Title: The role of social media on today?s markets ? Companies? desire to understand theircustomersAuthors: Kristoffer Avci-Nåmark & Patrik WidlundBackground: The markets of today are characterized by dynamic conditions because of thecontinuous change in consumer preference. Due to this, the interaction between the company and its consumers is gaining importance as companies find the need to increase their knowledge about the market. Out of this need social media has emerged as a tool forcompanies to improve their communication with customers. The popularity of social media isincreasing at a rapid rate and sites such as Facebook now has around 500 million usersworldwide.

Changes are occurring in most organizations today and due to the fact that changes often are harder to implement than they seem, it often takes much longer time to implement them than the management have planned. During an organizational change theorist claim that communication between managers and employees is one of the most important things to consider. Therefore, in this essay, our aim is to closer investigate which needs of information and communication co-workers have during a planned organizational change. To collect data, we interviewed five co-workers and one manager who works in an organization which has gone through a major change. Our theoretical framework comprises former research of organizational communication, employee?s needs of communication, change communication and theories of uncertainty during organizational change.

The thesis aims to understand how learning processes are affected when an organization split into two separate organizations. The study is designed as a single case, covering a new government agency?s takeover of a core activity from another agency and the use of a purchase-provider split between the agencies, providing the new agency with IT-services. The findings revealed a difference in productive system and knowledge types between core- and IT-activities. The core activity was found to be dominated by explicit knowledge while the IT-activity seemed to be dominated by a mix of explicit and tacit knowledge.

A social intranet is an information and communication channel that is relatively new. There is still a small amount of research done around social intranet and what it is, and also on what organizations and their members may benefit from using such an intranet. Therefore, this paper was written with the purpose to em-phasize the reasons, possibilities and difficulties of implementing and using a so-cial intranet. With interview as method we took part of the experiences and views on social intranet from a number of organizations that are using or is about to establish a social intranet, and also from companies who deliver the service. Through the use of previous research in organizational communication, we then analysed the responses we received from our respondents.

The essay studies the relationship between communication and organizational culture; to determine if there are any cultural differences between the management of an organization and its employees and to examine how a difference can affect the communication of organizational policies. A case study, where the public school was examined, was used to answer the research question, and interviews were held with relevant people on different levels in the organization.The interviews were analyzed with the theoretical frame of reference as a benchmark. Cultural differences could be identified between different levels in the organization and between the two schools studied. The differences affected how and why people communicated but not how well the respondents understood each other.Keywords: Organizational culture, subculture, Organizational communication, affects, hierarchy..

Organizations today face big challenges as a result of increased exposure. A distinct and recognizable identity is required to differentiate. Consistent and coherent communication about what the organization stands for and where it is going is crucial if you want to succeed. This is a case study of how organizational members from two real estate companies that have merged into one, perceive their merged organization. The method is depth interviews with management representatives and focus group interviews with members from different levels of the company.

This essay discusses organizational culture and focus on corporate creativity and innovation. The aim is to see which organizational factors that foster creativity and innovation in organizations. The essay will provide answer on how organizational culture can encourage creativity and innovation and how organizations can promote the rise of a creative work environment. The research design of this essay is a qualitative case study with interviews at Gotland Energi AB (GEAB). The interviews provided insight in factors that can foster creativity and innovation in organizations.

With a strong company culture an organisation has relationships with their clients on an organizational level rather than on an individual. This simplifies the ability to change team members in order to enforce creativity and keep clients on a long-term basis. In turn the final product/service improves, which creates long-term relationships. Additionally, relationships on a personal level due to social activities helps Solberg detect early warnings-signs of eventual dissatisfaction from the client?s point of view.

Knowledge is of great importance for organizations and it is seen as an important competitive advantage to effectively preserve knowledge within an organisation. The upcoming retirement of employees born in the 1940s poses a threat because it is believed to result in a knowledge drain. The problem of preserving knowledge within the organization lies in the fact that it is partly tacit, and therefore not possible to write down or communicate in words. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how tacit knowledge is created in the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the implications thereof. We examine the following research questions: Of what significance is the creation and reproduction of tacit knowledge for the Swedish Foreign Ministry? Which factors influence the creation and reproduction of tacit knowledge and why? A case study of the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs has been conducted.

The purpose of this study was to examine the experience of organizational culture among salespeople at a specific workplace. The purpose was also to investigate what motivates these salespeople in their work and the impact culture has on their motivation. We have used a qualitative research method to collect the empirical material. With the help of seven interviews, including six salespeople from one of Sweden?s biggest electronic retailer and also one information interview with a sales consultant, we attempted to find the answer to how they perceive the organizational culture and how it affects their work motivation. The following questions are used to fulfill this purpose: ? How do the salespeople experience the organizational culture? ? What motivates the salespeople in their daily work? ? What effects does the organizational culture have on the salespersons motivation? As analytical tools we have used are the concept of organizational culture, Schein's description of the three components of culture and Herzberg Motivation-Hygiene theory. The results of the study indicate that the salespeople experience a positive organizational culture and that this culture promotes fellowship and unity between colleagues, which in turn contributes to an enhanced motivation.

Syfte: Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka vilka faktorer som leder till kunskapsflykt och vilka metoder svenska företag som är verksamma i Kina kan använda sig av för att öka organizational commitment. Metod: Uppsatsen har en abduktiv ansats och ett företagsekonomiskt perspektiv. Studien bygger på kvalitativa intervjuer utförda med representanter för svenska företag som verkar i Kina samt en expertintervju. Vidare utgår studien från litteratur och vetenskapliga artiklar, framförallt inom teoriområdena organizational commitment och kultur. Resultat: Undersökningen resulterar i ett praktiskt och ett teoretiskt bidrag.

The purpose of this master thesis is to present a model that illuminates the important factors when deriving technical information from market data within a company. For companies to be able to become and stay competitive in the market, product quality is an important factor. Whilst good product quality leads to customer satisfaction and loyalty, lack of quality brings costs in service and replacements. To improve product quality, the developers need information and knowledge about what quality issues affect existing products. Most companies gather data from market about known issues, but in order eliminate known quality issues in new products; this data has to be transformed into information and knowledge.

Companies learn through their employees. In this paper I make research into how knowledge transfer and learning occur at Metso Paper Karlstad AB, which is a partly project based organization.The result is that there are many factors that affect the knowledge transfer in a company. Knowledge transfer occurs mainly between individuals within the company, but also between departments and other actors outside the company. In the gaps between these actors, there is a risk that knowledge is not transferred, which is an obstacle to learning. A great deal of the knowledge transfer and the learning is carried out through individual?s own drive and motivation.

The aim of this essay is to examine the experiences of an introduction process of newcomers through an integrative perspective, by two guiding questions: How does the examined organization socialize newcomers? How is the organizational socialization experienced by the employees? Most Swedish corporations engage in some form of workplace introduction and this introduction should give the newcomer an understanding of his work and its relation to the organizations other business practices. Earlier studies have mostly focused on the effects of socialization tactics but few on the experience. This study, based on qualitative interviews with a regional manager, newcomers and established employees shows that the studied organization socializes its newcomers through many socialization tactics where the newcomers? personality and previous knowledge allows to direct the socialization process.

This thesis has two aims: The main purpose is to describe and illustrate how a large Ltd. company can use voluntary redundancy as a tool for restructuring. The additional purpose is to challenge the concept of voluntary redundancy trough outlining alternative ways of reaching the intended achievements of the voluntary redundancy programme. The theoretical framework that has been used primarily contains knowledge assets theories. The chosen theories are intellectual capital and knowledge management theory to approach and analyse the empirical findings.