Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the innovation process of companies, and to analyse how important success factors and obstacles are in their innovation process.Method: The investigation strategy used for this essay was to interview companies that work with innovations. The essay has a qualitative approach. Both primary ? in the form of interviews - and secondary data ? literature found in books, scientific articles and internet - have been used to achieve our results.Results: The result of this essay is: there is not just one inovation process that is applicable to all companies. On the other hand, there are some guidelines that could be followed in the process.

People are given better opportunities to participate in polity today. Democratic equality entails that all individuals are equal and therefore they should be included in the process of making the decisions. How can participation be defined and does it mean that having the possibility to participate means that people can influence the process of making the decisions in polity process?This paper focuses on participation and influence in polity and examine the relationship between having the possibility to participate and having the possibility to actually influence polity process on more local level. Therefore I have been examining the citizens? participation and influence in Helsingborg which is my case study.

In this essay we have been trying to get an understanding of what Swedish charter tourists cares for when they are going on vacation. The Tourism industry is a major field with a lot of winners, but it also comes with consequences. The purpose with this essay is to get an understanding of how aware the Swedish charter tourists is of these consequences. We would also like to get a perception of how the tourists themselves believe that their presence effects the locals at the destinations they are visiting (if they assume that they are). There are several different types of consequences that can appear in the context of tourism, but we have decided to focus on one kind.

This study is a degree project in environmental engineering at Mälardalens university. Its purpose has been to perform a risk assessment on whether or not any contaminations are present in the soil at two properties in Köping. The assessment was to be done accordingly to a method that has been set up by The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (Naturvårdsverket). The method for investigation of contaminated sites is called MIFO. MIFO consists of two stages.

Even if the main purpose is to decide if the companies profitability and financial position is a determining factor for its growth, the purpose is to determine if there are any differences between big and small companies in there economical positions then they grow, in the selected industry. This thesis is mainly a quantitative study. The selected industry for the study is extraction of turf. The financial measurement that most clearly differ the growing companies from the not growing companies or the companies that didn?t change there amount of employees was the returns of the companies own capital. It was also the returns of the companies own capital there the main difference existed between the big and the small companies.

The disintegration of the Soviet Union was a vast experience, not solely for the former members and inhabitants of the Soviet Union, but also for the rest of the world. This thesis examines Estonia and Uzbekistan's different experience with transition. By examining three different aspects of transition I seek to explain Estonia and Uzbekistan's different outcome of transition. Estonia has since their independence been fully aware of the process that started with their independence. They have reformed both the political and economic system, the industry is privatized, institutions democratic and Estonia is today a member of the European Union.

Holmen Skog has only five out of 70 wood buyers who are women, This report is seen as a step in the process towards gender balance in the company. This is a problem that is equal over the entire forest industry in Sweden. They all think that sexual equal workplaces are very important to remain competitive, see things from different perspectives and development of the company. The survey was done by sending out questionnaires to all women who work and have worked as a wood buyer at Holmen, and as many men of both categories. These four categories became a total of twenty persons. To map the industry another questionnaire was sent out to the six largest forest companies in Sweden. The survey found that female wood buyers not finished their work earlier than men did, as they thought before.

The importance of human capital in firm valuation is something Huang and Wang points out in there paper from 2008. We expand Ohlson?s valuation model (1995) in line with Huang and Wang (2008) to enhance a market value that includes proxies for human capital. By using human capital based market value and one of Francis, Nanda and Olsson?s (2008) version of earnings quality, we create a value table which aim to sort for undervalued and overvalued companies during the  economic upswing of 2003 to 2007 in the human capital line of business.

This paper intends to show how micro- and small businesses in the tourism and experience industry makes use of social media as a marketing tool. The study also shows the possibilities for businesses to market themselves to customers through social media. Small businesses usually don?t have the same conditions or the same marketing resources that larger companies have. For small businesses that lack marketing resources, social media is a great addition to marketing since the technology around social media is relatively simple.

Parallel to new technological advancements, including the development of interactive recommender systems, digital music services on the Internet, such as Spotify, have in a short time span gradually replaced former physical media such as CDs and MP3-players and become pioneers on a market with an otherwise uncertain future. By subscribing to the service, users have access to a vast library of music and from any device with Internet access. In order to provide a satisfactory and useful musical experience, different ways of coping with the vastness is required - which is precisely what recommender systems are for. Improved filtering techniques and use of devices built in sensors, make way for new opportunities of more precise and contextually tailored suggestions for track selection, which in turn leads to potential privacy issues when using interactive music services. But where do we stand today? By compiling, exemplifying and discussing three different perspectives with relating to the development of interactive music recommender systems, the objective for this paper is to provide a for science, industry and user, objectively nuanced account of current potentials and expectations.

The purpose of this thesis is to ascertain the main determinable factors of Swedish SMEs capital structure decisions and to investigate whether existing capital structure theories are applicable on Swedish SME financing. We have used panel data to run regressions of various capital structure determinants on three measures of capital structure; short- term debt, long-term debt and total debt. We found that growth opportunities, profitability and age are the most important capitalstructures determinants for our sample. Firm size shows a small explanatory result but the effective tax rate and the asset tangibility do not seem to explain the capital structure at all. Thematurity matching principle is considered significant..

Companies in the apparel industry are becoming increasingly responsible with regards to the social and environmental issues related to textile production. Despite these tendencies, there are great insecurities surrounding the concept of CSR and the effects on consumers of CSR communication. There is currently no model for breaking the concept of CSR down into smaller elements, specific for the apparel industry. In the first part of this thesis, we create such a model, applicable in a consumer communication context. In the second part, we investigate the effects on consumer attitudes and intentions of communicating the different elements of CSR presented in the model.

The construction industry is always looking for ways to make the work more efficient aswell as minimize the waste of money in general. At the same time the industry is showing alow awareness of logistics which has to increase in order to improve the industry in thesekind of questions. Projects located in the inner city have high demands on the logistic andthe handling of material due to the so often limited space for storages of the material. Dueto this the purpose of this report is true a case, study and analyze what kind of factors thereis to take into consideration during the materials way from the supplier to the workstationin a project located in the inner city. The data for the report was collected with the help of acase study, and in three different ways.

The current thesis is on the rule of law and how the principles of the rule of law are met in thenew Swedish migration process. The migration process has been subjected to criticism duringseveral years and on different occasions. The migrations process is viewed through a ?rightsof the child? perspective, foremost to seek if the rights of the child are met. The children are avulnerable group, not the least in the process of migration.

The concept Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) describes a company's social and environmental work. More and more companies have embraced the concept of CSR and for some businesses, it has become equally important to present its efforts within CSR as to present its latest profits.The purpose of this essay is to establish an overall picture of a company's CSR efforts and to discuss the potential conflict between CSR and the aim for profit We investigate how businesses can improve their CSR effort so that it contributes to a positive development for the society while still creating economic value for the company. The study is based on a qualitative study of four Swedish companies in the fashion industry: Kappahl, Gina Tricot, Åhlens and Indiska. The results show that according to the theoretical framework, the four companies do not reach a complete strategic approach to CSR. To achieve this it is necessary for the companies to change their current CSR-activities..