Leadership is essential for every company. Its strength or weakness of direction, clarity, and evaluation affects success or failure of its organization. With the complex structure of the big and global companies today leadership is more challenging. The traditional view of leadership, with the single individual possessing all the competences and skills, is therefore being challenged by an alternative way of leadership, a shared leadership. Existing research on the subject is still scarce, which makes further studies in this field important.

 The current estimations in regards to the increase in environmental threats underline the importance of influencing individual behavior towards a more sustainable lifestyle. At the same time current trends show an increasing interest into ecologically produced foods around the world and that the consumption has seen a major rise in the 20th century. It is therefore of great importance that companies show their interest and commitment in order to offer and influence the consumer into choosing the environmentally sustainable alternative. Also, in order to properly reach out to the consumers, it is of outmost importance to map out their attitude towards these types of products. It is equally important, in order to fully realize the potential of successful positioning, to show an understanding for the underlying decision processes that dictates purchase.

During the past year it has been made possible to buy back a company?s outstanding stock. This is done in order to change the capital structure towards a situation with less equity. A change in capital structure means a change in the cost of capital for a company and by that a change in the value for the stockholder. This Master Thesis studies the relation between capital structure and business risk.

The swedish song contest ?Melodifestivalen? is the most popular TV-show in Sweden according to number of viewers. Not only has it managed to remain the viewers? number-one choice year after year, it has also engaged a lot of the viewers (2, 4 millions in this year?s final) to vote for their favourite song. Melodifestivalen is classified as a creative organisation since it has evident elements of creativity in its process, product and among its employees.

This study investigates how the concept of Social Responsible Investment (SRI) can be applied to futures trading. More specifically, this study examines the possibility of creating a SRI-product for an investor, active in futures investments within commodities, energies and stock indices, and the content of such a product is suggested. We conducted a qualitative study, based on a number of interviews. The study suggests that investments in futures of specific assets are to be equated with investments directly in the underlying assets from a SRI point of view. Therefore, we analyzed the underlying assets of futures traded commodities, energies and stock indices, and used social screening, together with specific screening criteria, for the analysis.

This Master thesis was written for Lantmännen Agroetanol in Norrköping concerning the layout of their finished goods inventory and unloading of feed after introducing a new product mix. Lantmännen Agroetanol has two production lines which produces feed. Both lines lead to six silos, used as inventory of finished goods. The feed from the two production lines differ in terms of quality, where as Lantmännen Agroetanol wants to separate their finished inventory in order to charge a higher price, by selling the better product as a premium. With two different feed products the yearly revenue is expected to increase which motivates a research about the current capabilities and necessary changes to be made in the factory.

During the last year in the Innovation Engineering Program, at Halmstad University, a degree project was performed that was carried out during Fall semester in 2006 and Spring semester 2007. The project was performed by two students in corporation with LIC Audio AB, a company in Stockholm. The degree project was meant to result in a communication aid for people with a cognitive handicap. The project focused on people suffering from dementia because of the expressed need within this group. This aid should first and foremost help in a conversation between a person with dementia and another person, like a relative or nursing home staff.

It is increasingly important for cities to attract visitors, potential new residents and businesses. Jönköping is one of the cities working with place marketing, a strategy that intends to mediate a positive image of the city, in order to accomplish just that.People often have a need to preserve the memory of a trip into something tangible. Anyone visiting Jönköping encounters a souvenir choice, much like the one in many other cities. Linked to the idea of positive place marketing, our work aims to investigate how we as product developers can create a product that en¬hances the image of Jönköping based on the thought that all residents are con¬sig¬nors. Accordingly, we develop three different products from the residents' own image of the city.Our research questions are:Based on the photographs, what image of Jönköping do the ambassadors mediate of their own city?As designers, what in Jönköping's history versus the image of Jönköping today, can we seize in order to give products for visitors a sense of authenticity?As designers, how can we use knowledge of place branding in the development of souvenirs?We performed interviews within three different aspects: history, souvenirs and place branding, all focused on the city of Jönköping.

In a time of economic turmoil and financial crisis profitability matters rise higher and higher on company agendas. Many companies are pressured to find profitability to avoid layoffs or even bankruptcy. Profitability essentially depends on the margin on the product or service sold and the costs associated with selling these products or services and hence these areas are of vital importance if companies are to improve profitability. Previous research has focused, for the most part, on product profitability while customer profitability has received less attention. This study is based on a case study of a Swedish publishing house and aims to investigate how the company?s Cost-to-Serve varies between its distribution channels.

The aim of the thesis was to provide further understanding on how Swedish consumers use the Internet as an information source in their purchase decision process. The subject was investigated from different perspectives: gender, product type and information type. The authors used a quantitative approach, and a survey (n=120) was conducted. It was concluded that men and women are equally influenced by traditional word-of-mouth, but more men than women search for product information online and they are more likely to let their purchase decision to be influenced by it. Women tend more to trust commercial sources.

Research has shown that immigrants in the Swedish society often, when seeking jobs, don?t get the same opportunities as the rest of the population. This thesis is a qualitative research that examines the problematic situation of unemployment among immigrants in the municipality of Finspång. The purpose of this study is to analyze how civil servants in Finspång apprehend and describe the labor market problems surrounding the immigrant groups that live in the municipality of Finspång. The empirical material is build upon seven qualitative interviews with eight civil servants working in Finspång.

Kitron had wishes to be able to test and measure how disturbance affects their vehicle electronic units before they have been verified by SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden in Borås. This work started with the writing of a demand specification together with Kitron for a product PSQS, Power Supply Quality Simulator, which can generate some test pulses according to a standard for electronic units to Volvos vehicles. A design proposal was developed with the help the demand specification and was verified with the help of simulations. All electric schematics was designed with the guide of the design proposal. The pulses realized in the works of this thesis are those which Kitron experienced that they have a need to test in their own premises and which are possible to generate with the means available.

A large part of the Namibian low income population lack access to grid distributed electricity. This mean they are effectively shut out from basic functions such as lighting, information technologies and hygienic food handling. Hence, finding ways of providing affordable off-grid electricity is an important, not to say critical, task.This master thesis is an innovation and concept development project that has been carried out in cooperation with organisations in Sweden and Namibia. The purpose of the project has been to (1) develop a concept for off-grid electricity supply in Namibia and (2) to gain a deeper knowledge within the area of innovation and product development for the Base of the Pyramid population, i.e. the poorest, but largest, socio-economic part of the global population.Essential in this project has been to acquire user understanding and to identify user needs to create a foundation for developing the concept.

First time labelling occurred was when animal owners marked their cattle in order to distinguish the differences. The need for labelling was added when the trade had expanded during Roman times in order for the customers to know who manufactured their craft. Trademarks are characterized as a way to distinguish one's own product or service from someone else. The marketing purpose is to create an identity. The brand has an important role as an effective competitive tool for businesses.A brand can have many different functions, which will simplify a customer's decision making process in selecting a service or product.

Graphic profiles are a part of companies? brand expressions. The graphical values reflect the brand values the business wants to convey. They consist of different graphic elements such as logo, company sign, colour schemes, templates, rules, fonts, pictograms, formats and references to how different graphic elements should look, for example, business cards, signs and materials for websites. This thesis aims to examine why firms choose to replace their graphic profiles by studying their underlying motivations.