Syfte: Vårt syfte är, att genom att studera Apples historia, omvärld, bransch och strategiska val, analysera om och hur Apple använder hemlighetsmakeriet som grund för skapande av långsiktiga och varaktiga konkurrensfördelar. Metod: Vi har använt oss av en kvalitativ metod med primärdata bestående av intervjuer med personer insatta i Apple och dess omvärld. Sekundärdatan består mestadels av artiklar från olikaelektroniska källor, facklitteratur och tidskrifter. Teoretiska perspektiv: Vi använder oss av teorier och begrepp som Porters Five Forces, Schumpeterian markets, Hyperkonkurrens, delar av Porters generiska strategier samt Barneys VRIO. Empiri: Vi har gjort en fallstudie av Apple med inslag av jämförelser med andra företag.

China is a unique market that differs from the Western market in many ways. Companies are not required to publicize financial reports, and furthermore a heavy focus on business relationship building can make it hard for companies to have high quality streams of data to get insights about their markets. For a consultant company to successfully enter the Chinese market and helping producing and technological global firms improving their insights on the Chinese market, the consultant company needs to understand which the important factors are and how those factors can help in creating value for their potential customers. To help the analyzing and consultant firm called Kairos Future, a qualitative case study was conducted on 16 different global companies with focus on industrial production. The case study was mainly conducted through face to face interviews with decision makers who had a broad understanding of their respective companies.

 Our study aims at investigating the unit manager?s, within LSS, perceiveddiscretion, when people with Down´s syndrome develop Alzheimer?s disease. We wanted to know what they perceive as limiting factors or facilitators in order to meet changing and/or emerging needs, as well as how they interpret their discretion in relation to this. We have conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews with five unit mangers within LSS.When analyzing the interview material, we have used a theoretical approach from a street-level bureaucracy and from the unit managers? perceiveddiscretion point of view.Our study?s result demonstrate that the unit managers are experiencing a wide discretion and do not feel a need to widen their identifieddiscretion..

The aim of this project was to design a furniture that raises thoughts and curiosity about how to relate to people you share furniture with. Luova, a changing piece of furniture for public spaces is a bench where the user can choose the degree of social interaction. Furniture for public spaces has a diverse audience ranging from children to adults. Some come alone, others in group. Some are sitting down for a short time while others stay for longer.

The purpose of this thesis is to give an understanding of how grocery stores relate to local foods. Through a case study representatives for two groceries in Norrbotten have been interviewed regarding why they supply local foods, how they try to influence customers to buy this, and how they decide upon the assortment of local foods. The result shows that groceries supply local foods in order to supply a wide range of products and to mediate social responsibility, in order to create customer loyalty. Concerning how the groceries try to influence customers to buy local foods the result cannot give any clear-cut view. Instead it shows that a grocery that actively works to influence customers to buy local foods markets them in specific ways, while the opposite applies to a grocery that does not actively work for this.

A segmented market, according to traditional methods, appears increasingly difficult in mature consumer markets. A common explanation is that the mature markets are often characterised by over-supply which results in a great variety of choices for the consumer. Furthermore, the consumer of today has a more complex and flexible purchase behaviour which is difficult to catch. This makes consumer segmentation difficult. International studies indicate that dividing consumers into generation cohorts might be advantageous in understanding consumers of today.

The following study examined whether similarities in motor speech deficits in Parkinson?s disease and in developmental stuttering could be observed. Furthermore, intelligibility was examined. Assessments of 16 people with Parkinson?s disease, 35 people with developmental stuttering and 49 matched controls were performed with the tests Dysartribedömningen and the Swedish Test of Intelligibility.

The last few decades largeincreases in institutional and foreign ownershipin Swedish listed companies have created a concernthat the traditionalSwedish ownership model are disappearing.With increasing globalizationand ever morecapital-intensive markets, so have great owners forced to admitcapital fuelled institutionaland foreign investors into their companies. By from an agency theoryperspective examine how different ownershiptypes and ownershipconstellations affects the cost ofequity, we want to see if there is reason for concern. Is the change in ownership structure affecting theSwedish listed firms?Our results show that the owneridentity or ownership constellations don?t affect the cost of equity that much.The only owner-identity that shows a significant correlation with the cost ofequity is the institutions and they relate to a lower cost of equity. Theresults show that companies with two controlling shareholders relates to lowercost of equity which can show that ownership structure affects the cost.

3nine has developed oil mist separators for the manufacturing industry. They are used in factories and workshops in Sweden as well as many other countries. The basis for this thesis is to investigate the performance of these separators in applied environments under different circumstances and to find factors that influence the performance. It has been shown both theoretically and in laboratory environments that the sizes of the particles in the oil mist influences the performance of separation. This is to be verified under applied circumstances as well.The separators also have in most cases, after the centrifugal separation, HEPA-filters mounted that separates the remaining oil mist.

Background and research problem: The former highly inflationary property market is currently undergoing a stagnation process. Investors have been used to annual growth figures in double digits,but now this is no longer considered to be a realistic outlook for future years. According to a report from PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Urban Land Institute, published by Avanza Wealth Management,the three most attractive markets for property investment in Europe are London, Paris and Stockholm. Because of this the authors have focused their investigation on two companies in the London andStockholm. The authors will additionally use an international bank, an estate agent and a consultancy firm for further information, with regards to the property market and risks associated with these typesof investment in particular.

Over the last decade, the private insurance market has undergone a stable growth in turnover and growing demand for insurance products in all Member States of the European Union. Therefore, the creation of a single market in insurance will enable consumers to have access to wider choice of insurance products, and insurance companies to gain access to markets in various Member States and compete effectively. The EU legal framework for the insurance industry embraces the Treaty freedoms of services, establishment and capital, the EC Directives and the ECJ case-law. The present thesis identifies numerous factors that hinder the Community insurance market integration and offers possible remedies. The summary of the market obstacles is all-inclusive and reflects the responses to the questionnaires and the Commission surveys.

Problem: In society of today corporate competence is an important factor for survivor and development. IT is developing rapidly and can not be ignored by companies. Then need for people with IT-competence is conquent increasing. A survey of corporate IT-competence is therefore of interest for companies as well as for local authorities. To determine the IT competence within an organisation, this competence has to be measurable.

The digitization in the Swedish health care sector is rapidly growing. This study investigates whether the digitalization in health care has led to higher quality and an increased value for patients. Interviews with staff in various health care professional categories were conducted to qualitatively study how the implementation of digitization is perceived in practice by those directly involved. Furthermore, an observation was made, where a doctor was followed duringa workday to study the different digitalization software tools that are being used. Previous studies and other relevant literature accompanied the study of digitalization in health care. Organizational theories were compared with the practical organization management at the studied health care organization, as well as their dependence on other authorities and companies.

By the year of 2007, 97 % of all listed companies in Europe had a CSR strategy described on their website. As the concept of CSR during the last decades has increased rapidly in popularity, a need to understand how such a strategy can be implemented has followed. While working with CSR in an integrated manner shows similarities to other popular management ideas, such as Lean and TQM, companies applying to a CSR strategy has been shown to be under higher scrutiny from media and NGO:s. Through a case study this thesis examines how these special circumstances of a CSR strategy makes The Body Shop use organizational control to avoid being subject to scandals due to not fulfilling the promises made to its customers. The results show that The Body Shop's commitment to CSR creates a need for a stringent bureaucratic control system that highly restricts the freedom of action for its employees.

There will be changes in the accounting regulations in Sweden. Firms will be categorised as K1-K4 firms depending on the size of the company. There will be different levels of accounting in the four categories. Firms will always have the possibility to choose a more advanced accounting regulation than the one they are obligated to due to their size. The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate which factors that influence the management in K3 firms in the choice between the K3 and K4 regulation.