The purpose of this thesis is to analyze and identify a selected number of key factors in successfully implementing open innovation. More precisely, it looks at how value is maximized using open innovation practices. The scientific approach taken is based largely on the network perspective, which puts relations to other companies in focus. An extended view of the resource based view (RBV), different from the traditional one by taking also external resources into account, is in addition central to understanding the use of external resources to create internal value. The two main research questions strive to look at how the company locates relevant partners and what the relations that are established with these partners should look like to get the most of open innovation.

This thesis concerns the Swedish credit card market to a younger public and specifically Nordea as a card editor. The purpose is to investigate whether a Swedish bank can, and want to build long term relationships with a young public through credit cards, and if so, how they do this.The theoretical background formulated by researchers Bendapundi and Berry consists of four key factors of relationship maintenance; trust, dependency, dedication and constraint. These key factors are also assembled in an analytical framework. The empirical findings mainly consist of interviews with three employees at Nordea. They describe a recent segmentation of the bank?s customers with the issuing of a new credit card; Mastercard Silver.

SyfteVi vill undersöka om och beskriva hur Human Resource Management kan bidra till minskad personalomsättning inom franchisedrivna fastighetsmäklarorganisationer. Huvudfrågor:Hur upplever anställda och före detta anställda fastighetsmäklare att personalomsättning påverkar branschen och deras arbetssituation?Hur skulle en mer omfattande organisationsstyrning med inriktning på HRM kunna minska personalomsättning inom fastighetsmäklarorganisationer styrda enligt franchisestruktur?MetodI arbetet hålls ett Hermeneutiskt synsätt. Ämnet personalomsättning och dess orsaker har tidigare behandlats i uppsatser som berör fastighetsmäklarbranschen och vi ser vårt arbete som en vidareutveckling i denna fråga. För att få en uppfattning om hur medarbetare ser på ledarskap och personalomsättning, används den kvalitativa intervjumetoden.Resultat & SlutsatsDe svar som framkom av intervjuerna med anställda och före detta anställda, visar att det finns en stark oro för personalomsättningen inom fastighetsmäklarbranschen. Detta påverkar anställda mäklares redan höga arbetsbelastning.

The purpose of this study was to examine the foreign news flow in Sweden´s largest news agency TT. Since TT has an important position as a news provider to most of Sweden´s local and national news outlets, it was important to examine exactly what their news stories consisted of.The theoretical background of this study consist of theories of news values, agenda setting, dependency theory and the theory about the ?news shadow? a lack of coverage leads to.In our quantitative study we have looked at 506 articles taken from the TT news flow during two weeks In November 2013. We have studied which continents and countries the news origins from, who have supplied the text, the topics of the news, which one gets to speak in the text and what general tone the story has.The study shows that the supply of news follows the criteria of news values. It also shows that in some regions of the world the coverage is almost nonexistent.

The product structure of the fuel tank installation is one of the most complex product areas at Scania. Caused by the number of parameters, which affect the fuel tank installation, a product structure is created which is very difficult to handle. Knowledge exist that the structure in a nearby future will be considerable more complex. The purpose of the study has been to understand in why this complexity exist and find ways to break the trend of a growing product structure. The goal was to achieve a more standardized fuel tank installation.A theoretical study was performed in order to bring knowledge in relevant areas both in general theory but also in documentation at Scania.

Handling materials and packaging, which is the focus of this study, requires efficient logistics, both internally and between companies. To achieve an efficient material flow, good information systems, whose role is to collect, store, process and distribute information, are required. The assumption that packagings are handled in an efficient manner is currently not a matter of course, when many companies do not prioritize the internal management of the package.The purpose of this report was to investigate how medium-sized businesses working with distribution and handling of spare parts packaging can improve their internal management of packaging. In order to answer the purpose, we have used an abductive process and a qualitative data collection. The study had Logistic Center Ljungby (LCL) at Electrolux Laundry Systems (ELS) as a case company and two other respondents, Nibe in Markaryd and Enertech in Ljungby.

In this report a system for Rapid Control Prototyping, RCP, is evaluated through animplementation of the motor control methods Field Oriented Control, FOC, and Space VectorPulse Width Modulation, SVPWM. The evaluation emphasizes on time-consumption andresource utilization on the used hardware and on usability for of software.A new mechatronic laboratory is under development at ABB Corporate Research in Västerås. Itwill be used for both mechanical and motion control design using existing and new hardware.The control structure in a traditional robot system will be interfaced to a rapid prototypingsystem which should allow easy changes to algorithms at different levels in the system.The system designated for this project comes from National Instruments and constitutesLabVIEW Real-time and FPGA module as the software tools. The hardware is a NI Single-Board RIO (Reconfigurable Input Output), sbRIO, development board including a Field-Programmable Gate Array, FPGA, from Xilinx and a microprocessor from FreescaleSemiconductor. Graphical programming is performed in the LabVIEW environment, andthrough Xilinx tools the LabVIEW FPGA code is compiled to VHDL code.A pre-study was carried out to clarify the concept of RCP and investigate different systems forRCP and their traits.

Upplands Väsby municipality has a vision that podcars in the future will become an effective alternative in public transport, with reduced car-dependency as a result. The system would also attract new inhabitants and businesses to the municipality.This report deals with various issues that podcar stations may face. Also, suggestions for possible track laying at the stations and station design are presented. Two areas are investigated. Eds allé which is a neighborhood that is planned for housing and where the station may be planned into the cityscape from the start.

Stress i arbetslivet anses vara den främsta orsaken till utbrändhet/utmattningssyndrom, men det finns forskare som menar att det är värt att även studera individfaktorer i detta sammanhang. Syftet med denna studie var att fokusera på ohälsa bland medberoende individer genom att undersöka om dessa var mer utbrända/utmattade än icke medberoende. I undersökningen deltog 92 personer. 45 studenter ingick i en kontrollgrupp och 47 medlemmar i självhjälpsrörelsen Alanon ingick i experimentgruppen.Deltagarna besvarade en enkät, bestående av två självskattningsformulär; Karolinskas utbrändhetsformulär samt ?the Holyoake Co-Dependency Index?.

The dependency of continuous electricity supply is high in the Swedish society today, at the same time no one is willing to pay for a too costly or over dimensioned power distribution system. The owners of the distribution systems are the ones responsible for this balance act of maintaining a high quality of electricity delivery to customers at a reasonable cost.In this master thesis a limited part of the primary distribution system (10 kV), owned by Mälarenergi Elnät AB and located in the city centre of Västerås, was chosen for a deeper analysis of its reliability. Its ability to handle outages of system components (N-1 and N-2 contingency analysis) was investigated to find out potential weak spots and parts of the grid that showed signs of being overdimensioned.The results of the performed simulations showed that in 74 % of the studied N-1 contingencies cases, consisting of outages of a bus bar in a distribution substation, the system could handle this without causing outages in other parts of the grid. For the N-2 contingencies 61 % passed the test. It was also found that one of the two included high voltage substations could alone supply the investigated part of the grid.

This study aims to examine attitudes and conceptions of staff who work with mentally disabled persons, concerning normalization and gender. Six qualitative interviews with such professionals were performed and subsequently analyzed. Since the method of this study is qualitative, no claim of generalizability is made. The interview material has been categorized into themes by means of coding. The result of the study is presented according to those themes.

This study aims to examine attitudes and conceptions of staff who work with mentally disabled persons, concerning normalization and gender. Six qualitative interviews with such professionals were performed and subsequently analyzed. Since the method of this study is qualitative, no claim of generalizability is made. The interview material has been categorized into themes by means of coding. The result of the study is presented according to those themes.

This paper supports the thesis that creative consumer advertising also can be used as a recruitment tool. By increasing the level of creativity used in their communication, a company can affect the attractiveness of themselves as future employers. The creative advertising influences the brands perceived creativity. It also increases the perceived social, development- and reputational value as well as the future intentions with the brand. By being more creative the brand is also viewed as making more marketing effort, which in turn affects the perceived potential of the brand in a positive way.

As the Swedish governments long term goals include a reduction of fossil fuel dependency, increasing pressure is placed upon energy companies to create and develop new solutions for renewable energy. The following case study was done in collaboration with the company Sydved Energileveranser AB and one of their contractors, Enarssons Skogsentreprenad AB. The objective of the study is to examine the bioenergy situation in region of Skåne and evaluate the potential solutions in the region for a forest-fuel assortment, based on a bioenergy-cutting-system. As a part of this study I have compared ordinary manual cuttings done with a chain saw and cuttings made using the new ?bio- energy cutting system?. The cuttings made under both systems were tested in areas near agricultural fields or pasture land in order to maintain an open landscape.

För att skapa en större konkurrenskraft och hantera det allt hårdare affärsklimatet väljer många företag idag att implementera Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, dessa heltäckande affärssystem integrerar alla verksamhetens delar med en gemensam databas och skapar nya möjligheter. För att kunna utvärdera vilken nytta en organisation får av ett sådant system behövs det lämpliga analytiska ramverk. Trots att det finns ramverk för denna typ av utvärdering, råder brist på lämpliga utvärderingsverktyg. En ny utveckling på marknaden för dessa system är webbaserade ERP-system. Systemet köps istället som en tjänst, där systemet finns på en server hos tjänsteleverantören.