Background: It is necessary for a company to hold some unique and irreplicable competitive advantage in order to be able to succeed in a market. In a market where public procurement is an important part the competitive advantages will be characterized by the fact that some of the participants on the market are public organizations and that their actions as for procurement fall under the legislation LOU. The characteristics of competitive advantage also depend on and change with continuous changes on a market. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to study the competitive advantages that are presenton a current market characterized by public procurement and how these are created. The purposes is also to based on the trends on the market today study and predict the nature of the competitive advantage on the market in the future as well as the changes that we think will occur on the relevant market.

Passive houses are a relatively new concept in Sweden and by that it is meant a house without a traditional heating system. The most acknowledged passive house project is the terrace houses in Lindås, Gothenburg, which we have used as a reference. This project concerns a square apartment block. So far, no square apartment block has been built as a passive house in Sweden.The common opinion in the construction industry is that it is not economical to build extremely energy efficient houses. With Peab as commissioner our task was to investigate if that is true, if regarding the construction of a multi storey house as a passive houseMidroc, now owned by Peab, constructed in the block of Preussen in Jönköping during 2004-2005 four houses, with 132 apartments distributed on seven floors.

The transformation of the Swedish Armed Forces is bringing about major changes in many areas. Indirect fire is one capability affected by these changes. Financial savings, a shrinking organization and higher eligibility requirements mean that fewer soldiers will gain access to exclusive high-tech support resources such as the JAS 39 Gripen aircraft and the ARCHER artillery system. This thesis aims to examine whether access to indirect fire capability can be increased through the use of civilian products and communication networks. Technology development in the civilian mobile communications area is exponential and nations such as the USA, facing challenges similar to those of the Swedish Armed Forces, devote substantial resources to research and development.

The outset of this study is to contribute to the literature concerning China?s increasing economic interest to engage in the African context, its economies and resource abundandce. The overarching research problem is that the approaches held by the respective African state entities may facilitate increasing development gains for the recipient state of this economic interest in principle. To adress this research problem the study is undertaken by conducting a comparative case study where three cases/states, with presumably diverging economic and political status, are likely to effect their overall state approaches differently.Research questions, which are addressed by the creation of an idealtype analytic matrix, concern whether the states of South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe take on a more ?permissive? or ?restrictive? approach towards China?s economic interst and whether the approaches can be looked upon on both aggratege and case/area-specific levels.The main findings are that a clear tendency of the ?permissive approach? may be noted on a aggregate level for all cases.

Föreliggande kandidatuppsats handlar om att söka beskriva samverkan och konflikt i samband med naturresurshantering. Undersökningens forskningsobjekt är ett försök till lokal samförvaltning som togs av lokala invånare i Tivedsbygden, en skogsbygd i gränslandet mellan Västergötland och Närke. Visionen om detta hållbara naturresursarrangemang lyckades dock aldrig nås. Initiativet togs i samband med ett landsbygdsutvecklingsprojekt pågick under åren 2009-2011. Min tolkning är att detta försök präglades av samverkan och konflikt.

AbstractThe Government´s guidelines found in the curriculum for pre-schools, recommend that music should be an important resource for children. To stimulate children´s language is also an important part of this curriculum. It is every teacher`s proffessional duty to ensure that these guidelines are followed. Language is of unparallel importance in assisting an individual to grow and to function within a society. In my work about music and languages in pre-school the purpose is to investigate how the studied teachers use music to stimulate of children`s developmt in language.

One of the main tasks of the Swedish Armed Forces over the past few years has been International assignments, which increased the importance of the Lessons Learned process. Methods of simulator training with computers have become more frequent and the technical ability to collect digital data from sensors has been developed as well. This work demonstrates how the experience of Lessons Learned can be communicated with the computer simulator StriSimPC and how modern technology in future support experiences from the Lessons Learned process at the tactical level in the Army.Currently knowledge sharing consists of several processes and strategies in the Swedish Armed Forces. This is done by written reports, oral presentations and different practical exercises.This case study shows the functions of the simulator StriSimPC, methods of training and how it is used today. The study also describes the future opportunities, where digital metadata acquired from the modern combat vehicles could contribute sharing of experience in the Lessons Learned process.The summarized conclusions indicate that StriSimPC can combine the two strategies for personalization and codification of knowledge transfer to reach a higher level of learning.

AbstractResource efficient manufacturing is a term that has been increasingly applied within manufacturing, where one of the key points is to reduce waste of such forms that do not add value for the end customer. By the Lean principles, there are seven plus one types of waste, in which the definition of the eighth point varies among sources. In this study, the eighth type of waste has been interpreted as the untapped creativity and competence among employees that has not been put to use. From this, our question was incubated; How can you make the most of the employees? untapped creativity and potential within manufacturing? The case study will be developed with empirical data obtained from Dometic Group by conducting interviews.From the gathered literature, it was concluded that the communication between employees contributed to an increased understanding of one another as well as it allowed for improvement in work.

HR yrket är en position som kräver stor spännvidd av kompetenser då de ska tillgodose både ledningen och medarbetarna. Deras yrkesroll är mångsidig då de ansvarar för de anställdas utvecklingsarbete parallellt med pressen att generera goda resultat för organisationsledningen. Många gånger innebär detta motstridiga krav, vilket i vissa fall skulle kunna leda till stressutfall och otydliga roller. Då relativt få studier behandlar HR rollen och dess stressnivå samt rollotydlighet ansåg vi att det krävdes ytterligare dokumentation. Denna studie undersöker samband och skillnader mellan upplevd arbetsrelaterad stress, rollotydlighet och emotionella copingstrategier för HR chefer.

This Master?s Thesis is an evaluation of the software Xilinx System Generator (XSG) and blockset for Matlab. XSG is a module to simulink developed by Xilinx in order to generate VHDL code directly from functions implemented in Matlab. The evaluation was made at Saab Avionics AB in Järfälla, north of Stockholm. In order to investigate the performance of this new module XSG to simulink, a model of a frequency estimator often used in digital radar receivers were implemented in Matlab using XSG.

Bioenergy from the forest has been heavily debated in Sweden for several decades due to the interest of society to decrease dependence upon fossil fuels and limit the effects of climate change. The actual use of bioenergy from the forest has shifted over the years but increased during the last decades. Private actors within forest and nature conservation sectors play an important role for the development of bioenergy from the forest as well as for the debate and the implementation of political goals. Forestry in Sweden is characterised by ?freedom under responsibility? for private actors and the perspective of governance is valuable for studying actors and discourses.

Local charges may induce people to change their pattern of consumption by influencing investments and acts in certain directions. Some charges could for example give people incentives to use less natural resources. This study investigates four different local charges and whether they benefit an economical management with natural resources or not. This is carried out by investigating whether there is a polarity between local charges that may influence environmental actions or goods, and effective pollution control set to achieve certain nationally determined environmental goals. The study includes two economic perspectives and investigates on the one hand whether local charges counteract governmental subsidies and on the other hand whether the charges vary between the different municipalities since large differences may lead to cost inefficiency.

Stump biomass is energy rich and stump harvesting for use as fuel become more and more interesting in Sweden. Swedish Forest Agency (2009) has estimated that stump harvesting in Sweden would respond to an annual energy supply of 57 TWh/year. However, stump has not been recognized as a bioenergy resource in Sweden. Suitable methods for pre-treatment of stump are probably of great importance to make it accepted as fuel. It is therefore rewarding to carry out an investigation in this area for stump. This report represents results from a diploma project, which was aimed to develop a fixed bed reactor for experimental study of biomass torrefaction, followed by TG analysis and kinetic modelling employing Ozawa method and different kinetic models including one-step and three-pseudo-component models.

AbstractThe Northern Wheatear (Oenanthe oenanthe) is a small insectivorous passerine bird living in open landscapes. Both parents feed the brood of approximately five chicks, but little is known about how each sex allocates their feeding effort. In this study I investigate feeding nest visit differences between male and female Northern Wheatears relative to the age of the chicks, the number of chicks and the quality of the territory for 17 pairs from 2008-2010. Data were collected using automated data loggers to record nest visitation rates during chick feeding, and the sex was determined from nest video cameras. I also examine if the parents? rate of feeding visits changes over the nestling period.

During the last couple of years the focus for many businesses have moved from just being price oriented to include such factors as quality, flexibility, service, delivery precision and environmentally friendliness. The shift in viewpoint arises from the increasingly competition on the market and the hard economic atmosphere. It has become more important to differentiate the company and its products to be able to increase market share. The purpose with this master?s thesis was to get a better understanding on how companies (customer to DHL) are reasoning and prioritizing when choosing Swedish carriers.