I dagens Sverige är marknadsläget i ständig förändring och på grund av den rådande lågkonjunkturen var år 2011 ett år präglat av minskad försäljning inom detaljhandeln. En verksamhet som drabbats hårt av den senaste lågkonjunkturen är RNB Retail and Brands och då främst deras koncept Sisters. På grund av de sjunkande försäljningssiffrorna har ett beslut tagits som innebär att Sisters hösten 2012 ska sluta producera och distribuera sitt interna varumärke och istället enbart verka som återförsäljare av externa varumärken. Frågan vi då ställer oss är vad de sjunkande försäljningssiffrorna kan bero på. Är det så att de inte känner den målgrupp de vänder sig till? Eller har de inte kunskap om vad målgruppen efterfrågar i ett erbjudande från Sisters? Kunskap om vilken image som är förenat med sitt företag är av hög prioritet eftersom det kan ge en indikation på eventuella förändringar som bör göras i varumärkesstrategin.

The sun is essential to life on earth and no matter where you are, there is a constant need ofenergy. Nearly 800 000 years ago man learned for the first time to use fire in a controlled way.Since then, fire has given us the opportunity to inhabit places despite a cold climate. In Swedenthe resident sector accounts for a major part of the total consumption of energy. In a time whenenvironmental issues and greenhouse effects are increasing, we also see a future of rising energyprices. With this perspective, we have in this bachelor thesis in the Building Environment at theRoyal Institute of Technology, KTH, in Stockholm decided to focus on the renewable energysource, solar energy.The energy from solar radiation is a free resource and does not have any negative effects uponthe environment.

The climate changes that are occuring in the world have resulted in that the EU callingfor a 20 % reduction in energy consumption to the year 2020, to reach that goal theEU want the public sector to go forth as a good example. Västfastigheter owns andmanage the hospital buildings in the Västra Götaland region. To be able to reducetheir energy usage Västfastigheter has hired several consulting firms to chart out theenergy consumption on each hospital building. The biggest energy savings potentialhave been calculated and what the cost will be to perform each action. The energyaudit have been completed and stand as the decision basis for Västfastigheter?s choiceon which action packages that should be implemented.

Today, about 15 to 20 percent of Sweden?s total emission of carbon dioxide can be traced to the household sector. By examining apartment blocks in a life cycle perspective, the origin of the carbon dioxide emission has been charted and analyzed. This information has been used to create a computational model that calculates the total emission of carbon dioxide from a specific apartment block. The results from the analyzed apartment blocks indicate that both the use of energy and the emission of carbon dioxide have been reduced since the 1960s. Through the examination of building materials, it is possible to lower the emission of carbon dioxide that origins from the construction phase of an apartment block.

Background: The latest development within the business world has been characterized by deregulation and globalization which has made the company bigger and even more influential. The increased power has resulted in a shift of responsibility for the community from the public to the private sector. (Steinholtz och Löhman, 2003) There have been many trends regarding what accountability includes and how financial accounting can be complimented in a useful and reliable way. Some trends have come to stay whilst others have shown to be less successful or the world has not been ready for them. (Larsson, a, 2002) Purpose: The purpose with this paper is to look at the historical development towards accounting for sustainability and to investigate what factors that might have hade an impact on this development.

PurposeThe purpose of this thesis is to investigate the market of pedagogic consulting and how the customers look upon these kinds of services and what the consultants think about the market. The following five questions were investigated:What is the situation of the market of pedagogic consulting?-          What needs and what demands are there of pedagogical consulting services? -          What are the economic possibilities for schools and municipalities to buy professional development and consulting services?What do schools and municipalities think about their needs and what do they think about buying professional development from consultants?-          How are the professional development offerings of the consultants recieved by schools and municipalities and is there a difference between the private and public sector of education? -          What impact could professional development have on schools?In what way is the marketing for pedagogic consulting done?Method In this study I have chosen to have a qualitative approach with an abductive perpective. I made these choices to get closer to what I wanted to investigate. Through the abductive methodology it was possible to go between theory and empirics.

This thesis concerns how Sweden relates to life cycle assessment (LCA) in the construction process. LCA means analyzing a products impact and the analysis includes the whole life span of the product. A building has a high complexity and the combination with its unique shape will make the LCA more comprehensive, unlike e.g. aluminum cans. Recently there has been a development of a working procedure in the construction industry.

The purpose of this essay is to describe how Boverkets Byggregler has affected the cost ofnewly built houses from 2003 to 2012, to Boverkets Vision 2025. The purpose is also to findagent-principal relations in the construction sector.When investing in an energy efficient house the operating costs are reduced compared to aconventional house. But due to the lower operating costs, the investment cost rises. In thisstudy, we find out if it is economically viable to invest in an energy efficient house comparedto a conventional house from the customer's perspective.The study's approach has been qualitatively where we in collaboration with Derome Hus hadaccess to three conventional reference houses and a passive house and data that was necessaryto conduct viability assessments on houses. We conducted five interviews with people fromDeromekoncernen and Varbergs kommun.The calculation methods we have used in this study are present value method, annuity methodand a sensitivity analysis.

Background: Today, the tourism sector is one of the economically fastest growing sectors in the world. Volunteer travel is a type of service that is gaining in popularity and a number of tour operators organize these trips. Few aid agencies engaged in volunteer activities and therefore the interest in volunteer travel is caught by tour operators. These tourists travel in small groups and interact with locals. Today fifty million children in Africa are orphaned and Africans struggling with the care of these children by founding orphanages.Research questions:What does volunteers contribute with during their stay at orpahanges?What view does volunteers and orphanages have on volunteer tourism?Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the positive and the negative effects that volunteer tourism contributes to orphanages.Method: The study is based on a qualitative approach with semi-and unstructured interviews, observations, and email interviews.

Within the fields of business as well as the academic, there is a growing interest for the role images play in an organized conception of the world. This paper acknowledges the relevance of such images and ideas, and its purpose is to examine the fixed ideas and conceptions of the world as they appear in a Swedish organizational context. The Swedish Trade Council is a hybrid organization between the state and private sector with an outspoken purpose of defining an image of the outside world for small and medium size enterprises in Sweden. The underlying question in focus for this study is: What central conceptions of the world appear in the Swedish Trade Council?s information films ?Världens möjligheter?? Within organizational studies, a postcolonial theory has to a large extent been overlooked.

This is a bachelor thesis about arable land in Varberg, from sustainability and it?s relation to local government and management. Arable land has become more important as a natural resource from a global point of view and in concerns of higher demands of food supply, as a result of population growth, higher consumption worldwide and climate change. But the arable land in Sweden is being exploited an increasingly rapid pace and the arable land in Varberg is not an exception of this development. The issue is most topical and the discussion holds questions about a declining agricultural sector, the formal and administrative protection of arable land and because other interests of land use often is given higher priority in community development and planning.

The purpose of the project is to determine the impact of solar cells and electrical vehicles on the future electricity grid and distribution network. Future electricity grids will be affected differently than it does today. Therefore, it is important to determine the impacts so that the current electricity distribution system can be developed and redesign to achieve the future demand. In Sweden, government has changed rules and laws in order to make it easier for private sector to invest in renewable energy sources. Our project focused on the impact of the solar cells and electric vehicles on the low voltage electricity distribution.

GPS (Global Positioning system) and GIS (Geographical information system) has been used for planning and inventory in the forest sector for more than ten years. The last years the development has come to equip harvesters and forwarders with GPS and GIS (GIT). The goal with this study was to reach a basis for decision, how Stora Enso Skog should continue its investment in GPS and GIS in harvesters and forwarders. To reach this basis for decision, possible advantages and benefits, disadvantages and problems in the harvesting process was evaluated. The study was made as an interview study with four harvesting managers and ten machine teams. To secure the quality of the results an interview questionnaire was made before the interviews were done. The results showed that GIT will make the harvesting managers work easier.

Titel: Innovate or Stagnate! ? Open innovation in manufacturing small and medium-sized businesses in Småland.The purpose of the study is that, from a leadership perspective (innovationmanagement), create a better understanding of open innovation in manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises. The study therefore intends to contribute to the understanding of how open innovation processes leads to greater innovation in manufacturing small and medium sized businesses.We have used a qualitative research method and adopted an abductiveapproach. We made interpretations and created meaning based on our research results.Our theoretical framework is based primarily on Chesbroughs (2003) research on open innovation. Based on this model, we have selected a number of other theories, which we perceived as prerequisites for small andmedium sized companies in open innovation processes.

For many years, the construction industry in Sweden has not developed much of an integral approach for design across disciplines. The sector?s impact on society, economics and environment is huge. To make the interactions within the construction industry more efficient, a relatively new concept called BIM (Building Information Modeling) has been introduced. The idea with BIM is that the different actors of the construction industry will work through intelligent CAD software, with common file formats and more cooperation between different actors during the various steps of the building and construction process.The technical consultancy company WSP Sweden is working actively to implement BIM within the frame of its activities.