The purpose of the essay has been to clarify why and how small companies, whose major resource is knowledge, establish strategic alliances and which opportunities it brings. We have increased our understanding for the concept of strategic alliances through empirical search and through well-known scientist work. The method, which has been used in the essay, is principally qualitative interviews and gathering secondary data from articles from well-known authors. Our study has given that we have found that entering strategic alliances can make growth and by that way create competitive advantages for the company in question. We also found that there are risks with strategic alliances and the company can protect themselves by legal actions.

Purpose: This paper aims to describe the socialization process that audit associates experience within an auditing firm that is included in the Big 4-sphere. Our purpose is also to describe which attributes that characterize the organizational identity, and how these attributes are reflected in the self-image of the associates. Furthermore, we seek to explain how the socialization process has influenced the organizational identification. This subject is of interest since the business of auditing is facing higher demands from regulators and politicians, due to the bankruptcy of HQ-bank among others during the financial crisis in the beginning of the 21st century. Earlier research claims that the socialization process of recruits, especially in the initial state of the employment, has a major impact on their future values and attitudes in their job performance.

How debt affects companies is an issue that has received much attention. The fact that researchers disagree can make it hard for companies to choose a financingpolicy that maximizes the value of the firm and its return on equity. In a world with investors that are seeking to maximize profits the value of the firm can be affected differently by different economic conditions. The intention of this study is to answer these issues with quantitive methods, with focus on year 2010 and 2009, where the value of the firm is defined as P/E and P/B ratio. The outcome showed that liabilities only affected return on equity significant in one of four cases, and liabilites didn?t affect the value of companies significantly in any of these.

Master thesis studying the use of multimedia on CD-ROM in a library setting by analysis ofqualitative interviews with nineteen persons.The thesis relates the study to some relevant issues in human-computer interface (HCI) researchand to the commercial market for multimedia CD-ROM products. Three main types ofuse were described by the persons interviewed: recreational, information seeking and usingmultimedia to learn more about using computers. Children and young people interviewed mademost use of the multimedia provided, whereas adults thought it to be less valuable as a sourceof knowledge for them personally.HCI research shows various results of using multimedia for educational purposes. Thecommercial market is dominated by American products which can have a negative effect onthe use of multimedia in Swedish public libraries..

SummaryThe purpose with this study is to give a view of how employees understand their belonging and role in a temporary work agency and its clients. This study describes the employees´ relation towards the temporary work agency and the client. The study should be interesting for temporary work agencies and those who have considered of working in the temporary work agency business.The agency in this study is Manpower AB and has existed in Skövde for five years and has appreciated 200 employees. The company offers fast, worth its prizes and flexible employment agency solutions no matter if it affects a few persons or more complicated solutions. You can find specialists and generalists within the most fields, for example administration, sales, market, telemarketing, technology, and logistics.

Abstract This study is an evaluation of a development project, seeking to work for entrepreneurial learning, starting from John Hattie's findings on the significant factors for visible learning. The study is based on action research a method together with a questionnaire, focused interviews and observation, by the issue of How do students perceive entrepreneurial learning? The results show that the methodology contributes to a more active learning and greater work satisfaction among students. The results also reinforce the thesis of the formative assessment and the importance of reflection for increased metacognition. The work identifies the project's educational shortcomings and strengths, and lays the foundation for further development towards full implementation of entrepreneurial learning in a secondary activity that works to prepare students with special needs for the labor market..

Syftet med det här arbetet var att ta reda på vem rederierna anställer, samt identifiera vilka faktorer som påverkar rekryterarna när de ska anställa en ny styrman.  För att ta reda på det har jag intervjuat två rederier som anställer svenska styrmän. Jag valde att göra en kvalitativ undersökning för att kunna ställa lite mer ingående frågor samt att ha möjlighet att ställa följdfrågor. Resultatet blev att det är till stor del de personliga egenskaperna samt den sociala kompetensen som är av störst betydelse så länge de formella kraven uppfylls. Erfarenhet inom sjöfarten eller utav yrken som man kan ha nytta av i sjöfarten är också meriterande samt att man har bra referenser..

AbstractThe purpose of this study is to examine whether the individual influence at the working place leads to the perception of decreased stress. Also I looked at whether stress and individual influence is affected by the employees age, sex or employment years. Previous research shows that individual influence decreases stress but strangely enough do the research show that individual influence seem to decrease in today?s work environment. This research is quantitative with questionnaires, answered by 74 civil servants working in a department in the municipality of Karlstad.

The aim of this study was to acquire knowledge about the working conditions of people's gainful employment. The research was conducted at one of the regional social insurance offices of Malmö with participation of ten of their employees. The research method of choice was a phenomenological approach. One open question about the working situation was answered freely. The results indicate a rather severe discontent about the workplace.

The purpose of this master thesis was to study the librarians?assignment at the public accesses computers, especially howthe librarians perceive what their task is and what their taskshould be.In order to answer these questions a series of ten qualitativeinterviews ?inspired by the phenomenographic approach ?was conducted with librarians who were employed at smallpublic libraries in municipalities with 5 000 - 25 000residents in Sweden.The conclusions in the master thesis were that librarianshave both similarities and differences in how they perceivetheir tasks at the public computers. The most essential taskwas helping the user with information seeking. Thelibrarians also perceived that it should be included in theirduties to help users with the technical/practical issues at thepublic computers. Competence, time and assets were finallythree outlying factors which affected in what extent thelibrarians were able to help the users..

The purpose of this thesis is to gain a better understanding of how elderly people seek and use information in everyday situations. A further aim is to suggest ways for the library to offer more services specifically tailored for pensioners. This is an important topic as pensioners are a rapidly growing group of library users. We conducted qualitative interviews with four elderly people concerning their information needs in everyday life, and discovered that they rarely use the library, preferring instead to get their information from various internet sites and their pensioners? organisation.

Annual reports are by many considered to be companies primary way to inform their world where the CEO's words are read most carefully by shareholders. The purpose of this paper is to examine the design of the CEO's words in annual reports in light of the financial crisis in 2008. The study seeking explanations for change, similarities and differences in the various texts based on three themes which are results, future and confidence. In this qualitative study five CEO's words are explored by means of a discourse analysis, all from large Swedish industrial companies listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. Some of the results shown is that the CEO tends to talk about the company's results in a self-serving manner and CEO speaks more aboutm the results before than after the crisis.

This essay ventilates the relatively new phenomenon employer branding. Due to societal changes, such as demographical and financial changes, the labour market in Sweden has changed. It is evident that an increasing number of organisations need to put more of an effort in their methods of attracting talent and retaining competence within the organisation. By a case study based on five interviews, the purpose of the study was to compare literature and practice to see how well they compare as well as how employer branding bring about different aspects of the effect. There was also an ambition to highlight aspects of employer branding considered important to have in mind when undertaking an employer branding exercise.

This study aims to explore purposes of daily workshops for persons with disabilities. The method used was qualitative interviews. An inductive research strategy was used. Half-structured interviews with six managers of daily workshops were carried out, wherein they expressed their intentions with the daily workshops and the reasons for people to participate. The interviews were analysed with Antonovsky´s salutogenetic perspective, in which Sense of Coherence, SOC is a main concept, and with the normalisation principle.

Annual reports are by many considered to be companies primary way to inform their world where the CEO's words are read most carefully by shareholders. The purpose of this paper is to examine the design of the CEO's words in annual reports in light of the financial crisis in 2008. The study seeking explanations for change, similarities and differences in the various texts based on three themes which are results, future and confidence. In this qualitative study five CEO's words are explored by means of a discourse analysis, all from large Swedish industrial companies listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. Some of the results shown is that the CEO tends to talk about the company's results in a self-serving manner and CEO speaks more aboutm the results before than after the crisis.