Management consulting firms are an important part of the knowledge economy and they capitalize on the analytical ability and knowledge of their employees. Much research have been made on large consulting firms and their management of knowledge, but little is known about how Small Consultancies manage their knowledge. Even less is known about the management of knowledge in Small Consultancies specialized in change management. These firms rely solely on senior consultants and focus on the human aspect of organizational development. This thesis aims to show how these firms manage their knowledge and also provide an understanding of why.

Companies today are exposed to a turbulent market with fierce competition and the ability toinnovate itself becomes increasingly important. But what innovation is and how it is managed is farfrom obvious. In this case study at EVRY the research questions are: ?What is innovation in ITconsultant companies?? and ?how can innovation be managed in IT consultant companies?? ITconsultancy is a complex type of business and their focus is often to innovate the customers businessrather than their own. The study is based on a literature review, field studies, unstructuredinterviews and an interpretive analysis.

AbstractTitle: Transparency within Public Relations ? A study about PR-companies understanding of opennessPages: 71Authors: Olof EhrsTutor: Virginia MeliánCourse: Media and Communication Studies, Bachelor Degree.Period: Autumn 2011.University: The Department of Journalism, Media and Communication, JMK,at Stockholm University.Background and aim: The PR-industry is continuing to grow in Sweden. The increase of working consultancies has made it more difficult to define what PR-activities really are in Sweden today. This exam reviews the presence and lack of transparency within the PR labour. The aim of the essay is to inspect the PR-companies relation to transparency and non-transparency.

The purpose with this essay is to enlighten the small business´ existence at times of expansion, identify threats and possibilities and also to try to find ways to encourage growth in the small business.To answer our purpose we carried out a literature study to later implement six interviews with small business leaders. We separated the companies into three categories; small business without employees, small business with 2-5 employees and small business with 6-10 employees.We confirm that the main reason why small business leaders think both once and twice before hireing new labour force are because of the high costs. The change in government has so far not given the small business what was promised, but there is still hope for improvement and simplification.The economic part of owning a company has been pointed out as the greatest threat in relation with expansion and the big responsibility in another persons possibilities to earn his/her living is also burdensome. The possibility to take on more work increases with the number of workers, which is positive..

Growth of small businesses is vital to the Swedish economy, and many entrepreneurs want their enterprises to grow. However, the business climate of today is more changing than ever, and attributes becoming increasingly important for companies in order to deal with this are flexibility, speed, and adaptability: characteristics normally attributed to small enterprises. As a larger organization often is associated with more rigidity as a consequence of a higher degree of formalization, entrepreneurs are hesitant to seize growth opportunities, as they fear it will have negative impact on the aforementioned competitive advantages their enterprise possesses as a small business. This simple case study of a growing small enterprise investigates the effects of organizational growth on a small business' organizational structure and through its above mentioned advantages. The study finds that avoiding formalization while growing damages the competitiveness of the firm, and concludes that a degree of formalization is a necessity to maintain the flexibility, speed and adaptability in a growing small business..

Background: Today small business firms represent a considerable part of swedish economy, and the number of small firms has steadily increased the last ten years in relation to the total employment. The fact that there are firms willing to grow, it ought to be interesting observing their motives of growth, and what kind of strategies that can be identifiable in these firms. Purpose: To examine the motives of growth in small business firms, and to study which growth strategies the firms use when expanding their business. Realization: The study is accomplished through telephone interviews with six small business firms in the province of Jönköping. The firms contain between 10-49 employees.

This essay describes some factors that may effect small business survival in relation to becoming a supplier for bigger companies that may implement the use of EDI for electronic invoicing.The purpose of this study is to analyse and evaluate what impact may occur during the introduction of EDI between small and big business.Following on from the introduction of methods used in this study there will be a complete analysis made detailing results.From our research we have found that most small business have developed a professional working relationship between themselves and their clients.The adoption of EDI by big business has revolutionised the day to day dealings between both supplier and consumer in that EDI has empowered both chains to collaborate data in real time.In conclusion our research illustrates that in order for small business to survive the must implement EDI. The results of our study have shown that the introduction of EDI to both small and big business has had a positive outcome..

This thesis deals with co-operation between municipalities viewed from the perspectiveof the small municipality. It poses two questions: How and why doessmall municipalities co-operate? and Which is the place of the small municipalityin a larger organization?. To examine this three Scanian municipalities have beenstudied and one Norwegian municipality is used to provide a perspective on theSwedish discussion.Four theoretical topics guide the thesis. Firstly the core values of municipalities;democracy, autonomy and efficiency.

Title: The significance of small talk on leadershipDate of seminar: 13 October 2010Course: Bachelor paper in Business, in Organization, 15 ECTSInstitution: Swedish Business School at Orebro UniversityAuthors: Linda Andersson & Ebba HallbergAdvisor: Gabriella WennblomPurpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify and describe how leadership is affected by the small talk, with these three managers. This with the manager?s perspective as a starting point, within the three services we examined.Research methodology: This paper is based on a qualitative method. Targeted open interviews were carried out with three respondents. Literature in the organizational field has been searched through to give a base for the study.Theoretical framework: This paper uses the theory of communication, the theory of leadership and the theory of small talk.Conclusion: The conclusion we make is that the small talk makes it easier for the modern leadership, this is because the small talk, among other things, allows the manager to spread information and to avoid misinterpretation, and that the manager become more involved in the company.Keywords: Communication, small talk, leadership.

Background: With the removal of audit requirement for companies in Sweden from the first of november 2010, a lot of companies has chosen not to keep the audit requirement. So far 57 percent of the small companies has chosen to keep the audit, in spite of that they don´t need to which led us to the problem statement: Which are the factors that affect a small limited company to choose to keep the audit, in spite that now there is a possibility to choose not to use audit anymore?Purpose: The purpose of the essay is to examine why small limited companies choose to keep the audit, in spite that now there is a possibility to choose not to use audit?Method: This research founds itself in a qualitative study with a deductive research approach. We have been studying secondary data in books and articles and preformed 29 phone interviews with small ltd company owners in Sweden. The selection consisted of 14 companies with credit debts and 15 companies without credit debts.

Background: With the removal of audit requirement for companies in Sweden from the first of november 2010, a lot of companies has chosen not to keep the audit requirement. So far 57 percent of the small companies has chosen to keep the audit, in spite of that they don´t need to which led us to the problem statement: Which are the factors that affect a small limited company to choose to keep the audit, in spite that now there is a possibility to choose not to use audit anymore?Purpose: The purpose of the essay is to examine why small limited companies choose to keep the audit, in spite that now there is a possibility to choose not to use audit?Method: This research founds itself in a qualitative study with a deductive research approach. We have been studying secondary data in books and articles and preformed 29 phone interviews with small ltd company owners in Sweden. The selection consisted of 14 companies with credit debts and 15 companies without credit debts.

Today there are many different Cad-applications on the market for engineers. Because of big building projects it has become more and more important to work with the same application or to have access to a neutral file type to be able to transfer files between different ones.This report studies the single objects and how they react when transferring them between ADT and ArchiCAD via the neutral type IFC. We have also been looking at problems during the transfer between and if there are some connections between these problems. Afterwards we created a neutral object model of a small country house to see if the objects appeared different. The result shows no differences.But looking at the problems that appeared during the transmissions they felt small and no logical.Today it is not possible to save in a neutral type without facing small problems.

Entrepreneurial firms face unique challenges in attracting and acquiring human resources due to difficulties associated with resource constraint and organization legitimacy, often described as liabilities of "smallness" and "newness". The aim of this paper is to examine the "smallness" and "newness" challenges met by small entrepreneurial firms, which strategies they apply to counter these challenges, and if these strategies can be explained by the firm's HR philosophy. Since few studies on Human Resource Management (HRM) in small entrepreneurial firms exist, a framework combining theory from the research fields of HRM, entrepreneurship and small firms has been developed. Employing a qualitative case study design of five small Swedish entrepreneurial firms, our findings demonstrate four "smallness" and "newness" challenges and seven strategies that either counteract or prevent them. Furthermore, results showed that the strategies applied seemed to have no significance with regards to the firm's HR philosophy.

The purpose of this thesis was to illuminate and create a deeper understanding of how small niche retail businesses within the apparel industry position themselves. We aimed to investi-gate how these small niche retail businesses create their position and how they communicate these positions to their target market. To be able to investigate the positioning-process within these small niche retail businesses a case study was conducted based on interviews with two respondents from two different companies and observations of these businesses physical envi-ronments. The study indicated that the small niche retail businesses mainly make use of emo-tional aspects and their assortment range to create their position. To communicate their posi-tion to their target market they mainly use their in-store personal selling and their assortment range..

The most dominating type of company in Sweden is the small-sized business and it usually lacks its own marketing department. The purpose of this paper was to analyze several small Swedish businesses which are specialized in different sectors of the Mechanic/Technology industry but they are similar in terms of having niched products and they are leading companies in the world. The objective was to do research about how small businesses work with marketing despite its lack of resources and capital.This survey has shown that customer contacts, customer relationships and especially for those investigated companies, it was very important to focus on globalization and product development in order to build a Point of Difference..