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? ability to differentiate themselves from their competitors becomes increasingly difficult when standardized technical solutions are used, which means that the employees become the most important resource. Many workplaces consist of a mix of employees with different backgrounds and of different ages, which highlight the generational perspective. Previous research has long focused on different generational drivers and of motivation at work, but there has been few studies in which the transfer of knowledge between generations have been examined. With that as a background, a qualitative interview study was conducted at a major IT company to investigate how employees legitimize knowledge and how it affects the transfer of knowledge between generations.

The thesis has two aims to first describe the phenomena by explaining how interim management works and what the charachteristics of an interim manger are. The second aim is to look at the value issue of interim management; What value does an interim manager provide to a company and how do interim managers try to capture and cultivate this?The qualitative method has been used. The interim management market analysed in this thesis can be stated to consist of three parts; the interim manager as a provider of knowledge, a client firm in need of a temporary manager, and an interim agency in between working as an intermediary/supplier. The characteristics of interim managers are; they are in general self-employers and rather generalists than specialists, meaning they are experienced and have great knowledge skills.

AbstractKnowledge is today usually used as a way to compete in todays working life. It has become a fashionable concept and is used without a purpose. Both Plato and Aristotle used knowledge as a concept and Plato foremost acknowledged the theoretical aspect of knowledge and called it episteme. The practical aspect of knowledge was by Aristotle called techne. Today there are several concepts that describe the practical and theoretical aspect of knowledge.

Background: Knowledge management is a concept that is considered of increasing importance in the developing knowledge society. Previous research in the area has to a large extent been based on large multinational companies. Purpose: The thesis aims to clarify how middle-sized Swedish management consultancy companies work with knowledge management. The thesis intends to use existing theories about knowledge management to explain the effect of size and area of operation on management consultancy companies? knowledge management.

Purpose/aim: The purpose of this thesis is to examine if, and in that case how, the municipality of Umeå worked strategically with its communication during 2014 when Umeå was chosen as ?European Capital of Culture?. The research is mainly focused on the outlines of their communication plan, main goals, what  communication strategies the municipality has chosen to and their choice of media channels.Material/method: Two methods are used for this research; qualitative interviews with four employees within the communication team during Umeå2014 and a text analysis of three formal documents which provide the framework of communication policies and media strategies during Umeå2014.Results: The results clearly indicate a well structured, strategic planning outlined in the formal documents. The four people intreviewed all had a good knowledge of the policies and strategies in the documents, they also described their work in accordance with these..

Knowledge is frequently discussed in modern society, and has been since ancient Greece. Our goal is to examine the content of two political documents with the desire to point out their visions about how the Swedish school system should be shaped, in relations to knowledge. More precise this essay is going to concentrate on two specific political parties, Folkpartiet and Vansterpartiet and their official programs on the subject school and education, to see what they say about knowledge. The choice is made on the basis that these parties political standings differ most from each other, in the left/right scale in politics. The qualitative analysis takes its main base from Aristotels concepts of knowledge; Episteme, techne and fronesis, and Bernt Gustavssons modern defenitions of them.

In 1988 the Swedish Social Democratic Party decided to reform the tax system. In this essay I analyse the motives behind their acting on a basis of the party strategic theories of Przeworski and Sjöblom. The reform commonly referred to as the tax reform of the century, was although they considered that it was a high risk project pursued together with the Liberal Party. The new tax system implicated a less progressive income tax scale, actions against tax avoidance and raised value-added tax. The empirical analysis is primarily based on memoirs written by the key actors.

Psittacines and reptiles are exotic animals that are difficult to care for and it requires extra knowledge to make a correct assessment of their wellbeing. An animal welfare inspector, with an education in general animal welfare, may not have a deep enough knowledge of exotic animals to do a proper assessment of the animal?s general condition and its environment. In this paper it was therefore examined if animal welfare inspectors have enough knowledge to do a satisfying inspection of establishments working with selling of exotic animals. A literature study was used to examine difficulties with each species.

Knowledge regarding pain and pain treatment is an essential part within nursing that a nurse is responsible for. Earlier studies have shown that lack of that kind of knowledge often results in inadequate treatment for pain. The purpose with the study was to describe nurses? knowledge regarding pain and pain treatment at a medical unit in a hospital in central Sweden, and to see if there was a distinction in knowledge related to professional experience. Data was collected through a questionnaire with questions referring to pain (6 questions) and pain treatment (6 questions).

By understanding which factors that affect individuals´ will to share knowledge with others within an organization, companies can successfully develop a knowledge-based culture by influencing individuals´ attitudes and behaviour concerning knowledge sharing. Several researchers claim that intrinsic motivational factors can consistently facilitate knowledge sharing between individuals within an organization. Other researchers also assert that extrinsic motivational factors, such as reward systems, might affect individuals? motivation to share knowledge. However, extrinsic motivational factors´ impact on knowledge sharing is a relatively unexplored field and more empirical studies are sought after.

The purpose of this study was to describe how journalists do research for their articles and whether there is a need to create a knowledge bank of the material that journalists use for writing these articles. I also looked at how knowledge management could be used at a daily newspaper to add value to the information used by the journalists. The thesis is based on four interviews with journalists, a literature review and a practical project. I helped a journalist with his information seeking and later tried to organize the material. This project gave me an understanding of how varying the material that journalists use is and how difficult it would be to try to organize it in order to create an organizational knowledge resource of the material.

When contemplating entering an alliance the rationale behind the decision should differ depending on the size of the companies involved as well as on other important factors. The important factors influencing the decision are related to the resource pooling potential of the alliance, the power structure along with the business network the companies are a part of. The analysis has shown proof of a need for cooperation if one wish to succeed in the telecommunication industry and it has also determined which resources that are deemed to be most important to get in touch with, for our study object, to facilitate its access to the market. Those resources are defined as a direct channel to the customer, funds/capital and the access to relevant business networks. To get in touch with these lacking resources, three alternative approaches has been proposed; all of them involving a strategic alliance decision.

This paper conducts a qualitative examination based on interviews with six childrens librarians. The purpose is to put a perspective on the librarians competence and focal knowledge within the area of reading promotion and reading stimulation aimed for children, and also to examine how this competence and knowledge is constructed. The work is based on the following questions: How do childrens librarians experience reading promotion and reading stimulation within their profession? Which competence and what knowledge do childrens librarians experience as most important in order to make their work with reading promotion and reading stimulation function? What can be concluded regarding the construction of their competence and knowledge? The analysis is carried out from theories about competence, tacit knowledge and reading promotion. Following primary conclusions are drawn from the study: The professional role is mainly experienced as promoting reading as pleasure, but also as an important factor for childrens language development.

The war between Georgia and Russia awakened the world pretty brutally when a small country like Georgia tried to restore order in South Ossetia. The war between the two countries took place over five days in August 2008. This paper discusses the Russian operational art and its development after the war. The starting point is to test the traditional and classic Russian theory of operational art. The aim is to describe and discuss the Russian operational experience and any developments and trends in the Russian Federation's armed forces. The purpose of describing the theory behind the operational art is to create an independent analysis model. The essay?s analysis is based entirely from qualitative research with the collection of qualitative data in the form of texts and documents with a holistic perspective. Initially, the theory chapter is created from an inductive approach to identify, define and describe the operational concept and principles, creating a theoretical model of explanation. The developed analytical model is based on the Russian theory of operational art and takes off from a deductive approach to the collected empirical data. The results of the performed analysis results are interpreted and the product of this presented in the operational conclusions. Russia had a strategic ability to win the war by means of strategic resources related to tempo, simplicity and shock effect on the Georgian troops. Russia carries out a variety of reforms and the outcome of the war demonstrates the importance of Russia having a strategic capacity to make use of one in the type of conflict that Georgia represents. This success shows that the strategic capabilities are initially a success factor, while the deficiencies in the operational and tactical levels cannot be accepted in the long run, but must be developed.