Researchers and practitioners have recognized the need for ?transforming? every policy of the company into a competitive advantage tool. Thus, both the pricing approach and the supply chain practices of the firm have emerged as an important determinant of success. In this study, however, we are not only interested in these two aspects, but also in a third one-namely cultural conflicts as an obstacle and challenge. The interaction of the tree factors is extensively presented against the backdrop of Skanska and four of their closest Polish suppliers.

The purpose of this thesis is to study how organisations are working with repatriation of employees who have been working abroad, especially regarding how their experiences and competences are being utilised and transferred within the company. A qualitative abductive method is used, since the aim is to obtain an understanding of this phenomenon. The main source of information has been 21 interviews. The interviews were executed in two steps; a preliminary study with nine Swedish organisations was followed by our main study, containing 12 interviews with repatriates, their colleagues, and personnel employed at the International Assignment departments at Scania and Volvo. The conclusion of this thesis is that large Swedish companies, which have Swedish employees working abroad do not seem to be working with repatriation according to suggestions given by the theories, even though their performances are better than earlier research implies.

Studien undersökte vilka ledarbeteenden och organisatoriska förutsättningar som upplevs vara viktiga för att ett ledarskap ska kunna skapa hälsa och effektivitet i en arbetsorganisation utifrån både ledare och medarbetarperspektiv. Metoden för studien bestod av gruppintervjuer. Deltagare var nio personal ledare, varav två kvinnor och tio medarbetare, varav tre kvinnor på en svensk tillverkningsindustri och underlaget bestod av fyra gruppintervjuer, varav två med personal ledare och två med medarbetare. Resultatet visade att ledarbeteenden som upplevdes viktiga för att skapa hälsa och effektivitet var tydlighet, regelbundna medarbetarkontakter, lyssnande och personalvård. Organisatoriska förutsättningar som ansågs viktiga var personalgruppens storlek och tid för medarbetarkontakter.

The main subject with this master thesis is to take a closer look at university libraries specially Gothenburg University Librarys operation of marketing the librarys user contact, how it receives various users demands and carry out the interactive and strategic marketing. Marketing is planning, structuring, implementation, analysis and controls of carefully formulated programs, designed to bring voluntary interactions and relations with the target markets, for the purpose of achieving organisational and user satisfaction objectives. The structure of this thesis covers three main parts. Part I reflects the researchers approach to the subject. Marketing researchers such as Grönroos, Kotler, Bryson, De Sáez and Gummesson among others are presented.

Dairy farms have during a long time been under pressure and this situation was aggravated during the spring and summer of 2009, when profitability declined to historically low levels. Lower milk price and relatively high input prices have caused Swedish dairy farms great liquidity concerns and profitability problems. For a long time, Denmark has been identified as a leading country for the agrarian development with a leading structural rationalization and willingness to grow. In 2009, it was shown that the Danish agriculture, which is generally more leveraged, has difficulties in maintaining profitability and when market price of land started to fall, the proportion of technically insolvent agricultural enterprises rose dramatically. In light of this prevailing situation, this study highlights differences between Denmark and Sweden with the hope to learn from each other.

Syftet med denna studie var att med en enkät undersöka belåtenhet med chefen ocharbetsrelaterad tillfredsställelse i förhållande till kvinnlig/manlig chef samt medarbetarnas könoch verksamhetstyp. Totalt deltog 147 respondenter vilket gav en svarsfrekvens på 74 %.Resultaten visade signifikanta skillnader i hur manligt och kvinnligt ledarskap uppfattades, imeningen att de kvinnliga cheferna hade genomgående mer nöjda medarbetare. Resultatet visadeäven att av de tre verksamhetstyperna (förskola, grundskola och gymnasium) som ingick istudien var förskolan den verksamhet som var mest belåten med chefen, oberoende av kön. Denverksamhet som hade lägst arbetstillfredsställelse i alla kategorier var grundskolan. Den endasignifikanta skillnaden som visades när det gäller kvinnliga och manliga medarbetare, var idelmåttet förmåner.

Our study illustrates health communication in order to find out how widespread the knowledge is about osteoporosis and how to reach out with health information to the public. Our essay was conducted through quantitative surveys, which included 402 respondents. This in order to highlight the prevailing uncertainty about the public disorder osteoporosis, which is common in Sweden. We wish to examine trough which channels our respondents choose to collect their health information. The thesis framework includes theories such as McGuire?s ProcessingTheory, Agenda setting, Two-step hypothesis and Diffusion of innovation. Through these theories, we analyzed our empirical data that emerged. The results showed that our respondents had very low knowledge of osteoporosis, although theyshowed interest for health information. The results also showed that respondents were consistent intheir actions regarding which channels they came to turn to. They prefered their health informationfrom news papers and family, friends and work colleagues. When asked where they got their information from, the respondents answered mostly from family, friends and work colleagues, followed closely by newspapers. This shows that respondents are more receptive to informationfrom the channels of their own choice. The results also showed that the propensity to change behavior increases with the age of the respondents..

Today digital guides are most frequently used by the museum and tourism industries. They are also used for education purposes. They make it possible to distribute information and have it easily accessible. In addition to written information they add sound, pictures and videos which lift the whole impression of the visited place to a higher level. A variety of systems currently in use today have been evaluated.

The role of the quality manager has evolved from being a quality controller to work with a more global business. Within many organizations in Sweden, however, the traditional role of the quality manager's remains and the tasks categorized as quality control still takes up most of the quality manager's time. The survey conducted as part of this master thesis shows that the quality manager in most businesses has multiple roles in addition to the role of quality manager, which can create a role conflict. One consequence of this is that each improvement is not given priority due to time constraints. Although the importance of a clear and committed leadership is the key for succeeding as the quality manager.

The European Union is struggling to maintain democracy and tries to increase the participation among the citizens in Europe. The European Citizens? Initiative, ECI, is a platform established by the European Commission to allow citizens to propose new legislation. ?Water and sanitation are a human right! Water is a public good, not a commodity!? is the first ECI that has met the requirements.

The thesis focus on how organizations can improve the ability of absorbing coworkers ideas in purpose of gaining long term competitive advantage through innovations. The study was conducted at IKEA AB where a campaign to collect coworkers ideas was a big success given the quantity of ideas collected. This fact allows a comparative analysis of idea management in the shape of campaigns and in comparison, idea management in the everyday line-organization.The analysis show that fundamental factors for innovative environments such as organizational climate, culture and leadership perceives auspiciously by the respondents. However, lack of infrastructure such as systems and processes hinders coworkers ambitions to contribute with ideas.An important issue in idea management is the treatment of incentives for innovation. Results of the study show that the ?soft? incentives ?feedback, encouragement and attention have a higher impact in coworkers willingness to the contribution of ideas than for instance monetary rewards..

Studies have shown that mergers and acquisitions often fail and that a reason to this might be that investment banks do not take any responsibility for the post merger integration. Despite this there have been no studies of the potential benefits of an investment bank taking a holistic approach to the M&A-process and including post merger integration in its service. This study identifies a couple of investment banks that does this and calls them holistic investment banks. In M&A-theory a successful process is often described according to so called success factors that need to be fulfilled in order to achieve a successful result of the merger or acquisition. The business model and work approach of one holistic investment bank is analyzed in this case study on the base of seven success factors from established theories.

A central question is what view of communication is dominating in a municipality in the southern part of Sweden. The study deals with communication theory from two different perspectives; the view of transmission and the view of creation of meaning. Falkheimer and Heide (2003) claim that the view of transmission is one-way communication where the receivers apprehend passivly. In the view of creation of meaning the goal is to develop and strengthen the common notion that exists in a group. Empirical studies were done, that consisted of qualitative interviews with politicians, directors of the municipality, and principals from three childcare and school areas, and also from one upper secondary school.

The Swedish sports retail industry has experienced extensive growth during the last decade, and this has attracted new entrants to the market, both start-ups and international followers. This has inevitably put more pressure on incumbents, which are now confronted with major challenges as how to retain their customers and market shares. Customer loyalty has been proved to be an important factor for customer retention and proposed to constitute inertia of switching behavior. In light of this problematization, the purpose of this study is to describe the underlying factors of loyalty and whether purchase habits could further explain customer loyalty. The aim is also to understand the strategic implications of the factors involved.

Följande studie syftar till att belysa hur organisationer idag arbetar med att mäta och följa upp sina immateriella resurser, vilket i denna studie avser personal. Vi lever idag i ett kunskaps- och tjänstesamhälle vilket innebär att människans bidrag i form av humankapital generellt värderas högre än materiella tillgångar. Dessutom medför en ökad globalisering ett hårdare affärsklimat och konkurrens. En konsekvens blir därför att organisationer för sin överlevnad måste vara allt mer lönsamma, vilket ökar vikten av en rätt hanterad personalresurs som kan generera kostnadsfördelar. Med den bakgrunden bör organisationer fokusera på metoder som kan synliggöra den allt viktigare personalresursen.