Master's thesis, Master of Business Administration program, School of Business ofEconomics at Linnaeus University, Management, Course code, 4FE10EAuthors: Anton Milemo and Christoffer WideénTutor: Magnus ForslundTitle: Focus on employee turnover - an ethnographic study on the insurance companyTrygg-Hansa?s outbound department in VäxjöBackground: The costs of losing employees, recruiting new people, making a selectionof potential employees and training them are all high. The costs often exceed onehundred percent of the annual salary for the otherwise vacant position. In addition to thedirect costs of employee turnover troubles, things such as work confusion, loss oforganizational memory along with strategic skills can arise. The employee turnover rateof Trygg-Hansa?s outbound department in Växjö is too high according to the officemanager.Purpose: Understand the causes of high employee turnover in a Swedish insurancecompany.Methodology: This thesis consists of an ethnographic study of a Swedish insurancecompany.

The Smart Grid technology has during the last decade been established as a way to create a greater flexibility on the electricity grid that will be needed as the development moves towards an increased share of renewable primary energy sources in the electricity production. One part of the Smart Grid technology is the ability to shift loads in time, to adapt to either price or emissions, known as Demand Response. This project, which was conducted at KTH in collaboration with the consulting corporation Capgemini, examines the economic, environmental and social aspects of the Demand Response technology. In the project, three household products are used in a model that derives the potential savings in costs and emissions of CO2e. The results show that the actual savings measured in SEK are small, but that the savings measured in percent can be as high as 20 percent. Reduction of CO2e emissions is slightly lower.

The study focuses on mapping how well prepared the counties in the west region of Sweden is in case of restructuring. The study explores what kind of activities and routines that contributes to prepare the organization for restructuring. The study also aims to investigate the effect of precedent restructuring, and if the counties who experienced restructuring are more prepared than others.The research within the field of restructuring characterizes of an evaluating nature and the focus has been after the restructuring occurred. There have also been a lot of studies of the negative consequences on individual and organizational level. Since downsizing is a frequently used method by management despite its consequences is it important to investigate how organizations can learn and thereby be more prepared for restructuring.

Background: Balanced scorecard is a relatively new strategy in analysing activities in a company. To carry out a strategy in an organization a successful implementation is very important. Strategy implementations are unique for each organization and to succeed it has to be formulated and implemented with the individual companies particular conditions as starting- point. A problem is that the implementation sometimes is treated as a small detail in the planning process. This problem depends on how the strategic plans is carried out.

The Smart Grid technology has during the last decade been established as a way to create a greater flexibility on the electricity grid that will be needed as the development moves towards an increased share of renewable primary energy sources in the electricity production. One part of the Smart Grid technology is the ability to shift loads in time, to adapt to either price or emissions, known as Demand Response. This project, which was conducted at KTH in collaboration with the consulting corporation Capgemini, examines the economic, environmental and social aspects of the Demand Response technology. In the project, three household products are used in a model that derives the potential savings in costs and emissions of CO2e. The results show that the actual savings measured in SEK are small, but that the savings measured in percent can be as high as 20 percent. Reduction of CO2e emissions is slightly lower.

Background: Businesses are traditionally valued with the so called Discounted Cash Flow-model. When valuing newly-started businesses, surrounded by high uncertainty, and whose capital mostly consists of unrealized business opportunities, the Discounted Cash Flow-model needs to be complemented if the total value of the business is to be captured. A valuation with the help of real options is capable of valuing these unrealized opportunities, which often exist in newly-started businesses. The unrealized opportunities are to be found in the business plan of the business, why this needs to be valued to capture the total value of a newly-started business. Purpose: To demonstrate what the use of real options can result in when valuing businesses.

This essay describes the Swedish furniture business and its strong competition between domestic and foreign producers. As the demand on higher development speed grows stronger, alongside a fierce competition between the companies, long lasting and unique qualities such as customer relations and strong brand names become crucial. Nowadays many furniture producers chose to sell their products through retailers and they therefore miss out on invaluable direct contact with their customers. Consequently, this means that they lack the perquisite to build relations or more importantly, to communicate their brand.To illustrate the problem a case study and a survey have been carried out. The study compares the strategic marketing works between producers who have own concept stores and those who uses retailers.

Since Sweden joined the European Union all Swedish fruit and vegetables are classified according to EU Quality standards. One important function is the product description and how it can facilitate the trade; for example in better comparing prices and also to guarantee the quality of the product. This quality standards or product descriptions are written as words of an Act and obligatory for all countries that has joined the EU. It?s often a demand from the customers to be certificated according to some of many certificating systems. One example is the common worldwide GLOBAL GAP-certification system created by the organisation EUREP which represents the leading European retail traders.

Background: Good health at community and individual levels are key policy priorities. These priorities can be shown through supporting parents about various different healthy lifestyle choices. In order to know where interventions are needed, it is of interest to study how parents generally feel and how they perceive their parenting.Aim: To study how parents rate their own health and parenting skills, and examine whether there is any correlation between perceived general health and perceived parental competence.  Further, this study will show whether there is a correlation between rate of perceived general health and rate of perceived parental competence when it comes to gender.Method: 64 questionnaires were collected at strategic open kindergartens in the municipality of Uppsala. The questionnaires were distributed to the parents present and who chose to participate in this study.Main result: The result of this study shows that parents have a high rate of general health.

The idea for this project was initiated together with one of the leaders in the forest, paper and packaging industry. To get through an A/R CDM process the company is exposed to the risk of failing the process or that the overall costs will exceed the benefits of the project. This would delete the incentives to invest in GHG removals compared to purchasing emission allowances on the carbon market. The questions that have been raised and needs clarification in the thesis are the following:? From a company perspective, what are the incentives for implementing Forest Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects?? What is a likely financial outcome of a reforestation CDM project on degraded land in the Guangxi province of the Peoples Republic of China?? When does an investment like this break even with the cost of buying market based carbon emission allowances? The objective of this master thesis is to carry out a research about the incentives for forest, paper and packaging companies to invest in reforestation through the clean development mechanism.

Corporate Social Responsibility is a concept whereby companies integrate social and environmental concerns into their core business and in their interaction with stakeholders on a voluntarily basis. The purpose with our thesis is to study how Swedish insurance companies work with Corporate Social Responsibility and to analyse the underlying strategies of the companies? social, environmental and economical activities. We will analyse where, how and for whom value can be created with CSR. Where does the value creation take place, how can it be created through these activities and who will benefit from Corporate Social Responsibility? Theories point out that companies need to assemble and value the total package of benefits to be able to create successful corporate initiatives.

Value stream mapping is a tool that is frequently used by many different companies. It is a great tool used to achieve the work that follows the theories of lean production. The tool is used, however, only frequent on the factory floor and the method is also designed based on this type of use.An interest of applying the method on administrative parts of the company has occurred lately. Administrative parts of the company refers to the part that does all the planning such as purchasing, receiving orders, customer contact, contact with factory floor and other work that is made around the actual manufacturing. But the knowledge about applying value stream mapping on the planning part of the company is lacking because the method is relatively new.In this work, a comparison is made between the introduction of value stream analysis on production and planning.

The aim and purpose of this essay is to study if three museums are using Facebook strategically to promote two-way communication with their target audiences in their external communication. A qual-itative and comparative research method and has been used and communication managers from each of the three museums have been interviewed. These interviews have been transcribed and coded in order to reveal opinions and views on how that particular museum feels about social media and the use of these tools in their external communication. A number of Facebook statuses have also been collect-ed in order to discover how each of the museums is using social media in order to reach and engage their target groups. Should the results of this essay be summarized it would show that the museums are using the communication channel that they feel suits the needs of reaching a specific audience.

Within the interconnected global markets of today; people, products, and information travel at a pace never met before. In light of the global retail markets recent integration, consumers are opened up to new products and are beginning to develop a vetted interest in the heritage of those products. Within literature this process has been coined "Country of Origin" COO, and its impacts on consumer attitudes, product value- assessment, and overall behaviors has been one of the most emphasized areas of "international business" studies, during the last three decades. Numerous studies have shown a correlation between positive or advantageous associations to a country of origin, and the actual products representing and coming out of that country. It is by this synergetic process that so-called positive COO-effects are brought forth.The goal of this thesis stems directly from the still unexplored potential for Swedish firms to differentiate their products and brands on new international markets, through a strategic and coherent communication of relevant Swedish COO-effects.

Background: Traditionally defined boundaries and borders between organizations are at present being re-evaluated because of new and tougher demands. Today we can see a trend where these boundaries are being lowered or even eliminated when organizations choose to co-operate instead of compete. Purpose: In order to create an understanding for the partner selection process in the newly founded joint ventures between the companies which are building the Swedish 3G Network, the determining factors are being studied. Delimitation: The studies companies are co-operating as network operators but are at the same time competing as mobile operators. This relationship is in the literature described as co-opetition, which will not be investigated in this paper.