Traditional financial management has lately been criticized, since it gives inadequate and unilateral information for decisions and strategy of the operation. The purpose of this essay is to investigate if a balanced scorecard is able to work together with a budget and become a stronger control system for the management. Essential theory underlies the gathering of data as well as the analysis, and the empirical investigation is based on personal interviews. The conclusions drawn from my analysis are that two parallel control systems could complement each other?s weaknesses.

Who has the ownership of a company´s long-term strategy, and who should have it? Is it the board of directors or the senior management? Swedish law and regulations seemingly point in one direction, whereas the findings of studying the relationship between CEO and chairman of the board in eleven Swedish listed large- and mid-cap companies, point the other way. In a majority of the companies the senior management have the ownership of the long term strategy whilst the board of directors merely hold a control function. The possible effects on the companies managed as well as the rules and regulations they are managed according to, are analyzed..

The purpose of this study is to contribute to a better understanding of how visions could be applied in subsidiaries and similar sub organisations of global enterprises. With increasing globalisation it becomes more difficult to work in accordance to same standards and towards a common and unifying interest. The study has a qualitative and deductive approach and is based on interviews with three global subsidiaries with some hundred people employed each.Conclusions are that the subsidiaries visions have to be based on a guiding philosophy issued by their mother entities and it is the responsibility of the sub organisation to develop a tangible image with a local vision, mission and strategy with targets requiring feedback. Sustainable strategies cannot be issued without a vision describing where the organisation want be in the future. Otherwise they will not come very far until they have to make a restart with a new strategy and they will never be a market leader..

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to test for the existence of Capital Structure Arbitrage oppertunities in the equity-credit markets. Methodology: The mispricing of Credit Default Swap contracts are calculated and used as input in an Equity-Credit market trading strategy. The returns are then evaluated with a modified Value-at-Risk simulation. Theoretical perspectives: A Merton-based structural model, CreditGrades, is used for credit pricing and a mispricing-convergence trading-strategy between the credit and equity markets is implemented. Empirical foundation: Daily quotes for the Credit Default Swap spread of 37 European firms were collected for a period of two years, as well as equity-prices for the same period and the previous two years, used for model calibration.

This study is called When the ice of the Arctic melts is the world defrosting? and written by Rebecca Fröling.The purpose of the study is to investigate how the concept ?security? is used in the Swedish arctic strategy and why the concept is described in that way. The debate of the concept ?security? has been going on for years, but the debate is still present today. What we put in to the concept is operative for how we regard and discuss security and security politics.To analyze the strategy I used two theories, one with a traditional approach and one with a critical approach to security: Realism and Copenhagen School.The method that has been applied to the study is qualitative content analysis, to be able to analyze the text on the depth.

Corporate responsibility is a popular phenomenon of today. The interest for the subject is extensive and means for implementing corporate responsibility strategies within organizations are demanded. There are studies showing how management control systems can be used in order to implement general strategies into organizations. Still, management control systems designed for the implementation of corporate responsibility strategies, in particular, are not provided by the current academia. The aim of this paper is to contribute to studies within management control systems by studying the management control system specifically designed to implement corporate responsibility strategies.

The study was conducted at a business in the social service. The purpose was to examine how the business works with human resource planning. In order to answer the purpose two questions was formulated, which human resource planning strategy does the business use? And, how do businesses need to act according to the theory of strategic manpower to achieve human resource planning? Survey data collection was done through a qualitative research design, where interviews with five employees in the business took place.The study shows that the business is using a own made strategy in order to achieve human resource planning. The strategy consists of two steps, in step one they do an background analysis and step two a needs analysis where a goal- and responsibility description are designed and then a set of requirements.

Network RTK is a real-time technique for accurate positioning with Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). The technology means the use of correction data from a network of GNSS receivers with known positions (reference stations) to reduce the uncertainty in position for the user´s GNSS receiver (rover). However, this requires that the correction data can be transferred seamlessly to the user in real time. Commonly the corrections are transferred via mobile phones. The Swedish National Land Survey operates a nationwide Network RTK service, where users can receive correction data via GSM or mobile Internet (GPRS).

Today there are many studies that have shown positive results in the treatment of ICT at an early age. The focus of the studies vary, and they target everything from the actual implementation of teaching resources in ICT, to student performance with ICT support. Regardless of the amount of studies on the subject, there is no precise strategy for how to implement, working with ICT, integrate ICT in different subjects, utilizing the hardware and software that is or how it will eventually respond to new technologies. This work will there by focusing on trying to develop a basis for further research and hopefully in the future to develop an ICT strategy at a national level.In order to provide a basis, a comparison was made of ten different schools. The schools were entered into a table showing the similarities and differences .

This masters thesis deals with smoke spread via ventilation systems. One aim of the thesis is to investigate and explain the differences in efforts to prevent smoke spread via ventilation systems in different countries. A second aim of this thesis is to investigate how frequently occurring smoke spread via ventilation systems in Swedish buildings are. A third aim is to investigate how uncertainties in input variables to smoke spread calculations will affect the result of calculation. To be able to do this the most important input variables are identified and analysed.

By the year of 2007, 97 % of all listed companies in Europe had a CSR strategy described on their website. As the concept of CSR during the last decades has increased rapidly in popularity, a need to understand how such a strategy can be implemented has followed. While working with CSR in an integrated manner shows similarities to other popular management ideas, such as Lean and TQM, companies applying to a CSR strategy has been shown to be under higher scrutiny from media and NGO:s. Through a case study this thesis examines how these special circumstances of a CSR strategy makes The Body Shop use organizational control to avoid being subject to scandals due to not fulfilling the promises made to its customers. The results show that The Body Shop's commitment to CSR creates a need for a stringent bureaucratic control system that highly restricts the freedom of action for its employees.

This study has been assigned by Bengt Hellman who works at the logistic department at IKEA Torsvik just outside of Jönköping. The task has been to develop a new picking strategy for the Oversize area in the CDC-Warehouse. The reason why IKEA wants a new strategy is because they want to minimize the route length for the forklifts when collecting the orders.By evaluating the current strategies on other areas in the CDC-storehouse, study literature within this subject and look at restrictions for the storing of goods, we have analyzed how the Oversize area works today. We compared the gathered information, to how it should be done according to the literature to be able to work out a new functional strategy.Today, IKEA does not have a working strategy for the oversize area because of lack of time and because all the power has been put on other areas were sales rates are currently higher. This have led to lack of organisation at the Oversize area and items are just put were there is space without first analysing were it should be placed.The strategy that we have worked out and introduced to IKEA builds on easiness of understanding the layout, the employees shall know why an item is placed where it is.

Non-profit organizations gain increasing attention in society but their legitimacy often decrease by scandals in separate organizations. Doctors without borders (MSF) constitutes an exception and has managed to retain their legitimacy. The aim of this study was to examine how MSF built and retained its legitimacy towards institutional actors in their environment, when the branch in general is suffering from a crisis of confidence. In a case study, this was done by identifying the institutional pressures on MSF and examining which strategies MSF uses to handle the pressures. The study was conducted through qualitative interviews with employees at MSF and actors in their environment.

Technological advancements in information and communication technologies (ICT) have resulted ina need to use ICT in schools. Sweden has actively promoted ICT in schools since the early 1980's.In Japan, 1994 saw the government's first step towards active promotion of ICT in education. In thisstudy, we have compared the strategies used to promote the use of ICT in elementary and secondaryschools in Sweden and Japan. Our findings suggest that a similar 3-step approach was used in bothcountries: 1, infrastructure; 2, effective use of ICT; 3, implementation of ICT. A significantdifference was found in the way the two countries planned their strategies.

The global spread of the Internet has enabled busniesses and consumers in all industries to be better informed. Consequently, the buying process has appeared to become different from what tratditional models implies. As the buying behaviour among customers is evolving, selling companies are responding to this change. This thesis evolves around the consequences that the developing relationship between buyer and seller in business-to-business companies has led to. The topic in focus is the buzzword and phenomena "content marketing" with its marketing and selling strategy.