This essay contains material of how the competence maintenance works on a chosen company and how a web based tool developed for its use can help companies with competence insur-ance. As competence maintenance is a major factor to have a long term profit it´s necessary to be aware of the company?s future needs in the competence sector. This essay describes the company?s competence maintenance occupation needs taken from internal documents; it also identifies the need for competence maintenance and presents multiple areas of possible im-provements.

The research this report is based on aims to find out the characteristic features of the marketing tools that are essential for a music artist, and define a successful artist. The thesis arises and discusses how different medias can have an affect on an artists career and on his/hers achievement. To bee seen in the right medias can have an important influence on their career. To be able to answer our aim we have interviewed people who have a solid knowledge about music business, we have also used a qualitative method. The outcome of the research is that there are some indications that show important factors which are essential when it comes to marketing artists.

Quality was earlier only an issue for the company?s quality departments but today is the entire organization involved in quality- and improvements work. With the customers in focus, both external and internal, quality and improvement work should be integrated in the daily activities. The management shall state goals and visions together with a policy. Through participation the correct requirements for a successful work are created.With SPC, statistics process control, there is an opportunity to perceive variations in the process and with the correct tools make it stable.

The civil war in Sierra Leone was a very complicated conflict, both in its origin as well as in its realization. Many actors, along with the diamond trade, played vital parts in making the war carry on for a decade. In this paper I will try to clarify the relations between the actors and the diamonds, first and foremost the part the diamonds played in the conflicts start and continuation. I will also show what has happened in the country and in the diamond industry after the wars conclusion. What I find is that diamonds did not play the only part in the origin of the conflict but that the poor economic state the country was in had its part.

Through a case study, I wanted to find out what advantages and disadvantages local companies consider with scrum and what they think about its future. To find out what scrum is, I read the literature and scientific articles and then wrote surveys based on my thoughts. Further, I also wanted to find out if it?s possible to use scrum in a school environment and therefore I visited a high school class who used scrum in one of their projects. The result was good but could have been better as it requires more training of scrum to understand everything.

Brands are the instruments corporates use to create and communicate brands reputation. Within the different industries for consumer products intangible assets such as brands are known to have great importance for corporate prosperities. When consumers experiences a specific brand symbolizes best possible value for money, the corporate behind it has managed to create a unique competitive advantage that should be to its full potential. Strong brands can pose the difference between winning or loosing on the market. Due to this brands should be considered as cost-effective instruments since they help create financial advantages such as consumer loyalty.

The modern workplace is dependent on effective communication in order for the employees to be able to execute their tasks. Despite this over half of the new communications-solutions that are inserted to handle an organizations communication needs fail. Therefore this study focuses on the adoption of communication-solutions in the context of the modern workplace. This with the intent of identifying factors that are central to the individuals? adoption of new communication-solutions.

Lean has been studied intensely since the 1980s and it has been tested and successfully implemented in a wide variety of businesses. This thesis aims to examine the potential effects of a Lean implementation on meeting efficiency, a topic that has gotten little attention in the research community. First, a number of meeting problems are introduced, as they are perceived from the company that is the subject of the study. Second, the potential of introducing Lean in a meeting process is evaluated using the Lean Thinking principles. Third, the wastes that are generated from the meeting problems are identified.

This is a qualitative study where the purpose was to investigate what professionals experience to be the reason for an individual to become addicted to gambling and continues to gamble even though it leads to negative consequences. The purpose was also to investigate what the professionals experienced was of importance for an individual to recover from a gambling addiction. The study was based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with knowledgeable individuals in the field. The main findings of the study were that the motivation for individuals with a gambling problem to continue gamble was that they saw gambling as the solution to their problems by winning back lost money. It was common that gambling was an escape from anxiety, guilt, shame, and other gambling-related problems such as financial liabilities.

First objective: To bring forward managers? perceptions of the underserved consumers in emerging markets. Second objective: To reveal what implications managers? perceptions of underserved consumers in emerging markets provide for branding in these markets. Our study indicates that managers? perceptions are still lacking consumer insights within five elements (value, loyalty, purchasing power, consumers and consumption).

Why has some cyber-attacks been more successful than others? There has been in the near past examples of cyber-attacks used with different purposes. How do we understand these chosen targets and what result the attack accomplished?Research has discussed similarities between aviation warfare and cyber warfare, and how the first could explain what is happening in cyber warfare now. There is also opposing opinions whether cyber warfare should be seen as a method to alone force a will on your opponent or if cyber warfare should mere be supporting other military means.

The study is made in Nacka, a suburb of the capital of Sweden, Stockholm, and focuses on ?the parental school choice" that takes place when children start in first grade at the age of six. New differences in the number of pupils attending various municipal schools have appeared after reforms in the early 1990s giving parents free choice of elementary school for their children. Some schools are located in areas where most children have a middle class background, while others are placed in less attractive surroundings where the parents have a lower educational status, and are more often immigrants. Parents living in the latter kind of surroundings can now send their children to schools further off, but located in more attractive areas. This leads to some schools get an increasing number of pupils and others gets a decreasing.

The aim of the study is to examine different statements for and against regional identity in the research of the new organisation of the Swedish society. The aim is also to observe in what extend the Swedish committee of responsibility has had an awareness of the identity politics in its effort to improve the presumptions for the new, successful regional division.The questions are:1. In which ways do the opinions of the participant of the work of the committee of responsibility, coincide and differ when it comes to the importance of the regional identity in the case of a new regional division?2. How has the committee of responsibility worked on development of consciousness and mobilisation for the creation of the regional identity in its final report?A method called the argumentation analysis was used in this study.

This report examines the industrialization of a newly developed household machine on behalf of Technogarden Engineering Resources in Karlstad, Sweden. The report is a part of the final course in the Bachelor Program in Mechanical Engineering at Karlstad University and takes place in spring 2014.An innovator, an investor and a engineering consultant firm have through collaboration developed a new type of gruel machine. The product is in its final stage of construction and is planned to be manufactured in a production located in Sweden, autumn of 2014.To compete against today?s trend in outsourcing manufacturing to low cost countries for better profitability, the industrialization of the gruel machine must be done with a minimum amount of resources in order to become successful, which also describes the problem of this study. Using pre-study material in form of Lean production literature, visiting a successful production site and gathering data from involved engineers a specification was developed which describes what this industrialization must achieve and which requests can be accomplished.

This essay is built upon the thoughts of Joseph S. Nye concerning power, and the different ways of exercising that power. The characteristics of Nye's theories are the thoughts about the second face of power, or what he describes as the soft power. The essay seeks to examine what kind of power the US has been in their work for non-proliferation and democracy promotion in the Middle East. It also seeks to find what it is that makes the US to choose to exercise the specific powers.