The number of firms adapting the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility is constantly growing. It is no longer enough only to supply your customers with demanded products and services since todays? customers have an increased awareness and are demanding more transparence when it comes to the manufacturing and responsibility for society.Along with a growing interest in social, ethical and environmental matters, many firms have received critique, consequently forcing them to start taking more responsibility for their activities. The clothing industry was among the first to get critized and therefore early in starting their work with CSR.The purpose of this paper is to investigate how firms in the clothing industry work with CSR today, and also how they choose to communicate this work, both internally and externally. The methodology of the paper is qualitative and aims to deeply investigate four different firms, along with an additional interview with a CSR-consult from one of the leading communication-firms in Sweden.The theoretical foundation includes a frame of reference around CSR and the communication thereof, and also a few relevant theories around CSR and business ethics.After analyzing the empirical material the paper have reached a few conclusions.

The purpose of this thesis was to illuminate how companies work with their brand identity and particularly how it is applied in their positioning. The empirical data has been collected through interviews with two companies in Sweden working with brand identity as a stated strategy. The study shows that companies discover, develop and build their brand identity based on their core identity and core values. The core value can be strengthened through customer satisfaction surveys. In order to develop the brand identity in companies, management has to be aware of their brand person- ality, as an essentiality for survival.

AbstractTitle:The Impact of Management Control Systems on the Purchaser Function - A study of Scania and Sandvik Authors: Mohammad Reza Akhbari and Johanna Sullivan Svensson Published: 2011 Keywords: Management control, purchasing function, impact, control, control instruments, Key Performance Indicators, measurement, communication and organizational structure. Background and problem formulation: In order for a company?s business idea or vision to be fulfilled, the management of a company needs assistance from various means to intentionally affect the operation in the desired direction. Management control concerns activities of both financial and non-financial character in order to implement the strategy of a company and to reach profitability. Since the purchaser function is responsible of spending 50 percent of a company?s total revenue, the function has an optimal starting point to be a key actor in the shaping and execution of a company?s strategic plan.

Risk management has become a key ingredient for businesses all over the world. High Reliability Organizations (HRO) has distinguished themselves as experts in this area. By continuously focusing on improving their ability to manage risks they?ve been able to successfully avoid catastrophes in environments where normal accidents can be expected due to complexity and risk factors.The aim of the thesis is to improve the risk management at Apotekens Service by applying theories from HRO and safety culture. In July 2009, following the re-regulation of the Swedish pharmacy market, Apotekens Service AB was appointed national pharmacy infrastructure supplier for the Swedish health care system.

Bakgrund: Flera stora produktionsföretag har börjat använda sig av utvecklingsprogram för sina leverantörerna för att sprida beprövade tanke- och arbetssätt och därigenom erhålla förbättrade prestationer av leverantörerna. Denna utveckling har i flera fall visat sig ge positiva förändringar på leverantörernas prestationer men det har varit svårt för kundföretagen att få kännedom om vad som verkligen har hänt i leverantörernas verksamheter. Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att utreda vilka effekter som eftersträvas och erhålls när stora produktionsföretag, genom utvecklingsprogram, bedriver leverantörsutveckling. Genomförande: Data och information har insamlats genom personliga intervjuer hos personer från ett stort produktionsföretag samt ett tvärsnitt av tre leverantörsföretags personal. Resultat: Studien visar på att bakomliggande motiv till leverantörsutveckling är stabilitet i flödet, långsiktiga leverantörsrelationer, optimala processer och upprätthållandet av kontinuerliga förändring.

This thesis tries to explore how different strategies of internal communication are used in actual situations within an organization. Specifically, the purpose is to investigate how the internal communication within the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) has been carried out during their work to change their organizational structure, and, how this can be understood in terms of existing theories for strategic communication. The research questions explored are:What are the chosen strategies used to communicate the changes internally?How can these strategies be understood in terms of existing theories?What are the views of the employees on the communication and what are the relations between their views, the chosen strategies and existing theories?The theoretical ground work chosen is mainly the work by Cornelissen (2008), Dalfelt (2005), Johansson (2011) and Larsson (2008). The method chosen for the empirical part of the study is semi-structured qualitative interviews.

Background: With the increased globalization food prices went down for a while, only to skyrocket to new levels. Prices of organic food, which already were more expensive than conventional, are now even more expensive. The current financial crisis results in reduced consumption which creates a threat to the smaller grocery stores. Globalization and the increased competition have had a negative impact on the environment but at the same time the desire to solve these issues has increased appreciably. The environmental aspect has been given higher priority by the individual, which led to a wider range of organic products and dramatically increased the number of stores selling organic products, leading to a greater competition among the stores selling organic food.  Problem definition: What factors are important for organic retail business long term survival?Purpose: Trough case studies analyze and evaluate the organic niche retail companies? strategies of marketing.Methods: This study is based on both qualitative and quantitative research methods.

This study aims to explore purposes of daily workshops for persons with disabilities. The method used was qualitative interviews. An inductive research strategy was used. Half-structured interviews with six managers of daily workshops were carried out, wherein they expressed their intentions with the daily workshops and the reasons for people to participate. The interviews were analysed with Antonovsky´s salutogenetic perspective, in which Sense of Coherence, SOC is a main concept, and with the normalisation principle.

This Master Thesis within Marketing and Strategy investigates the values customers perceive within the Real Estate market in the inner City of Stockholm. The dependent variable is customer satisfaction, and it could be explained by 1) the feeling of light and uniqueness of the apartment, 2) that the apartment is of a satisfying size, 3) the address of the apartment, 4) and the economics, the common areas of the building, and the bidding process. The feeling of light and uniqueness, combined with the number of square meters, and the monthly fee of the apartment, are also identified as the price driven functions of this market. A quantitative method is used to investigate the market, where 107 apartment buyers completed a survey..

Objektorienterade mönster och omkonstruktion är två olika designstrategier som har ett gemensamt mål: att göra mjukvarusystem mer förändringsbara och mindre komplexa. Mönster tillämpas för att förebygga utvecklingen av komplexitet i mjukvara. Omkonstruktioner görs för att reducera komplexitet som redan uppstått i mjukvarans inre struktur. Denna rapport identifierar fyra grundläggande strukturproblem som gör mjukvara onödigt komplex och svår att förändra: duplicerad kod, villkorslogik, långa metoder och bristande inkapsling. Rapporten visar hur objektorienterade mönster kan införas i mjukvara genom omkonstruktion och göra mjukvara mer förändringsbar genom att reducera de fyra nämnda strukturproblemen.

During the twentieth century, mergers&aquisitions have occured in waves where times of low activityfrequently has turned into periods of high activity. M&A:s have been of increasing numbers and growing size, which was extra evident during the last wave during the 1990:s. What are the motives that has made M&A such a widely used strategy? Are there similarities within and across industries regarding merger motives? The empirical material consists of primary and secundary data collected from two mergers in three industries respectively; manufacturing, banking and IT. The analysis make use of three different perspectives, the reason for this being to create understanding and furthermore illuminate the complexity of the problem.

The purpose of this essay is to examine how officials within the Swedish public libraryorganisation view the IT-development, how the IT-development progresses within theorganisation and if there is a need for a national IT-strategy for the public libraries in Sweden.Four unorganized interviews with officials within the regional- and county libraryorganisation and one within the national organisation where conducted. This study is aqualitative examination where the phenomenographic approach has been used as inspirationfor the analytic model. The analytic result has been compared to the system theory of how anoptimal system should be constructed to perform in an optimal way and to be able to producegood results. The results of this study show a wish for a better national cooperation regardingthe IT-development for the Swedish public libraries. Today?s library structure should bereviewed over in order to enable the libraries to produce even better results from the cooperation?s..

Sahlgrenska Academyat University of GothenburgDepartment of Internal Medicine and Clinical NutritionAbstractTitle: Alcohol consumption after training and its effects on muscle gain and recovery adult menAuthor: Frida Carlstedt, Puck JanssonSupervisor: Frode SlindeExaminer: Anna WinkvistProgramme: Dietician study programme, 180/240 ECTSType of paper: Examination paper, 15 hpDate: April 09, 2014Background: Today, the Swedish population exceeds the recommendations for alcohol intake while advised to move at least thirty minutes a day. It is well established what happens if you drink alcohol before a workout or if you workout the day after an alcohol intake, but it is less well established how muscle gain and recovery are affected by an intake of alcohol in the phase of recovery.Objective: The objective of this review is to investigate if there is a relation between alcohol intake after a workout and effected recovery and muscle gain. This was performed by measuring the outcomes cortisol, testosterone, creatine kinase as well as different measures of muscle strength. The issue was ?Does an intake of alcohol after training affect recovery and muscle gain??Search strategy: A systematic review in the databases PubMed and Scopus with the MeSH-terms: exercise, muscles, recovery of function, training, athletic performance, performance, sport, alcohol drinking, alcohols, alcohol and ethanol.Selection criteria: Criteria for articles to be included in this review were that they would be RCT- and human studies in healthy subjects as well as containing an ethanol intake after a physical activity that consisted of weight training in the form of resistance training or other forms of activity that promotes strength.Data collection and analysis: A systematic search for literature as mentioned above (search strategy) was performed as well as an analysis with the SBU quality review template for randomized studies, and a quality review for each measure of outcome according to Gothenburg University summarized evidence template for measures of outcome.4Main results: Many studies are authored by the same group of researchers and/or are of a lower quality.

This paper studies how peer assessment is used as a strategy to improve young learners' results in Swedish as a school subject. Nine teachers are interviewed about their use of the method on 7-12-year-old pupils. Comparisons are made between the interviews and Swedish and international discussion on peer assessment. There are similarities between the practice of the teachers and what is said in the litterature about the method and its advantages and drawbacks. The teachers tend to emphasize the social aspects more, though.

Syftet med studien är att skapa en djupare förståelse kring innovationsförmågan hos flygbolaget Ryanair och undersöka vilka innovationsstrategier de har tillämpat för att positionera sig på den europeiska marknaden. I denna uppsats använder vi oss utav en kvalitativ metod och har valt ut tre informanter via ett bekvämlighetsurval. Det insamlade materialet från informanterna har transkriberats och vi har valt att använda selektiva citat för att bygga upp större delar av empirin. En abduktiv ansats har tillämpats vid insamling av primärdata och sekundärdata för att besvara vår forskningsfråga. Studiens undersökning verifierar att Ryanair är ett innovativt flygbolag och har tillämpat ett innovativt tänk i sina strategier för att bli ett framgångsrikt och lönsamt flygbolag.