The Swedish bank Handelsbanken has, according to their own way of measuring, been more successful than a weighted average of their competitors during the last 38 years. They have also handled the recent financial crisis, as well as the one in the 1990´s, better than most other banks. This paper studies their management control system at branch level in order to identify the controls which have been enforced to ensure that a low risk level is retained in the lending. The controls that have been identified are; (1) A decentralized organization with the offices as profit centers where the manager has restrictions regarding risk level and the results are measured as K/I (cost/revenue). (2) The absence of bonuses and individual follow-up regarding performance measurement.

Stressful routines for animal handling can reduce immune function and productivity of animals. If stakeholders are handling animals aversively, animals will show increased expressions of fear for humans and higher stress levels which lead to the compromise of animals? welfare. In Ethiopia, there are no legislations to protect animals from suffering or discomfort. The main objective of this study was therefore to analyse welfare of cattle on animal markets in Ethiopia and map out supply chains of animals to these markets.

This master thesis has been done at Enea Epact AB. The purpose of this thesis is to develop and implement a Link Quality Control algorithm for GPRS/EPGRS in the current testing tool. A Link Quality Control (LQC) shall take quality values from mobile stations and base stations and decide a codingsscheme that opimizes the throughput of data. The Advantage with LQC is that it adapts the used coding scheme to the channel quality. If the channel quality is too bad for the used coding scheme, a slower coding scheme with more redundancy should be selected.

Bakgrund och problem: Dagens företag verkar i en osäker och dynamisk miljö där marknaden ställer allt högre krav på snabba förändringar och anpassningar till kundernas behov. För att möta denna dynamiska omgivning har en rad nya produktionsfilosofier introducerats. En av dessa som fått stor uppmärksamhet och vars användning ökat är lean.Under senare år har det kommit att riktas stark kritik mot tillämpningen av traditionell ekonomistyrning och att denna kan vara skadlig vid tillämpningen vid lean. Andra forskare tar det steget längre och ställer sig frågan om det finns någon plats för ekonomistyrningen vid operationella koncept.Som ett svar på ovanstående kritik introducerades lean accounting, ett ämne som fortfarande är hårt debatterat inom managementlitteraturen. Andra forskare skiljer här på lean accounting och lean control, där lean control fokuserar på output, behavioral samt social control.

The supply of raw materials has always been an important issue in the Swedish Forest industry. Buying timber from local suppliers is important. To ensure raw materials to their industries the forest company must offer good prices and good business deals to their suppliers. The aims with this work are to find out how the contact between private suppliers of raw materials and how the forest company can be developed. To be able to do a complete study of the problems connecting with this subject a quality interview study has been done.

Bioenergy from the forest has been heavily debated in Sweden for several decades due to the interest of society to decrease dependence upon fossil fuels and limit the effects of climate change. The actual use of bioenergy from the forest has shifted over the years but increased during the last decades. Private actors within forest and nature conservation sectors play an important role for the development of bioenergy from the forest as well as for the debate and the implementation of political goals. Forestry in Sweden is characterised by ?freedom under responsibility? for private actors and the perspective of governance is valuable for studying actors and discourses.

When a car owner want to lock or unlock his or her car today, it?s preferable done by using aremote control. The system is really comfortable when the car owner is using the remote.A problem arises if a thief gets the remote.The thief doesn?t have to know where the car is parked, an approximate estimation where thecar is parked is enough.For instance, it?s enough to know which car park the car is parked in. If the thief knows that,he/she can repeatedly activate the remote control while looking for a car indicating with lightsand sounds.Because of the fact that a car usually indicates that it has been unlocked by making a shortsound indication, there will be no problem finding the car.The purpose with this project is to make a prototype which makes it harder for a thief to findthe car.

Term: Spring term 2007Study objects: Reitan Servicehandel AB, Vi-butikerna, ICA Sverige ABPurpose: The purpose of this study is to analyse how procurement is used as a strategy to achieve better competitive strength, within the retail food industry.Theoretical: The theoretical chapter illustrates different procurement organisations, multiple and single sourcing, brand equity, consumer behaviour and involvement, Efficient Consumer Response including supply chain and category management and finally Demand Chain Management.Method: For the case studies, three food retail companies have been interviewed: Reitan Servicehandel AB, Vi-butikerna and ICA AB. To illustrate how consumer behaviour influences retail food market, several secondary consumer research studies have been analysed.Conclusions: The results indicate that the procurement organisation can achieve a better competitive strength by a centralised organisation, which make it possible to improve conditions of terms when ordering higher purchase volumes. The sourcing strategies can improve a company?s power within the supply chain. All companies within the study had a very good knowledge about consumer behaviour.

This masters thesis investigates the relation between China and the Information Society as it is manifested in the UN conference the World Summit on the Information Society WSIS. The first phase of this two-phase conference took place in Geneva 10-12 December 2003, with two documents, Declaration of principles DP and Plan of action PA, as main results. The information policy is central to an authoritarian rule in its efforts to keep control over the national identity. The thesis investigates the impact that the information revolution and Internet might have on the Chinese national identity through the acceptance of DP and PA in various aspects. With the use of the information science theories by Manuel Castells and Frank Webster, the vision of WSIS was compared with the Chinese information policy.

One of the main objectives of all food production is to produce foods that can safely beconsumed without fear of being sick. Despite this hundreds of people are affected in Sweden offood poisoning almost every day. Most cases are caused by a small group of so-called pathogenicmicroorganisms. The most frequently affected are the small children, the elderly, persons withreduced resistance and pregnant. The reasons behind the food poisoning are often ignorance andlack of food hygiene.

The purpose with this disertation is to find if there are selected factors which can force companies to grow. We have chosen five factors which we think can force the companies; market, strategy, profitability, demographic and institutional factors. We want to examine if there are differences between small and larger companies, and if there are differences between the lines of business.The intention to growth is also influenced by different factors. The organization and the board have an effect on the development. There are also factors that can obstruct the growth, for example control.

Energy Director is a control and measuring system for energy consumption and is part of the product portfolio of E.ON AG for more efficient use of energy, offered to business customers. As of today, the system has only one parameter of control, namely power, and the objective of this essay has been to investigate whether other ones could be added. The emphasis is on the environmental perspective, which is why carbon dioxide has served as an example for this parameter in question.Parallel with the study of Energy Director electricity on the margin, calculations of carbon dioxide equivalents and also the Swedish trade of electricity have all been highlighted. Results indicate that when reductions in energy are made it is endorsed to omit from electricity on the margin rather than some mean distributed electricity, under certain conditions, and in addition the calculations of the reductions should be modified regarding the efficiency of the power stations fuelled by lignite and bituminous coal. Sweden practices trade with the Nordic countries as well as Poland and Germany.

The purpose of this essay is to apply Activity Based Costing on a Service and Support function in order to identify and allocate costs for providing support for IT deliverables..

Entrepreneurship is said to be the missing link between knowledge and growth in the Swedish economy. New ventures run a high risk of failing and this holds true especially for technology ventures. Since company leaders have proven to exert an influence on organisations' survival possibilities, the selection of an appropriate CEO is important. The purpose of this study is to describe the importance of the CEO for ventures as well as to explain how knowledge and experience affect the opinion of who should be CEO. Using a qualitative case study research design including three life science companies, we show that there are three main factors crucial when selecting a CEO.

Uppsatsens syfte avser att beskriva hur ACB Laminat, ur ledningens perspektiv, arbetar med lönsamhetsstyrning. Vidare ska eventuella brister i detta tillvägagångssätt belysas och analyseras, för att förslag till tänkbara åtgärder ska presenteras för företaget.För att nå uppsatsens syfte har en fallstudiebaserad kvalitativ studie använts. En tydlig avgränsning av vad som ingår i undersökningen och vad som ligger utanför finns då uppsatsen enbart avsåg att undersöka ledningens syn på hur företaget arbetar med lönsamhetsstyrning. En kvalitativ ansats har använts för att genom en djupgående intervju belysa en helhet och med hjälp av mina egna tolkningar finna en förståelse i det undersökta.En beskrivning på hur företaget, enligt ledningen arbetar med lönsamhetsstyrning har presenteras. Vidare har undersökningen resulterat i att brister i företagets arbetssätt funnits och förslag till hur de kan avhjälpas har presenterats.