Background: Increasing globalization makes companies more influenced than before by actors and factors in their environment. For some this has lead to a more dynamic and complicated business context. Therefore it is of strategic importance to understand what is currently going on as well as to have a general idea of what the future brings. Purpose: To contribute to a deeper understanding of how a corporate management can perceive its business environment and how it affects he gathering of business information from a strategic perspective. Realisation: In-depth interviews were conducted with all four members of the management in the studied company, Volvo Competence Center in Skovde, Sweden.

SIDA?s relief work in Bosnia aims at making the country ready for a membership in the EU where the main focus lies in the creation of a sustainable state as well as liberalizing the market to create an increased economic cooperation between Bosnia and the rest of Europe. These ambitions are closely related to the neo-liberal theory of state building which aims at creating democratic societies in line with the western democracy model, with a liberal economy constituting its base. Despite generous financial aid, the democratic and economic development in Bosnia is moving very slowly and the ethnical tensions seem to grow despite international involvement in the country. The purpose of this study is to evaluate SIDA?s present relief work in Bosnia out of a peace perspective.

This thesis is studying Stråk* in an urban contexts. Thiswill be achieved through a study of Rosengårdsstråket inMalmö based on the question "What is a Stråk?".Malmö has experienced a major change in the last 15years. From being an industrial city with economic problems,Malmö is now part of the dynamic Öresund Region,and a knowledge city with great optimism. New parts ofthe city is about to grow up that reinforces the image ofMalmö's new identity.The next step in Malmö's development is to make thecity even denser and interconnect the inner city and thesuburbs to create a more sustainable city.

Today's society is characterized by constant changes. In order to adapt to the development, organizations must continuously come up with innovations and invest in new projects. As a result, the responsibility of organizations' leaders has increased. Parallel with this development, more and more firms incorporate mindfulness in the organizations, and many managers choose to practice mindfulness themselves. This case study is based on interviews with business leaders that have completed a course in mindfulness.

Product development is a risky business; many products never yield profit, but it is also ne-cessary for a company?s survival in a competitive business where the costumers change their requests constantly. Consumer-led product development is developed from the wish to fill the consumer?s needs and expectations and thereby be more likely to succeed. Lindell?s Gårdsslakteri AB is a local slaughter and meat processor in Västergötland.

Bakgrund: Vår utgångspunkt i uppsatsen är att produktskillnaderna blir allt mindre och det emotionella värdets betydelse blir allt större. I och med detta får varumärket en allt större betydelse även inom business-to-business. Syfte: Vi avser att undersöka ICA Menyföretagens identitet samt vad dess varumärke står för. Dessutom vill se hur användbara de modeller vi använt är i business-to-business-relationer samt utforma en egen modell som förklarar hur märkeslojalitet uppnås i en sådan relation. Avgränsningar: Vi kommer endast att beröra så kallad business-to-business samt varumärkets emotionella värde.

The awareness regarding environmental issues is increasing and as a result a large number of products are eco-labeled. This enables the consumers to make enlightened environmental decisions when purchasing products. Eco-labeling is no longer for products only, but also for services like hotels. It?s difficult to determine what it actually means to eco-label a hotel and what kind of benefits it includes.

This report focuses on work schedules in the retail sector, where work schedules are dynamic and change according to the needs and work schedule is a requirement for an effective structure of the work. This structure is important for maintaining a good order and all this is a requirement for a profitable business for both long and short term future. Work schedule also contributes to safety at the workplace. The purpose of this study was to investigate the transfer of knowledge by work schedules. The HRM employee we interviewed worked in Reitan Servicehandel Sverige AB which includes 7-Eleven, Pressbyrån and Shell.

Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka vilka samband det finns mellan värderingar, föreställningar och normer kring miljön till agerande för ekologisk hållbarhet i det vardagliga livet. Vår hypotes var att det finns samband mellan affekter kring miljöns framtid och agerande till hållbar utveckling. För att söka svar på syftet och bekräfta hypotesen har enkäter med frågor gällande individens värderingar, föreställningar och normer om miljön samt frågor om miljömässigt agerande skickats ut via e-post till 119 deltagare i åldern 23-65 år. Svarsfrekvensen var på 59 procent. Resultatet visade att det fanns ett flertal starka samband mellan miljömässiga värderingar, föreställningar och normer till individens agerande och hypotesen om att det fanns samband mellan affekter och agerande för hållbar utveckling verifierades.

Business incubation is an important force of economic development but relatively unheard of in organization theory. This is partly due to the fact that in organization theory, meta-organization or the organization of organizations has been neglected or left lagging as much theorization has been focused on organizing individuals. With the growing number of business incubators, and meta-organizations in general, the need for understanding a relatively new type of organization is prevalent.This case study of the business incubator Global Business Labs Botswana (GBL) aims to clarify the organizational differences among meta-organizations and traditional organizations on a case level, as well as explain the underlying factors for these dissimilarities. With respect to the nature of this case study no general conclusions are drawn from the results. The inference, however, is that the organization of GBL and its incubated companies differs from the traditional organization in five elementary aspects: the weak hierarchical structure, the operational autonomy of its members, the strong focus on recruitment processes, the member identity and the lack of formal sanctions.

AbstractIn my work on language development in preschool the purpose was to examine how and to what extent the pre-school supports children with special needs in their language development. Trough qualitative interviews with four preschool teachers, I wanted to see how they work with language development in preschool. In the study, Main questions asked in the inquiry :How do teachers and support children?s language development?What techniques, resources and tools available to facilitate language development? The conclusion that I made from my inquiry is that the primary language stimulation methods teachers use to encourage children?s language development are rhymes telling, books reading and song singing based on active selection of pieces that match the children?s maturity level.And how they are using different language stimulation techniques Karlstad model, TAKK (Signs of augmentative and alternative communication) and TRAS (Early registration of language development) to promote children?s language development. Keyword: Language development, language stimulation, treatment, communication, methods..

Aim: A business ratio is a measuring instrument that companies use in their financial report to show profit and progress. As it is today, there are no standards to follow that shows which business ratio to present in a companies annual report. Our aim with this report is to see if there are any trends in the use of business ratios by looking into how thirty growth companies are applying them.Method: To see what business ratios are used in practice, we have collected information from the thirty companies? annual reports. With help from the literature, we have created an understanding about the most frequently used business ratios.

The purpose with this report is to highlight the value which Enterprise Architecture (EA) can bring,including the effects that can emerge, for a business. In the report we also study how Enterprise Architecturemay serve as basis for generating even more business value. The study is based on a theoretical frameworkwhich covers the following perspectives; architecture design, strategy development, management of changeand evaluation of IT-investments. Gathering and analysis of empirical data has been performed using acustom-developed model which is based on a model from Sogeti called Dynamic Architecture (van DenBerg and van Steenbergen, 2006) and Innovation Value Institute?s maturity curve (Innovation ValueInstitute, 2008) for Enterprise Architecture management.Explaining the value of Enterprise Architecture is invariably an important topic since many organizationsexpect to be able to generate quick value of the investments made in Enterprise Architecture.

This essay describes some factors that may effect small business survival in relation to becoming a supplier for bigger companies that may implement the use of EDI for electronic invoicing.The purpose of this study is to analyse and evaluate what impact may occur during the introduction of EDI between small and big business.Following on from the introduction of methods used in this study there will be a complete analysis made detailing results.From our research we have found that most small business have developed a professional working relationship between themselves and their clients.The adoption of EDI by big business has revolutionised the day to day dealings between both supplier and consumer in that EDI has empowered both chains to collaborate data in real time.In conclusion our research illustrates that in order for small business to survive the must implement EDI. The results of our study have shown that the introduction of EDI to both small and big business has had a positive outcome..

This final thesis is a basic inquiry into a countryside programme for the municipality of Hässleholm. By interviewing people who live in the countryside in the municipality of Hässleholm I?ve tried to get a picture of how the thoughts on development of countryside are. Trough these interviews I?ve also tried to find out how people on the countryside defines the concept of countryside.