The purpose of this study is to examine what creates motivation in the workplace of a small company with a high employee satisfaction index. The case study consists of qualitative interviews that help explain what the most important motivational factors are for the experienced IT consultants in a company that was founded by a circle of friends. The study concludes that the unique and equal pay model implicates an economic risk to the individual consultant but results in liberties, Synergies and benefits. These appeal more than either self-employment or work at a larger IT consultancy that several consultants have backgrounds in. An expansion is ongoing since two years back, which threatened the culture but implicated opportunities for the individual consultants.

This thesis deals with co-operation between municipalities viewed from the perspectiveof the small municipality. It poses two questions: How and why doessmall municipalities co-operate? and Which is the place of the small municipalityin a larger organization?. To examine this three Scanian municipalities have beenstudied and one Norwegian municipality is used to provide a perspective on theSwedish discussion.Four theoretical topics guide the thesis. Firstly the core values of municipalities;democracy, autonomy and efficiency.

Product development cycles become shorter and shorter. The time from idea to market has become an important competitive factor. Despite this, methods used for making the product development process faster are surrounded with uncertainty about their efficiency. The purpose of the thesis is to describe the pros and cons of ?best practice? methods for shortening lead times and how these methods effect the lead times in research and development.

Kindergarden - How can we create different Synergies between different fields that they can benefit from each other? What different activities will suit the kindergarden? How will our perception of the kindergarden, of its need and function in society, change?In this Degree Project in Architecture I will be investigating the combination of the kindergarden together with a restaurant and a dance studio. I believe these activities will harmonize since they have overlapping benefits: We all eat, move and grow.With the new architectural activities in mind, I will further investigate the importance of the kindergarden as a part of society, more specifically our perception of what function it may, may not or could fill. I share the idea with a lot of authors, scientist that we are headed toward a society where children are kept too safe, thus minimising their chance to experience and learn to cope with a harsh reality when they grow up as adults. It's ok to get hurt to an extent, as long as they do not endanger their lives..

This paper aims to shine a light on the challenges connected to the implementation of a process focused way of thinking in a public service organization. To this we have conducted a series of qualitative interviews, primarily from participants of a university driven project. The project aims to teach decision making employees of public service organizations how to use process modeling techniques to increase their efficiency. We have also interviewed the teachers who have taught the courses included in the project. As a final point of view we have also interviewed a researcher and IT consultants to compare novice users with experienced users of process modeling techniques.

Syftet med denna studie har varit att undersöka hur företag samlar in och utnyttjar kundinformation mellan försäljningskanalerna. Men även att utreda motiven bakom att bli en multikanalåterförsäljare samt produkttypens roll i beslutet. En kvalitativ fallstudie med semistrukturerade intervjuer har tillämpats, där fyra företag och en expert deltagit. Studien har visat att information om kunden har varit värdefull och har använts emellan handelskanaler för att anpassa butikens sortimentsmix, skapa välgrundade kampanjer och styra kunder till butik. De mindre företagen, sett till omsättning, har haft mer användning av kundinformation vid beslutet att öppna fysiska butiker än de större.

This study has investigated how urban vegetation can be used in a multifunctional way to support ecosystem services in urban environments. Nacka municipality is in the start-up phase of building what is to become Nacka city. This provides a unique possibility to study and analyse what role the vegetation play in making the city a healthy living environment and how it needs to be adapted in order to be resilient against changing climate conditions and how the effects of those changes can be regulated. The study further investigates how airborne pollution, caused by urbanization processes, can be regulated or reduced by vegetation or species selection. Methods used in this study were a combination of qualitative interviews and literature studies, seeking to answer the questions: Which specific ecosystem functions are needed in the urban environment and which aspects will influence the ecosystems ability to deliver the functions in demand? And which plant species have the right mechanisms needed to deliver those functions? These questions have been studied and analysed in a local based context where the local conditions ands site specific needs of Nacka define criteria for plant selection.

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, OTEC, is a sustainable energy conversion technology that is not yet commercialized. OTEC is a technology that utilizes the temperature difference in oceans between the warm surface water and the cold water at 1 000 m depth to run a Rankine Cycle. This technology can produce electricity and provide Synergies like fresh water, air conditioning and aquaculture. A simulation program for three alternative OTEC systems has been created in order to decide which OTEC system is most profitable; closed, open or hybrid system. In this simulation a production cost analysis is performed in order to investigate and decide which one of the three systems that has the lowest production cost. The production cost analysis also analyzes if the profitability is affected by the size of the facility. After these analyzes, the most profitable of the three different OTEC-systems is expanded by an installation of solar collectors in order to see if the thermal efficiency is improved. The result shows that the most profitable system varies with the size of the facility.

Bakgrund och problem:Företagsförvärv är en process som ständigt förekommer i vårat näringsliv och som nästan dagligen omnämns i media. Trots detta stora antal förvärv som sker är företagsledningarnas kunskap omkring integrationsprocessen av företagen ofta bristfällig. Sammanslagningen av företagen är många gånger det som skapar mervärdet vid ett förvärv. Tids-, kommunikations- och företagskultursperspektiven anses vara de främsta framgångsfaktorerna vid en integration.Syfte: Denna studie kommer att granska dessa tre perspektiv för att skapa en ökad förståelse för dem, samt för att generera kunskap om själva integrationsprocessen.Metod: Fyra ledande konsultföretag som arbetar med integration har intervjuas för att återspegla deras syn på perspektiven och integrationsprocessen.Resultat och slutsats: Intervjuerna gav en djupare insikt i och ökad förståelse för integrationsprocessen. Med hjälp av tidigare forskning resulterade undersökningen i tre nya modeller som beskrev samt tydliggjorde företagsledningens optimala förhållandesätt gentemot de enskilda perspektiven.

The acquisition process as an object for research and empirical studies have increased in importance during the past decade. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate this process further. This was done by reviewing previous research covering the area of mergers and acquisitions. Seven key factors that should be considered in an acquisition process emerged; acquisition project management, planning, communication between the acquirer and the potential target, goal alignment within management, company-cultures, a trade-off between a certain speed in integrating the companies and consideration of the employees, and finally the follow-up. These factors have been shown to increase the likelihood of value creation in acquisitions.

Background: The design industry is relatively immature in Sweden but large on the international market, where companies have used services from industrial design firms for a long time. Companies incresignly realise that design is an efficient mean to gain competitive advantages on the market. Several design companies fancy growth and to receive a wider market share to expand on the international market. One of them is Design Communicaton who has made a couple of acquisitions, to receive wider comptences and to cover different segments. That has lead to an increased brand portfolio with different subbrands, which can be complicated to handle efficiently in the internal and external communication.

Leverage buyout?s is an opportunity for companies, who can strengthen its market position by expanding its operations, and it add?s value to the company. At every LBO, copmanies make different values of the target company to finally come upp to a final bid. The final bid may in many cases be made of a surplus value, which is the differens between the value of the net-assets and the final bid. This we call goodwill and it has been a target in many discussions.

In June 2006 the Council of the European Union agreed on the review of the EU sustainable development strategy. This renewed strategy voices a commitment to sustainable development that includes a diverse list of safeguarded interests. Sustainability is to be attained in the spheres of democracy, solidarity, the rule of law, gender equality and at the same time it should promote a dynamic economy. Given this multifunctional application of sustainable development, curiosity may soon give rise to questions such as; What is the legal significance of the concept? Is it to be considered a general principle of Community law? And can it be used as an instrument in adjudication and legal reasoning? Anyone who looks deeper into the concept of sustainable development is soon to find a labyrinthine complex of ideas, expressions and opinions.

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.

This master of science thesis intends to examine how the established innovation theoriesinteracts with the social and cultural phenomena arising from the reduction in communicationcosts as a result of the development of the internet.The aim is to present a knowledge inventory of attitudes to and experiences of an openapproach, with emphasis on collaborative innovation, in product and service developmentdriven companies in different fields. The studied theories and the empirical results forms thebasis for an analysis of how companies can benefit from the diversified knowledge that existsoutside their borders as well as an exploration of the potential for this kind of knowledgeexchange to act as a catalyst for innovation.The theoretical part of the study is based essentially on two tracks: (1) innovation theories witha focus onopen innovation and user innovation, and (2) a broad review of how theories ofdiversified knowledgeand collective intelligence has become possible to apply in an innovationcontext. The empirical part of the study is based on material obtained from semi-structuredinterviews with respondents from six companies.The results show that companies have implemented unstructured innovation initiatives withoutany formal links to the structured product development processes, which are part of thecompanies core activities. The main conclusions include the following insights: There is a needfor structured links between the unstructured initiatives and the core activities, which makes itpossible to take promising ideas to market. The companies also have to lose some control of theunstructured initiatives; consequently it is impossible to pinpoint what the outcome will be.