The aim of this thesis is to examine how salesperson control can be exercised in a retail store environment. A case study has been performed on a Swedish fashion company emphasizing the relationship between the company?s upper level management and their retail store operations in order to describe, analyze and classify the prevailing management control mechanisms. The paper presents an agency theoretical approach to the relationship applying behavior- and outcome based control theory, performance measurement theory and incentives theory in order to give a comprehensive image of the control system. The main finding is that the company?s management control system as applied to the sales force in its retail stores can be categorized as mainly behavior-based despite several explicit outcome-based features..

Bandura definierar (1997) outcome expectancy som individens skattning av sannolikheten att ett beteende ska leda till ett specifikt utfall. Utöver individens skattning av sitt eget beteendes följder (individual outcome expectancy), är hennes bedömning av sin grupps möjlighet att nå ett specifikt utfall (collective outcome expectancy) en del av begreppet (Riggs & Knight, 1994). Studien syftar till att undersöka huruvida arbetsrelaterad- self efficacy, locus of control och collective efficacy predicerar outcome expectancy. En enkätundersökning genomfördes med 102 deltagare från olika yrkesgrupper. Resultatet visade att arbetsrelaterad- self efficacy och locus of control samvarierade med individual outcome expectancy och att collective efficacy predicerade collective outcome expectancy.

This thesis concerns the control of outsourced interorganizational buyer-supplier relationships in the low-price fashion industry. A qualitative case study has been performed on two supplier relationships of a low-price fashion company. By identifying specificities of the industry and relating them to control problems and their implications on control solutions, the thesis has established a relation between industry specific characteristics and the way companies in the industry control their supplier relationships. The analysis is based on a theoretical framework created by Dekker (2004). Amongst other factors, the difficulty to define, quantify and measure the design variables of a fashion good, the high heterogeneity between individual products and the difficulty to predict the trend based demand, create high coordination requirements as well as appropriation concerns solved through extensive formal control.

In industrial control systems PID-control remains the prevalent strategy, also for processes that would benefit from model based control. The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate whether model based control can be readily implemented in an industrial control system. To this end a simulated surge tank with a simulated industrial control system is studied. For evaluation two scenarios with specified objectives are selected.Following a review of LQR and versions of MPC, Predictive Functional Control (PFC) is considered the most suitable for implementation. PFC is a form of MPC developed with industrial applications in mind and therefore has several advantages for implementation in an industrial control system.

Title: Co-operative, prevent or complement? - An essay on the relationships between control systems. Authors: Kim Eriksson and Victoria KarlssonPurpose: The essay aims to describe the relations between control systems and how they related to each other, based on an operationalization of the control systems. Research question: What are the control systems relations to each other? With regards whether control systems co-operative, prevents and/or complement each other.Theoretical framework: The essays theoretical framework is based on Malmi and Browns (2008) description of five different control systems and control mechanisms associated with each control system.   Research methodology: The method was based on three different data collection methods. These methods were observations, documentation, and semi-structured interviews.Conclusions: It is concluded that the control systems has comprehensive relations. Control systems have more, than one, relation to each other..

Title: Co-operative, prevent or complement? - An essay on the relationships between control systems. Authors: Kim Eriksson and Victoria KarlssonPurpose: The essay aims to describe the relations between control systems and how they related to each other, based on an operationalization of the control systems. Research question: What are the control systems relations to each other? With regards whether control systems co-operative, prevents and/or complement each other.Theoretical framework: The essays theoretical framework is based on Malmi and Browns (2008) description of five different control systems and control mechanisms associated with each control system.   Research methodology: The method was based on three different data collection methods. These methods were observations, documentation, and semi-structured interviews.Conclusions: It is concluded that the control systems has comprehensive relations. Control systems have more, than one, relation to each other..

Title: Co-operative, prevent or complement? - An essay on the relationships between control systems. Authors: Kim Eriksson and Victoria KarlssonPurpose: The essay aims to describe the relations between control systems and how they related to each other, based on an operationalization of the control systems. Research question: What are the control systems relations to each other? With regards whether control systems co-operative, prevents and/or complement each other.Theoretical framework: The essays theoretical framework is based on Malmi and Browns (2008) description of five different control systems and control mechanisms associated with each control system.   Research methodology: The method was based on three different data collection methods. These methods were observations, documentation, and semi-structured interviews.Conclusions: It is concluded that the control systems has comprehensive relations. Control systems have more, than one, relation to each other..

The use of temporary workers gives companies the opportunity to be flexible, by avoiding hiring and dismissing workers because of economic conditions and trends in demand. The management control in use at the company has the purpose of influencing employees? behaviour to act in the company?s best interest and towards its goals. The management control should also influence the behaviour of the temporary worker. The companies have to create motivation and commitment among the temporary workers although they are employed by a staffing agency.

Aims The aim of this study was to investigate how personnel within food control are regarded from different perspectives and to find the answers to the sub questions:- what is included in the profession of food control?- what are the requirements for personnel within the profession of food control?- how is the profession perceived from different perspectives?- how do personnel within the profession of food control estimate their psycho social working conditions?Method The study included 68 individuals (34 female and 34 male) and was conducted via observations, web-based surveys and survey-based interviews. Conclusion - The study was feasible.- The overall goal of the study as well as the research questions were answered to and contributed to clarify what is included in the profession of food control. - Quality measures should be implemented to greater extent within the development of the national food control system..

The task in this thesis is the steering of one of Saab Bofors Dynamics robots using Sliding Mode Control, a method they never used before. The robot constitutes a system which in addition to perturbations and uncertainties due to modeling imprecision, hold the difficulty of being highly time variant. In order to be able to keep required performance with uncertainties and modeling imprecision present, the use of robust control methods like Sliding Mode Control is necessary. SMC is based on the states of the system being forced to stay on or in the direct vicinity of a hyper plane in the state space which is chosen in a way that gives the system dynamics desired properties. Other advantages with sliding mode are reduced order dynamics on the switching surface and total insensitivity to some uncertainties and perturbations.

The control of indoor temperature must be able to handle large time constants and both measureable disturbances like outdoor temperature, and non-measurable disturbances, like waste heat from appliances. Due to cheaper microcontrollers (small computers with designated tasks) with better performance, more advanced and computation-demanding methods for control can be used.In this thesis, Generalized Predictive Control (GPC) has been implemented and tested on a theoretically derived model of a house. GPC states that a model of the system is estimated in every sample, and the control is carried out simultaneously, based on predictions of the model. Disturbances like solar radiation can be estimated and used in the control as well. The control signals are determined by quadratic programming, which makes it possible to consider conditions, for example limitations on the control signals.GPC requires a number of parameters to be defined, like model order and control signal penalty, but is relatively robust for variations in them.

Problem: What are the characteristics of Polykemi?s management control system and how is it affected by growth? Purpose: To describe and analyse the management control system of a medium-sized family-owned company from the perspective of Simons? Levers of control. Research design: An abductive, interview-based case study of Polykemi AB. Conclusion: Polykemi?s management control system is primarily a traditional one which is rather strong in terms of Levers of control.

The implementation of a material requirements planning system is a complex and demanding task. There has been much research into what factors are important in such implementations, but seemingly very little about the links between critical success factors and management control systems. This thesis attempts, through a case study, to answer the question of how management control systems affect the implementation of an MRP system in ASSA AB, a Swedish manufacturing firm. Data is primarily collected through interviews. Theory regarding implementation success definitions, critical success factors as well as management control systems is presented.

The market is developing and a growing competition increases pressure on companies to maintain their competitive advantage. Working with cost savings is a way to enhance earnings in a short term but also in a longer perspective. Volvo Powertrain Production Köping has an overall goal; to reduce costs by nine percentages in three years. To achieve the goal, Volvo Powertrain Production Köping works with World Class Manufacturing where the Department of Processing Technology constitutes an important part.Volvo Powertrain Production Köping lacks a standard for how savings within the metal cutting tool area are to be calculated. This makes it difficult to control and monitor their business outcome but it also causes difficulties in controlling the tool suppliers? outcome.

The function of budgetary controls is to control the resource allocation within companies. It can also be an instrument for measure and control subordinates and/or business units? performance (Van der Stede 2001). This paper concerns the latter; when the budgetary control function is used to measure and control subordinates performance based on budget. Previous research in this area has not yet accomplished to explain the effects of tight budgetary control which Hartman (2000) considers as the main issue to be concerned about in management accounting research.Previous research has presented contradictory findings regarding tight budgetary control explained by positive effects as well as negative effects during the last decades.