This paper is about the conflict between the Middle East and the Western world after the Danish newspapers’ cartoon publications of the prophet Muhammed in October 2005. The conflict resulted in massive reactions in the Middle East and the Danish-Swedish dairy company Arla Foods, was boycotted during six months in 2006. The aim of this study is to describe how the biggest Swedish daily newspaper, Dagens Nyheter and three Saudiarabic newspapers Al-Hayat, Al-Watan and Shark Al-Awsat described "the Other" during the crisis in the year of 2006. Another aim is to describe how Arla Foods managed the consumer boycott. The ideas about "the Other" that were expressed in the media are seen as a discourse with the aim of maintaining and/or creating a "Us and Them viewpoint". Earlier theoretical studies are being presented, not at least Foucault, Schutz and Baumans and Mays contribution to the "Us and Them viewpoint" and their sociological approach. The main questions in the paper are; what ideas were expressed in the Saudiarabic newspapers against the Western world and the other way around; what ideas were expressed in the Swedish newspaper against the Middle East? The third question is; how Arla Foods handled the reactions in Saudi arabia due to the cartoon publications and how the company management reacted in order to reduce the damage of the consumer boycott ? The result of this study shows that an "Us-and Them viewpoint" exists in both the Saudiarabic and Swedish newspapers. Three themes can be outlined. First of all, the Swedish focus on freedom of speech and its lack of understanding on why the cartoons caused such massive reactions in the Middle East. Second, the massive criticism against the Western world for publishing the "islamphobic" cartoons and causing all the hatred. Third, the ideas of more calm and ressentment between the people, respecting Islam as a religion and freedom of speech at the same time. Arla Foods reacted to the crisis by applying risk management and also by dissociating itself from the publications by an information campaign that was published in 25 different Arabic newspapers. Finally, the company made a reset of the communication stra   strategy adopting a more global mindset although being a Scandinavian company.

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Innovation is a key factor for economic development and growth, and firms need to continuously innovate in order to stay competitive. However, innovation is complicated in today’s markets as there are many different aspects for companies to manage. The very first phase of innovation, the fuzzy front end (FFE), is critical and this phase presents one of the greatest opportunities of improvement for the overall innovation process. Yet, the research on this phase is limited. The new product development (NPD) and the FFE are different from each other and require different ways of thinking and working. The FFE is the phase that takes place before the structured NPD phase and it aims to develop a sustainable flow of ideas. All innovations are born as creative ideas and creativity is the production of new and useful ideas. Many stress the importance of the environmental variable climate as important for creativity and innovation. This thesis is a case study which aimed to investigate the climate for creativity and innovation at an innovation department at Arla Foods Sweden. The innovation department is working successfully with NPD but lately, the ideas that the innovation department has produced have been rather few and not good enough for the results they want to achieve. Therefore, this case study had the overall goal to find improvements areas regarding the climate for creativity and innovation in the FFE. In order to investigate the climate an established instrument, a questionnaire, was utilized. This gave an initial diagnosis of the climate for creativity and innovation at the department. Thereafter, interviews were carried out with each of the members of the department to gain in- depth understanding of the current climate. Additional interviews at Arla Foods were carried out to provide the results with a wider picture. Moreover two projects which took place in the FFE were observed to get insight of how professional consultants work with creating a favorable climate. The two managers of these projects were also interviewed. The results of this thesis revealed that the current climate is relatively favorable for working in the NPD while it is not favorable for the FFE. Thus, it was indicated that additional requirements are placed on a climate that are to be favorable for creativity and innovation in the FFE. For this specific case study, a number of dimensions (risk taking, idea time, dynamism/liveliness, playfulness/humor, idea support and encouragement, debates, and discussion) and underlying factors (input and inspiration, idea process, and clarity) that could be improved at the Innovation department were identified.

The dairy food industry is continuously striving towards products with higher quality and longer shelf-life available to the customer at low prices. Arla Foods in Linköping, Sweden, is currently investigating the possibilities of changing the material in yogurt packaging containers by replacing the currently used carton with a different and cheaper alternative. A successful switch will give the company an economical advantage without affecting the sensory attributes (smell, taste, sight, and consistency), aroma profile or other important trademarks of the yogurt. This study is designed to examine and compare yogurt that has been stored in different packaging cartons, one coated with a single-layered low-density polyethylene (LDPE) and one coated with a currently used multi-layered ethylene-vinyl alcohol (EVOH). The study was based on the analysis and measurement of sensory attributes performed by experts, physical properties in laboratory and chemical composition in GC-FID/MS together with a discriminative test where a group of people would identify any difference between the yogurts. Together, these analyses would provide an explanation about any differences between the packaging materials by connecting physical, chemical and/or sensory characteristics. The collected results would give a better and more comprehensive picture than each analysis would do separately. The results from the study show that there is a difference between yogurts stored in LDPE-based containers and yogurts stored in EVOH-based containers and that the product was chemically affected, mainly by the level of oxygen in contact with the food. The overall assessment is that the largest difference was discovered in the taste.