Abstract Today's turbulent business environment, which is characterised by uncertainty and inability to predict the future, is extremely challenging. Mobile and Internet Protocol (IP) convergence, which brings together technologies and services from the mobile and Internet domains, has been identified as a discontinuity in the mobile telecommunications business. Additionally, new disruptive technologies are introduced together with new, complex products. This research addresses the approach that, along with introducing disruptive technologies in the mobile and IP convergence era, a new operational mode is needed in the new product development (NPD) process. This study approaches the operational mode from five perspectives: business environment, competence development, process renewal, running technology pilots, and product reliability. The research on the business environment area proposes two frameworks: one for building and describing and another for evaluating business models. The study on competence development arrives at the conclusion to propose a project management competence development framework. The third research perspective suggests that, when the business environment is changing, and disruptive technologies and continuous innovations create new kinds of products, it is likely that processes need renewal. Running technology pilots to involve customers early enough in new product development is proposed in the fourth research area. Finally, the fifth research topic proposes that it is essential for companies to be able to estimate the reliability of their products during the product development phase. It is concluded that the new operational mode when introducing disruptive technologies requires reconsidering business models, special attention to competence development, process renewal, customer involvement in new product development, and requires a means to guarantee software reliability.

Matematiklyftet är en statligt finansierad kompetensutveckling för matematiklärare. Jag har undersökt hur några av lärarna i en kommun har upplevt matematiklyftet och om det har fått några effekter på deras undervisning. Har lärarna blivit bättre på att undervisa alla elever så att de når målen? Jag har undersökt det här genom att jag har intervjuat tre stycken lärare som har gått matematiklyftet och de arbetar på olika skolor i kommunen. De har berättat om hur de upplevde matematiklyftet. Studien består av tre delar: Den första är vad det är för faktorer som påverkar kompetensutveckling, den andra är hur kompetensutvecklingen matematiklyftet har påverkat undervisningen och den tredje är hur undervisningen har påverkat elever i behov av stöd i matematik. De faktorer som jag i min undersökning kom fram till påverkade matematiklyftet var hur kommunen hade organiserat det hela. Faktorer som påverkade var bland annat skolledningen, lärargruppen, tiden och innehållet. Under matematiklyftet har jag sett att lärarna har gjort vissa förändringar i undervisningen, men alla dessa förändringar kom inte att bestå. En av de förändringar som alla lärarna gjorde var att de införde mer matematiska diskussioner i klassrummet. Den tredje delen handlar om elever i matematiksvårigheter. Lärarna tar upp att de som har koncentrationssvårigheter och ADHD fick svårt när lärarna gick matematiklyftet eftersom läraren genomförde aktiviteter som bröt mot det vanliga lektionsinnehållet. Lärarna tar samtidigt upp att alla elever hade nytta av att lärarna gick matematiklyftet, eftersom det gjorde att aktiviteterna som var med i matematiklyftet innehöll flera matematiska områden och tränade flera olika förmågor. Och det var bra även för elever med matematiksvårigheter. / Matematiklyftet is a government funded competence development programme for math teachers. I have examined how the teachers in one municipality have experienced matematiklyftet and its consequences in their teaching. Do the teachers become more skilled in teaching to get all the pupils to achieve a passing grade? I have done this by interviewing three teachers in different schools in the municipality who have taken this programme. They have given me their story of how they experienced matematiklyftet. I have examined three parts of the competence development programme. Number one: What are the elements that impact on the competence development programme. Number two: How does the competence development programme influence teaching. Number three: How does the competence development programme affect on pupils with special needs in mathematics. In my research I found that the elements that had an impact on matematiklyftet was how the municipality had organized matematiklyftet, the principal of the school, the teacher´s assembly and the programs contents. The second part was the consequences in teaching where I found out that all the changes in teaching procedure during matematiklyftet did not last afterwards, but one of the changes that all three teachers did and are still doing is that they are having mathematical discussions with the pupils. Finally the effect on pupils with special needs in mathematics where that the teachers noticed that pupils with ADHD or short span of focusing had difficulties since matematiklyftet made the teachers deviate from ordinary activities and content in math class. The teachers bring up that all students benefits from this programme because the activities within matematiklyftet contain several different areas in mathematics. And tests several different skills, which is beneficiary even for pupils with special needs in mathematics.

Bakgrund: I Stockholmsregionen råder det en brist på intensivvårdssjuksköterskor. En orsak är hög personalomsättning där många intensivvårdssjuksköterskor lämnar intensivvården inom två år efter anställning på grund av hög arbetsbörda, otillfredsställande lön eller bristande möjligheter till kompetensutveckling. Arbetsgivare som uppmuntrar till kompetensutveckling får fler intensivvårdssjuksköterskor att stanna kvar inom intensivvården även om arbetsbördan är hög. Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka vad intensivvårdssjuksköterskorna anser om arbetsväxling som kompetenshöjande intervention. Metod: Studiedesignen var kvalitativ och som metod har fokusgruppsintervjuer använts. Materialet har analyserats med hjälp av kvalitativ manifest innehållsanalys. Resultat: Studiens huvudresultat var deltagarna ansåg att arbetsväxling fungerar som kompetenshöjande intervention. Resultatanalysen utkristalliserade totalt fem teman: arbetsväxlings inverkan på kompetensen, arbetsväxlings inverkan på individen, arbetsväxlings ömsesidiga påverkan mellan avdelningar, arbetsväxling som kvarhållande åtgärd och anledning att stanna kvar inom intensivvård. Slutsats: Studien visade på att intensivvårdssjuksköterskan anser att arbetsväxling är en kompetenshöjande åtgärd för intensivvårdssjuksköterskan. Det är dock oklart om det är något som får intensivvårdssjuksköterskor att stanna kvar inom intensivvården. Klinisk betydelse: Vårdadministrationen har fått en antydan om att arbetsväxling höjer kompetensen för de anställda inom intensivvården. / Background: The Stockholm area has a shortage of intensive care nurses. A main reason for this is the high staff turnover where many intensive care nurses leave their employment within two years. This is related by high workload, unsatisfactory pay and insufficient opportunity to raise the level of competence. Employers that promote actions which could raise the level of competence would get more intensive care nurses to stay within the intensive care unit even though the workload would be high. Aim: The aim of this study is to investigate what intensive care nurses view regarding job rotation as an intervention to raise the level of competence. Method: Two focus groups interviews were used to collect the data. The data was analysed by a qualitative manifest content analysis. Result: The result shows that the participants considered that job rotation works as an intervention to raise the level of competence. During the analysis five themes were found: the impact of job rotations on the competence, the impact of job rotations on the individual, the mutual impact of job rotations between departments, job rotation as a retention measure and reasons to remain in the intensive care. Discussion: This study has shown that intensive care nurses think that job rotation is an intervention to raise the level of competence in intensive care nurses. It is although unclear whether job rotation will keep intensive care nurses within the intensive care. Clinical significance: The care administration has been given a hint that job rotation increases the level of competence for the employers in intensive care.

Project-based organizations (PBOs) have drawn attention in business management and represent an increasingly important part of organizations. If managing by projects represents an adapted way to cope with the current environment, it also comes with new challenges. This research brings light on the organizational tensions between immediate performance and sustained performance in PBOs by focusing on competence development as the crucial means to achieve sustained performance. Because PBOs are temporary by nature, competence development represents one of their challenges. Therefore, this research was conducted to gain a better understanding of how this tradeoff can be managed by PBOs. With that purpose, we both researched how this organizational tradeoff and competence development processes were managed in a hockey organization. In sport organizations, player succession is crucial to the organization’s overall performance and survival, therefore making competence development a key activity. The research led us to grasp a better understanding of the nature of the tradeoff between immediate performance and sustained performance as well as brought additional findings on competence development processes. More specifically, it was found that this tradeoff requires adaptation to project stages. We summarized and visualized the findings by providing a framework that can act as a tool for practitioners in PBOs to understand and therefore manage the tradeoff between immediate performance and sustained performance by implementing competence development.

The purpose of this study was to examine the preschool teachers' view of their competence in art and art creation, as well as the competence they consider that a preschool teacher should have and how competence can develop. In this study, we define competence as something you own in the practice of preschool education and that preschool teachers can meet the challenges that the profession requires. Competence is about being able to carry out an action in practice, and in this study, the expression summarizes what a person can in the field of art and art creation. Our study addresses the following questions; how do preschool teachers perceive their competence in art and art creation? What do the preschool teachers think they need in competence in art and art creation? What role do preschool teachers play in promoting their own and children's competence development in art and art creation? Four preschool teachers and a teacher for elementary school's older years who worked in preschool since her education was interviewed with a qualitative interviewing method from a sociocultural perspective. The results show that the competencies that preschoolers apprehend is competence that includes material knowledge, the ability to link activities with curriculum and theories, and to make it a fun-filled activity for the children. In order to develop their competence, the result shows that they use continuous education and collegial learning and in interaction with children.

Information and communication technology has for long been integrated into learning and teachers utilize all forms of digital technology for communication as well as to simplify learning. To adapt, teachers need to personally or through informal learning process, learn about new technologies and how to utilize them to improve learning. To personally educate themselves, the teachers need to dedicate time and resources to identify ICT competence areas where is needed and sort for resources to solve it. This thesis investigates the process of self-directed learning with a group of teachers in a planned competence development program within a local municipality’s educational department, on the use of digital technology to integrate into classrooms. With action research that integrates instructional learning from the organizations perspective and inquiry learning from teacher’s perspective, self-directed learning process was tested as a simple and structured process for self/collaborative learning, for participants. The result was a series of events that summarized why teachers could not follow the learning process, with a conclusion that in order for teachers to be self-directed in learning new ICT, the organizational need to allocate time not only for instructional learning, but also for inquiry learning.

Begreppen organisationskultur och kompetensutvecklingsinsatser är båda väl utforskade ur en organisatorisk aspekt och även dess förankring till varandra. I befintlig litteratur saknas studier som fokuserar på individens synvinkel vilket lett fram till studiens syfte: Att beskriva individens upplevda organisationskultur i två olika organisationer samt förklara hur denna syn påverkar upplevelsen av kompetensutvecklingsinsatser. Detta syfte besvaras med hjälp av två forskningsfrågor: 1. Vilken är individens upplevelse av företagets organisationskultur? 2. Hur påverkar individuell upplevelse av företagets organisationskultur individens upplevelse av kompetensutvecklingsinsatser? Då inga studier med samma individuella perspektiv gjorts tidigare kan resultatet präglas av många faktorer. För att bemöta detta förhåller sig studien induktivt. Genom en kvalitativ metod samt genom semistrukturerade intervjuer på respondenternas arbetsplats har empiri samlats in. Denna data bearbetas sedan med hjälp av ett hermeneutiskt förhållningssätt. Detta leder fram till fyra kategorier som respondenterna valt för att beskriva verksamheternas organisationskulturer. Dessa kategorier är hierarki, relationer med kollegor och chefer, transparens samt organisatoriska mål och milstolpar. Genom vidare analys identifieras fyra teman inom dessa kategorier som tycks prägla individens syn på organisationskultur. Dessa teman används för att besvara studiens första forskningsfråga. De fyra teman är individuell upplevd rangordning, relationers utveckling över tid, graden av öppenhet inom organisationen samt tillgängligheten av organisatoriska och individuella mål. Men hjälp av dessa teman, bakgrunden till studien, förankring till nya teorier samt genom jämförelser skapas en figur. Denna figur bidrar i sin tur till insikt i hur upplevd organisationskultur påverkar upplevelsen av individens kompetensutvecklingsinsatser. / The concepts of organizational culture and human resource development are both well researched from an organizational aspect and also their connection with one another. In existing literature studies with a focus of the individual aspect is missing which has led to the purpose of the study: Describe the individual’s experienced organizational culture in two specific organizations and to explain how this point of view affect the experience of competence development. This purpose is separated into two research questions: 1. What is the individual experience of the culture within the organization? 2. How does the individual experience of the organizational culture affect the individual experienced outcome of human resource development? The lack of earlier similar studies with an individual focus makes it so that many factors can characterize the results. In response to this the study maintains an inductive manner. The data is collected through a qualitative method and through semi-structured interviews at the respondent’s workplace. This data is then processed through a hermeneutic approach. This leads to four categories that the respondents have used to describe their organizational culture. These categories are hierarchy, relationships between employees and manager, transparency and lastly organizational goals and milestones. Through further analysis four other categories are found within the first ones that seems to affect the individual’s view of the organizational culture and thereby answering the study’s first question. These categories are individual experienced rank, relationships development through time, the degree of openness within the organization and lastly the availability of the organization’s goals and milestones. With the help of these categories, background, anchoring with new theories together with comparison between the cases, a new model is created. This model helps to get an understanding of how experienced organizational culture affects the experienced outcome of the individual human resource development.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the preschool teachers’ understanding of digital competence in preschool and their use of it to create learning situations for children in the form of increased opportunities for literacy. Digitalization has been given a lot of space in the latest revised curriculum of the preschool (2018). This has made digital competence a prerequisite for the pedagogical task in preschool. I want to highlight the opportunities and risks that digitalisation in preschool activities could entail in the form of, on the one hand increased accessibility and participation, on the other hand increased stress and reduced equivalence. It is about democracy as all children should have the opportunity to develop their learning about handling digital tools in everyday life in order to be able to participate in societal issues. Digital competence is a necessity in today`s society, both adultse and children come into contact with the digital in society in our everyday lives. Developments in ICT (Information and communication technology) take place at a furious pace, this will affect children`s working lives in the future. The preschool teachers digital competence has a significant impact on an equivalent teaching in the preschool. The starting point for the essay is my experiences of professional life. I will present the wording of the governing document on digitization in general and the meaning of the teacher assignment. Iwill investigate various strands of research on digitization in preschool and investigate the connection between literacy and multimodality. Finally I will examine the teacher´s  competence development. We adults need new knowledge and skills to guide the children in their development. Finally I will discuss the duties of the academic leader of the preschool when it comes to the implementation of digital tools in the preschool. / Denna studie syftar till att undersöka förskollärarens uppfattning av digitala kompetens iförskolan, samt förskollärarens användning av dem för att skapa läs- och skriv situationer förbarnen. Digitalisering har fått stort utrymme i förskolans reviderade läroplan (2018).  Den snabba utvecklingen av det digitala i samhället avspeglar sig på förskolan i vårtpedagogiska uppdrag, att forma barnen till framtida medborgare som kan hantera teknik samtsamarbeta med andra människor i framtida yrkeslivet.  Utgångspunkten för essän är mina egna upplevelser av mitt yrkesliv, jag vill ge läsaren en ärligbild för att synliggöra den komplexitet som den innebär. Digitalisering medför både möjligheter och utmaningar i förskolans kontext. Pedagogerreagerar på olika sätt inför förändringar, ökade krav medför stress hos pedagoger idigitaliseringsarbetet. Jag kommer att börja med att presentera styrdokumentens, formuleringar om digitaliseringgenerellt och läraruppdragets innebörd. Hur ser läroplan för förskolan på digitalisering iförskolan? Jag kommer att undersöka vad forskningen säger om digitalisering i förskolan föratt belysa både risker och möjligheter som studier har visat. Jag kommer ta upp och diskuteravad begreppet litteracitet innebär, samt analysera samband med multimodalitet som är ettteoretiskt synsätt, och hur multimodala verktyg kan underlätta arbetet med litteracitet iundervisningssituationer i förskolan. Till slut kommer jag att undersöka förskollärarnaskompetensutveckling. Vi vuxna behöver nya kunskaper och färdigheter för att lära oss navigeraoch vägleda barnen i sin utveckling och lärande. Jag kommer även att diskutera rektorns roll idetta förändringsarbete.

The research explores the competencies that lead to firm success, success defined as the attainment of above-average rents over the long-term. The research asserts that to fully understand how companies come to be successful one needs to adopt a complex understanding of performance led by the internal workings of the firm. This involves identifying how different allocation processes might adapt resources to develop unique organisational competencies.Case study research was the most appropriate methodology to use in studying the internal workings of the firm. The case study focused on a single South African firm and, more specifically, on the competencies within a particular business division. Five competencies were identified and their development and evolution analysed in five historical phases of the organisation.Key findings are summarised as follows: strong leadership was essential in driving a particular strategy that once it became institutionalised developed into a core competence; one of the precursors to the development of competencies was the leaders’ choice of the firm’s positioning on the value chain; a collaborative organisational structure was not necessary for the development or evolution of organisational competencies; external sourcing for competencies was unsuccessful when the acquired competencies were foreign to the existing store of competencies in the organisation; institutionalisation, initially required to develop certain competencies, can inert the evolution of competencies due to perceived threats to existing norms and values in the organisation. The research also explored the development of competencies in an isolated environment which affords time to allocate resources and to develop processes in isolation from external market forces to build unique competencies.The findings contribute to an in-depth understanding of the reasons for the firm’s success as well as contributing to an area of strategy theory that is empirically understudied, particularly in the South African case. The research concludes with suggestions for further research to contribute to this important understudied area. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Syftet med denna undersökning är att få större förståelse för hur mellanchefer inom detaljhandeln motiverar sina medarbetare till kompetensutveckling och kompetensutvecklingens roll i bibehållande av de anställda. Studien har utgått utifrån en kvalitativ metod, där fem utvalda mellanchefer inom detaljhandel har intervjuats genom semistrukturerade intervjuer. Studien börjar med en presentation av relevant litteratur och därefter tidigare forskning som består av tio utvalda vetenskapliga artiklar. Undersökningen kopplas till ett teoretisk perspektiv, Maslows behovstrappa. Intervjuerna har transkriberats och sedan tematiserats enligt en tematisk analys. Resultaten tyder på att kompetensutveckling har stor betydelse för bibehållande av personal. Vidare framkommer det att chefer motiverar personal på olika sätt genom delaktighet, arbetsmiljö, belöningar och ledarskap. Slutsatsen är att kompetensutveckling är inte endast viktigt för organisationen det är även viktigt för personalen, därför måste personalen ta sin egna ansvar och utvecklas inom arbetet.