Personlig data genomsyrar hela vårt samhälle och hanteras digitalt via informationsteknologi. Detta försvårar för individer att ha kontroll över den personliga data som hanteras av företag. Den 25 maj 2018 ersätts den svenska Personuppgiftslagen (PuL) med den nya Dataskyddsförordningen GDPR. Förordningen är utformad för att sätta en enhetlig standard gällande hur vi samlar in, hanterar och delar europeiska medborgares personliga data. Den här forskningen är uppdelad i två steg. I det första steget genomförs en komparativ undersökning av de två lagtexterna för att identifiera de nya lagkraven som Dataskyddsförordningen medför. I det andra steget används resultatet från den komparativa jämförelsen som grund för en explorativ undersökning av hur ICT-företag förbereder sig inför de nya lagkraven. Vårt resultat visar att de deltagande ICT-företagen förbereder sig genom att implementera nya processer och åtgärder för att följa förordningen. Inga av de deltagande företagen är vid tiden av denna undersökning fullständigt kompatibla med de krav den nya förordningen ställer. Vår forskning visar att svårigheterna med att bli fullständigt kompatibel ligger i bristen på resurser och tvetydigheten i tolkningen av förordningen. / Personal data flows through our entire society in the shape of technological processing. This makes it difficult for individuals to have control over their personal data being processed by companies. On the 25th of May 2018 the Swedish Personal Data Act (PuL) is replaced by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The regulation is designed to set a uniform standard with regards to the way we collect, use and share personal data of European citizens. This research uses a two-step research approach. The first step is to perform a comparative legal research to identify the new requirements that comes with the upcoming Regulation in relation to the current Swedish legislation. The second step is to use the findings of the comparative legal research as a foundation for an explorative survey of how ICT companies are preparing for the new requirements of the GDPR. Our result shows that the participating ICT companies are preparing by implementing new processes and measures in order to comply with the Regulation. Additionally, all of the participating companies are at the time of our research not fully compliant with the Regulation. Our research concludes that the difficulties in achieving full compliance lies in the lack of resources and ambiguities of the interpretation of the Regulation.

In ICT industry, firms’ financial prosperity and growth are highly depended on innovation. The innovation provides competitive advantage and high performance for the ICT companies. The purpose of the paper is to study effect that the companies’ internal resources, experience on the market, investments in innovation and business environment have on their performance. The sample includes 22 ICT companies from North America, EU and Asia region. The examined data cover period from 2011 to 2015. The companies’ annual reports and USPTO were used as the sources of the data. The mixed research method is chosen to reach the study’s objectives. The study is analysed with help of DEA and Balanced scorecard performance measurement methods. Organizational learning theory and Resource based theory are applied to answer the research questions in the study. The outputs of performance are categories such as assets and competencies, innovative activities, suppliers and customer relations, and employees and management. These categories are presented by a variety of indicators such as assets turnover, labour productivity ratio, debt ratio, SG&A costs ratio and number of published patents. The factors such as companies’ size, age, investments in R&D and business environment have significant impact on the performance of innovative activities. The results suggest that the large established ICT companies are less efficient in studied categories than the smaller and younger ICT firms. Moreover, the younger smaller companies show higher efficiency even in terms of such outcomes as R&D intensity and number of published patents. The results are consistent with the findings attained in previous studies from the same scientific field.