Title: Management control to support sustainability practices in SMEs - An interview study of  MCS in small and medium-sized enterprises Authors: Isac Arvidsson & Oscar Dahl Supervisor: Josefine Rasmussen  Background:  Most companies today employ some sort of sustainability strategy, and those who do not are facing increasing demands to shift focus towards sustainability in wake of the evolution of society. MCS is a key contributor to a company's ability to work towards sustainability, and large parts of current research within the field is solely focused on large companies. As management control for sustainability is just as important for smaller companies it is relevant to study how it tends to be used in SMEs. Aim: The aim of this study is to examine how Swedish SMEs with a sustainability strategy uses MCS to support and manage their work towards sustainability. The study will be based on Simons LOC. Method: The study is based in the qualitative field of research and is performed in the form of an interview study, where nine interviewees from nine different companies have been interviewed. The companies and the interviewees have been selected through a goal-directed selection in order to identify interviewees in relevant company positions. The collected empirical data has been compared to prior research in the analysis in order to be able to draw conclusions, find similarities and differences between the companies. Conclusion:  The conclusion of this study shows that there are several similarities between the SMEs regarding how they employ their MCS in order to handle their work towards sustainability. The study shows that the identified differences stem from two main factors: the size of the company and whether the company has sustainability at its core or not. Lastly, it can be established that the biggest opportunities for SMEs are connected to their growth, and their ability to adopt a structured MCS at an early stage. / Titel: Styrning för att hantera hållbarhetsarbete i SMF - En intervjustudie av MCS i små & medelstora företag Författare: Isac Arvidsson & Oscar Dahl Handledare: Josefine Rasmussen Bakgrund: De flesta företag arbetar idag efter någon form av hållbarhetsstrategi och de som inte gör det blir i allt högre utsträckning tvingade att ställa om mot hållbarhet till följd av samhällsutvecklingen. Ekonomistyrningen är en nyckelfaktor när det kommer till företagens förmåga att arbeta mot hållbarhet och mycket av den forskning som finns inom ämnet är enbart inriktad på stora företag. Då styrning mot hållbarhet är lika viktigt för mindre företag är det relevant att undersöka hur den tenderar att se ut i SMF. Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är att med utgångspunkt i Simons LOC, undersöka hur svenska SMF med en uttalad hållbarhetsstrategi använder sig av MCS för att hantera sitt hållbarhetsarbete. Metod: Studien bygger på en kvalitativ metod och är utförd i form av en tvärsnittsstudie där nio respondenter från olika SMF har intervjuats. Företagen och respondenterna har valts ut genom ett målstyrt urval i syfte att identifiera intervjupersoner i relevanta positioner som skulle kunna bidra till studiens syfte. Det insamlade empiriska materialet har sedan jämförts i analysen för att kunna dra slutsatser och hitta likheter eller skillnader mellan företagen. Slutsats: Resultatet av studien visar att det finns många likheter kring hur SMF utformar och arbetar med MCS för att kunna hantera sitt hållbarhetsarbete. Vidare visar resultatet att de skillnader som identifieras främst beror på två faktorer, företagens storlek och huruvida företagen har hållbarhet som affärsidé eller inte. Slutligen kan det konstateras att de största möjligheterna för SMF kan knytas till deras tillväxt genom att lyckas tidigt etablera strukturerade MCS som kan underlätta när organisationen fortsätter växa.

Ανάπτυξη αναπτυξιακού συστήματος για τους μικροελεγκτες MCS-51. / Design and development of a development system for MCS-51 controllers.

With the significant improvement in IoT technology and smart devices, data collection and distributed computation have led a foundation for Mobile crowd-sensing (MCS). MCS utilizes the capabilities of embedded sensors in smart devices for gathering data. MCS benefits both data provider (participant/user), and data requester, i.e. data providers via incentives/rewards, data requesters by delivering required data. Apart from the benefits gained through acquiring data, confronting challenges such as participant privacy, data trustworthiness, malicious attacks (from illegitimate users) need to be addressed to build robust and reliable data solicitation. In addition to that, it is necessary to consider user motivation and user preference, comfort during its engagement in crowd-sensing. User preferences/constraints can be due to privacy concerns in terms of location, the sensitivity of data or energy usage and many more. With this in mind, the main contributions of the thesis can be listed as follows. 1) We design user selective trustworthy data acquisition frameworks. We introduce a variety of user selection criteria to form participant communities based on participants reliability and income. To evaluate the trustworthiness of our selective reputation-based data acquisition, we consider malicious users in the environment and calculate the total rewards given to malicious users. Simulations results show that community formation based on the acquired income of participants ended up with a substantial loss to the cloud platform as well as participants. Contrary to that, reputation-based community formation has shown nearly equal platform utility (profit), negligible loss of user utility compared to benchmark Non-selective data acquisition with 7% malicious probability. 2) Moreover, we attempt to enable users to modify (allow/deny access to) their builtin sensor set according to their comfort levels. We formulate three comfort levels high (only allow access to sensors that would not directly reveal personal identity such as accelerometer, light sensor, etc.), moderate (obstruct access to sensitive data, e.g. camera), zero comfort (allow access to all users). We introduce Static modification, where users pre-arrange their sensor set before the start of data collection. Our feasibility study shows that pre-arrangement of the sensor set favours user comfort, user utility at the cost of loss in platform utility and performs better than selective reputation-based recruitment for the considered settings. 3) We apply Adaptive sensor modification on top of pre-arrangement of sensor set through which participants are authorized to re-arrange their sensor availability based on reliability scores. Simulation results show that the Adaptive comfort-aware approach performed better than static in terms of platform utility and achieved comparatively better user comfort with reasonable loss in user utility.

Tjänster, immateriella skapelser, som konstruerats för att interagera med, utveckla, komplettera och förstärka den påverkan materiella objekt har på människans vardag. Den potential som finns i dessa fenomen är, om den används på rätt sätt enorm och värdet som kan skapas av dem är gränslöst. Men hur vet man vad som är rätt sätt att använda dem på? Sedan 1980-talet, har svenska företag insett den kraft som finns i tjänster. Att kunna presentera ett erbjudande som fyller det behov kunden upplever, är att göra kunden en tjänst. När dessa tjänster är framgångsrika så är de ett oslagbart verktyg för lönsamhet. Detta leder till att fler och fler företag valt att fokusera på att bli mer tjänsteinriktade och genomgår därför en Servitization-process. Så är även fallet för Umeå Energi, där man tagit steget till att bli en mer kundorienterad organisation där fokus ligger på att öka lönsamheten genom att höja kundvärdet. För att lyckas med detta, har Umeå Energi skapat det nya arbetsområdet Design & Prissättning, som i sin tur presenterade oss möjligheten att ta fram en styrmodell som skulle hjälpa dem att leda verksamheten efter denna Servitization-process. Studiens teoretiska ramverk bygger på litteratur från service-dominanta logiken, Servitization samt Management control systems. Denna teoretiska kunskapsbank, tillsammans med semistrukturerade intervjuer med medarbetare har använts för att svara på studiens problemformulering, det vill säga, lokalisera vilka kritiska faktorer som Design & Prissättning måste fokusera på för att lyckas etablera en välfungerande styrmodell. I studiens empiriska del, har varje enskild respondents berättelse presenteras separat, för att på så sätt garantera en rättvis bild av deras uppfattning. Empirin har tematiskt analyserats utifrån den teoretiska ramverk vi presenterat ovan, för att slutligen presentera studiens slutsats samt rekommendationer. Resultatet från studien visar att de kritiska faktorerna som Design & Prissättning måste fokusera på för en lyckad implementering av en styrmodell är, vision och uppdrag, Information och kommunikation samt kultur.

För startupbolag är venturekapital (VC) ett populärt alternativ som extern finansiering, där VC- bolagen inte sällan tar en aktiv roll deras portföljbolag. Vidare indikerar tidigare forskning att startupbolag har ett mindre behov av Management Control Systems (MCS) samtidigt som MCS och affärsstrategi har en växelverkande relation. Studiens syfte är att ge ett kunskapstillskott kring huruvida förekomsten av VC påverkar startupsbolagens affärsstrategi samt MCS. En kvalitativ metod har genomförts med fyra intervjuer som bas för den empiriska sammanfattningen. Studiens resultat indikerar att VC ökar användningen av MCS för startupbolag. De faktorer som påverkar förändringens omfattning är företagsstorlek, investeringens storlek samt VC-bolagets involveringsgrad. De områden inom MCS som förändras främst är omfattningen av långsiktig planering samt användningen av finansiella mått. Det är stor variation avseende hur VC påverkar affärsstrategin. Vidare indikerar resultatet att förändringar inom startupbolag inte nödvändigtvis är initierade av VC-bolagen, utan ofta är ett naturligt steg när företaget växer.

MENVSC / Department of Ecology and Resource Management / See the attached abstract below

The purpose of the study is to gain an understanding of and analyze how a municipality can control the new construction of a district that has not previously been regulated by a detailed planned area. This was investigated based on a new construction in the district Ranagård, which is located in Halmstad municipality. The area has not been planned in detail and has a vision of being a sustainable district, where the main focus is om social aspects in the form of reduced segregation and design of the area. How the management has been has been analyzed based on both Halmstad municipality ́s and the developer ́s perspective. Furthermore, the extent to which the municipality ́s governance can be conveyed down to the developers and how they deal with this governance internally is examined. The study is based on two main theories, firstly Robert Simon ́s levers of control, which is a control model that is divided into four different aspects of control. These are belief system, boundary system, diagnostic control system and interactive control system. The second theory on which this study is based is how strict or loose the control of a management control system (MCS) can be and what incentives there are for this. By connecting the given theories, an analysis model was created that examined the municipality ́s use of the various aspects of Simon ́s levers of control and how these aspects were used strictly or loosely within the Ranagård project. Using a deductive approach, semi-structured interviews were constructed as the qualitative method. All four respondents were experienced in the construction industry, three of whom work as clients of the Ranagård project. The Fourth respondent is a municipal development engineer who is this study represents Halmstad municipality ́s governance together with the Future Plan 2050 and the plan description available in Ranagård. The result shows that Halmstad municipality has governed with all of the different aspects from Simons levers of control, and this has affected the developer ́s freedom to implement their internal governance. The result also shows that in the Ranagård project, all aspects of Simons levers of control worked in synergy.

Existing minefields left over from previous conflicts pose a grave threat to humanitarian relief operations, domestic everyday life, and future military operations. The remaining minefields in Afghanistan, from the decade long war with the Soviet Union, are just one example of this global problem. The purpose of this research is to develop a methodology that will predict areas where minefields are the most likely to exist through use of a GIS model. The concept is to combine geospatial data layers to produce a scored raster output of the most likely regions where minefields may exist. It is a "site suitability analysis" for minefield existence. The GIS model uses elevation and slope data, observer and defensive position locations, hydrographic features, transportation features, and trafficability estimates to form a minefield prediction surface. Through use of the NATO Reference Mobility Model (NRMMII) and the Digital Topographic Support System (DTSS), trafficability estimates are generated for specific vehicles under specific terrain and weather conditions in specific areas of interest. The model could be used to create prioritized maps for minefield detection sensors, demining teams, or for avoidance. These maps could define the "high payoff" search areas for remote sensors, such as ASTAMIDS, and positively identify minefields. These maps could also be used by humanitarian relief agencies for consideration when planning movement into areas that may contain minefields. The analysis includes a model calibration and sensitivity analysis procedure and compares the model output to known training minefield locations taken from two US Army training centers. The resultant Minefield Likelihood Surface has a 91% accuracy rate when compared to known training minefield data. / Master of Science

No description available.

Combining cesium (Cs) bombardment with positive secondary molecular ion detection (MCs+) can extend the analysis capability of Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) from the dilute limit (<1%) to matrix elements. The MCs+ technique has had great success in quantifying the sample composition of III-V semiconductors as well as dopants and/or impurities; however, it has been less effective at reducing the matrix effect for IV compounds, particularly Si-containing compounds, due to Cs overloading at the surface during the analysis from the Cs primary ion beam. The Cs overloading issue is attributable to the mobility and relocation of the implanted Cs to the surface; this effect happens almost instantaneously. Once the surface is overloaded with Cs, the excess Cs begins to reneutralize the ionization Cs and, as a result, the MCs+ technique is ineffective at reducing the matrix effect. This research provides new insights for improving the MCs+ technique and elucidating the Cs mobility. A combination of multiple experimental techniques and theoretical modeling was implemented to assess the Cs retention, up-take, and distribution differences between group III-V and IV materials. Early experiments revealed a temperature-dependent component of the Cs mobility, prompting an investigation of this phenomenon. Therefore, we designed, built, and installed a variable temperature stage for our SIMS with temperatures ranging from -150 to 300 C. This enabled us to study the temperature-dependent component of the Cs mobility and the effect it has on the secondary ion emission processes. Additionally, a method was devised to quantify the amount of neutralization and ionization due to the relocated Cs. The results allow for a more thorough understanding of the material dependence on the Cs+-sample interaction and the temperature component of the Cs mobility. / Ph. D.