Sweden is entering a time characterized by a shortfall of qualified labour. Thus companies will have to hold on to, and develop their most valued employees since it is getting harder to find competent replacements. By finding and developing Talents, companies will improve their position in the market and perhaps even create a competitive advantage. The academic discipline concerning locating, assessing, developing and retaining Talents is called Talent Management. Purpose To identify how the most desirable employers in Sweden work with Talent Management, and implications following its practises. Method The selection was made based on the response of a pre-study of 30 large Swedish companies recognised for their employment practises. Nine oral interviews, with a number of HR professionals at the corporations, were performed to investigate how they utilise Talent Management to create more value from human resources. The thesis takes a multiple case study approach investigating the utilization of Talent Management practises in Sweden. Conclusion The Swedish dialect of Talent Management correlates with the frame presented by theory. Swedish firms are mostly locating Talents internally but are willing to use outsourcing for some recruitments. Talents’ competencies are more important than their credentials. Within the frame of their job description, Talents are encouraged to find creative solutions to solve their tasks. Swedish firms are increasingly using assessment and clear feedback as foundation for the individual development plans. Within the individual development plans there is on-the-job training, job rotation and mentors. This is also a part of the retention process which focuses on recognition, relocation and career management. Implications of the work with Talent Management in Sweden are; since the companies investigated employed, or were about to employ, Talent Management processes, it seems that they are well prepared for the future war for Talents and will better cope with the gap occurring when baby boomers retire. Thus, firms adapting to Talent Management, and sees the strategic importance of it, can gain a competitive advantage against others not concerned with these practises.

The trend that more and more recently graduated (business) students are having trouble entering the Swedish labor market, and the fact that many of Sweden’s small firms are perfect absorbers of labor − putting aside the larger firms − how well do these two supply and demand sides match. The recurring theme of this thesis was to analyze the perceptions that small firm managers in Jönköping area, in the business-related sectors, had of business graduates and business graduate skills and competences. It was the skills approach that was the main focus of this thesis. Here we restrict ourselves to the small firms that employ less than fifty people and more than ten. To supplement the reflections of small firm managers on graduates, soon-to-become business graduates in Jönköping area (undergraduates or postgraduates) were asked for their own opinion on small firm recruitment possibilities, and which ‘basket of skills’ they acquired and thus found to be important for small business firms. It is because of these two complementing perceptions that the authors had a chance to underline interesting graduate recruitment results, and perception on skills gaps. The research design was of mostly qualitative nature coupled with additional integrated quantitative data serving as a supplement to the former. The empirical work was conducted through four interviews with small businesses and three focus groups with graduates. Two of the companies had a basic aversion towards employing graduates, while one was indifferent and another welcomed graduates into the company. Graduates were seen as a ‘fresh applicant’, with new ideas and good social competence. However, lack of work experience and practicality, risks of hiring and over qualification brings the employability down. The authors cannot identify a clear indication of a skills gap or skills match, but when taking into account the categorization of skills between practical and non-practical ones, there is a very positive skills match between graduates and small firms. In this way recommendation for designing educational business programs on the basis of practical skills seems to be appropriate for having business students well equipped for the small business labor market. In addition to that, other interesting results point out to that the skills preferences/demand by small firms varies when taking into account whether they recruit graduates to specific job posts or just for general work.

The purpose of this study is to gain an understanding of how Cross-Cultural Training (CCT) can contribute job satisfaction. Job satisfaction is one of the crucial lessons for hotel human resource management. There are many factors studied in the past literatures affecting job satisfaction, such as the compensation system, the promotion opportunities, organizational culture, and so on; however, the purpose of this research is to evaluate Cross Cultural Training, as the factor, to study how the job satisfaction will be affected. This study takes one international hotel located in Taipei as the object to analyze how job satisfaction can be affected and contributed. The results are found as follows: 1¡B Regarding the design of CCT, it is proved that ¡§On-the-job Training¡¨ is the most appropriate design to conduct CCT to increase job satisfaction. Most of the interviewees are with the opinion that ¡§learning by doing¡¨ is the most efficient and effective way to be trained. 2¡B Regarding the duration of CCT, it is found that ¡§One month¡¨ is the best duration to conduct CCT; however, it is also distinguished that the duration of CCT depends much on the demand in different departments. 3¡B Regarding the strategy method of CCT, it is found that the responses from the interviewees are quite concordant, which are mainly focused on ¡§Simulations¡¨, ¡§Expositive Instructions¡¨, and ¡§Behavior Modification¡¨. 4¡B Regarding the profit of CCT, all interviewees agree that CCT is profitable since it will limit inefficiency and increase job satisfaction.

In wireless ad hoc networks, the resources such as bandwidth, power, computing ability, etc., for end users are limited by the environments and hardware. In addition, the mobility of each user is different. Furthermore, the varied wireless networks with different properties such as transmission rate, coverage, power and protocols make it rarely difficult to establish and maintain the communications through the multiple intermediate nodes which are mobile devices. This dissertation will focus on the following three issues: 1. Most homogeneous wireless networks only considering one or less resources of the mobile device can not select and distribute the routes. In addition, it can cause the load of the intermediate nodes to increase. 2. The various wireless networks have different characteristics of resources. The route selection and distribution algorithms proposed before in homogeneous wireless networks are not adapted for the heterogeneous wireless networks. 3. Most route selection and distribution algorithms are designed for specific type of wireless environments (such as only for proactive type or reactive type). For different environment and different mobility, its cost will be different. To allow an environment-aware based adaptive management for heterogeneous wireless networks with different characteristics of resources becomes an important issue. In homogeneous wireless ad hoc networks, the resources of the mobile devices such as bandwidth, power, computing ability, etc., are limited and different by the environments and hardware. To evaluate the individual resource of each mobile device, the route distribution and selection algorithm considering the multiple resource variations in wireless ad hoc networks is proposed. First, the evaluation and management for individual resource of each mobile device such as bandwidth, power, and computing ability, are proposed. Second, according to the proposed algorithm, a mobile device can be estimated whether it supports the QoS or not. In addition, these resources evaluation results are transformed as the bottleneck resource information. At last, according to the bottleneck resource information of all the found routes, the route distributed through different intermediate nodes with most resources is selected for load distribution and balance. Considering the wireless network infrastructure today including 3G wireless communication, IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network, and wireless ad hoc networks, the characteristics such as transmission rates, bandwidth, power consumption, and transmission range of these wireless structures are not the same. In other words, the routing selection algorithm for homogeneous wireless networks may not be flexible for another wireless network. In this thesis, these different wireless network structures are integrated into one heterogeneous wireless network. Individual characteristics such as transmission rates, bandwidth, power consumption, and transmission range of these wireless structures are evaluated. According to the adaptive resource evaluation and route selection algorithm for the heterogeneous wireless networks, the route with the lowest cost and most resources is selected based on the integrated information of each resource estimation and the bottleneck information of each route found. Besides considering the characteristic of the heterogeneous wireless networks, the module (type) of the route selection and distribution algorithms also induces different costs and performance. The existing algorithms can be defined and divided into two typical types: proactive (table-driven) protocol and reactive (source initiated) protocol. The proactive type protocol pays the memory and periodical update (bandwidth consumption) costs for selecting the routing directly. In opposite, the reactive type protocol saves the costs but may increase the overhead for finding a routing path to the destination. To decrease the total costs of finding and maintaining routing paths, the environment-aware based adaptive management for heterogeneous wireless networks is proposed in this thesis. Corresponding to the movement of the users, the appropriate type of the routing algorithm should be selected for reducing the total costs of finding routing paths. In the adaptive management, we propose the type selection process to individually evaluate the cost of the two type protocols (proactive and reactive) via considering the protocols and the mobility of the users. According to the evaluation results, the appropriate protocol with less cost will be selected for finding and maintaining the routes in the heterogeneous wireless networks. According to the simulation, the routing selection and distribution algorithm proposed in this dissertation can not only effectively distribute the routing paths but also balance the load within homogeneous or heterogeneous wireless networks. Corresponding to the mobility of the users, the suitable type of routing protocol can be selected. Furthermore, the cost for routing paths searching, selection and maintenance is decreased. The block rate of these routing paths is reduced. Overall, according to the simulation, this dissertation makes the major contributions as follows: 1. The individual resource evaluations and managements for the mobile devices in the homogeneous wireless networks are proposed. The routes which satisfy the QoS can be selected and distributed according to the proposed algorithm. 2. The various wireless networks with different are integrated into a heterogeneous wireless network. The route search, selection, and maintenance algorithm for the hybrid properties heterogeneous wireless networks is proposed. 3. The classification to separate and classify the route search and selection algorithms is proposed. Corresponding to the mobility of the users, the environment-aware based adaptive management for heterogeneous wireless networks is proposed to reduce the costs caused by route search, selection, and maintenance.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are the foundation of Taiwan¡¦s corporate structures and the driving force behind Taiwan¡¦s economic development. The economic miracle in the past could be attributed to the high proportion (97.8%) of small enterprises in Taiwan (2005). Therefore, how small and medium enterprises use human resource management to obtain organizational competitive advantages is the motivation behind this research. High-performing and potential SMEs¡¦ practices of human resource management may be beneficial to the learning and referencing of domestic enterprises. Thus, this study focuses on enterprises which received the National SMEs Award from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and enterprises listed as ¡§small but beautiful, small but rich¡¨ on the Feb 2006 issue of CommonWealth Magazine. Through in-depth interviews, this study attempted to qualitatively induce and analyze the core practices involved in human resource management and the practices developed under and applied to various situations. Through literature review and interviews with six high-performing SMEs in Taiwan, the following results were obtained: 1.The analysis of the human resource management measures currently adopted by SMEs showed that human resource management and organizational competitive advantages are correlated. Human resource management measures are influential to human resource competence, organizational core competence, and organizational competitive advantages. 2.From a universalistic perspective, SMEs¡¦ core practices of human resource management include: sharing of operation results with employees, providing a strict recruitment procedure and valuing employees¡¦ cultural adaptation, offering highly-competitive salary, valuing cultivation of professional competence, integrating performance, salary, and development, and providing open communication channels. 3.From a contingency perspective, we probed into the SMEs¡¦ practices of human resource management developed under and applied to various contexts. The analysis of the outstanding SMEs showed that human resource management measures that enterprises have focused on to obtain competitive advantages may vary with practical contexts. Organizations can thus react and adapt to the dynamic environment and maintain or elevate their competitive advantages.

Human Resource Management (HRM) handlar om att leda mänskliga resurser. Det blir det allt vanligare att personalansvaret delegeras till linjecheferna i organisationen eftersom de arbetar närmast de anställda. Syftet med denna studie var att med kvalitativ metod undersöka på vilket sätt chefers arbetssituation skiljer sig åt mellan de som har, respektive inte har, en HR-avdelning att tillgå. Studien baserades på nio enskilda intervjuer vilka tolkades enligt induktiv tematisk analysmetod. Resultatet visade att personalarbetet var mer integrerat i det dagliga chefsarbetet på företag som hade HR-avdelning, och dessa chefer kände sig inte stressade av personalansvaret i sig. Cheferna på företag utan HR-funktion prioriterade verksamhetsfrågor i större utsträckning och upplevde viss mental stress när de kände sig osäkra i sina HR-kunskaper och därmed ibland inte kunde hantera personalfrågor som dök upp.

Abstract Keeping the key individuals in a post merger and acquisition situation is vital to preserve the value of the investment. Yet it is not uncommon, in relation to mergers and acquisitions, that key individuals not only leave the organization but assumes a position with a competitor or even start a competing business. This problem was highlighted as a sug-gested topic for this thesis by Nordic Construction Company (NCC). Findings from interviews with 4 key individuals at NCC and 6 individuals with a combined experience of the human resource management aspect of the merger and acquisition process and its aftermath, show that the primary reasons why key individuals leave is, even if the deciding factor differs, strongly linked to uncertainty that can be reduced with a suffi-cient communication strategy. This thesis suggests a number of potential actions of improvement to the NCC merger and acquisition process and its aftermath. The following human resource influences should improve the NCC merger and acquisition process in order to prevent the loss of key individuals • Introduce the human resource aspect into the strategy discussion during the merger and acquisition preparation phase. • Infuse human resource related enquiries into the discussion with the target organization’s owners, during the initial due diligence phase. • Conduct qualitative and quantitative human resource research that relate to the set human resource management strategy, during the due diligence phase as soon as access to the workforce individuals have been granted. • Implement extraordinary PLUS conversations with key individuals shortly after the closing of the deal process. • Modify the welcome package that is communicated in relation to the merger or ac-quisition so that it includes a list of communication channels, a contact information list and a message in alliance with the human resource strategy. This message should put the individual in the center by focusing equally on the expectations flowing from the individual to the new organization and vice versa.

Background: Going abroad for a number of years to live and work in a different country and culture is a major change for most people. To make this easier and minimize the risks of facing adjustment difficulties for these people going abroad, companies’ Human resource departments, in particular, have great responsibilities. It is also mainly their responsibility to ensure a smooth re-adjustment for employees returning to home country after a completed international assignment. Today many companies not only underestimate the problems related to an unsuccessful repatriation process, but also do not acknowledge the difficulties that the expatriates face upon return. Moreover, there is evidence showing that only a minority of companies invest substantial resources in the task of creating an Effective Repatriation process, even though researchers have confirmed repatriation to be more challenging than expatriation. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to find out how companies can improve and facilitate the repatriation of their employees. This will be done by examining factors affecting how an expatriate perceives the repatriation process and by identifying the most critical actions in achieving an effective repatriation process. Method: In order to fulfill the purpose of this thesis a qualitative method was chosen. A case study was conducted over Volvo Construction Equipment in Eskilstuna, based upon personal interviews with expatriates as well as representatives of the Volvo International Assignment Management (VIAM) and Human Resource department of Volvo Construction Equipment in Eskilstuna. Further, the case study included a preliminary study based on a question and answer format, answered by 20 expatriates at Volvo CE in Eskilstuna. With support from information gathered through the preliminary study, later 10 personal interviews were carried out with expatriates at Volvo CE. Conclusion: The findings of this thesis propose 10 main factors, which influence how an expatriate perceives the repatriation process. These are; (1) the Purpose for why an expatriate is sent abroad, (2) the Picture of the repatriation process and responsibility areas communicated by the home company, (3) the perceived Communication and support, (4) the utilization of Mentorship, (5) Reverse culture shock issues, (6) Career issues, (7) Organizational issues, (8) Practical issues, (9) Family issues and finally,(10) the existence of an Evaluation. Further, the result of this thesis suggest that there are four critical actions in achieving an effective repatriation process; preplanning, communicating and providing support, proactive repositioning process and finally, applying an evaluation.

Många multinationella företag (MNC) ställs inför problemet hur de skall kunna implementera sina strategier i alla sina dotterbolag då det kan finnas både stora kulturella och legala skillnader mellan olika länder. Ett område som detta märks tydligt på är human resource management (HRM) då företaget måste anpassa sig till både den lokala arbetsmarknadens regler och lagar samt MNC:ts övergripande strategi. För att kunna hantera det här problemet finns det flera lösningar och ett vanligt sätt är att föra över mer eller mindre beslutanderätt till dotterbolaget. Den här uppsatsen undersöker vilken autonomi ett svenskt dotterbolag till ett amerikanskt läkemedelsbolag har när det gäller HRM. För att kunna undersöka det har vi gått igenom aktuell forskning inom området för att se vad som finns skrivet om liknande fall utomlands. Därefter har vi gjort en fallstudie med två kvalitativa intervjuer på Merck Sharp & Dohmes (MSD) svenska dotterbolag. Utifrån vår teori har vi sedan analyserat intervjusvaren och kommit fram till att MSD Sverige har en begränsad autonomi när det gäller HRM. Generellt gäller att MSD Sverige har att röra sig inom de ramar som moderbolaget sätter upp i form av policys och andra regler. Vi generaliserar även mot vår teori och kan med relativt stor säkerhet säga att dessa förhållanden även gäller andra amerikanska dotterbolag i Sverige. Avslutningsvis ger vi förslag på intressanta ämnen för framtida forskning.

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