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The economic growth of recently established companies by the name of startups has increased significantly within the past couple of years. Startups are commonly attributed to achieving positive effects on socioeconomic advancements by creating new employment opportunities within its surrounding environments. However, startups are particularly vulnerable for having a supply of limited resources caused by their lack of market experience. Additionally, in times of turbulence, such companies are predominantly dependent on a commonly short-term method called an ad hoc strategy to avoid facing the risk of operational loss or even bankruptcy. This study comes to examine how ad hoc strategies can be used as long-term methods following a period of organizational instability, leading to the thesis’ research question: How can startups continue to use ad hoc strategies after turbulent times? To investigate this, the study applied a qualitative research method in the form of semi-structured interviews with representatives of startup companies. The following results show that during the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, startups have used a variant of ad hoc strategies in order to become more digital. This has resulted in several advantages, mainly that their main business measures become more economically efficient through the process of digitalization. Thus, the study concludes that startups can utilize ad hoc strategies after a turbulent time by using digitalization to a greater extent on a daily basis, exemplified by the approaches used during the Covid-19 pandemic. Consequently, the research proves that ad hoc methods do not have to be used exclusively as temporary solutions and can instead be applied to benefit with future organizational approaches. / Tillväxten av nystartade företag, även kallade för startups, har ökat markant. Startups har en positiv effekt på den samhällsekonomiska utvecklingen genom att möjliggöra ny sysselsättning för individer i samhället. Dock är dessa typer av organisationer sårbara i och med deras begränsade resurser vilket grundar sig i att startups har varit på marknaden under en kortare tid som resulterat i en lägre grad av erfarenhet inom respektive bransch. Utöver de begränsade resurserna som startups besitter kan turbulenta tider vara avgörande för att startups inte har möjligheten att driva sin verksamhet på ett lönsamt vis och riskerar därmed att hamna i konkurs. Vid turbulenta tider är dessa företag då tvungna att använda sig av ad hoc strategier, det vill säga specifika korttidsåtgärder, som en lösning på ett oväntat och tillfälligt problem. Syftet med denna studie är att ta reda på hur ad hoc strategier kan användas som metoder efter turbulenta tider. Därmed utformades studiens problemformulering: Hur kan startups fortsätta använda ad hoc strategier efter turbulenta tider? För att undersöka detta har studien använt en kvalitativ metod i form av semistrukturerade intervjuer med representanter från startups. Resultatet har påvisat att under Covid-19-pandemin har startups verksamheter blivit mer digitala vilket har resulterat i flera fördelar, främst att arbetet blir mer effektivt genom att utgå från digitaliseringen. Studiens slutsats är att startups kan nyttja ad hoc strategier efter en turbulent tid genom att använda digitalisering i större utsträckning på daglig basis, exemplifierat av hur vissa företag gått till väga under Covid-19-pandemin. Därmed underbyggs det att ad hoc strategier inte endast fungerar som tillfälliga lösningar utan kan fortsätta användas för framtida organisatorisk utveckling.

Cancer är den näst vanligaste dödsorsaken globalt och står för uppskattningsvis 9,6 miljoner dödsfall varje år, eller var sjätte dödsfall totalt sett. Detta innebär en enorm börda för de människor som drabbas. Allt fler överlever många typer av cancer tack vare tidig upptäckt och snabbt fastställande av diagnos. Hudcancer är efter prostatacancer den näst vanligaste cancerdiagnosen i Sverige och behovet för att ta hudbiopsier har därmed ökat till följd av mycket solande hos invånare.  Patologilaboratoriet i Jönköpings län har under 2020 till 2022 haft en långsamt växande kö av hudprover på grund av brist på patologer och att samarbete med extern underleverantör löpte ut. Syftet med förbättringsarbetet är att hitta sätt att förkorta svarstider för hudprover.  Region Jönköpings län har valt att använda sig av kvalitet som strategi för sin organisationsutveckling. Ambitionen är att värderingarna kring kvalitet ska genomsyra hela organisationen. För att lyckas med förbättringsarbeten krävs det att medarbetare både har fått kunskap och förutsättningar för att tillsammans driva verksamheten framåt.  Syftet med studien var att belysa medarbetares drivkrafter bakom ett framgångsrikt kvalitetsarbete och identifiera vilka strategier som leder till detta. Hörnstensmodellen tillämpas för att dra slutsatser kring resultatet och metoden är kvalitativ. Semistrukturerade intervjuer av medarbetare genomfördes.   Förbättringsarbetets resultat illustreras med hjälp av kvantitativ data och SMARTA målet uppnås redan innan slutdatum. Studien visar att det finns flera faktorer som är viktiga för att uppnå ett framgångsrikt kvalitetsarbete. Både engagerat ledarskap och medarbetares möjlighet till delaktighet är avgörande faktorer för att lyckas med kvalitet som strategi inom organisationer. Utöver detta är arbetet med att sätta upp mål en viktig strategi för att lyckas. Vidare kan studiens resultat användas i det fortsatta kvalitetsarbetet både inom verksamheten och utanför. / Cancer is the second largest leading cause of death globally and causes an estimated 9.6 million deaths each year, or one in six deaths in total. This means an enormous burden for the people affected. More and more people are surviving many types of cancer thanks to early detection and rapid diagnosis. Skin cancer is after prostate cancer the second most common cancer diagnosis in Sweden, and the need to take skin biopsies has increased due to a lot of sunbathing among residents.  From 2020 to 2022, the pathology laboratory in Jönköping County has had a slowly increasing queue of skin cancer samples due to a lack of pathologists and the fact that collaboration with an external subcontractor expired. The purpose of the improvement work is to find ways to shorten the response times for skin samples.  The County of Jönköping has chosen to use quality as strategy for its organizational development. The ambition is for the values around quality to permeate the entire organization. In order to succeed with improvement work, it is necessary that employees have both gained knowledge and that they have conditions to focus on improvement work.  The aim of the study is to shed light on employees' driving forces behind a successful work on quality and to identify which strategies lead to this. The “cornerstone model” is applied to draw conclusions on the findings while the method of the study is a qualitative one. Semi-structured interviews with employees were conducted.  The results of the improvement work are illustrated with the help of quantitative data and the goal is achieved before the deadline. The study shows that there are several factors that are important for achieving a successful quality work. Both leadership and employees’ opportunities to participate are decisive factors for success with quality as a strategy within organizations. In addition to this, the work of setting goals is an important strategy for success. The results of the study can be used in the continued quality improvement work both within the unit and outside.

NASCAR has become one of America's fastest growing spectator sports, and corporate sponsors have played an important part in this upsurge in popularity. Race teams, drivers, and sanctioning bodies use the income that sponsors provide to operate at NASCAR events. This study provides an analysis of how corporate sponsorships have changed the way that NASCAR is presented in print journalism. Using Burke's method of indexing, NASCAR-related titles in the New York Times and the Johnson City Press from 1950 to present day are analyzed. The analysis reveals not only a steady increase in the number of NASCAR-related titles, but 4 indices of meaning that are most often used (Specific Races/Locations, NASCAR, Specific Names, and Sponsors) and that organizations should consider before they plan to promote their products using NASCAR.

A common method for colleges and universities experiencing a transition between permanent presidents is to employ an interim president. A dominant perspective in related literature discussing the role, organizational value, and practices regarding the employment of an interim president has been based upon specific experiences of an institution or individual who had endured or fulfilled an interim presidency; absent, have been the insights of experienced interim presidents-individuals who have been a permanent president at least once and interim president multiple times at different institutions. Therefore, this research answers the following two questions: (a) what are the perspectives and insights of individuals who have been a permanent president at least once and interim president multiple times at different institutions pertaining to the role, organizational value, and practices regarding the employment of an interim university president, and (b) how do their perspectives and insights complement or differ from common beliefs and practices dominating related literature pertaining to the role, organizational value, and practices regarding the employment of an interim university president?

Since the issuance of the Manifesto by President Wilford Woodruff on September 25, 1890, discontinuing the practice of plural marriage by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, intensive efforts have been made by dissenters to show that authority to practice polygamy has secretly continued to the present day. Claiming that the Church departed from its original teachings when it discontinued the practice of plural marriage and that the Manifesto was adopted merely as an act of appeasement, "fundamentalists" have attempted to show that the doctrine of plural marriage was revealed to the Latter-day Saints as an irrevocable decree, essential to the highest exaltation in the world to come. They further claim that since the time of Joseph Smith a special "higher priesthood" organization has secretly functioned independent of the Latter-day Saint Church through which authority to solemnize plural marriages has continued to the present day. Asserting that the practice of plural marriage is still a "vital part of the religion of the Latter-day Saints," and that men are commanded to obey God's laws "in total disregard of the laws of man which might conflict therewith." "Fundamentalists" conclude that it is not within the power of the Latter-day Saint Church or the Federal or State Government to prohibit plural marriages.A consideration of this position indicates that only after a unique interpretation of certain carefully selected excerpts from Latter-day Saint Church history and in some instances a complete fabrication of events, can evidence be found for the contention that the practice of plural marriage is still a "vital part of the religion of the Latter-day Saints."On the other hand, a review of the history and doctrine of the Church indicates, that no provisions were made for a succession of authority from Joseph Smith independent of the present Latter-day Saint Church leadership; that the practice of plural marriage was not dogmatically regarded as an irrevocable decree or an essential to the highest exaltation regardless of circumstances; and that the suspension of the practice of plural marriage was accomplished by the same authority by which the practice was introduced.

This study investigates whether Gaussian Process Regression can be applied to evaluate buffer queue times in large scale data processing systems. It is additionally considered whether high-frequency data stream rates can be generalized into a small subset of the sample space. With the aim of providing basis for dynamic software optimization, a promising foundation for continued research is introduced. The study is intended to contribute to Direct Market Access financial trading systems which processes immense amounts of market data daily. Due to certain limitations, we shoulder a naïve approach and model latencies as a function of only data throughput in eight small historical intervals. The training and test sets are represented from raw market data, and we resort to pruning operations to shrink the datasets by a factor of approximately 0.0005 in order to achieve computational feasibility. We further consider four different implementations of Gaussian Process Regression. The resulting algorithms perform well on pruned datasets, with an average R2 statistic of 0.8399 over six test sets of approximately equal size as the training set. Testing on non-pruned datasets indicate shortcomings from the generalization procedure, where input vectors corresponding to low-latency target values are associated with less accuracy. We conclude that depending on application, the shortcomings may be make the model intractable. However for the purposes of this study it is found that buffer queue times can indeed be modelled by regression algorithms. We discuss several methods for improvements, both in regards to pruning procedures and Gaussian Processes, and open up for promising continued research. / Denna studie undersöker huruvida Gaussian Process Regression kan appliceras för att utvärdera buffer-kötider i storskaliga dataprocesseringssystem. Dessutom utforskas ifall dataströmsfrekvenser kan generaliseras till en liten delmängd av utfallsrymden. Medmålet att erhålla en grund för dynamisk mjukvaruoptimering introduceras en lovandestartpunkt för fortsatt forskning. Studien riktas mot Direct Market Access system för handel på finansiella marknader, somprocesserar enorma mängder marknadsdata dagligen. På grund av vissa begränsningar axlas ett naivt tillvägagångssätt och väntetider modelleras som en funktion av enbartdatagenomströmning i åtta små historiska tidsinterval. Tränings- och testdataset representeras från ren marknadsdata och pruning-tekniker används för att krympa dataseten med en ungefärlig faktor om 0.0005, för att uppnå beräkningsmässig genomförbarhet. Vidare tas fyra olika implementationer av Gaussian Process Regression i beaktning. De resulterande algorithmerna presterar bra på krympta dataset, med en medel R2 statisticpå 0.8399 över sex testdataset, alla av ungefär samma storlek som träningsdatasetet. Tester på icke krympta dataset indikerar vissa brister från pruning, där input vektorermotsvararande låga latenstider är associerade med mindre exakthet. Slutsatsen dras att beroende på applikation kan dessa brister göra modellen obrukbar. För studiens syftefinnes emellertid att latenstider kan sannerligen modelleras av regressionsalgoritmer. Slutligen diskuteras metoder för förbättrning med hänsyn till både pruning och GaussianProcess Regression, och det öppnas upp för lovande vidare forskning.

In the past decade, characterizing spiking neuron models has been extensively researched as an essential issue in computational neuroscience. In this thesis, we examine the estimation problem of two different neuron models. In Chapter 2, We propose a modified Izhikevich model with an adaptive threshold. In our two-stage estimation approach, a linear least squares method and a linear model of the threshold are derived to predict the location of neuronal spikes. However, desired results are not obtained and the predicted model is unsuccessful in duplicating the spike locations. Chapter 3 is focused on the parameter estimation problem of a multi-timescale adaptive threshold (MAT) neuronal model. Using the dynamics of a non-resetting leaky integrator equipped with an adaptive threshold, a constrained iterative linear least squares method is implemented to fit the model to the reference data. Through manipulation of the system dynamics, the threshold voltage can be obtained as a realizable model that is linear in the unknown parameters. This linearly parametrized realizable model is then utilized inside a prediction error based framework to identify the threshold parameters with the purpose of predicting single neuron precise firing times. This estimation scheme is evaluated using both synthetic data obtained from an exact model as well as the experimental data obtained from in vitro rat somatosensory cortical neurons. Results show the ability of this approach to fit the MAT model to different types of reference data.

This study investigates the relationship between an increased traceability and shortened lead times in the internal material replenishment system at a large Swedish industrial tools manufacturer. Traceability and its effects on uncertainty in the supply chain has been widely researched in academia, but there is a gap regarding how traceability affects lead times. The research investigates which factors drive the lead times in the material replenishment to lean assembly lines and determines how these factors relate to traceability. A case study was conducted in one of the case company’s factories. The study consists of both quantitative and qualitative data. The quantitative data was derived from the case company’s ERP-system while the qualitative data consists of interviews and empirically collected data. The results of the study show that waiting time is the primary driver of lead times in the current state of the factory. No indication that internal material replenishment lead times decrease as a result of an increased traceability was found. However, there are aspects with an increased traceability that indirectly facilitates reduction of lead times by making it easier to make well-informed decisions due to the increased availability of real-time data. Traceability is found to not contribute any value to the end customer on its own. However, it can play an important role in a company’s supply chain. Further, potential advantages with a high traceability were observed when implementing advanced protocols such as JIT and other lean principles. The study should be seen as a starting point to further studies into the relationship between increasing traceability and reduced internal lead times. For managers and companies, the study identifies a potential procedure to use for deter- mining which factors drive replenishment lead times to lean assembly lines. Furthermore, the study shows that companies can have great use for traceability when trying to remove waste from its processes. / Denna rapport utreder sambandet mellan en ökad spårbarhet i den interna materi- altillförseln hos ett stort svenskt producerande företag och minskningen av dess ledtider. Forskning har bedrivits inom spårbarhet och kring dess effekter på osäkerheten i en sup- ply chain, men det finns begränsad forskning gällande spårbarhetens effekter på interna ledtider. I studien undersöks vilka faktorer som driver ledtiderna i materialtillförseln till lean mon- teringslinor hos ett producerande företag och hur en ökad spårbarhet påverkar dessa. En fallstudie har utförts hos ett industriföretag, i en av deras fabriker. Studien använ- der sig av både kvantitativ och kvalitativ data. Den kvantitativa datan kommer från fallstudieföretagets affärsystem medan den kvalitativa delen består av intervjudata och empiriskt genererad data. Resultatet av denna studie visar att det främst är väntetider som driver upp ledtiderna i fabriken. Inga bevis hittades för att interna materialtillförselns ledtider minskar som en direkt följd av en ökad spårbarhet. Däremot finns det aspekter med en ökad spårbarhet som hjälper att minska ledtiderna indirekt genom att underlätta för bättre underbyggda beslut som följd av en ökad tillgänglighet av data i realtid. Denna studie visar på att spårbarheten i sig inte skapar något värde för slutkunden, men att det trots det kan spela en viktig roll i företagets supply chain. Dessutom påvisas poten- tiella fördelar med en god spårbarhet när man implementerar avancerade system så som JIT och andra lean-principer. Rapporten bör ses som en startpunkt för framtida studier för att undersöka sambandet mellan en ökad spårbarhet och minskade ledtider. För företag så innebär denna rapport en möjlighet till att få en förståelse för vilka fak- torer som driver upp ledtiderna i materialtillförseln till lean monteringslinor. Dessutom visar studien på att företag kan gynnas av att öka sin spårbarhet när det gäller process- förbättringsarbete.