The thesis is divided into two main parts. The first part is focusing to theoretical bases of work, it is a brief introduction to business performance and utilization of modern indicators to measure it with an emphasis on benchmarking. In second part, we deal with the practical application of information acquired and that a specific enterprise. It is an analysis of the current situation with companies in the same field of business. With the help of financial analysis, SWOT matrix identify the strengths and weaknesses of the company. The most important part is devoted to benchmarking based on publicly available data from the financial statements. For these purposes, I especially enjoyed the information from the available statement. Based on the information they are designed adequate opportunities in improving and recommendations for evaluating enterprise.

<p>”The language of management is money”, har någon sagt. I affärslivet gäller det att veta vilka åtgärder som lönar sig. Vi har i vår uppsats fokus på design som en strategisk resurs; skapande av mervärde. Kunskapsbaserade tillgångar, är mycket viktiga för företagens framgång i dagens hårda konkurrenssituation. Mer än 75% av det genomsnittliga företagets marknadsvärde kommer från immateriella tillgångar som traditionella redovisningssystem inte klarar av att värdera. Vilka resurser har företag i form av kapital, fysiska tillgångar, människor, teknik, varumärke och relationer?</p><p>Den ökade fokuseringen på immateriella tillgångar förändrar synen på ekonomi och utmanar inrotade lednings- och organisationssynsätt. Som en följd av globalisering och hårdare konkurrens blir det svårare för företag att differentiera sig. Nya mervärden måste adderas till produkten eller tjänsten för att locka kunden och möta förändrade behov som uppstår.</p><p>Att implementera design på en strategisk nivå handlar först om att fastställa ansvaret och ledarskapet som har hand om design. Därefter kommer sökandet efter det design kan göra för organisationskulturen; möjligheterna till nyskapade produkter och ökat identitetsskapande.</p><p>För att uppnå framgång i ett företag krävs det idag mer än att styra med ekonomiska mål och nyckeltal. Det behövs en balans mellan finansiella- och ickefinansiella mått. Vi vill ta reda på hur design och designers kunskap bidrar strategiskt och skapar konkurrensfördelar — designens förmåga att differentiera, anpassa sig, förändra och bidra till ett företags ”bottom-line”-resultat. Vi har fördjupat oss i detta och vill undersöka om det går att arbeta med något gemensamt konkret och visuellt verktyg för att förstärka designens roll som strategisk resurs. En hjälp att överbrygga klyftan mellan designers och företagsledares skilda världar.</p>

Background: From the beginning of the 60´s until the beginning of the 80´s the swedish local government has expand enourmously. The expansion didn´t lead to any discussions about how the local government should be controlled or organized. The local government should instead be organized and controlled as administrations. Lately it has became more usual to have these discussions about how local government should be controlled and organized. Nowadys it´s not unusual that local governments imitate private companies. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to analyze how local governments have had the possibility to use Balanced Scorecard. Limitations: We have only analyzed how local governments have had the opportunity to use Kaplan&amp;Nortons original model about Balanced Scorecard. Method: We have performed a case study, where we have carried out eight interviews with a total of ten respondents from four local governments and Svenska Kommunförbundet. We have also used internal documents, Internet and already written literature concerning Balanced Scorecard. We have also used local governments respective private companies characteristics. Results: Local governments characteristics result in that the original model about Balanced Scorecard, can´t be used in local governments as it is performed by Kaplan&amp;Norton. It´s still possible to use the basic idea of the model, but it has to be adapted to local governments conditions.

”The language of management is money”, har någon sagt. I affärslivet gäller det att veta vilka åtgärder som lönar sig. Vi har i vår uppsats fokus på design som en strategisk resurs; skapande av mervärde. Kunskapsbaserade tillgångar, är mycket viktiga för företagens framgång i dagens hårda konkurrenssituation. Mer än 75% av det genomsnittliga företagets marknadsvärde kommer från immateriella tillgångar som traditionella redovisningssystem inte klarar av att värdera. Vilka resurser har företag i form av kapital, fysiska tillgångar, människor, teknik, varumärke och relationer? Den ökade fokuseringen på immateriella tillgångar förändrar synen på ekonomi och utmanar inrotade lednings- och organisationssynsätt. Som en följd av globalisering och hårdare konkurrens blir det svårare för företag att differentiera sig. Nya mervärden måste adderas till produkten eller tjänsten för att locka kunden och möta förändrade behov som uppstår. Att implementera design på en strategisk nivå handlar först om att fastställa ansvaret och ledarskapet som har hand om design. Därefter kommer sökandet efter det design kan göra för organisationskulturen; möjligheterna till nyskapade produkter och ökat identitetsskapande. För att uppnå framgång i ett företag krävs det idag mer än att styra med ekonomiska mål och nyckeltal. Det behövs en balans mellan finansiella- och ickefinansiella mått. Vi vill ta reda på hur design och designers kunskap bidrar strategiskt och skapar konkurrensfördelar — designens förmåga att differentiera, anpassa sig, förändra och bidra till ett företags ”bottom-line”-resultat. Vi har fördjupat oss i detta och vill undersöka om det går att arbeta med något gemensamt konkret och visuellt verktyg för att förstärka designens roll som strategisk resurs. En hjälp att överbrygga klyftan mellan designers och företagsledares skilda världar.

Diffusion studies are commonly associated with the dissemination of innovations across legally and economically independent organizational units. Suggesting a new perspective on the existing diffusion literature, this thesis argues that diffusion of innovations is a relevant issue to study also on a (formally) micro–level of investigation. Based on this reasoning, this thesis examines how and why a contemporary management accounting tool diffuses within a group of organizations belonging to a common corporate group. The concept in focus is the Balanced Scorecard. A high number of adopters worldwide combined with a shortage of empirically grounded scientific studies dealing with the practical Scorecard application make it a relevant tool to study. Against this background, this thesis also aims to enhance our knowledge on what it means to adopt and to maintain a Balanced Scorecard in practice. To address these aims, this study presents the results of an in-depth case study of a large-sized multinational firm. The empirical data describes a five-year BSC adoption and implementation process in five business divisions; all of them active in the communications business. Diffusion of innovations studies, supplemented by management accounting implementation studies form a first part of the theoretical framework developed. In an effort to create an even richer understanding of the data, a network perspective is additionally applied in a second analytical step. The findings of this thesis indicate that applying theory of diffusion on a micro–level requires using a process-approach of study. Under this pre-condition, the study portrays the intra-firm Balanced Scorecard diffusion as a complex process—unpredictable in its nature and highly dependent on groups of individuals and their interests. The Balanced Scorecard is identified as a management fashion. Confirming experiences made with established management accounting tools, organizational resistance prolongs its implementation process. Parts of this resistance are identified as being related to the Scorecard concept itself, while others appear to be non-specific to the tool examined.

In today’s world, globalization has increased the competition among companies and functioned as a factor for increased product variety, increased amount of customized products and shorter product life cycles. Supply Chain management is considered one of the most critical strategies for increasing organizational effectiveness and enhancing the customer service. Supply Chain needs to be evaluated based on its performance of how efficient and effective it is. Quality on products and processes has becoming even more critical to companies’ success. Zero defects on the components and parts that meet the customers’ needs are important for the quality of the final products and quality efforts can decrease the costs throughout the Supply Chain. Moreover, Supply Chain’s cost identification is getting even more important in order for the companies to evaluate the performance of their channel and realize the efficiency of their activities based on their supply chain processes. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how the implementation of a performance measurement system can assist companies to improve the Supply Chain based on the identification of the relation between the evaluation of the Supply Chain and the quality and service that is provided to the customer. Moreover, the cost of the production and the after-sales service is measured, in order to have a clear image of the Supply Chain performance. A case study company, Giraff Technologies, was examined and investigated further in order the author to be able to support the results and the analysis of the primary research combined with the analysis of the literature review. Based on the results of the research it can be said that the quality performance of a company and the service that is offered to the customers can be enhanced through the measurement and evaluation of the Supply Chain performance. Better collaboration with the suppliers and customers, customer focus and continuous improvements are ways to improve not only the Supply Chain but also the quality and the service that is offered. The production cost is considered as a factor that can be influenced positively or negatively by the Supply Chain performance, whereas the after-sale service cost is not clear if it can be affected immediately from the Supply Chain performance.

The purpose of this thesis is to develop a model for assessing cost effectiveness of applying lean tools. The model consists of eight phases: it starts by understanding customers' requirements using Voice of Customer (VOC) and Quality Function Deployment (QFD) tools. In phase 2, the current state of plant is assessed using lean profile charts based on Balanced Scorecard (BSC) measures. In phase 3 and phase 4, identification of critical problem(s) and generating of improvement suggestion(s) are performed. Phase 5 provide evaluation of the cost effectiveness of implementing the suggested lean methods based on life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) and phase 6 prefers the right alternative based on multiple criteria decision making (MCDM). In phase 7 the selected alternative is supposed to be implemented and finally the user should monitor and control the process to make sure that the improvement is going as planned. The model was verified successfully using a case study methodology at one Swedish sawmill called Södra Timber in Ramkvilla, one part of Södra group. Results obtained from the study showed that the production and human resources perspectives are the most critical problem areas that need to be improved. They got the lowest scores in the lean profile, 63% and 68%, respectively. Using value stream mapping (VSM) it was found that the non value added (NVA) ratios for the core and side products are 87.4% and 90.4%, respectively. Using the model, three improvement alternatives were suggested and evaluated using LCCA and MCDM. Consequently, implementing 5S got the highest score, second came redesigning the facility layout. However, it was estimated that 4.7 % of NVA for the side product would be reduced by redesigning the facility layout. The recommendations were suggested for the company to improve their performance. The novelty of the thesis is based on the fact that it addresses two main issues related to lean manufacturing: firstly, suggesting lean techniques based on assessment of lean profile that is based on BSC and QFD, and secondly assessing the cost effectiveness of the suggested lean methods based on LCCA and MCDM. This thesis provides a generalized model that enables the decision-maker to know and measure, holistically, the company performance with respect to customer requirements. This will enable the company to analyze the critical problems, suggest solutions, evaluate them and make a cost effective decision. Thus, the company can improve its competitiveness.

In today's society, the internet is an important part of everyday life. Over recent years the number of electronic services has increased markedly. Communities such as Facebook, consume more of people's time than 5-10 years ago. How can public authorities benefit from these communities or are the municipalities not ready for this? The municipalities determine how their resources should be allocated based on the municipality's needs. The municipalities may be in charge of such matters of public interest which is linked to one municipality or its citizens. The purpose of this study is to explain what a virtual meeting platform means and how the public authority can take advantage of the virtual world to create benefits for its citizens by modifying existing tools. We have chosen a deductive approach with elements of induction, and the study is positivistic because of the approach on trying to find absolute knowledge from this study. We have developed five hypotheses by material from a pilot study. The material from the pilot study has served as the basis for a quantitative survey among users of Facebook. By introducing the Balanced Scorecard a municipality can, based upon local needs and capabilities, develop goals and measures based on the municipality strategy. We have constructed a model that is partly based on David Lundberg's 5-model (Lundberg, 2009). The model, Heimberg Flower, focuses on the "benefit"-factor which is directed towards the virtual options from which the municipality may choose which options to examine or test. Our hypothesis could prove two significant relationships, there is adesire for internet-based services, and that Facebook is preferred over other virtual meeting places for representation by the municipality. Using the modified Balanced Scorecard according to Heimberg Flower, the model can serve as a basis for municipalities in efforts to implement IT solutions that create value for the citizen.

The rudimentary cost accounting methods were set up for an organization¡¦s internal planning and controlling, its main function is to provide managers with information of program-control, product cost calculation and performance assessment. At that time, cost-management system had not been affected by external accounting statement.Follow the organization¡¦s growth and expansion,the relationship of external investors and government between businesses is becoming much more closer, the method,that lead to external audit and accounting statement became more important and even supersede the function of old accounting methods. The current costing methods used by ordinary enterprises are traditional ones ,which emphasizing on writing accounting statement, that could not provide managers with real-time and useful management information. After 1980, however, some scholars began to notice these problems and announced new cost accounting methods to solve defects of traditional accounting .On the base of traditional job costing, process costing, standard costing, new accounting ABC and target costing development, this study is to redesign an integrated costing system to meet three major targets---editing financial statement, providing related information about program-control and assessing product cost. According to the research design, to compare advantages and disadvantages of all costing methods firstly ;and then ,take the job costing, process costing and ABC as the actual costing on one hand, and take the standard costing and target costing are as estimated costing on the other hand. And to co-operate costing skills, such as AIS, responsibility center, pricing assignment and balanced scorecard ,integrating these two dimension to form an integrated strategic costing management. Applying this system into a case company can not only assess cost more accurate but also get cost-difference analysis of operation center and usage of company¡¦s resources. In hence, that can satisfy a manager¡¦s information demand, and good for exception management and performance assement.

In recent years, companies are facing fierce competition and fast advancement of information technology (IT); thus, how to enhance corporate performance and obtain competitive advantage through IT investment in this dynamic environment has become an important issue for academia and businesses. Investigating the impact of corporate IT investment strategy on business performance need an effective performance measurement tool that help organization on the correct objective. We suggested that evaluate business performance through human development, customer management and benchmark management could improve the shortcomings of traditional evaluation tools. This paper referred intellectual capital and included a review of the latest literature on performance measurement and consolidated these findings, examining the interrelationships and the interaction effects among intellectual capital components and organizational performance. Based on intellectual capital and complementary assets theory, we proposed a model with regard to how IT investment strategy impact to business performance. This paper used data envelopment analysis comparing the efficiency of IT investment in information-intensive service industries and used path analysis investigating the relationship of measurement indicators; these analysis is used as the basis of research model of this paper. Since there is time delay in the transfers from IT investment to the market performance, the impact of IT investment on market performance is a problem involving dynamic complexity. Thus, from the perspective of long-term, non-linear, closed-loop causality, this study developed a computerized system dynamics model to analyze the dynamic relationships between corporate IT investment strategy and business performance in information-intensive service industries. The results of this study provided several important implications for IT investment management research and practice. The paper helps managers understand better the dynamic interrelationships in organization design and, in particular, the interrelationships between an organization¡¦s profitability (both short-term and long-term) and investment in human competence, internal process and innovation and relationship building measures with customers. The proposed system dynamics model also provided IT managers with a useful decision support tool for evaluating different IT investment strategies.