<p>ABSTRACT</p><p>The conditions on the market are rapidly changing and businesses in Sweden need to seize signals of change in time, in order to have a strong market position. The ability to make the right decisions and react in time is vital due to the increasing competition and a mistake can have devastating consequences for a company. The aim of this thesis is to investigate what tools and methods businesses use to analyse the surrounding world, which has lead to following research question:</p><p>How do businesses analyse the surrounding and predict trends and what factors in the society should a company be attentive to while performing an analysis?</p><p>Analyses of the surrounding heritage from a term called Business Intelligence, which consist of internal and external factors. This thesis focuses of analyses of external factors, in other words the surrounding. These external aspects enrich the understanding of the internal factors and together they are the foundation that strategic planning originates from. An analysis can be performed in many different ways for instance with collaborations with consultants or by observing the society. A World Mapping method can be used to chart trends or important changes and a company can also try to identify unpredicted events by using the factor X-model. Theories by Bengt Wahlström have also been used in the study to display how trends can be analysed.</p><p>This study will analyse large food producers who have established brands on the Swedish market. A qualitative approach has been conducted where six food supplier companies and three consultant companies specialised in analysing the surrounding have been interviewed. The method has been deductive where the empirical findings has been analysed with the theoretical framework. The outcome of the research shows that collaborations with consultants is a commonly used instrument and practical methods such as scenario planning and in real life scanning are preferred as visualising factors simplifies the managing of them. Media plays a significant role, both as a tool to search and track trends but also as a tool that can increase the affect of trends and unforeseen occurrences.</p>

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<p>This Master’s thesis was commissioned by Siemens Industrial Turbomachinery,subdivision Industrial Gas Turbines (PGI4) in Finspong, Sweden, and in Lincoln, England. The company has been part of Siemens Power Generation Industrial Applications since its</p><p>acquisition in 2003. In this connection, the strategic importance of procurement became more recognised and the procurement organisation has undergone many changes. Procurement, however, is a function very much affected by changes in the business context,making constant adaptations and transformations necessary. In order to ensure that the procurement organisations in Finspong and Lincoln are well</p><p>prepared for future challenges, the purchasing director at Siemens PGI4 asked us to investigate competency requirements on procurement beyond the year 2010, based on the impact of macroeconomic trends. Furthermore, a gap analysis was requested in order to compare the current competency level with the required future competency level.</p><p>The task was approached by studying literature and interviewing well-known purchasing professors. From this we concluded that the macroeconomic trends of greatest relevance for Siemens PGI4 are globalisation, outsourcing, development of information technology,</p><p>increasing demands on corporate social responsibility and changing consumer patterns.</p><p>Our investigation of the impact of these trends on procurement resulted in several requirements for the future. For example, risks must be managed throughout the whole supply chain, as the complexity of supply increases as a result of globalisation and outsourcing. The requirements are presented in terms of competencies and roles that need to be assumed. We mapped the current competency level by means of questionnaires filled in by the personnel concerned. We then compared this with the required future level. The gap analysis indicated that gaps within management of relations, for example, exist for several of the studied function profiles and that today’s way of handling risks will not be sufficient in the future. Still, the majority of the competency gaps are not very large. We believe</p><p>therefore that by taking care of the existing gaps and installing a supply chain risk management team, the procurement function can live up to the future requirements until the year 2010. We recommend the identified crucial roles and competencies to be taken into consideration when recruiting new employees and when developing existing personnel. However, continuous review and update of competencies will be needed in order to keep the company competitive.</p>

<p>Background: For the knowledge company the employees’ competencies and knowledge are important assets. According to this, there has been a lot discussion about how to best take advantage of the employees’ knowledge and create organizational learning. This organizational learning can be difficult to create due to the individuals’ own goals and the fast changes in today’s society. </p><p>Purpose: “To define how factors such as time pressure, individualism and increased mobility on the future labour market will influence the knowledge companies and affect the organizational learning. We will also studyif mentoring in the future is a possible way to accomplish organizational learning.” </p><p>Delimitations: We have only investigated how the organizational learning will be affected by increased time pressure, individualism and mobility. We have also looked at organized, company internal, mentoring. Realization and </p><p>Results: We have conducted interviews at three different knowledge companies, where one of them has an organized, internal mentoring programme. We have also used three prognoses of future trends and compared these with the answers from the interviewees. From this we found that increased individualism and increased mobility can affect the organizational learning in both a negative and positive way. Increased time pressure is the most critical factor to create an organisational learning in knowledge companies.</p>

<p>The automotive industry is today in a world of globalisation and external factors can influence the car companies and it is important that they progress with the people. When an external factor, as the oil price, increases dramatically, it will affect the economies in different matters. Other external factors are impacted by the oil price, for example inflation, unemployment and target rates. In addition, people are changing their preferences due to the attention of the environment. With this as the foundation the problem of the essay were divided into three aspects. First, are the automotive companies affected by an increasing oil price? Second, is a different green thinking in the markets of the companies affecting them? Third, do economic trends making an impact on the auto companies? The purpose of this essay is to investigate if the oil price, a new green way of thinking and if different economical factors have affected the car companies. To be able to accomplish the purpose, the ten largest automotive companies’ annual reports and Internet sites were used to gather information about monthly and annual sales numbers. Along with that, other necessary sources as pollution rates for different areas; inflation rates, unemployment rates and target rates were collected. Theories that were necessary for analyzing the empiric work were used. The analysis part of the essay consists mostly of correlation- and regression analysis, because they are the most appropriate tools in this context. Furthermore, the study is stating that the car companies are demonstrating tendencies to being negatively affected by an increasing in the oil price. Moreover, auto companies with more green cars have more sales on markets that have additional green thinking. Lastly, the study is also concluding that economical trends do not affect the companies in any special circumstances.</p>

<p>Purpose/Aim: The aim of this paper is to find out how the new media landscape and new communication channels is altering how companies and organizations can reach out with their messages. The aim is also to shine light on the different trends within advertising today and also to discuss the Tivo-effect ie. that consumers are doing whatever possible to avoid advertisements.</p><p>Material/ Method: I have used a qualitative research method where I have interviewed a number of people working in advertising in Sweden. The paper also includes material from books, article and various websites.</p><p>Main results: In order for advertising agencies to create successful advertisement and to generate positive associations around a certain brand, it’s crucial that the advertisement is relevant for the target group. The advertisement and the brand need to be looked upon as genuine and ’real’. In order to create that type of ads and generate a positive outlook for the brand the advertisement needs to be researched properly. In order for agencies and it’s clients to reach their intended target group by using new media their is a need to create ads that provide value for the consumer. The bottom line seems to be that in order to make successful advertisements today you need to work harder, you need to know your brand more intimately and more than ever you need to have extensive consumer insights on a deeper level.</p>

<p>Wegener´s granulomatosis (WG) is an unusual, serious, systemic vasculitis with specific clinical findings. The studies in this thesis aim at broadening our understanding of the aetiology and outcome of WG.</p><p>Patients with WG were identified in the In-patient Register 1975-2001. During this time the incidence increased three-fold, and neither ANCA-related increased awareness, nor diagnostic drift, seem to fully explain this trend, but it is still unclear if a true rise in incidence exists. </p><p>Anti- neutrophil cytoplasmic antibodies (ANCA) have been presented as highly specific for vasculitis. In a series of consecutive cANCA/PR3-ANCA positive patients, we investigated the positive predictive value for ANCA, and the outcome of patients with a positive cANCA/PR3-ANCA but not vasculitis. These patients have a low future risk of developing vasculitis, possibly indicating that ANCA, in this setting, reflects neutrophil activating properties not specific to vasculitis.</p><p>By linkage of the WG-cohort, and randomly selected population controls, to the Multi-generation register, we identified all first-degree relatives and spouses of patients and controls, totally encompassing some 2,000 patients and 70,000 relatives. Familial aggregation of WG was the exception, with absolute risks of < 1 per 1000.However, relative risks in first-grade relatives amounted to 1.56 (95% CI 0.35-6.90) such that a moderate familial aggregation cannot be excluded.</p><p>In the WG-cohort, cancer occurrence and risk was compared to that of the general population. Patients with WG have an overall doubled risk of cancer, with particularly increased risks of bladder-cancer, haematopoietic cancers including lymphomas and squamous skin-cancer. In a case-control study nested within the WG-cohort, treatment with cyclophosphamide was compared among bladder-cancer patients and matched cancer-free controls. Absolute risk of bladder cancer as high as 10% some years after diagnosis were found, and this risk can partly be attributed to cyclophosphamide-treatment, with a dose-response relationship.</p>

Water resources management is now recognized as a multidisciplinary task that has to be performed in an integrated way, within the natural boundaries of the hydrological basin or of the aquifers. Policy makers and water managers express a need to have tools able at this regional scale to help in the management of the water resources. Until now, few methodologies and tools were available to assess and model the fate of diffuse contaminants in groundwater at the regional scale. In this context, the objective of this research was to develop a pragmatic tool to assess and to model groundwater flow and solute transport at the regional scale. A general methodology including the acquisition and the management of data and a new flexible numerical approach was developed. This numerical approach called Hybrid Finite Element Mixing Cell (HFEMC) was implemented in the SUFT3D simulator developed by the Hydrogeology Group of the University of Liège. A first application of this methodology was performed on the Geer basin. The chalk aquifer of the Geer basin is an important resource of groundwater for the city of Liège and its suburbs. The quality of this groundwater resource is threatened by diffuse nitrate contamination mostly resulting from agricultural practices. New field investigations were performed in the basin to better understand the spatial distribution of the nitrate contamination. Samples were taken for environmental tracers (tritium, CFCs and SF6) analysis. The spatial distribution of environmental tracers concentrations is in concordance with the spatial distribution of nitrates. This allows proposing a coherent interpretative schema of the groundwater flow and solute transport at the regional scale. These new data and the results of a statistical nitrate trend analysis were used to calibrate the groundwater model developed with the HFEMC approach. This groundwater flow and solute transport model was used to forecast the evolution of nitrate concentrations in groundwater under a realistic scenario of nitrate input for the period 2008-2058. According to the modelling results, upward nitrate trends observed in the basin will not be reversed for 2015 as prescribed by the EU Water Framework Directive. The regional scale groundwater solute transport model was subsequently used to compute nitrate concentrations in groundwater under different scenarios of nitrate input to feed a socio-economic analysis performed by BRGM. These computed concentrations were used to assess the benefit, for the users, linked to the reduction of contamination resulting from the changes in nitrate input. These benefits were compared to the costs associated to the implementation of the considered agri-environmental schemes that allow reducing the nitrate input to groundwater.

A significant number of teenagers are killed each year by unintentional or intentional injuries. A teenager is in a vulnerable phase of her/his life, going from being a child to adult. This transition often includes testing the limits of their capabilities, which can include, e.g., high speed driving, testing alcohol and other drugs, including drinking and driving. The development from child to adult includes different psychological stress factors, such as, e.g., school problems, broken love affairs and bullying. The demands – perceived or real – also increases over time and vulnerable individuals can turn to self-harm and in the most extreme case suicide. The aim of this thesis was to investigate teenager fatalities in the northern half of Sweden and to suggest preventive measures. A survey of teenager fatalities during a twenty-year period revealed that the incidence of unintentional (n=248) deaths decreased, while intentional (n=102) deaths were unaffected over time. Most unintentional deaths were transportation related (n=204) while most of the intentional deaths were suicides (n=88). Twenty-eight percent of the decedents were test-positive for alcohol at autopsy. In a series of three studies, teenager suicides were investigated in depth, firstly through an interview study with the investigating police officer in charge of the investigation of a teenager suicide. Most of the suicides occurred in rural and depopulated areas despite the fact that most teenagers live in the larger cities along the coastline. A majority of the suicides appeared to be planned. Females, contrary to males, often had a psychiatric history. One of the conclusions was that police officers provide essential information concerning the circumstances around a teenager suicide. Parents who had lost a child through suicide, and in some cases siblings, were interviewed 15-25 months after the suicide. It was striking how the life of the surviving family members were still affected by the devastating trauma of the suicide; most parents testified that they were still struggling with the question “why?” and that they were thinking of their lost child every day. Post suicide support was often badly timed and insufficient, especially for the younger siblings. The family doctor has an important role as a co-ordinator of a long-term individually formulated support scheme for the bereaved. Evidence of suicide contagion and suicide cluster formation, i.e., one teenager suicide led to another suicide, was found in these studies, and two suicide clusters were identified, with links between the victims in each cluster. Both clusters occurred within a geographical and timely proximity. Everyone involved in the well-being of the young should be aware of the risk of contagion and suicide cluster formation. The fifth study concerned 12,812 teenagers who visited the Emergency Room at Umeå University Hospital due to an injury during 1993 through 2006. Sixty-one of these were found dead through 2007, 49 by unnatural (of which 38 were included) and 12 by natural causes. The standard mortality rate for unnatural death was calculated to 1.44 (1.02-1.98), confirming an increased risk of premature death. In many of these deaths, alcohol and drugs may have contributed. By increasing the awareness among health professionals that injury can predict a premature death - primarily among those who develop substance abuse - some premature deaths may be prevented by early intervention. This thesis confirms that most teenagers die from unnatural causes, mostly in transportation-related events and by suicide. By studying these deaths, preventive measures that could save lives have been suggested.

Background: For the knowledge company the employees’ competencies and knowledge are important assets. According to this, there has been a lot discussion about how to best take advantage of the employees’ knowledge and create organizational learning. This organizational learning can be difficult to create due to the individuals’ own goals and the fast changes in today’s society. Purpose: “To define how factors such as time pressure, individualism and increased mobility on the future labour market will influence the knowledge companies and affect the organizational learning. We will also studyif mentoring in the future is a possible way to accomplish organizational learning.” Delimitations: We have only investigated how the organizational learning will be affected by increased time pressure, individualism and mobility. We have also looked at organized, company internal, mentoring. Realization and Results: We have conducted interviews at three different knowledge companies, where one of them has an organized, internal mentoring programme. We have also used three prognoses of future trends and compared these with the answers from the interviewees. From this we found that increased individualism and increased mobility can affect the organizational learning in both a negative and positive way. Increased time pressure is the most critical factor to create an organisational learning in knowledge companies.