Syftet med denna uppsats är att beskriva hur två företag som frångått den traditionella budgetprocessen arbetar med sin ekonomistyrning samt vilka verktyg de använder för att uppfylla budgetens syften. Utöver detta undersöks även vilka förutsättningar som krävs för att kunna arbeta budgetlöst. Datainsamlingen skedde genom granskning av litteratur samt en kvalitativ fallstudie. Semistrukturerade intervjuer genomfördes på två företag, Ahlsell och Ikea. Empirin analyserades med hjälp av en deduktiv metod.   Vår slutsats är att det är möjligt att fylla budgetens syften även vid budgetlös styrning. Detta förutsätter dock en ledning som vågar delegera ansvaret nedåt i organisationen. Denna decentraliserade organisation bör dessutom bestå av relativt likartade enheter som med hjälp av nyckeltal och benchmarking kan jämföras med varandra. Utöver det behövs ett öppet och snabbt informationssystem för att skapa helhetssyn av den decentraliserade verksamheten.  Vi har även kunnat konstatera att budgetlös styrning inte lämpar sig för alla typer av företag. Dock borde företagsledare se över sin budgetprocess. Det är möjligt att det finns inslag från den budgetlösa styrningen som skulle kunna bidra till en effektivare ekonomistyrning. / The purpose of this essay is to describe how two companies that abandoned the traditional budget work with their financial control, and which instruments they use to fulfill the purposes of budget. In addition, the requirements needed to work Beyond Budgeting are examined.   Data was collected by literature reviewing and qualitative case study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted at two companies, Ahlsell and Ikea. Empirical data was analyzed using a deductive method.     The result of this study shows that it is possible to fulfill the purposes of budget even when using Beyond Budgeting. However, this requires a management that dares to delegate responsibility down the organizational chain. This decentralized organization should consist of relatively homogeneous units, which can be compared with KPIs and benchmarking. In addition to this, a transparent and rapid system of information is necessary to create a holistic view.   Beyond Budgeting is not suitable for all kinds of organizations. However, the managers should review their budget process. It is possible that there are elements from Beyond Budgeting that could contribute to more effective management control.

Weber and Linder (2005) have enlightened that the focus of the current debate on the budget’s to be or not be, has been on trying to find a general tool, which fits best in all situations. They argue that the budget may be more appropriate for organizations in certain circumstances, than for others. They claim that there is a gap in research concerning the situations in which the budget may be appropriate, or when Beyond budgeting is preferred. It is this gap we are trying to fill with our thesis. The purpose of the thesis is to explain which situational factors that affect the organization's use of budgets for the functions the budget can fulfill. We examined various organizations to explain the situation dependent factors that affect the organization's use of budgets. Since the budget is a tool that can fulfill multiple functions, we have chosen to examine the use of budgets for the three functions - Planning & Coordination, Responsibility allocation, and Control & Evaluation. We chosed not to investigate the function for Motivation, since we be-lieve that motivating the employees is a function of the reward system. To be able to generalize our conclusions, we constructed a model of factors that could affect the use of budgets. To test the model, we have made a survey, which was sent to about 700 organizations. Using the responses of the survey we tested the model with regression analysis. The conclusions we have reached through our empirical study is that the organizations' over-all use of budgets is affected by the environmental turbulence, its competitive situation, the degree of formalization and the size of the organization. The organization's information sys-tem also affects the use of budgets positively, but only for the functions Planning & Coordi-nation and Responsibility allocation. We also came to the conclusion that the corporate cul-ture affects the use of budgets negatively, but only for the function Planning & Coordination. With our results and conclusions, we believe that we have filled a part of the gap in research concerning the budget’s to be or not be. We have identified situational factors that affect the use of budgets for its functions and they show when budget tends to be used.

No description available.

No description available.

Well motivated theoretical models predict the annihilation of dark matter (DM) into standard model particles, a phenomenon which could be a significant source of photons in the gamma-ray sky. With its unprecedented sensitivity and its broad energy range (20 MeV to more than 300 GeV) the main instrument on board the Fermi satellite, the Large Area Telescope (LAT), might be able to detect an indirect signature of DM annihilations. In this work we revisit several interesting claims of extended dark matter emission made from analyses of Fermi-LAT data: First, based on three years of Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) gamma-ray data of the Virgo cluster, evidence for an extended emission associated with dark matter pair annihilation in the bb̄ channel has been reported by Han et al. (arxiv:1201.1003). After an in depth spatial and temporal analysis, we argue that the tentative evidence for a gamma-ray excess from the Virgo cluster is mainly due to the appearance of a population of previously unresolved gamma-ray point sources in the region of interest. These point sources are not part of the LAT second source catalogue (2FGL), but are found to be above the standard detection significance threshold when three or more years of LAT data is included. Second, we confirm the detection of a spatially extended excess of 2-5 GeV gamma rays from the Galactic Center (GC), consistent with the emission expected from annihilating dark matter or an unresolved population of about 10³ milisecond pulsars. However, there are significant uncertainties in the diffuse galactic background at the GC. We have performed a revaluation of these two models for the extended gamma ray source at the GC by accounting for the systematic uncertainties of the Galactic diffuse emission model. We also marginalize over point source and diffuse background parameters in the region of interest. We show that the excess emission is significantly more extended than a point source. We find that the DM (or pulsars population) signal is larger than the systematic errors and therefore proceed to determine the sectors of parameter space that provide an acceptable fit to the data. We found that a population of order a 10³ MSPs with parameters consistent with the average spectral shape of Fermi-LAT measured MSPs was able to fit the GC excess emission. For DM, we found that a pure τ⁺τ⁻ annihilation channel is not a good fit to the data. But a mixture of τ⁻τ⁻ and bb̄ with a (σν) of order the thermal relic value and a DM mass of around 20 to 60 GeV provides an adequate fit. We also consider the possibility that the GeV excess is due to nonthermal bremsstrahlung produced by a population of electrons interacting with neutral gas in molecular clouds. The millisecond pulsars and dark matter alternatives have spatial templates well fitted by the square of a generalized Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) profile with inner slope γ = 1.2. We model the third option with a 20-cm continuum emission Galactic Ridge template. A template based on the HESS residuals is shown to give similar results. The gamma-ray excess is found to be best fit by a combination of the generalized NFW squared template and a Galactic Ridge template. We also find the spectra of each template is not significantly affected in the combined fit and is consistent with previous single template fits. That is, the generalized NFW squared spectrum can be fit by either of order 10³ unresolved MSPs or DM with mass around 30 GeV, a thermal cross section, and mainly annihilating to bb̄ quarks. While the Galactic Ridge continues to have a spectrum consistent with a population of nonthermal electrons whose spectrum also provides a good fit to synchrotron emission measurements. We also show that the current DM fit may be hard to test, even with 10 years of Fermi-LAT data, especially if there is a mixture of DM and MSPs contributing to the signal, in which case the implied DM cross section will be suppressed.

Where is technology heading? And how will our behaviors towards these new innovations look? This project questions the direction of ”beyond smart” products, through scenarios within our everyday life. The work is both critical and speculative. Speculative in the sense that it is speculating in how a future scenario with ”beyond smart” products would look like. And by beyond smart I refer to the fact that the products would posses extreme features. Such as complexity and irationalism. But also to be spontaneous and self aware. At the same time the work is questioning, and perhaps criticising, if this sort of development really is beneficial for us or not. If we would turn to technology and smart products for a solution to our desires and problems, how would our human relationships towards each other look? And also how would we interact with these future products and what would the consequences of that be?

This thesis focuses on systems for mediated communication that run on mobile technology. The aim has been to give an answer to the question about what require- ments there are for situation awareness for domain experts when communication is secondary and supports the primary task. This thesis originated in a critical approach to the common practice of design- ing mediated communication systems with the face-to-face meeting as a guiding scenario. Instead, this thesis explores a design process that is based on the task and the strength of the technology itself. Different tasks do, of course, make different de- mands on a system, and a task that is strongly connected to the face-to-face meeting will probably be best served by a system that is designed from that perspective. Three cases that are presented in this thesis share three common themes that have characteristics that set them apart from the face-to-face meeting. The first theme is that the communication is a secondary task that is used to support a primary task. The second theme is that the cases involve domain experts active in the primary task. The use of experts implies that communication will be task- centered and also that the need for information to sustain a valuable situation awareness may be different from a person with less experience in the domain. The third theme is that all cases and the corresponding tasks benefit from some kind of situation awareness among the participants for optimal execution of the task. The three cases are based on: Wearable computers using mediated communication with wearable computers and how to handle interruptions for users of such computers Multidisciplinary team meetings improving access to patient information and enabling individual and group interaction with this information Trauma resuscitation giving a remote trauma expert’s correct and valuable in- formation while minimizing disturbance when supporting a local trauma re- suscitation team Prototypes are central in all three cases, and different prototypes have been designed and evaluated to validate the benefit of designing tools for communication that do not try to replicate the face-to-face meeting. The main findings in this thesis show that the shift of focus to the primary task when designing mediated communication systems has been beneficial in all three cases. A conflict between the secondary communication that is used to support sit- uation awareness and the primary task has been identified. Full situation awareness should therefore not be a goal in these designs but communication should support enough situation awareness to benefit the primary task with minimal disturbance to it. / <p>QC 20140221</p>

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Köln.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1960. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1969. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.