Spekulationsköp i nyproduktion av bostadsrätter förekommer i allt större utsträckning och antalet spekulationsköpare har ökat under senare år. Genom litteraturstudier samt intervjuer och enkäter med såväl byggherrar som spekulationsköpare och mäklare verksamma i nyproduktion har spekulationsmarknaden av nyproducerade bostadsrätter i Stockholms län utretts och kartlagts. Den generella spekulationsköparen är en man mellan 25-35 år med varierande kapitalstyrka som vill tjäna snabba pengar. Områden som är mest attraktiva för spekulationsköpare att investera i är centrala Stockholm och närförorter. Byggherrarna är samstämmiga i att spekulationsköp idag utgör ett problem främst med avseende på företagets affärsrisk. Mäklarna upplever inte spekulationsköp som ett problem. Både byggherrarna och mäklarna ser dock svårigheter i att förhindra spekulationsköp av nyproduktion eftersom det är svårt att identifiera vem som är spekulationsköpare. För att komma tillrätta med problematiken skulle samverkan mellan olika byggherrar och deras kundregister behöva komma till stånd, vilket strider mot befintlig lagstiftning. Efter granskning av köpprocessen i nyproduktion anser författarna att de mest riskfyllda spekulationsköparna kan förhindras genom att senarelägga upplåtelsen till tillträdet och då även låta köparen betala hela köpeskillingen som upplåtelseavgift. Idag betalas omkring 10 procent av den totala köpeskillingen som upplåtelseavgift upp till 6 månader innan tillträdet. Detta innebär att dagens köpare av nyproduktion inte behöver erlägga hela köpesumman förrän tillträde men kan ändå överlåta bostadsrätten till annan från upplåtelsen innan tillträde. Detta öppnar upp för handel med hög avkastning till låg insats. / Speculative buying of newly constructed condominiums has turned to be more common and the number of speculative buyers has increased in recent years. Through literature studies, surveys and interviews with developers as well as speculative buyers and real estate brokers within sales of new housing development, the speculation market of newly built condominiums in Stockholm have been investigated. In general, the most frequent speculation buyer is a man between 25-35 years with variable capital strength who want to make quick and easy money. Areas that are most attractive for speculative buyers to invest in are central Stockholm and the inner suburbs. The developers are unanimous in that speculative buying today is a problem mainly with respect to the company's business risk. The brokers do not experience speculative buying as a problem. Both developers and brokers see, however, difficulties in preventing speculative buying of new construction due to that it is difficult to identify who is a speculative buyer. To deal with the problem the developers would have to interact and share customer records, which is contrary to existing law. After examination of the buying process of new construction, the authors consider that the most risky speculative buyers can be prevented by delaying the concession and at that point also allow the buyer to pay the full purchase price fee. Today, buyers pay around 10 percent of the total purchase price as a concession fee up to 6 months before access. This means that today's buyers of new construction does not need to pay the entire purchase price until the access but can still sell the apartment to another person after the concession and before the access. This opens up for trade of high yield with a low effort.

Syfte: Denna studie syftar till att undersöka hur konsumenters köpbeslut påverkas utifrån deras kunskap och uppfattning om produkters tillverkningsland (Country of Manufacture). Metod: I denna studie används den kvalitativa forskningsmetoden där datainsamlingen utfördes genom 10 kvalitativa semistrukturerade intervjuer via telefonsamtal och Zoom-möten. Slutsatser: Informationen om ett tillverkningsland används i konsumenternas utvärdering av alternativ i form av stereotyper om länder, vilket även påverkar deras förväntningar av produktens inre värden. Påverkan av informationen om tillverkningslandet är större vid personliga och känslomässiga aspekter i form av fientlighet, affinitet och etnocentrism. Bakomliggande faktorerna till dessa aspekter är politik, hållbarhet och religion vilket uppstår på kollektiv och individuell nivå utifrån deras livssituation och tidigare erfarenheter. Dessutom tar konsumenten ställningstaganden över om de ska genomföra ett köp eller inte utifrån dessa aspekter. / Purpose: This study aims to investigate how consumers purchasing decisions are affected based on their knowledge and perception of the Country of Manufacture of products. Method: This study has a qualitative research method where collection of data was performed through 10 qualitative semi-structured interviews via telephone conversations and Zoom meetings. Conclusions: The information about a Country of Manufacture is used in consumers' evaluation of alternatives in the form of stereotypes about countries, which also affects their expectations of the product's intrinsic values. The influence of the information about the Country of Manufacture is greater in personal and emotional aspects in the form of animosity, affinity and ethnocentrism. The underlying factors to these aspects are politics, sustainability and religion, which arises on a collective and individual level based on their life situation and previous experiences. In addition, the consumer takes a stand on whether or not to make a purchase based on these aspects.

The continuous advances and prevalence of embedded systems, being systems consisting of both hardware and software put together, provides a great challenge for industrial companies. Due to the increasing need of complex products to meet the demands of customers, companies more often need to source software from external suppliers. Software has the characteristic of being a product which is difficult to specify as it has the ability to iteratively update itself according to the changing environment, making it hard to determine precisely what it will look like at the beginning of its development. As a result, traditional waterfall contracts, for which the intention is to set clear specifications early on, are often not suitable for developing systems including software. Therefore, the need for flexible contracts, called agile contracts, among industrial companies is emerging to support new technological applications. The purpose of this thesis was to examine what the main challenges are when implementing agile contracts in industrial companies who are purchasing embedded systems, and how these challenges can be mitigated or rectified. This was done by an empirical study in the form of interviews with various relevant actors. Firstly, employees from an industrial company looking to implement agile contracts within its procurement processes to support its embedded system purchases were interviewed. The respondents expressed their concerns and perceived challenges with introducing agile contracts to their business. Then, to answer the challenges interviews were conducted with people who were knowledgeable within the topic of agile contracts. Also, a benchmark, a literature review and a theoretical framework have been performed to analyse previous findings within this research area. This thesis identified nine main challenges being Risk Management, Payment Model, Time Aspect, Communication, Embedded Systems, IP-Rights, Supplier Management, Mindset & Knowledge and Future. Each of these challenges was answered separately, but it was found that some answers overlapped between different challenges. The most prevalent challenge was regarding communication, as a successful relationship built on sufficient collaboration and trust lays a foundation for all the other challenges to be managed more easily. Another recurrent theme was that all involved parties must understand precisely what an agile contract implies in order to make beneficial decisions to manage all the challenges. / De kontinuerliga framstegen för inbyggda system, som består av både hårdvara och mjukvara sammansatt innebär en stor utmaning för industriella företag. På grund av det ökade behovet av mjukvara för att möta kundernas efterfrågan behöver företag köpa in mjukvara från externa leverantörer. Mjukvara är svårt att specificera eftersom det har förmågan att iterativt uppdatera sig själv i enighet med den förändrade miljön. Detta gör det svårt att i ett tidigt skede av ett projekt fastställa exakt hur produkten ska vara utformad. På grund av detta är traditionella kontrakt, som ofta följer vattenfallsmodellen för vilken avsikten är att tidigt sätta tydliga kravspecifikationer, sällan lämpade för att köpa in inbyggda system. Därav uppstår behovet av agila kontrakt bland industriföretag för att stödja nya tekniska tillämpningar. Syftet med denna avhandling var att undersöka vilka de huvudsakliga utmaningarna är gällande att implementera agila kontrakt på ett industriföretag som köper in och utvecklar inbyggda system samt hur dessa utmaningar kan bemötas. Detta gjordes i form av en empirisk studie med relevanta aktörer, främst inom ett industriföretag som avser att implementera agila kontrakt i sin inköpsprocess för att effektivisera inköp av inbyggda system. Först intervjuades medarbetare som idag köper in inbyggda system. Dessa fick uttrycka sina tveksamheter och utmaningar kring att implementera agila kontrakt i sin inköpsprocess. Efter det utfördes mer strukturerade intervjuer med kunniga personer inom agila kontrakt med målet att hitta lösningar till de tidigare identifierade utmaningarna. Dessa intervjuer i kombination med en litteraturstudie, ett teoretiskt ramverk och en benchmark användes för att analysera och besvara de identifierade utmaningarna. Denna avhandling identifierade nio huvudsakliga utmaningar från de explorativa intervjuerna; Riskhantering, Betalningsmodell, Tidsaspekt, Kommunikation, Inbyggda System, IP-Rättigheter, Mentalitet & Kunskap samt Framtid. Dessa utmaningar har alla blivit besvarade separat men det fastställdes tidigt att de finns tydliga överlappningar mellan utmaningarna. Den vanligaste överlappningen var angående kommunikation då en framgångsrik relation byggd på samarbete och förtroende lägger grunden för att alla andra utmaningar lättare ska kunna bemötas och lösas. Ytterligare ett återkommande tema var att alla parter måste förstå exakt vad ett agilt kontrakt innebär och hur det fungerar för att kunna fatta rätt beslut och hantera övriga utmaningar.

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to identify the challenges that small garments manufacturers in Pakistan face in an IOR with large retailers regarding power dominance. The paper also seeks to examine how those garment manufacturers can use the Boundary Control Systems as a strategic response to power dominance. Methodology: The study is Qualitative, Exploratory in nature. It adapts critical realism as its research philosophy while developing the study with an Abductive Approach. The data for this paper was collected through related literature, articles, and a series of semi-structured interviews. The collected Empirical Data was analyzed using Creswell's Six Steps method. Findings: The paper explores the challenges faced by the small garments manufacturers in an IOR with large retailers in the Garments Industry of Pakistan, which include the struggle to have fair pricing, dominant behavior of the retailer, over-controlling inspections of the production, unavailability of resources to manage the production scale, overly strict sanctions or price cut by the retailers, and misunderstandings created by cultural and lingual diversity. These challenges almost always start from the Negotiation stage of the collaboration leaving the small garments manufacturer little to no room for mitigating them. The most effective strategy that the small garments manufacturers can adopt while dealing with power dominance. It is to apply Boundary Systems as early as the Negotiation Stage to prevent the retailer from imposing opportunistic behavior. Involving Boundary Spanners can be useful to have better control over the challenges. Originality and Contribution: The paper attempts to explore the fairly under-studied area of power dominance between small garments manufacturers and large retailers working in the developing garments manufacturing-supplying industry in Pakistan and how Boundary Systems can be used in this dynamic. A significant lack of awareness and studies were identified while researching for this study. Hence this paper can be considered a new and fresh way to look at the issue that has been previously undermined. And a contribution to the literature and future researchers to further the studies in this area.

Titel: En kvalitativ studie som beskriver betydelsen av fastighetsmäklares sätt att kommunicera med bostadssäljare. Bakgrund med frågeställning: Framgångsrika relationer är något som många bolag strävar efter att uppnå för att skapa vinstfördelar. Förmågan att åstadkomma en önskad och ömsesidig relation har därför blivit allt viktigare på en alltmer konkurrenskraftig marknad för att skapa konkurrensfördelar. Detta gäller även för en fastighetsmäklare då fastighetsbolag numera erkänner att det är den enskilde anställde som är varumärket utåt mot bolagets kunder. Detta leder studien till en frågeställning: A) ”Vad utgör att en fastighetsmäklare ger ett bra intryck vid ett första möte gällande bostadsförsäljning?” B) “Vad ger till resultat att specifik fastighetsmäklare blir vald att förmedla en bostad?” Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att bidra med samhällsnytta och ge lärdom till fastighetsmäklare huruvida de kan förbättra och anpassa sin kommunikation till en säljare gällande försäljning av bostad. Metod: Studien har utförts med ett deduktivt tillvägagångssätt genom en kvalitativ ansats. Det empiriska materialet är konstruerat av tio intervjuer. Resultat: A) Ett bra intryck utgör den fastighetsmäklare som tar sig tid för en säljare och bostad vid mötet. Likaså en fastighetsmäklare som är positiv till säljarens bostad och person samt verkar trivas i säljarens sällskap. Detta bidrar till att säljaren känner sig lugn, trygg och positiv. Egenskaper som ger ett bra intryck uppfattas som bland annat, vänlig, ödmjuk och transparant. B) Valet av fastighetsmäklare resulterar i en emotionell aspekt med en fastighetsmäklare som ger ett bra intryck. Valet resulterar även i en rationell aspekt med en fastighetsmäklare som sålt många bostäder i närområdet med goda recensioner efter slutförda försäljningar. Vidare en fastighetsmäklare som är engagerad, har intressenter till visningen och som ger ett realistiskt slutpris inför försäljningen. / Title: A qualitative study that describes the importance of a real estate agent's way of communicating with home sellers. Background and research question: Successful relationships are something that many companies strive to achieve to create profit benefits. The ability to achieve a desired and reciprocal relationship has therefore become increasingly important in an increasingly competitive market to create competitive advantages. This also applies to a real estate agent as real estate companies now acknowledge that it is the individual employee who is the brand externally towards the company's customers. This leads the study to a question: A) "What does it mean that a real estate agent gives a good impression at a first meeting regarding home sales?" B) "What gives the result that a specific real estate agent is chosen to mediate a home?"Purpose: The purpose of this study is to contribute to the benefit of society and provide lessons to real estate agents on whether they can improve and adapt their communication to a seller regarding the sale of a home. Methodology: The study has been carried out with a deductive approach through a qualitative approach. The empirical material is constructed from ten interviews. Results of the study: A) A good impression is made by the real estate agent who takes time for a seller and home at the meeting. Likewise, a real estate agent who is positive about the seller and the home and seems to thrive in the seller's company. This helps the seller feel calm, secure and positive. Properties that give a good impression are for instance perceived as friendly, humble and transparent. B) The choice of real estate agent results in an emotional aspect with a real estate agent that gives a good impression. The choice also results in a rational aspect with a real estate agent who sells a lot of homes in the local area with good reviews after completed sales. Furthermore, a real estate agent who is committed, has stakeholders for the show and who gives a realistic final price before the sale.

In recent years, there have been incidents which decreased people's trust in some organizations and authorities responsible for ratings and accreditation. For a few prominent examples, there was a security breach at Equifax (2017), misconduct was found in the Standard & Poor's Ratings Services (2015), and the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (2022) validated some of the low-performing schools as delivering higher standards than they actually were. A natural solution to these types of issues is to decentralize the relevant trust management processes using blockchain technologies. The research problems which are tackled in this thesis consider the issue of trust in reputation for assessment and review credibility at different angles, in the context of blockchain applications. We first explored the following questions. How can we trust courses in one college to provide students with the type and level of knowledge which is needed in a specific workplace? Micro-accreditation on a blockchain was our solution, including using a peer-review system to determine the rigor of a course (through a consensus). Rigor is the level of difficulty in regard to a student's expected level of knowledge. Currently, we make assumptions about the quality and rigor of what is learned, but this is prone to human bias and misunderstandings. We present a decentralized approach that tracks student records throughout the academic progress at a school and helps to match employers' requirements to students' knowledge. We do this by applying micro-accredited topics and Knowledge Units (KU) defined by NSA's Center of Academic Excellence to courses and assignments. We demonstrate that the system was successful in increasing accuracy of hires through simulated datasets, and that it is efficient, as well as scalable. Another problem is how can we trust that the peer reviews are honest and reflect an accurate rigor score? Assigning reputation to peers is a natural method to ensure correctness of these assessments. The reputation of the peers providing rigor scores needs to be taken into account for an overall rigor of a course, its topics, and its tasks. Specifically, those with a higher reputation should have more influence on the total score. Hence, we focused on how a peer's reputation is managed. We explored decentralized reputation management for the peers, choosing a decentralized marketplace as a sample application. We presented an approach to ensuring review credibility, which is a particular aspect of trust in reviews and reputation of the parties who provide them. We use a Proof-of-Stake based Algorand system as a base of our implementation, since this system is open-source, and it has a rich community support. Specifically, we directly map reputation to stake, which allows us to deploy Algorand at the blockchain layer. Reviews are analyzed by the proposed evaluation component using Natural Language Processing (NLP). In our system, NLP gauges the positivity of the written review, compares that value to a scaled numerical rating given, and determines adjustments to a peer's reputation from that result. We demonstrate that this architecture ensures credible and trustworthy assessments. It also efficiently manages the reputation of the peers, while keeping reasonable consensus times. We then turned our focus on ensuring that a peer's reputation is credible. This led us to introducing a new type of consensus called "Proof-of-Review". Our proposed implementation is again based on Algorand, since its modular architecture allows for easy modifications, such as adding extra components, but this time, we modified the engine. The proposed model then provides a trust in evaluations (review and assessment credibility) and in those who provide them (reputation credibility) using a blockchain. We introduce a blacklisting component, which prevents malicious nodes from participating in the protocol, and a minimum-reputation component, which limits the influence of under-performing users. Our results showed that the proposed blockchain system maintains liveliness and completeness. Specifically, blacklisting and the minimum-reputation requirement (when properly tuned) do not affect these properties. We note that the Proof-of-Review concept can be deployed in other types of applications with similar needs of trust in assessments and the players providing them, such as sensor arrays, autonomous car groups (caravans), marketplaces, and more.

本研究是以中國大陸從2005 年到2010年的風力發電之複合材料葉片產業為背景，討論A公司如何從其原來所屬的防腐蝕複合材料行業，跨入一個完全不同應用的風力葉片複合材料行業。於產業進入過程中，有三家迥然不同規模、屬性、企業文化的企業，於過去數年在大陸市場的競爭為研究範疇。 而在這一市場中依其資本來源，可概分為外資、國企與民企三大類，而因著資本來源不同導致其管理團隊與決策模式，有著極大的差異，因此對交易過程的四種成本亦有相當大的認知與評價差異。而這三家競爭廠商於面對不同客戶屬性時，如何依據其個別公司的不同市場地位、公司資源與技術能量，而採行的市場競爭策略。 A公司於競爭初期，利用其既有的品牌知名度、人脈與通路，以降低C2為第一要務，而後利用C2在地優勢與國際原料大廠建立策略聯盟，產生C1的競爭優勢。進一步利用C1優勢降低客戶C3，隨著個案的增加，增強與上游供應鏈的談判力量，再回頭去強化C1的競爭優勢，以本研究所處的市場，所有的競爭最後都還是回到C1的競爭。並對未來的發展提出如何增強各個成本構面的建議，與提升公司淨利的建議。 / The background of this study is based on the wind blade industry of wind turbine from year 2005 till year 2010 in mainland China. We try to analysis how the company A crosses into an entire new industry – wind blade composites from their original anti-corrosion application. And the scope of this study based on these three enterprises with complete different scales, categories and cultures how to compete in mainland China wind blade composites industry in the past 5 years. We may distinguish those customers into three types based on their different capital compose: foreign enterprise, state own company and private company. Due to the different capital compose, it cause quite obvious difference between the business philosophy of the management team and decision model. It also caused huge difference in recognition and evaluation of four kinds of transaction cost. Those three major suppliers how to take different compete strategies when they are facing different customer attributes based on their own corporate market position, company resources and technology. At the very beginning stage, company A leverages its original brand name, connections and channels in composites industry to lower its C2 as first priority. And then company A tries to build the strategic alliances with those global material suppliers to create the compettive advantage of C1. The further step is to reduce customers’ C3 through its C1 advantage. The more customers company A gets, the more bargain power she has with her supplier chain and then she could strengthen her own C1 competitive strength. The most fundamental competition is always backing to C1 competition in wind blade composite section of wind energy industry in China.

To regulate and facilitate are the main functions of legal rules. These purposes are achieved by a harmonised legal system by which the law becomes identical in numerous jurisdictions. The process to unify the law of sale internationally started in the 1920s and culminated, in 1988, in the implementation of the CISG. This Convention intends to provide clarity for most international sales transactions by regulating the formation of contracts, and the rights and obligations of the seller and the buyer resulting from the contract. The CISG has these days enjoyed much ratification and influenced a number of legislation reforms worldwide. Despite the role it played during the drafting process of the CISG, the DRC has not yet ratified it. Instead, the country continued to rely, until recently, on colonial legislations which had become out-dated, and inadequate to meet modern international sales contracts requirements. The situation appears to have been improved a year ago as the effect of the adoption of OHADA law whose Commercial Act is largely inspired by the CISG. Because the introduction of OHADA law in the DRC is very recent, this study intends to assess the current state of Congolese sales law by comparing it with the CISG and South African law, which is non-CISG but modernised. The comparative study aims at establishing whether current Congolese law, as amended by OHADA law, is sufficient or has shortcomings; if it has some, it aims to identify those shortcomings, and make suggestions for their improvements. After discussion, it has been discovered that the ratification of OHADA law has significantly improved Congolese domestic sales law. Given that there remain certain unresolved shortcomings in Congolese international sales law, however, the study ends by a proposal for the accession of the DRC to the CISG in order to fill them. / Mercantile Law / LLD

由於國際連鎖速食業地區經營者（Market Operator）的主要資本投入，包括：原料採購、餐飲設備投資、設計裝修、人員訓練、以及租用不動產時，都牽扯到被陷入或轉換成本偏高的問題，以致對於既有資源供應商之續約談判時處於不利的地位。 　　本研究主要從交易成本理論、陷入成本及專屬資產、買賣方之交易關係等理論解析國際連鎖速食店的地區經營者提高取得上述資源的議價能力（Bargaining Power）的管理策略，並透過業界專家實證其可行性。 　　經研究結果顯示，國際速食連鎖業地區經營者可以從「降低專屬陷入成本的投入」、「促使主要供應商投入專屬資產」、「善用其他交易影響者的力量」等三個方向來提高議價能力，並可根據資源特性的不同，而採取不同的策略行動。

The aim of this diploma thesis is to analyze a buyer decision process of consumers in choice of mobile phone operator with a focus on individual. The diploma thesis is divided in six parts. The first and second parts focus on theory of marketing of services with an emphasis on services of mobile operators followed by consumer behavior. Next part covers problems of mobile phone operator's market. Next key part is buyer decision process of consumers in choice of mobile phone operator based on secondary (agency) data and based on results from analysis of a questionnaire. A summary of acquired results is compared to all phases of buyer decision process in sixth part. Comparing of results for picked customer segment with actual offer of mobile operators in Czech Republic is at the end of this thesis.