Certification of buildings is now a big part of the construction industry. The role and importance of certifications is now undeniable. It has a positive impact on the environment, and in the meantime companies can label themselves as eco-friendly. Skanska is one of the biggest construction companies in Sweden. Lately LEED has become the most common certification system they use on larger commercial buildings. A new version has just been released, but how well has the system adapted to a Swedish market and environment, or vice versa? This can be difficult given that the certification system has been developed for an American market. In combination with the eventual problems given the system’s origin, working with LEED on the construction site is also a lot of work. Our Research indicates that approximately 20% of a project engineer’s time is taken up by work with the system. This thesis examines the possibilities of reducing the amount of time LEED takes up. U.S Green Building Council has released a fourth version of LEED. In order to streamline the work with certification, an updated tool has been made that explains the credit Sourcing of Raw Materials and focuses on the essential parts for people who work in construction. In order to do this the previous tool made by Skanska has been studied, along with interviews with employees of the company. USGBC’s LEED Reference Guide is the core of the information regarding the new version. The conclusion is that given the right tools, the work with LEED can be more efficient.

Increased trends towards globalisation, optimization of the value chain, outsourcing of activities and focus on core competentencies result in increased importance of procurement's role, in that it causes high attention from top management.The focus from top management is based on the change of the cost structure, i.e. lowering internal value chain and an increase of material and purchasing costs above 50 %. The core objectives of the worldwide procurement are internationalization, strategic focus and costs reduction. There are high expectations towards procurement. First, to generate procurement savings on a global scale, to identify the best procurement markets, finding the best supplier and to determine the world class price level. The study has been targeted to analyze the configuration of worldwide procurement organizations and the impact of international production network on procurement. Furthermore, to benchmark international sourcing activities on a global scale, resulting in identification of critical success factors for improving the procurement quality and effectiveness.

External knowledge sourcing is not only an integral practice within knowledge management, its successful facilitation through leadership has a pressing importance for companies in order to stay innovative and thus competitive in an economic environment, shaped by the dominant and continuous influence of globalization and the increasingly fast pace of technological innovation. Hereby, only limited research has been conducted in the relation between knowledge-oriented leadership, knowledge management, and innovation.This thesis is contextualized in the scientific discourse which concerns itself with the role of individual attitudes towards external knowledge sourcing, as well as the facilitating role of leadership towards changing individual attitudes. This thesis is, furthermore, also contextualized within the concepts of open innovation and absorptive capacity, which, respectively, are consequences of the spatial effects of globalization and the temporal effects of the fast pace of technological innovation.Research Question: Facing the challenges of globalization and the fast-changing pace of technology, what patterns between employee’s attitudes towards external knowledge acquisition and employee’s perceived leadership behaviors can be observed within tech companies in Sweden?In order to answer the proposed research question, we conducted a qualitative research including nine semi-structured interviews with employees with a technical background in tech companies in Sweden, ranging from small to large companies and with local to multinational operations.Our main findings represent a generally positive attitude towards external knowledge sourcing within our research scope, which relates with high levels of transformational leadership. Still, we were not able to explore the existence of knowledge-oriented leadership.This thesis contributes to the body of knowledge management, innovation, and leadership research, as it provides a first look into previously identified research gaps, namely the impact of knowledge-oriented leadership and knowledge management on open innovation (Naqshbandi & Jasimuddin, 2018) and the missing connection of the three separate bodies: leadership, knowledge management, and innovation (Donate & de Pablo, 2015)

Fashion and textile upcycling is currently considered a time-consuming and labour- intensive process. Since textile waste materials are not readily available as a secondary raw material, the process of sourcing pre- and post-consumer textile waste usually requires a lot of time and effort, and often results in a high inconsistency in input materials. In consequence, upcycling operations are generally difficult to scale up. In order to address this issue, this research study aims to explore the current sourcing process of secondary raw material as well as the opportunities and challenges this sourcing process implies for a B2B trading platform of secondary raw material. In order to serve the purpose of this research study, semi-structured interviews with experienced professionals from five small and medium-sized fashion and textile upcycling companies have been conducted. The empirical data collected through the semi-structured interviews was analysed using an inductive approach of qualitative content analysis. The overall findings suggest that concerning the sourcing process of post-consumer textiles for upcycling, the identified opportunities for a B2B trading platform outweigh the challenges. However, pre-consumer textile waste is often provided in the form of an already upcycled yarn from fabric or garment suppliers which gives the impression that a B2B trading platform is less relevant in this case. Nevertheless, the empirical results might have been impacted by the small sample size and the strong focus on post-consumer textiles. Therefore, more research is necessary in order to understand how SMEs working with pre-consumer textile waste source their input materials for upcycling and which opportunities and challenges this potentially different process implies for a B2B trading platform of secondary raw material.

The World Wide Web is an infrastructure to publish and retrieve information through web resources. It evolved from a static Web 1.0 to a multimodal and interactive communication and information space which is used to collaboratively contribute and discuss web resources, which is better known as Web 2.0. The evolution into a Semantic Web (Web 3.0) proceeds. One of its remarkable advantages is the decentralized and interlinked data composition. Hence, in contrast to its data distribution, workflows and technologies for decentralized collaborative contribution are missing. In this paper we propose the Structured Feedback protocol as an interactive addition to the Web of Data. It offers support for users to contribute to the evolution of web resources, by providing structured data artifacts as patches for web resources, as well as simple plain text comments. Based on this approach it enables crowd-supported quality assessment and web data cleansing processes in an ad-hoc fashion most web users are familiar with.

The New Space industry is a novel branch of the space industry focusing on innovation and commercialization. It experiences very swift growth, although only a fraction of this growth has taken place in Sweden. In order to change this, policymakers are investing funds and efforts into developing the Swedish New Space industry, including the Kvarken Space Center project, aimed at developing the Northern Swedish New Space industry. Here, we see public support in developing a high-tech innovation ecosystem in a peripheral area. This is a topic offering multiple research streams on the most efficient development methods, two of which juxtapose the knowledge ecosystem and intercompany collaborations respectively. With that in mind, we formulated the following research question:   How are collaborations and the knowledge ecosystem used to source knowledge for the innovation process?   To approach to the subject, we gathered literature on innovation systems and ecosystems in order to analyze the importance of the knowledge ecosystem and the various shapes the industry can assume. This information is linked to theory on knowledge types and sourcing methods considering tacit and codified knowledge, which through different constellations form different needs of knowledge sources.   Our empirical approach investigated how the companies used different knowledge sources, namely collaborations, the knowledge ecosystem, and other sources, including networks, monitoring, and mobility. Thereafter, we considered the effects of outstanding factors, including funding and the peripheral region, on knowledge input in innovation.   We identified that companies in the upstream industry node, i.e. those related to launch activities and vehicles, and companies in the downstream node, i.e. those extracting data from space, both use engineering knowledge. Engineering knowledge requires both tacit and some codified knowledge, suggesting similar knowledge inputs for both nodes. However, different node traits lead to different inputs. Upstream companies see low degrees of knowledge transfer, especially from the knowledge ecosystem and from collaborations due to NDAs and intellectual property regards, and tacit knowledge input from external sources is particularly lacking.  Downstream actors see few constraints to using the investigated knowledge sources, although collaborations saw difficulties due to complexities in structuring them. However, many unilateral complementarities are seen from the knowledge ecosystem, leading to higher knowledge input particularly from networks, while also boosting collaborations to some extent. This was also partly observed in upstream companies. Thus, the knowledge ecosystem sees significant use, although much is indirect, while collaborations see less use.   Our main findings are that policymakers and the knowledge ecosystem should focus more on sources of tacit knowledge, such as students, while investing in network-boosting activities as industry events. Companies, especially upstream ones, should utilize collaborations more. Upstream companies should also utilize the local knowledge ecosystem more, as the rights to intellectual property produced by private actors in universities belong to the producer. Regarding future research, we warrant studies on knowledge sourcing in New Space companies and other knowledge sources, such as networks as a compensatory knowledge source.

Wind power is a fast-growing industry (GWEC, 2013) and already accounts for seven percent of the total electricity consumption in the EU. The largest market in the EU, and the third largest in the world, is Germany, with an installed base of 31 GW onshore. This master‟s thesis has examined the German onshore wind power market from a developer perspective, through a market study based on existing literature and semi-structured interviews with industry experts, a case study of a developer competing in the market and a survey, with the aim of investigating the sourcing models used as well as the success factors and challenges the developers are facing.  The study has found that Germany is a large, growing market with a generous feed-in tariff based support scheme, offering low-risk investments in wind power. However, there are many challenges for wind power developers, such as limited availability of designated areas for wind power development, non-uniform regulations, fierce competition and acceptance issues.  The authors believe that the future growth of the German onshore market will come from repowering and that having local contacts and credibility offer distinct advantages in the highly competitive arena.

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Att företag använder sig av global sourcing och har leverantörer i lågkostnadsländer har blivit allt vanligare. Detta för att arbetskraftskostnaden i dessa länder är låg. Men en kostnad som i stället ökar i och med detta är transportkostnaden. Godset behöver transporteras längre sträckor vilket även gör att transportledtiden ökar. Samtidigt ställer kunder allt högre krav på snabba leveranser och de företag som valt global sourcing måste därför många gånger ha stora lager för att kunna möta kundernas krav. De företag som har leverantörer i Asien väljer oftast att transportera godset med sjötransporter då det är det billigaste transportsättet. Dock är det också det transportsätt som har längst transportledtid. Kinas nya infrastrukturprojekt Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) bidrar till att järnvägstransporter kan användas i större utsträckning, men många svenska företag vet inte vilka möjligheter det finns med BRI och järnvägen. Syftet med denna studie är därför att ge svenska företag en ökad förståelse om vad BRI kan bidra med för de företag som använder global sourcing. Studien har uppfyllt sitt syfte genom att göra en fallstudie hos ett svenskt företag som har leverantörer i Asien och visade ett intresse för BRI och järnvägstransporter. Syftet uppfylldes även genom att göra en litteraturstudie där relevant information om studiens ämne inhämtades som grund för studiens teori. Det resultat som framkommer av studien visar vilka motiv och riskfaktorer svenska företag kan ta i beaktning vid användandet av BRI och järnvägstransporter. Utifrån dessa har en modell med riktlinjer utformats för att hjälpa företag att göra valet om de bör använda järnvägen som transportsätt eller inte. Fallföretaget skulle dra nytta av järnvägstransporter på grund av den minskade transportledtiden, den ökade flexibiliteten samt att leverantörer inte behöver vara lokaliserade nära en hamn. Genom denna studie ska fallföretaget och andra svenska företag förstå vad BRI är för något och vilka motiv det kan finnas med att byta transportsätt och fyller därför det kunskaps- och informationsgap som finns gällande detta.