Organizational change and game theory were separately investigated over time. Due to lack of scientific research on the relationships of those two fields of knowledge, an investigation of the game theoretic applications in managing change was performed in this research. Game theoretic applications were structured concerning the analytical use of game theory, strategic formulation with game theory and equilibrium analysis. By a qualitative flexible research method, main problematic areas of organizational change were identified with suitable game theoretic applications. Those problem areas are: making cooperation and coalition in change, group dynamic difficulties and the problem of incentive rewards. In each problem area, game theoretic solutions were discussed to help managers to make better decisions. Four mechanisms were inferred to support the game theoretic analysis of change management problems. Those mechanisms are: sub games, practical games, specific modeling and behavioral studies of games. Finally, an instructional framework was developed to conclude findings and illuminate the game theoretic approach in organizational change.

The globalization has converted the world into a small global village; a village in which there is an ever high stream of contentions and competitions between organizations. In this scenario the most effective and beneficial maneuver for any organization is to create innovative ways in conducting business. This thesis deals with the role of leadership in the phenomena of organizational change and innovation. The leader as a person in charge or as a change agent can manage an organization or the process of organizational change more effectively and successfully if h/she is capable and competent. Rapid technological advancements, high expectations of customers, and ever changing market situations have compelled organizations to incessantly reassess and reevaluate how they work and to understand, adopt and implement changes in their business model in response of changing trends. Organizational change is a demand of the day, and needed for organizations to survive. Organizations now a days, well understand the importance of the matter, and are serious to prepare themselves not only the current, but also for the future trends to get the level of sustainable success, but Along with all of its implications and importance the process of organizational change is also a very complex and challenging.  Research shows that 70 percent of organizational changes fail to get their goals. As leadership has a central role in evolution and cultivating an organization, the process of organizational change demands a very effective and highly competent leadership that is well capable to perceive the most desirable shape of an organization and address the issue of organizational change in most appropriate way. The analysis of literature reviewed and the results of real life cases of organizations which are studied for this thesis shows, that a leadership with the competencies of “Vision” and “Innovative Approach” along with other characteristics can prove more effective to conclude the complex phenomena of organizational change with success. Further the successful organizational change can leads to innovation for organization, which is the key of long term success and sustainability. This thesis as a result proposed a model which is derived from the leadership competencies, organizational change, and sustainable success and innovation literature. This model expresses relationship between successful organizational change and leadership on the basis of h/her characteristics, which are ‘Vision” and “Innovative Approach”. With the help of proposed model this relationship can be viewed graphically.

The overall purpose of this paper is to investigate the implementation of Continuous Improvement (CI) in companies from Sweden, Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Australia and United Kingdom.This paper used the 2nd international CI survey to analyze CI behavior. The analysis was made by comparing the tools in clusters defined by different CI abilities.The major finding is that different CI tool usage depends on the different CI ability

Detta examensarbete är utfört på AB ORWAK i Sävsjö. Företaget producerar balpressar som komprimerar kundernas avfall på ett säkert och smidigt sätt. Kunderna består enbart av andra företag. Arbetet är koncentrerat på endast sex utav företagets artiklar som ingår i olika grupper.För tillfället använder sig företaget utav inköpsmetoder som är baserade på intuition och erfarenhet. Syftet med arbetet har varit att beräkna olika partiformningar och beordringssystem på de sex olika artiklarna både med ett jämnt fördelat behov och med det verkliga fördelade behovet. Intervjuer, litteraturstudier och uppgifter från företagets databas har möjliggjort arbetets genomförande. Inköpsmetoderna har tagits fram med den breda litteraturstudien som stöd där gruppen har jämfört de olika inköpsmetoderna mot varandra.Resultatet visar vilken inköpsmetod som lämpar sig bäst för varje grupp. Det visar även hur stor kvantitet som ska köpas hem, när inleverans ska ske och hur stort säkerhetslagret ska vara för de sex olika artiklarna både för ett jämnt fördelat behov och för ett verkligt fördelat behov. Resultatet av beräkningarna visas i bilagorna.Beräkningarna på de sex olika artiklarna kan företaget använda som mall ifall de vill gå vidare med arbetet. A-klass artiklarna är de artiklar som först och främst bör ses över eftersom de är de dyraste artiklarna att köpa in och ta hand om. Vissa metoder kan inte användas på vissa artiklar i företaget pga. faktorer som volymvärde, behov, begräsningar i tid, resurser samt leverantörernas krav på minsta inköpskvantitet.

The Transport division is responsible for the internal transports on Sandvik Material Technology AB. At the moment there is no clear picture of how the straddle carriers are moving at the division Primary Products and if it is working in a satisfying way. It is important to see the whole picture of the transportation flow so improvements can be made. The purpose of this essay is to survey and analyse the truck flow in a Lean Production perspective. The essay is delimited to only include straddle carriers transportation ways in the Primary Products division. To survey the truck flow we have used a method called Walkthrough. This means that we have walked thorough the whole production flow and interviewed some of the employed on the way to get the necessary information. We have also made an extensive literature study to gather all the necessary theories that is relevant for this essay. Since 2003 Sandvik Material Technology is running a project called “ledtidsprojektet”, the purpose of this project is to create a more efficient production. This project is based on the Japanese philosophy Lean Production but is audited to be suitable to Sandviks organisation. Today most of the producing divisions within SMT are working according to ”ledtidsprogrammet”, unfortunately it is not introduced on the Transport division yet. The result we got by studying the use of the straddle carriers showed that 40 % where with cargo, 35 % without and 25 % where remaining times were breaks are included. The basis of the study is from a GPS-transmitter which is placed on one of the straddle carrier. We have also made our own study where we followed on the straddle carrier and measured the time for the different activities. To get a more statistical secured investigation it is necessary to make a more extensive study, when these study where made during a limited time. On the basis of the truck flows survey some suggestions for improvements have been identified. It has showed that today’s key measurements have to be overlooked to give a fair picture of the situation. They also have to improve the way they are planning the transports. This can be made by better communication with the producing divisions. For the straddle carriers to be more Lean first the producing divisions have to work according to the Lean philosophy. It is up to them to try to reduce the stock level and get a more evenly production.

Large scale companies have massive information flows in their administrative departments. This often creates problems when there is a lack of communication both internally and with internal partners such as sales units. Sandvik SMT Market Service (SBMS) is no exception in this case. They got big problems with their communication with the sales units especially when it concerns the mail traffic and routing of information. Today SBMS have three regional mailboxes where the SU’s (Sales Unit) send their mails depending on which region they belong to. This structure does not function as intended and creates an overload which leads to long response times. Therefore the market service manager Jonas Hofvenstam wanted us to investigate this problem area with the possibility of segmenting the mailboxes including a tagging system and to perform a review of the sales tools portal in order to shorten the response times and decrease the mail traffic. The outcome of this paper was suggestions/proposals regarding how to structure the common mailboxes, illustration of a tagging system for the mails and suggestions of how to improve the sales tools portal. We also made recommendations on how to take these suggestions into action including step by step instructions to make it easier when performing an implementation.

This thesis has been done on a haulage contractor company named GP-Last (AB Gustav Perssons Åkeri) and the purpose with the paper was to analyse their traffic from Malmö to Stockholm and leave suggestions on efforts that GP-Last can use to increase their level of transportation quality. This has been done with two main questions, which problem do they have today and which efforts they need to do to solve their problems? Through a case study with interviews as method to collect data it showed that GP-Last had four main problems.         Not enough information about their freights. The transport planning unit in Malmö doesn’t have the exact delivery address when GP-Last begins to bring in the gods.         There are no clear routes. The transport planning unit in Malmö doesn’t know how the staffs in Bromma want the trucks to be loaded.         Inadequate communication between the two sites in Malmö and Bromma. The staffs in Malmö don’t get informed about their mistakes when they load the trucks wrong which results in that the same mistakes are being repeated.         Lack of attention about how many mistakes that are made. GP-Last have no information about how many mistakes that is being made and how long time it takes to fix the mistakes.     The efforts that GP-Last has to make to solve these problem is first to inform Schenker, the company that receives the booking of the freights, about the importance of information about the freights that the unit of transport planning needs. A route list was made in consultation with staff in Bromma that’s going to help the transport planning unit in Malmö. By adopting deviation report when a truck isn’t correctly loaded leads to better communication between the to sites and GP-Last gets good information about how many mistakes that are being made and how long time it takes to fix them.

Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka hur Scania hanterar försörjningen av elektroniska styrenheter under sina produkters livslängd och hur de hanterar relationen med de leverantörer som de köper styrenheter av. Som teoretisk grund har en etablerad relationsmodell och försörjningsmetoder inhämtade från flygindustrin använts. För att besvara frågorna har tre intervjuer genomförts. Två gjordes med anställda på Scania och den tredje med Bosch, en underleverantör till Scania. Det vi kommit fram till är att:  Det finns inte ett enda sätt att hantera tillgången av komponenter. Att använda ett antal metoder möjliggör att lösa tillgången på det sätt som lämpar sig bäst för just den aktuella komponenten.  Relationen med leverantören är enligt vår teori att betrakta som ”normal”. Det är dock något överraskande att relationen inte är djupare inom ett så pass komplicerat område.  Det finns fortfarande utvecklingsmöjligheter inom området. Den här uppsatsen ligger under ämnet industriell marknadsföring.

This report is a result of a project that been conducted on System Andersson. System Andersson sells and develops MPS-systems for small and medium sized manufacturing companies. System Andersson are today located in the central parts of Jönköping and has about 20 employees. The goal for the project is to develop a new version of Andersson Qwick mps. The project has been divided into a number of smaller projects were the authors been part of the planning module project. The purpose of this part of the project is to investigate which functions that is going to be included in the new MPS-system. The authors part of the projects started off from formulations of questions that been stated in the initial phase of the project.   Two perspectives is brought forward in this report were the authors present what functions  that is available in system today and also which functions that System Anderssons future customers have the need for. The methods used are mapping, interviews and also literature studies that been of great use to answer the questions stated. A mapping of five MPS-systems, including System Andersson, Jeeves, Pyramid, EQ-Plan and Monitor has been conducted.   The results from the review of the mapping shows that System Andersson has the least amount of functions, 21 out of 51. Jeeves offered the greatest amount of functions and thereafter Monitor, Pyramid and EQ-Plan. The area where System Andersson performed best was in the material planning section. Beyond this mapping a prioritisation of the functions has been made by employees of System Andersson. This prioritization showed that many of the 51 functions received a high priority and a small amount of functions received a low priority. If the mapping and the prioritisation is brought together the results show that there was a great amount of functions that received a  high priority that were not included in the system used and sold by System Andersson today. The second part of the results is a number of interviews were the purpose is to create a reference base were parallels can be drawn between the mapping and the prioritisation made by System Andersson. The study show where System Andersson today is positioned in the volym/variant matrix and were the competitors is situated. The results shows that System Andersson miss a number of functions compared to their target group to supply other manufacturing methods and demands of adjacent markets.   The functions that are desirable to implement in the new system to gain more market shares in adjacent markets is:   <ul type="disc">A Graphical planning tool A net requirement rapport Daily planning tool

Recruitment can include everything from hiring a stand-in for the summer to finding an executive for a big company. When hiring an executive is it important for the company that the right person gets the right job. There is little information in Swedish literature that explains how executive recruitment separates from ordinary recruitment. Neither is there any information about how internal and external executive recruitment are separated. When a recruitment process starts it is important to do a thorough preparatory work. This can be done by doing a work analyse, or a revision of the job description which is mostly used in executive recruitment. After this a specification of requirements is formed, the specification is a guide that the company uses to specify what kind of person they want to hire. The search of candidates for a position can be done in several different ways. The company has to decide if they should do the process by themselves or if a recruitment firm should be consulted, which is common today. There are several ways of searching candidates, the most common today is advertising in different media or using the employment service. The company also have to make a decision considering if the search should be done internal or external, or both ways. When suitable candidates have been chosen it is time for interviews and testing. At this time the recruiter meets the candidate for the first time and creates a picture of him or her. Testing is often used as a complement to the interview to confirm or deny feelings or suspicions that has arisen during the process. Another way of doing this is by contacting references, it is important to be aware of the fact that references often just have good things to say about the candidate. There is a risk with this considering that the whole truth might not come out. There are many different ways of making the decision who to hire, most important is though to use the specification of requirements as basic data. It is not always a need that all demands in the specifications are fulfilled, the candidates other qualifications can be more important. During this study it has come to our knowledge that the recruitment process for hiring executives are not that different from the process of hiring other co-workers. The biggest difference is that companies often choose to outsource the process to a consult. The companies in this study are quite small and think that they don’t have the right competence to find people with the right qualifications themselves. They think that it is better to pay money to the consultant than risk that the recruitment goes wrong and they have to do the process all over again. Companies today are more interested in recruiting executives from outside the company. In a time of changes they want an objective point of view to be able to survive in business. Once again there are no right or wrong way for the company to choose, but to search both internal and external might be the best solution to minimize the risk of overlooking the best candidate. Being able to advance in the company is a big push for many employees to work harder. / En rekrytering kan handla om allt ifrån att anställa en sommarvikarie till att hitta en ny chef för ett stort företag. Att anställa en ny chef är en omfattande process då det gäller för företaget att hitta rätt person för tjänsten. I litteraturen finns mycket beskrivet om hur en rekryteringsprocess går till och denna studie handlar om att undersöka huruvida rekrytering av chefer skiljer sig från rekrytering av övriga medarbetare eller inte samt om det finns några skillnader mellan intern och extern chefsrekrytering. När en rekryteringsprocess påbörjas är det viktigt att göra ett grundligt förarbete. Detta kan ske i form av en arbetsanalys, eller en revidering av en befattningsbeskrivning, vilket är vanligast vid rekrytering av chefer. Därefter utarbetas en kravspecifikation som ligger till grund för den fortsatta processen, det är den som specificerar vad det är företaget är ute efter. Att söka efter kandidater till en tjänst kan ske på flera olika sätt. Företaget som ska rekrytera måste fatta ett beslut om de ska genomföra denna del av processen själva eller lägga ut det på ett rekryteringsföretag, vilket blir allt vanligare. Det finns flera olika sökvägar att använda sig av och vanligast är annonser i olika media samt Arbetsförmedlingen. Företaget måste också fatta ett beslut om kandidater ska sökas internt eller externt, eller kanske både och. När lämpliga kandidater har vals ut är det dags för intervjuer och tester. Det är i detta skede som rekryteraren på företaget träffar kandidaten och bildar sig en uppfattning om honom eller henne. Tester används oftast som ett komplement till själva intervjun för att bekräfta eller dementera känslor eller misstankar som har uppstått. Ytterligare sätt att göra detta på är att kontakta kandidatens referenser, men det gäller att vara uppmärksam för referenser är ofta någon som bara har bra saker att säga om kandidaten. Det finns en risk att hela sanningen inte kommer fram. Det finns många olika varianter på hur beslut om anställning kan fattas, det viktigaste är dock att den kravspecifikation som utarbetades i början av processen används som underlag. Men det är inte säkert att alla krav måste vara uppfyllda, i vissa fall kan andra egenskaper väga tyngre än att alla krav uppfylls. Under denna studie har det framkommit att rekryteringsprocessen inte skiljer sig så mycket åt för chefer och andra medarbetare. Den största skillnaden är att företagen ofta väljer att lägga ut denna typ av rekrytering på så kallade rekryteringsföretag. Detta innebär att en konsult sköter större delen av processen. Företagen som medverkat i studien är relativt små och anser att de inte har den rätta kompetensen i alla lägen för att hitta den mest kvalificerade kandidaten. För dem finns det en större nytta i att låta rekryteringen kosta pengar istället för att den ska bli fel och måste göras om. I dagsläget är företagen mer intresserade av att rekrytera sina chefer utanför företaget, i en tid av förändring vill alla ha en objektiv syn för att kunna hävda sig på den tuffa marknaden. Återigen finns det inget rätt eller fel för vilken väg företaget väljer att gå, men att söka både internt och externt torde vara den bästa lösningen för att inte missa den bästa kandidaten. Att kunna avancera inom företaget är en stor sporre för många anställda att arbeta lite hårdare.