The overall aim of this master project was to create an audio record consisting of seven tracks that are both cohesive and very individual at the same time. The pieces are thought to showcase the diversity of my creative identity as a composer and music producer and will represent my individual way of composing and producing music freed from all external influences in the best way possible. This written part of the thesis is a documentation and critical reflection as well as investigation of the creation process: from sorting out the original material, writing, producing and arranging over to mixing and mastering. The observations I make are the essential part of investigating my own creative identity as a music producer and composer. In addition to the audio record and its critical reflection, this thesis will also state remarks on three time management methods I apply onto my creation process in order to observe their effects on my working routine. / Det övergripande målet för detta examensarbete var att skapa en ljudinspelning bestående av sju låtar som är både sammanhängande och mycket individuella samtidigt. Låtarna ska presentera mångfalden av min kreativa identitet som kompositör och musikproducent och ska representera mitt individuella sätt att komponera och producera musik befriad från alla yttre influenser på bästa möjliga sätt. Denna masteruppsats är en dokumentation och kritisk reflektion samt en undersökning av skapandeprocessen: från att sortera ur originalmaterialet, skriva, producera och arrangera till mixning och mastering. Observationerna jag gör är den väsentliga delen av att undersöka min egen kreativa identitet som musikproducent och kompositör. Förutom ljudinspelningen och dess kritiska reflektion kommer denna masteruppsats också att ge kommentarer om tre metoder för time management som jag använder under min skapandeprocess för att observera effekterna på min arbetsrutin.

Nowadays, the nature of the projects has changed to be unique, uncertain, ambiguous,complex and innovative. It becomes hard to plan in advance the project progress, asdeviations from plans and unpredictable changes occur more frequently. This can bespecifically observed in the software development industry which needs to constantlymeet customers’ rapidly changed requirements. Traditionally, software projects aredeveloped through a plan-driven approach which emphasizes an overall project plan andcontrol process in terms of project management. Recently, this has been challenged byagile approach that focuses on flexibility to quickly meet changing requirements, andthese new agile methods provoked huge interest and got more and more popular andwidely applied especially in IT industry. However, the popularity does not mean theagile methods have advantage over traditional plan-based project management methods.In fact, both methods have own advantages and disadvantages and cannot be fullyreplaced by each other. Therefore, it becomes important and necessary for companymanagement to know how to select a suitable method for the new software developmentproject to get the maximum benefits.The purpose of this study is to describe different project management methods(traditional plan-driven and agile methods) and their various consequences for themanagement of software-development projects. Additionally, a more practical purposeis to suggest on what grounds a choice between methods may be made. Morespecifically, this research aims to provide the possible solution on how to selecttraditional plan-driven or agile project management method for managing a newsoftware development project. The research conducted a qualitative study in a casecompany of IT industry through several semi-structured interviews and questionnaireswith experienced and knowledgeable employees. It started with the analysis andcomparison of traditional and agile project management methods’ characteristics andapplication domains based on two specific examples (PROPS and Scrum) selected fromtraditional and agile project management methods respectively, in order to identify a setof preliminary outstanding characteristics which could be used to help IT company tochoose project management methods for new software development projects. Theempirical data obtained from interviews of case company was investigated to verifythese characteristics based on the literature review, and further adjusted thecharacteristics identification. After going through the whole research process, finallyresearchers identified the most suitable characteristics that were important both intheory and practice to examine on what ground a software development company needsto base the selection of project management methods. These suitable characteristics are:Project Complexity, Communication, Competencies and Requirements, in order to helpselect the best management way for the specific project.

This thesis deals with the way that values get taken up by managers and leaders in international non-governmental organisations (INGOs), organisations which already have a rich history of public appeals to values. By ”values‘ I take to mean those generalised and idealising statements, such as the aspiration to ”mutual respect‘, ”equity and justice‘ ”honesty and transparency‘ in dealings with others, which usually accompany the organisation‘s vision and mission statements. The thesis sets out the argument that modern management methods based on systems thinking have been imported largely uncritically into the INGO sector, and in situations where the future is uncertain, or where there is difficulty or conflict, managers often attempt to cover over this conflict or uncertainty with an appeal to values which pictures an idealised future or an imaginary unity. Further, the thesis attempts to explore this phenomenon and to uncover some of the ethical issues that arise in the process of an appeal to unity when I am engaged as a consultant in working with managers in the INGO-sector. The thesis considers how my own practice as a consultant has changed and developed as a consequence of considering these phenomena more intensely and acting on the conclusions from these reflections. The research was prompted by my feelings of being co-opted into a process that encouraged conformity in INGOs in a way that left me feeling uncomfortable. In exploration of this discomfort and as student in a faculty pursuing the conceptual development of professional practice I have drawn broadly on the phenomenological tradition of research as a way of better understanding what I was encountering and how to make better sense of it. The method underpinning this thesis uses narrative, and reflection on narrative with a community of enquirers, which has included both fellow students on the course, as well as a wider group of interested academics. I have used as my research material my own experience of working with INGOs as a consultant and have reflected on those occasions when the discussion of values is very much to the fore. It has also meant my locating the discussion of values in a wider discourse of philosophy, sociology and psychology and mounting a critique of the dominant paradigm for understanding values in current management and organisational change literature, which is often understood as a tool for management to bring about employee alignment. Instead, I have set out an emergent understanding of values as radically social phenomena arising in the daily interaction between engaged human beings. I argue that, because of our interdependence, we are obliged to renegotiate our value commitments on a daily basis as a way of working out how we can continue together. This has involved developing a different understanding of the relationship between self and other, and a more nuanced insight into the workings of groups and the relationships of power that arise between people. Engaging with values in INGOs as a consultant invited into conversations in INGOs has thus involved my paying attention to power relating between myself and others, and the dialectic between the good and the right. Reflecting on the ethical aspects of my own consultancy practice has involved an investigation into what we might mean by ethical practice, which is generally understood to be following a series of linear rules and paradigms. I have begun to develop in its stead a theory of consultancy practice based on concepts of mutual recognition and mutual adjustment that create more space for movement within the broader social processes that can severely constrain what it is and is not possible to say and do. This thesis contributes to knowledge in the field of the management of INGOs by being one of the first to offer a critique of accepted paradigms of management theory, particularly as it relates to the appeal to values as part of strategy formation. Moreover, the emergent and social theory of values that I develop as a foil to more orthodox understandings of the role of values in the management of INGOs is also unique. My arguments concerning the ethical practice of consultancy in the domain, underpinned by a dialectical engagement of self and other, are particularly relevant to the field in which I am involved where the encounter with difference is inevitable. In the literature on management of INGOs, where research on consultancy practice is still rather thin and orthodox, my argument for a different understanding of ethical practice offers a considerable divergence of approach. In pointing to the similarities between the pressures facing INGO and private sector organisations I have also called into question the uniqueness that many scholars claim for the current management practice in INGOs. My attempts to use narrative and reflection on narrative as a method that strives to articulate what a different practice might look like should also make a new contribution to the debate about method, and ways of discussing management practice, in international development.

The master thesis deals with the issue of risk management in a selected business entity. The subject of the research is the risks of the selected entity. The object of the research is a Slovak company with the changed name Betolta, a.s., that main activity is the production of reinforced concrete precast units. The thesis is divided into seven chapters. The thesis deals in more detail with the current state of the researched issues, identification, analysis and evaluation of risks using the methods of strategic situational analysis. The conclusion of the work deals with proposals and recommendations for improving the identified situation.

Pain has caused innumerable suffering to countless individuals and has impacted their lives in profound ways. There are many detrimental effects of pain including decreased ability to work, depression, isolation, increased pharmaceutical use, and addiction. Pain, on a worldwide scale, remains ineffectively treated and alternative solutions for managing pain are needed. Pain is conventionally treated with pharmaceuticals, primarily narcotics. Continuation of medications for these painful conditions often causes dependence and addiction. The pain and narcotics cycle contributes to the opioid epidemic. The cost in human lives is immense. Pulsed Electromagnetic Field (PEMF) is a holistic modality used for various ailments. This exploratory descriptive research study focused on the experience of individuals using the Micro-Pulse, PEMF, for pain relief. The mind/body connection was a foundation of the holistic theoretical framework for this study. The theoretical grounding for this study was Watson’s (2018) theory of human caring, which is based on a foundation of holistic healing incorporating mind, emotional body, physical body, and spirit for treatment of pain. Understanding an individual’s experience of pain relief will potentially raise awareness and promote the exploration of holistic therapeutic approaches for patients in pain. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2019. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

<p>Syftet med uppsatsen är att ge en bild av hur generella projektledningsmetoder används inom reklambranschen. Vi ville undersöka vilka aspekter av projektledningen som kan påverkas av de speciella förutsättningar som finns i reklambranschen. Varje reklamprojekt innehåller en skapandeprocess, och vi ville se hur sådant påverkar projektledningen.</p><p>Vi sammanställde först ett antal generella projektledningsmetoder för att få en teoretisk bild av hur projekt kan bedrivas. För att ge läsaren en inblick i reklambranschen och hur reklam skapas, beskrev vi även reklam ur ett teoretiskt perspektiv.</p><p>Med utgång från vår teori, genomförde vi en kvalitativ studie av sju reklambolag i Karlstad. Vi gjorde djupintervjuer med en projektledare från respektive byrå, under vilka de fick beskriva sitt projektarbete. Det empiriska resultatet från intervjuerna jämfördes sedan med den teori som låg till grund för undersökningen.</p><p>Undersökningen visade att reklambyråerna i stor utsträckning använde sig av projektledningsmetoder, i vissa fall utan att de själva var medvetna om det. Förstudien är inte särskilt omfattande från byråernas sida. Det är istället kunden som genomför det mesta av det arbete som vi skulle kalla förstudie. Planeringen av den kreativa arbetsprocessen var i de flesta fall så ostrukturerad som vi på förhand trott. Vi märkte även från vissa byråer en ovilja att strukturera planeringsarbetet, något som verkade bero på branschtraditioner. Efter att planeringen för projektet är gjord och idén tagits fram, har reklambyråerna ofta en produktionsledare som styr genomförandefasen. Projektledarna har då en marginaliserad roll, vilket är en skillnad gentemot gängse metodbeskrivningar inom akademin och näringslivet. Även om det fanns brister i planeringsarbetet, hade byråerna väl utarbetade rutiner inom andra delar av projektarbetet, framförallt för acceptansproceduren mellan byrå och kund.</p><p>Byråerna visade genomgående brister när det gäller rutiner för erfarenhetsutbyte mellan projekt. Slutrapporter skrivs inte, och lärdomar stannar därför hos dem som deltagit i det specifika projektet. Det riskerar att göra reklambyråerna beroende av att medarbetare stannar inom företaget.</p> / <p>The purpose of this essay was to study to which extent project management methods are used in advertising projects. We wanted to investigate which aspects of project management can be affected by the special conditions characterizing the advertisement business. All advertising projects demand a process of creation, and we wanted to see how that can affect the project management.</p><p>In order to create a picture of how projects can be run from a theoretic point of view, we made a compilation of a number of general project management methods. To give the reader an insight in the advertisement business and in how advertisement is produced, we also described advertisement from a theoretic point of view.</p><p>With our theoretic view as base, we carried out a qualitative study of seven local advertising agencies. We made in-depth interviews with project managers from all seven agencies respectively, during which they described their project processes. The empirical result from the interviews was then compared with the theories that formed the basis of the study.</p><p>The study showed that the advertising agencies to a great extent used project management methods, in some cases without themselves being aware of it. The agencies’ feasibility study is not especially comprehensive. Instead it is the clients that perform most of the work that we associate with feasibility studies. The planning of the creative work process was in most cases as unstructured as we had expected. We also noticed unwillingness from some agencies to make the planning process more structured, something that seemed to be due to business traditions. After the project planning is done and the idea for the campaign has been developed, the agencies often have a production manager to control the project execution phase. During the execution phase, the project manager has a marginalized role, something that differs from an academic view of project management. Even if the agencies had deficiencies in their planning processes, they had well elaborated acceptance procedures.</p><p>All agencies lacked routines for exchange of experience between projects. Final reports are not written, and lessons learned stay within the project team. This leaves the success of the agencies depending on their co-workers staying in the company.</p>

Since the nineties the words customer, effectiveness and quality have become part of everyday school life. Municipalities’ makes regular customer surveys to measure both independent schools as municipal schools ' quality. A common method for customer research and background studies is that parents and students are asked to respond to simple Web-based surveys. Customer satisfaction and/or customer dissatisfaction options are presented in tabular form, based on the percentage that expresses a particular position within a query. The measure of customer satisfaction and quality, risks being the ability to satisfy individual targets – not to maximize public benefit. The school is the cutoff point between mission to nurture democratic citizenship and to compete for students with other providers. This situation creates many a dilemma – not least when the measure of quality is squeezed into quality methods that can only measure what is easily measurable, such as statistics of amount of examination, national test scores and customer satisfaction. Can the school's complex operations, quality and effectiveness (customer value) be measured with the industry and business methods, parameters and in percent? The aim of my study is to investigate if these methods and the quality management practice had an impact at school and if so – discuss how and if this influenced the writing of quality reports. Ten randomly selected schools ' quality reports have been examined quantitatively, qualitatively analyzed and interpreted. It is possible to find traces of industrial-quality thinking in quality reports and see a link to the New Public Management? The notion that quantity measure ratings statistics and results of national tests is assumed to indicate schools' quality. Quality reports in elementary school does not work for describing schools quality so that  quality becomes possible to compare between different schools, nor as a concrete tool to drive school improvement and quality improvements in schools' everyday work.

Software development processes such as the Waterfall process and Extreme Programming are Project Management Methods (PMMs) which are well known and widely used. However, conventional Project Management (PM) lacks the process concepts expressed in PMMs, and the connection between PMMs and PM is not much explored in the literature. Our research problem is to make this connection. We present data models for PM and PMM, in a framework that can articulate the PM-to-PMM relationship, illustrating with simple examples. Tools and visualizations created in terms of our framework can make use of the familiarity, history and context of project management tools, and the prescriptiveness and reactivity of PMMs, and we believe these may assist the management of complicated projects, such as IT projects. Project Mentor, a prototype Java/XML implementation of the framework semantics, can create and then revise a PMM-aware project, conforming to a specified PMM. The PM-to-PMM connection is persistent in project data, and we describe a visualization of the footsteps of a PMM in project data that does not rely on the state of a PMM process. The visualization can also be used by Project Mentor, to indicate the state of a PMM. We test for possible applications of our framework with a case study and survey of some existing project data, and conclude with a description of further work.

There are many methods and management techniques, and given that competition strengthens significantly, it is necessary to introduce new management trends and elements. Prepared management is not afraid to go to change and achieve long-term strategic objectives. The aim of this study is to analyze the methods and techniques used by the proceedings of company and from the findings propose measures that would improve the current situation and contribute to the effectiveness of activities carried out and control systems. The research results showed that both organizations are applying modern techniques in management, the differences are minimal. Companies are approaching a general trend in the use of a participatory management style. The research results demonstrate that in the managerial positions are also women. The two companies does not competitive analysis. There are appeals for a change. In conclusion, the two companies pay attention to management systems, and are aware of the managers? mission in modern company.

The diploma thesis focuses on preparing and application of controlling tools in a medium sized growing company. Because of the fact that the system of controlling almost did not exist in that company theoretical part of the thesis describes the term of controlling itself, its goals, functions, possible benefits and ways in which companies can approach to controlling. The practical part of the thesis focuses on three key company fields. It is issue of price formation, material management and controlling of orders. For each of these fields the original (and in view of controlling unsatisfactory) state has been mentioned. After that the way of application of controlling measures in each field has been described. Thanks to sufficient time interval it was possible to evaluate results of applied measures and outline future steps that could lead in improvement of company controlling.