Businesses and humans in general have led to a variety of different social and environmental problems. In this thesis we call on businesses to be the solution to these problems. Therefore, we have developed two research questions:   How do Swedish companies incorporate CSR and sustainability into their business models? and How do Swedish companies create shared value through business models based on sustainability and CSR?   The purpose of these research questions is to discover how Swedish companies incorporate CSR and sustainability into their business models. Also, we aim to see how a business model based on CSR and sustainability can create shared value. We have focused our view of a business model on Bocken et al.’s (2014) three pillars: value proposition, value creation and delivery, and value capture. Furthermore, we have made a distinction between the concepts of sustainability and CSR to see how they impact these different business model pillars. We divided sustainability into two types: weak and strong and broke CSR into internal and external CSR. Porter and Kramer (2011) gave seven examples of how the concept of shared value could be created. Shared value is created when society benefits at the same time a company is making economic gains. To combine the concepts of business model innovation, business models, sustainability, CSR, and shared value we have created a model. The model’s purpose is to see how companies can practically integrate CSR and sustainability into the three business model pillars. Business model innovation was the purpose arena in which a company could change in order to create shared value   After conducting interviews with seven different respondents from six different companies located in northern Sweden we were able to see that both strong and weak sustainability are visible in the value proposition pillar and somewhat visible in the value creation and delivery pillar. On the other hand, both internal and external CSR were only visible in the value creation and delivery pillar. Moreover, we could conclude that shared value was created by all of the respondent’s companies and in addition to Porter and Kramer’s (2011) examples added a new way shared value can be created through spreading ‘green’ knowledge. By using our research as a starting point we were able to identify directions for future research in the fields of business model innovation, business models, sustainability, CSR, and shared value.

The project is a vision from the author for future autonomous vehicles in 2030, designed for Volvo. Volvo is one of the pioneering automotive companies for autonomous driving, concerning safety as a priority and taking sustainable responsibility for a better living condition.  In the not too distant future, the author sees people’s perception of mobility will gradually change from traditional private ownership to the ability to move freely. What if a mobility service, coming along with the district you chose to live in, satisfies individual usage needs vary with daily commuting to outdoor trips or moving plans? This type of mobility solution will be ubiquitous, changing the nature of the way people choose to live and move. During the design exploration, the tools varied from ideation sketches, rough package test, photoshop rendering, clay sketching, 3D modelling and experimental display graphic illustrations. This project has been strongly inspired by Scandinavian design and Volvo design principle. Also, the author expressed her vision for Volvo and materials thoughts for components and interior functions. The project outcome is 2030 Volvo Compact Concept, an autonomous sharing and subscription service provided by the residential community.

This study will provide an overview of mental models in teams and the significance of this particular concept for design teams. Researchers have applied the concept of mental models to understand how people perform tasks on the basis of their knowledge, assumptions, predictions and expectation. An overview is also provided on the relation between performance and mental models and their effect on stakeholders. The implications for design field are discussed. Through the study of two organizations in the same industry, the teams are studied in detail for each of these companies and hence leading to the study of mental models of stakeholders. Through the use of interviews, a detailed analysis is done on the team mental models. The mental models of stack holders and their influence on different aspects of company and team performance are discussed in detail. The methodology for the study of mental models is also proposed in the study. The findings are based on the data collected through interviews in both the organizations. The empirical study is designed in such a way that it investigates further the validity of theoretical concepts. Warid is a major telecommunication brand in Pakistan that provides services in all the regions of the country. Ufone is also a well-known telecommunication brand, known for its innovative and creative TVCs (TV commercial). Interviews with the marketing and sales officials of both these organizations provided an insight into the teams behind their advertising/marketing campaigns and the affect of stakeholders’ mental models on the performance and sales of the companies. The comparative analysis between the theoretical and empirical studies suggests that the quality of mental models is affected by diversity in the team, education and experience of the team members. This may be brought in for future research to further verify the effectiveness of mental models for design teams and eventually the whole organization. Finally the implications of our findings are discussed. / Program: Magisterutbildning i informatik

Shared custody has risen to the fore as one of the most contentious issues facing family law justice systems. Ongoing efforts to implement or contemplate legislative reforms to prescribe a rebuttable presumption for shared custody have been central. Drawing on in-depth, retrospective qualitative interviews with 28 young adults between 18 and 25 years of age, this researcher conducted a thematic analysis and examined children’s perspectives and motivations regarding transitions into and out of shared custody, relationships with parents, and their sense of fairness around decision-making. The dissertation research is presented in a ‘publications format’ and contains an introduction, three self-contained journal-ready publications and an overarching discussion. The introduction provided an overall review of the literature and presented a developing model for tying together the complex strands of existing theoretical and empirical literature. Paper one focused how and why transitions into and out of shared custody happen. Drawing on the metaphor of alchemy, the analysis illustrated that shared custody is not a short-cut to a successful custodial arrangement or parent-child relations. Shared custody blends together complex interactions among elements related to the child’s living situation, maturation and changing notions of fairness, flexibility, the push and pull of relationships, and in some instances, rigid enforcement. The second paper highlighted how participants’ utilized the business strategy of “managing-up” and illustrated how children are active agents in navigating post-separation family relations finding ways to exert their agency to help and protect siblings, manage parental conflict, maintain shared custody to shield their parents and siblings from emotional hurt and initiate contact to maintain parent-child relationships. Including children’s voices in custodial decision-making is predicated on a rights-based doctrine that children ought to have input on decisions that affect their best interests. Participants felt that young children (13 years or less) should have input in how their arrangements were constructed, but not the final say about the type of custodial arrangement. There was general consensus that adolescents (about age 14), should have considerably more input. A final overarching discussion chapter integrated the three papers with the model presented in the introduction and suggests implications for policy and practice.

Shared Services (SS) involves the convergence and streamlining of an organisation’s functions to ensure timely service delivery as effectively and efficiently as possible. As a management structure designed to promote value generation, cost savings and improved service delivery by leveraging on economies of scale, the idea of SS is driven by cost reduction and improvements in quality levels of service and efficiency. Current conventional wisdom is that the potential for SS is increasing due to the increasing costs of changing systems and business requirements for organisations and in implementing and running information systems. In addition, due to commoditisation of large information systems such as enterprise systems, many common, supporting functions across organisations are becoming more similar than not, leading to an increasing overlap in processes and fuelling the notion that it is possible for organisations to derive benefits from collaborating and sharing their common services through an inter-organisational shared services (IOSS) arrangement. While there is some research on traditional SS, very little research has been done on IOSS. In particular, it is unclear what are the potential drivers and inhibitors of IOSS. As the concepts of IOSS and SS are closely related to that of Outsourcing, and their distinction is sometimes blurred, this research has the first objective of seeking a clear conceptual understanding of the differences between SS and Outsourcing (in motivators, arrangements, benefits, disadvantages, etc) and based on this conceptual understanding, the second objective of this research is to develop a decision model (Shared Services Potential model) which would aid organisations in deciding which arrangement would be more appropriate for them to adopt in pursuit of process improvements for their operations. As the context of the study is on universities in higher education sharing administrative services common to or across them and with the assumption that such services were homogenous in nature, this thesis also reports on a case study. The case study involved face to face interviews from representatives of an Australian university to explore the potential for IOSS. Our key findings suggest that it is possible for universities to share services common across them as most of them were currently using the same systems although independently.

Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Master of Technology: Business Administration in Project Management in the Faculty of Business at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology 2013 / Good governance has been and is a growing phenomenon for almost all business organisations regardless of size, profit margins and purpose for existence. Government, quasi-government, non-governmental organisations and even civic organisations have adopted a project-based approach to business. The City of Cape Town Metropolitan Municipality is one such organisation that had adopted a project-based approach to business. The challenge was how to effectively and efficiently implement governance issues around projects and business organisations. Most organisations can easily be misled if issues of governance are not clearly defined and followed. A project-based approach helps in defining the resources needed at specific times, the time required for a specific task and the cost of a specific operation. In a multi-project environment (programme) resources are shared in a well-defined manner. The City of Cape Town Metropolitan Municipality has a huge responsibility in terms of successfully initiating, planning and implementing projects successfully. The magnitude and the dynamic complexities of their operation call for proper governance structures to be established within any municipality if service delivery is the main objective. Managing complex and mega projects calls for certain leadership traits. A fusion of these traits at different management levels will be critical for effective delivery of services to the electorate. Models and plans need to be in place as guidance to successful implementation of projects. A number of people, committees and institutions have developed different governance frameworks that can be adopted by organisations as a guide to good governance. This research is based on King III guide to good governance. Challenges experienced by other Municipalities and business organisations e.g. Nelson Mandela Municipality, Eastern Cape Education Department, Transnet, LeisureNet, Limpopo Provincial government and many others, directly relate to poor governance. This therefore calls for the investigation of the Corporate Services directorate in the City of Cape Town Metropolitan Municipality to establish the level of compliance with what King III had recommended as a framework for good governance. The City of Cape Town Metropolitan Municipality has different general governance frameworks in place. However they do not use them effectively because of different issues identified by the researcher. The major challenges facing the City of Cape Town Metropolitan Municipality are effective governance communication and lack of training in the practice of good governance. There were serious discrepancies when it comes to understanding and interpreting governance issues within the different levels of management. It is expected that an organisation like the City of Cape Town Metropolitan Municipality should have proper communication channels and effective training programmes. The researcher also found that information is not readily available to people who need it most yet the expectation is that information be readily available.

Diploma thesis deals with the topic of shared service center. Aim of this thesis is to charac-terize ICT SSC and propose a formalized procedure for the establishment of ICT SSC in the Czech Republic. To achieve its objective, the thesis is divided into two pats. The first part presents a theoretical framework of shared service centers. Newly acquired knowledge is used in the second part. The second part presents a formalized procedure establishing ICT shared service centers and case study. Case study is based on real project, which was implemented by an international retail group. The author's contribution to this work lies in comprehensive description of the problem and the integration of theory and practice.

Abstract, key words Title of the thesis: Shared residence in Czech and German law The aim of this thesis is to compare the approach to shared residence in the legal order of the Czech Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany, i.e. to find out to what extent the approaches of these countries to shared residence differ. This is examined in relation to selected issues which courts had to deal with when deciding on the shared residence, i.e. the influence of the child's wishes, the parents' will, their ability to communicate and long distance between the parents' households on the suitability of shared residence. Special attention is paid to the presumption of shared residence, or shared residence as a rule. The thesis focuses on the effective regulations. The thesis is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the Czech regulation of the shared residence. The individual chapters explain basic terminology, sources of law, legal regulation of shared residence, case law on the selected issues, including the presumption of shared residence, and some of the specifics of maintenance obligation. The second part of the thesis follows the same structure as the first part. However, there is a special chapter regarding drafts on shared residence as a rule. The third part compares the findings made in the...

Leadership in modern-day schools is changing. School leaders are expected to oversee the physical plant and school finances, as well as to be the instructional leader, personnel officer, public relations specialist, and point person for the accountability efforts at all governmental levels. Principals cannot be experts in every area of school administration; thus, they are more dependent on other members of the educational team. The purpose of this study was to develop and implement a form of shared leadership in an elementary school known as an intelligent hierarchy, to test whether such a model affects the distribution of decision-making, climate, and morale within the school (Leithwood & Mascall, 2008). This was a mixed-methods, action-research project in which the principal of the school served as a participant observer. A leadership team was formed consisting of the principal, teachers, support staff, and parents to aid in the decision-making process. Qualitative data were collected in the form of minutes of leadership team meetings, journal entries by the principal, and minutes of meetings with individual teachers. A modified version of the constant comparative method (Maykut & Morehouse,1994) was used to analyze the qualitative data. Quantitative data were collected with questionnaires administered three times each throughout the course of the study. Data were collected on shared leadership, the distribution of decisions, school climate, and teacher morale. The implementation of the hybrid model of shared leadership led to improvement in the areas of shared leadership, shared decision-making, and employee morale. Improvement was evident in some areas of school climate. The result is a model administrators could implement, either in whole or in part, to track the implementation of shared leadership in their schools. / Ed. D.

The Rappahannock River Basin Commission is undergoing a collaborative water supply planning process for Virginia's Rappahannock River Basin. Participants in the planning process have indicated an interest in technical information about the possible impact conservation programs may have on reducing residential water demand. The potential influence of conservation programs is identified through a literature synthesis and a statistical analysis of residential water demand for a locality within the basin (Stafford County). In the literature synthesis, conservation programs are classified as voluntary or mandatory. Voluntary programs utilize financial incentives (such as water pricing and rebates) or educational incentives (such as radio ads and bill inserts) to encourage conservation, and mandatory programs utilize regulatory incentives (such as plumbing standards and bans on outdoor water use). The water demand statistical model was estimated to more specifically identify how Stafford residential water customers respond to water pricing/rate structure changes (financial incentives), imposition of federal regulations on plumbing standards (regulatory incentives), and a voluntary conservation program utilizing educational incentives. The results indicate that while many studies have found residential customers are responsive to price changes, Stafford residential water users have not significantly changed their water demand in response to price/rate structure changes. Previous literature also suggests federal plumbing standards potentially have a significant impact on water demand. The influence of new plumbing standards in the Stafford demand model was inconclusive and warrants further analysis. Consistent with the literature, voluntary conservation programs utilizing educational incentives alone did not substantially alter residential water demand in Stafford County. / Master of Science