Generally, it is accepted that small businesses are becoming increasingly important in terms of employment, wealth creation, and the development of innovation in the global economy. Unfortunately, many small businesses fail before reaching maturity, mainly due to inadequate entrepreneurial skills to establish and grow their businesses. It is, therefore, vital to understand the management abilities that are required to enable start-up businesses to survive. This study's main aim is to propose a risk management training tool to assist business start-ups to mitigate their risks. This is expected to allow for increased business start-up success rates. The aim of the proposed risk mitigation tool will be to provide training to allow small business owners to deal with challenges they face. The tool should assist with minimising the risk of failure and therefore support increased growth and survival of small businesses. The research questions aimed at achieving the primary objective deal with: *The typical risks per start-up phase for small businesses *How to mitigate the risk per business start-up phase *How best to teach entrepreneurs to identify and manage business start-up risk per phase. The research was conducted by means of a literature and empirical study. The literature study reviewed business start-up phases, challenges facing start-up businesses, project life cycle phases, critical factors leading to project failure, project risk management, and principles of serious games design. The challenges facing start-up businesses were tested empirically in practice by means of a measurement instrument, and subsequently evaluated. The size of the sample used was 58 entrepreneurs from start-up businesses. The results from this study show a need for improvements in the following skills for start-up owners/managers: risk management skills, entrepreneurial skills, people management skill, business management skill, and financial management skill. This study proposed a tool to teach entrepreneurs to identify and manage start-up risks per phase. The tool is proposed to be a blended model tool. Thus, the tool consists of the workshop part; whereby, the facilitator is face-to-face with the trainee, and post-training application-based support. / MSc (Computer Science), North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2014

Generally, it is accepted that small businesses are becoming increasingly important in terms of employment, wealth creation, and the development of innovation in the global economy. Unfortunately, many small businesses fail before reaching maturity, mainly due to inadequate entrepreneurial skills to establish and grow their businesses. It is, therefore, vital to understand the management abilities that are required to enable start-up businesses to survive. This study's main aim is to propose a risk management training tool to assist business start-ups to mitigate their risks. This is expected to allow for increased business start-up success rates. The aim of the proposed risk mitigation tool will be to provide training to allow small business owners to deal with challenges they face. The tool should assist with minimising the risk of failure and therefore support increased growth and survival of small businesses. The research questions aimed at achieving the primary objective deal with: *The typical risks per start-up phase for small businesses *How to mitigate the risk per business start-up phase *How best to teach entrepreneurs to identify and manage business start-up risk per phase. The research was conducted by means of a literature and empirical study. The literature study reviewed business start-up phases, challenges facing start-up businesses, project life cycle phases, critical factors leading to project failure, project risk management, and principles of serious games design. The challenges facing start-up businesses were tested empirically in practice by means of a measurement instrument, and subsequently evaluated. The size of the sample used was 58 entrepreneurs from start-up businesses. The results from this study show a need for improvements in the following skills for start-up owners/managers: risk management skills, entrepreneurial skills, people management skill, business management skill, and financial management skill. This study proposed a tool to teach entrepreneurs to identify and manage start-up risks per phase. The tool is proposed to be a blended model tool. Thus, the tool consists of the workshop part; whereby, the facilitator is face-to-face with the trainee, and post-training application-based support. / MSc (Computer Science), North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2014

<p>The electronic and geometrical structure of free neutral clusters and liquids have been studied using synchrotron-radiation based photoelectron and Auger electron spectroscopy in combination with lineshape modeling. A novel experimental setup has been developed for studies of liquids, based on the liquid microjet technique. Theoretical lineshapes have been computed using both classical (molecular dynamics) and quantum mechanical (mainly density functional theory) methods.</p><p>Clusters are finite ensembles of atoms or molecules, ranging in size from a few to several thousand atoms. Apart from being fundamentally interesting, clusters are also promising as building blocks for nano-technology. In this thesis results are presented for rare-gas and molecular clusters, ranging from weakly van-deer-Waals bonded to hydrogen bonded. It is shown that the combination of core-level photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and lineshape modeling can be used to estimate the sizes of clusters. A model for treating the effect of inter-molecular nuclear relaxation upon ionization is proposed. The structure of single-component molecular clusters are investigated by molecular dynamics simulations, validated against XPS data. Finally, the radial structure of a two-component molecular cluster is investigated by XPS.</p><p>Liquids have been studied for centuries, but still many questions remain regarding the microscopic properties. With the recent development of the liquid microjet technique, new insight into the atomic structure can be obtained. In this thesis we study aqueous solutions using photoelectron and Auger electron spectroscopy (AES). We investigate the structure of surface active molecules by XPS, study the Auger decay after core-level ionization in aqueous potassium chloride (KCl), and follow the changes in molecular structure of glycine as a function of pH.</p>

Onboarding is the process where new employees get to know the organization, their colleagues and what rules and conditions that characterize their new workplace. The goal of onboarding is to get employees to perform, obtain work satisfaction and to feel a commitment and a loyalty to the business.This study aims to get increased understanding of the process by studying experiences from employees at an IT consulting company. The questions that are being answered are about how new employes experience their onboarding process and how managers describes the employees' onboarding process.A qualitative method has been used and empirical data has been collected through semistructured interviews with 12 employees, seven employees and five managers within the selected IT consulting company. The result shows that the onboarding process is formal and structured but that the employees' expresses a need for further improvement. Measures that appear as suggestions for improvement of the studied company’s onboarding process includes development towards mentorship, together with clear formal follow-ups with newly employed. These measures can contribute to an improved experience from start and further work to increase the employees willingness to remain within the organization. / Onboarding är den process där nyanställda medarbetare lär känna organisationen, arbetsgruppen samt vilka regler och villkor som präglar arbetet på deras nya arbetsplats. Målet med onboarding är att få medarbetarna att prestera, känna tillfredsställelse i sitt arbete samt att känna ett engagemang och en lojalitet till verksamheten. Denna studie syftar till att skapa en ökad förståelse för processen genom att studera upplevelser från anställda på ett IT-konsultbolag. De frågeställningar som söks svar på är hur nyanställda medarbetare upplever den onboardingprocess de genomgått, samt på vilket sätt chefer beskriver medarbetarnas onboardingprocess. En kvalitativ metod har använts och empiri har samlats in genom semistrukturerade intervjuer med 12 anställda, varav sju medarbetare och fem chefer inom valt IT-konsultbolag. Resultatet visar på att den studerade verksamheten arbetar formellt och strukturerat med arbetsplatsintroduktion, men att medarbetarnas upplevelser ger uttryck för visst behov av vidare arbete för förbättring. Åtgärder som framkommer som förbättringsförslag av det studerade företagets onboarding innefattar exempelvis ett utökat arbete med nuvarande fadderuppdrag alternativt vidareutveckling av ett mentorskap, tillsammans med tydliga formella uppföljningar med nyanställda medarbetare. Dessa åtgärder kan bidra till en förbättrad upplevelse från start och ett vidare arbete för att få medarbetare att vilja stanna längre inom organisationen.

Entrepreneurship and start-ups are important factors for economic growth and development. As the surrounding innovation ecosystem is becoming increasingly complex, it gets more difficult for entrepreneurs to find the right path. Incubators are important when it comes to facilitating and supporting new ventures. In this research, we conducted 19 semi-structured interviews of which five were held with public incubators, four with private incubators, nine with incubatees and one with Vinnova (a government authority that plays a huge part within the existence of public incubators) in order to gain an understanding of the interplay of the incubation process and the entrepreneurial process. As for analyzing the collected data we used a thematic analysis with an inductive approach. Throughout the coding process, we extracted the following three main topics: role of an incubator, incubation process and interplay. However, a distinction between public and private incubators was approved as applicable that determines the incubators’ purpose, objectives and operations. Our findings suggest that incubators play an important role in supporting and guiding the start-ups by transferring knowledge and asking the right questions as a fundament for the further entrepreneurial process. Continuous communication and expectation management are shown as crucial throughout the interplay of the two processes. Lastly, the disconnection from the incubatees should be done carefully, e.g. through a non-proactive aftercare.

Companies have put much focus on production systems to generate and maintain competitiveness which has contributed in less focus to logistics. The material flow is the process after the main processes and has therefore been regarded as “unimportant”. If the material flow fails, there can be consequences such as inventory-build ups or undersupply of material. Lean thinking is one strategy that may be applied to analyze and identify wastes, but the identification of problems has been harder to detect, while the ability to solve them has not improved at the same rate. Following two research questions has been asked to identify how companies should proceed to improve their inventory management but also what factors contribute to the inventory build-ups.  ·        What may cause excess inventory in manufacturing companies? <ul type="disc">How can a manufacturing company reduce WIP´s? The research method is based on a qualitative approach with an interpretivist research methodology to help answer the questions. A case study was done at a manufacturing company to help answer the research questions. The data has been collected by observations trough section B1 and unstructured interviews with both management and operators. The collected data was later compared to the literature according to the inductive reasoning to be able to make suggestions for improvements. The DMAIC tool has been a central point of this research regarding the mapping of the current state and suggestion of a future state. The case study was conducted at Company X AB in the middle of Sweden which is a company that manufactures components and complete solutions. The focus on production has resulted in less focus on the internal logistics. With the low focus on the internal logistics, inventory build-ups have occurred. The results point to the OEE being a contributing factor to the inventory build-up. The availability of both machines was low and therefore caused the OEE to be low. The low availability was caused by long changeovers, staff shortages, and emergency reparations. The conclusions are that Company X must make improvements so that the factors of the low availability decrease in frequency and severity to reduce the work-in-process (WIP). The improvements should be approached with different lean-tools such as SMED, KANBAN, FIFO and 5S.

This paper examines how small high-tech start-ups in Sweden source their funding and aims to understand the underlying factors affecting these firms financing behaviour, contributing to the relatively limited field of research conducted in Europe. To fulfil the purpose of the study, a multiple case study method was implemented as the study’s research design. A literature review generated in a theoretical framework consisting of capital structure and specifically the pecking order theory. Together with our empirics, consisting of data from interviews with six different companies, the theoretical framework composed the basis for our analysis. The data from our sample displays that these firms initially source their funding through internal funds, suggesting that small high-tech start-up firms in Sweden rely heavily on their own saved funds or other personal resources available to them at the start-up face. Our findings suggests that these firms are limited in their financial options but also that independency and control is to be seen as factors to initially be funded through internal funds. Inconsistent with the pecking order theory, evidence in this paper finds that when looking for external funds, equity is the funding source rather than debt. Two conclusions can be drawn from this. First, the high-tech start-up firms seem to value the advisory of equity investor. Second, capital imperfections makes it hard to access debt. Furthermore, we find that majority of the case companies does not implement a capital structure policy since it seems to limited their financial options.

This degree project starts in the interest for fashion spaces. With this project I want to challenge the way we can experience fashion. I want to push forward the concepts; showroom/ collection.  The body is always important and the starting point in my projects. The body is essential both in the sketching and in the final experience. More specifically, In this degree project I am investigating how body, furniture and puffer jacket can relate to each other. How a puffer jacket collection can be perceived spatially and what will it be then.

Given that the end-customer has become more demanding, the retailer has to deliver products according to the market demands, which have forced manufacturing companies to constantly search for new opportunities to reduce costs and improve efficiency. It is, therefore important to choose suppliers that are able to compete with the market demands.The market demands in the textile industry have lead to shorter product life cycles, which have caused manufacturers to deliver flexibility with high technology to compete successfully on the global market. To achieve the market requirements the underlying factor is to be aware and optimally use and control time. New technology can have a major influence in the production development, if the company choose to take benefit of the advantages, by optimal allocation of the internal resources the productivity and efficiency will increase, to accomplish a competitive advantage. One way to achieve this is by investing in a Unit Production System.In our thesis we have questioned what the main driving forces for an apparel manufacturing company is when it chooses to invest in new technology. Our previous knowledge says that manufacturing companies are forced to invest in a UPS to deliver to the market demands; therefore our sub-question investigates whether market demands impact the investment in new technology.In our theory we have concluded aspects in our study which is important for the reader to have an understanding of. We describe the textile industry from the view of Porters value chain and elaborate some concepts and their definitions, which will be used as a basis throughout our thesis. Finally we present a model of Five forces that determine industry competition made by Porter, to use as an analysis method when investigating whether an UPS may bring a competitive advantage.Our field study has been carried out in South India, where we have visited five textile factories and interviewed managers. We have questioned their decision-making judgment about implementing or choosing not to implement a UPS. Other production factors and general information about the companies have been asked to have an understanding of underlying factors. We have also had the opportunity to observe their manufacturing handling systems and seen how they have chosen to use this in an optimal way.Our previous knowledge of this subject has routed to that our research will be performed in a hermeneutics scientific approach. Our role as researchers has during the study been open-minded, subjective and committed according to a hermeneutics view. / Program: Textilekonomutbildningen

O objetivo de análise da presente investigação prático-teórica é a série "Habitações", composta por 24 autorretratos fotográficos autorais. O processo artístico consistiu em autofotografar-me em ambientes domésticos de permanência provisória, procurando incorporar algumas de suas características visuais, mediante sobreposições e encobrimentos de têxteis sobre o corpo. Muitos dos tecidos utilizados contém estampas ou cores semelhantes ás presentes no entorno da casa, com a intenção de promover a fusão entre o corpo humano e os ambientes domésticos habitados que o circundam. As tentativas de estabelecer relações entre o corpo humano e o ambiente doméstico possibilitam pensar o autorretrato fotográfico como microterritório subjetivo, na acepção de criar por meio da fotografia ínfimos mundos imaginários, oriundos da vida íntima e da reconfiguração de movimentos cotidianos rotineiros como é o caso do ato de deitar-se, pose repetida em todos os trabalhos. A estratégia de encobrir o corpo impossibilita que a fisionomia do sujeito seja mostrada, apontando reconfigurações do conceito tradicional de autorretrato e indagações sobre a superfície e as aparências físicas dos sujeitos e das coisas. Nessa acepção, o autorretrato fotográfico é encarado como alteridade e ficção, o que possibilita pensá-lo como um microterritório subjetivo. Para refletir sobre essas relações de sentido, latente na série "Habitações", recorro aos autores Deleuze e Guattari, bem como a Rouillé (2009), Berger (2014) e Fabris (2004). Instauro diálogos entre "Habitações" e obras contemporâneas e da História da Arte, destacando-se algumas de autoria de artistas como Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593), René Magritte (1898-1967), Nino Cais e Cecília Paredes, as quais contribuem para a análise teórico-reflexiva sobre a prática, materializada na série "Habitações". / The analysis object of this practical and theoretical research is the “Habitations” series, composed of twenty-four photographic self-portraits. The artistic process consisted in self photographing me in domestic environments for temporary stay, seeking to integrate some of its visual characteristics by overlays and cover-ups of textiles on the body. Many of the fabrics used contain prints or colors similar to those presents in the surrounding of the house, with the intention of promoting the fusion between the human body and inhabited domestic environments that surround it. The attempts to establish relations between the human body and the domestic environment enables think the photographic self-portrait as subjective micro territory within the meaning created through photography tiny imaginary worlds, coming from inner life and reconfiguration of routine daily movements, such as the act of lying down, pose repeated in all works. The strategy of covering the body prevents the subject's physiognomy is shown, pointing reconfigurations of the traditional concept of self-portrait and inquiries about the surface and the physical appearance of the subjects and things. In this sense, the photographic self-portrait is seen as otherness and fiction, which enables think of it as a subjective micro territory. To reflect on these relations sense, latent in the “Habitations” series, resort to the authors Deleuze and Guattari, as well as Rouille (2009), Berger (2014) and Fabris (2004). Establish dialogues between "Habitations" and contemporary and Art History works, highlighting some authored by artists like Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593), René Magritte (1898-1967), Nino Cais and Cecilia Paredes, which contribute to the theoretical and reflective analysis of the practice, embodied in the "Habitations" series.