Background: The increasing competition on the market demand both companies and supply chains to find optimal solutions. The edeavour to reduce inventory levels is a part of this. Earlier, inventory was seen upon as valuable assets, but today they tend to be more and more negative in the eyes of the companies. Inventory demands capital, handling, and space. Therefore inventory creates unnecessary costs.

AbstractThe purpose with this essay has been to gain a greater understanding and clarify how an arena can create value within place marketing and development of a place brand. This will be achieved through a description of which values an arena causes in the surrounding areas and an understanding of how these values can be interpreted through the place brand. We decided to base our study according to the following two questions:1. What are the underlying reasons why there has been such a big trend with arena project?2.

On the 17th of January 2002 the Swedish government presented a bill to theSwedish parliament, proposing ways of strengthening the Swedish democracythrough reforms for increased elements of participatory democracy. A publicreport on the state of the Swedish democracy had been released two years earlierwith similar enthusiasm for participatory democracy. However, the participatoryideals of these two documents were strongly criticised by a group of scholars.The aim of this thesis is to analyze and compare the arguments articulatedbetween the years 2000 and 2002 by the Actors mentioned above, and to examinetheir relation to arguments concerning political participation, articulated bythinkers from previous times. By classifying the arguments into different groupsdepending on their content I find that both parties in the Swedish argumentationfocus on the effects of participatory democracy on political equality, on theefficiency of the political decision-making and the quality of the decisions beingmade, and finally on the personal character of the citizens. Among the argumentsarticulated by thinkers from previous times, similarities with the Swedishargumentation can be seen as well as important differences.

Addressing increasing global environmental problems requires greater resource efficiency, and one way of working towards this is through industrial symbiosis. Industrial symbiosis means that companies collaborate through sharing of resources for collective benefits. The documented benefits of working with industrial symbiosis indicate that there is potential for companies to operate commercially with facilitation of industrial symbiosis. An interesting company to study within this context is Econova. Econova operates within the recycling and gardening industry and has been identified as a possible catalyst for industrial symbiosis.

After the orange revolution in Ukraine, hope was given to achieve fullydemocracy in the whole society. However, this has not been the outcome; theUkrainian public administration still has problems to deliver what the societydemands. By answering the question: ?Which problems have the publicadministration to become democratic and how can we explain them??, we analyzethe failures within the public administration to accomplish democratic procedures.The empirical material in this thesis is mainly obtained from interviews andresearch during a field study in Ukraine. The problems for the civil servants inUkraine to act as guardians of the society are strongly connected to an inadequateprofessional knowledge.

The Swedish political organization is subject for the investigation of this thesis, with regard to the realization of universal human rights. There is a discrepancy between the Swedish state's international undertakings in legally binding treaties and theactualization of human rights by local authorities. The local authorities are ruled by a complex function of both national and local government. Of interest here, is the effect that these, and other organizational aspects, between the national and the local, have for the realization of human rights in local authorities. Also, the discrepancy between the national and the local is attempted to be understood.

An environmental review has been carried out at FORIA AB, a transportation- and machine service company, to analyze the company?s environmental aspects from the transportation segment. This report describes the essential background and the methods of identifying and evaluate the environmental aspects. It also describes how the work with the environmental aspects often vary between different Actors. The design of the ISO 14001 is intentionally broad in order to apply on all sorts of activities and organizations.

Nowadays, the world around us is changing faster and faster, the globalization is increasing and harder competition puts extra pressure on companies to be more innovative than ever before. One of the fastest changing industries is the IT industry where the Actors always have to be up to date to keep their competitive advantage. The authors want to find out what makes some companies in this industry more innovative than others by examining what internal elements that are necessary for innovation. Much research has already been carried out within the field of innovation and especially about innovation management, although less research exists about smaller, non high tech service companies. Therefore the authors also tries to find out how applicable today?s theories are on this special field and thereby fill a smaller gap in today?s research.

AbstractThe purpose with this essay has been to gain a greater understanding and clarify how an arena can create value within place marketing and development of a place brand. This will be achieved through a description of which values an arena causes in the surrounding areas and an understanding of how these values can be interpreted through the place brand. We decided to base our study according to the following two questions:1. What are the underlying reasons why there has been such a big trend with arena project?2.

Economic changes, globalization and an aging population are phenomena that haveaffected the municipal development in the late 1900s. To address these challenges,cooperation in specific areas between municipalities in the 1990- and 2000's hasincreased. This is referred to in the literature as municipal cooperation. IT is one ofthese areas of collaboration and is seen as a potential solution to streamline municipaloperations. IT implementations are often complex projects involving a large number ofpeople.

This case study, ?The sense of place in a courtyard in Gothenburg?, examines whether the city planners? vision correspond to the residents? perception regarding the sense of place and the physical environment in a courtyard in Gothenburg. By carrying out a questionnaire survey, the inhabitants? perception has been explicated, which we have then compared to the total vision for the design of the courtyard that we have gathered from doing interviews with the planning executive, the developer and the landscape architect as well as reviewing the development plan. The study has shown that the vision coincides relatively well with the residents? perception, but it differenciates when it comes to social aspects.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine how five childrens librarians in Ireland and five in Sweden interpret and implement the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in public libraries. This study is hermeneutic. Using a qualitative method consisting of ten interviews with childrens librarians and structural fActors such as; library policies and laws; together with an insight into Irelands political, social and economical history and the historical development of childrens public libraries in Sweden and Ireland, has enabled us to create an understanding for the interviewees statements. Anthony Giddens structuration theory has been used for the analysis, helping us to determine how the duality between the structure, the Actors and their action effect the interpretation and implementation of the Convention in librarian work. The result of the analysis clearly shows that in comparison to Irish librarians, the Swedish interviewees are more aware and have a better understanding of the Convention and how to put it into practice.

How can I make art that face people in their everyday lives, which is integrated into their lives, becoming a part of the discussions both in the mundane and in the room of society? Can I do this by working with performative interpretations that are participatory driven? I have explored how artists and participants can create spaces that are both open and confiden- ce-building, and how they at the same time enable us to question established norms. How to engage in dialogues concerning social, political and existential issues like; What is freedom for me - What is freedom to you? What is it that is important? Which topics are never upraised for discussion?The project is about putting thoughts, experiences and bodies (my own, the participants and the viewer?s) in relation to each other and to the location and context they are in. It ?s about creating a broader perspective where everyone?s voice is important and can take place.

The purpose of this essay is to present, from a theoretical framwork about regional democracy, possible methods to handle the regional democratic problems in Östergötland in Sweden and to investigate the opinion of the political parties regarding this issue. Both the national and the local/regional level are investigated. The contents of the essay is based on literature studies and interviews of politicians in Östergötland. Regional democratic problems that is discussed are the political responsibility and the power distribution between the political Actors on the regional level. A solution of the problem could be to organize the regional society structure in accordance with one of the following organization models"Statligt regionalt ansvar","Kommuner i samverkan"or"Regionalt folkstyre".

The aim of this study is to analyze the process of an agenda setting and see how a specific issue came to materialize on the security policy agenda. The empirical goal of the study is to see why Sweden chose to participate in the EU-led operation to Chad, and how that process came to be? The analysis is based upon Kingdon's multiple streams theory (2003) where he distinguishes the process into three streams. Central for his theory is the coupling of these streams and the importance of a policy entrepreneur. I complement Kingdon's theory of policy entrepreneurs by taking inspiration from Hinnfors (1995), Gustavsson (1999) and especially Eriksson (2000) and their analysis of policy change and agenda setting.