As a consumer, you can use cards for payment more or less everywhere you go, however, it is not certain that the card can be used for all purchases. When a customer pays with card there arises a card transaction fee charged to the merchant. This is a big problem for businesses where transactions with small amounts are a large portion of sales. An observation at the beginning of this study showed that seemingly similar merchants have chosen to solve this problem in different ways. Some merchant?s refuses card purchases below a certain amount, while others accept card with any purchase.

The use of balanced scorecards have spread explosively throughout the world during the last decade. This management tool have become very common in a vide spread variety of organisations on all continents. Many balanced scorecard fails though and scorecard theorists often blame the identification- and implementation process as they claim that these lay the foundation for the use of the tool. As my literature study shows, academic research on the area is rare. Particularly the effect on the implementation process from organisational dynamics and organisational structures needs further research.

The purpose of this paper is to find out which characteristics the female and male characters have in five selected horse books in children's literature. I have analyzed five horse books by Professor Maria Nikolajeva?s gender roles schedule. I have chosen to do a qualitative text analysis and the questions I chose to ask for the books are: Which characteristics does the girls and the boys have in the selected horse books according to Nikolajeva?s gender chart? What is the relationship between the main characters and the horse/horses according to the theories of Backman? What does the typical horse book look like today? What I come to conclusion in my paper is that all the horse books I analyzed have female main characters, and the girls in these books about horses take a lot of space and demonstrate themselves strong.

A variety of studies have been conducted on the use of the balanced scorecard in the public sector. Fewer studies, however, is made at a lower, more local level within municipal departments. The aim is to describe the scorecard application by two different departments, while scorecard adjustment over time and actors and their rules are addressed in this context. This has led us to the following problem: How can scorecard application be described in two different departments in a municipal context? In the theoretical framework we presented fundamental theories of balanced scorecard in different contexts, a scorecards translation process and the rules that guide and limit the actors in the organization.

The purpose of this study was to gather knowledge about the functioning of the rein tension meter and test it for future studies of match and mismatch between rider and horse. We looked specifically into the possibilities to use a rein-tension meter to determine the quality of cooperation between horse and rider. We examined whether a rider shows a specific tension pattern and also if certain patterns could be recognised for a specific horse. During the study, a manual with pictures and text was written to support the practical use of the meter. The manual describes in a simple way the first steps in the installation and use of the meter.

SummaryBackground: Management control is important for all kinds of activities, both in trade and industry and in the public sector since you must economize on scarce resources. There are nevertheless many different views on management control, which have changed with the times. With regard to the public sector in Sweden, the management control systems have changed radically the last half century, especially from the 1980s, due to depressions and increased focus on effectiveness. New approaches have been taken by many municipalities and county councils, both in Sweden and internationally, where the former management control systems have been abandoned in favour of result control, target costing, and activity-based-costing, for example. Another new approach has been the Balanced Scorecard, which was introduced by Kaplan & Norton in a pioneering article in 1992.The Balanced scorecard is a multidimensional tool, originally intended to be used in trade and industry, but with regard to its nature, it has been adopted even by many non-commercial organizations, especially in Sweden.

Purpose: The purpose with our study is to accomplish a quantitative research of all municipalities in Sweden and see why they apply Balanced Scorecard. The study will also investigate the spread of Balanced Scorecard, even the benefits and how they use it. Method: In our study we have chosen a quantitative research. The study has been accomplished with a questionnaire survey which we sent to all of the Swedish municipalities. We have also done a literature study to get more knowledge about relevant theories.

The most common reason for a horse owner to seek veterinary care for their horse is related to the musculoskeletal system. Assessment of the horse's movement pattern is essential in the equine veterinary work. How uniformly veterinarians evaluate the lame horse may have both diagnostic and prognostic significance, such as follow up examination by the same or different veterinarian. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether there are between-veterinarian differences in assessing lameness in the same horse. In total 12 veterinarians evaluated 80 video sequences of 4 horses with induced lameness and made an evaluation of the affected limb as well as the degree of lameness.

During the last decade a new technique in animal breeding has developed called genomic selection. It is based on estimations of the effect from genetic markers on traits that are calculated in a reference population. By genotyping individuals, genomic breeding values can then be estimated without phenotypic observations. The aim of this essay is to investigate the response of genomic selection on breeding schemes for dairy cattle. The accuracy of the genomic breeding values is affected by the proportion of observations included in the validation set and how often the equation for estimating breeding values is reevaluated.

Traditional financial management has lately been criticized, since it gives inadequate and unilateral information for decisions and strategy of the operation. The purpose of this essay is to investigate if a balanced scorecard is able to work together with a budget and become a stronger control system for the management. Essential theory underlies the gathering of data as well as the analysis, and the empirical investigation is based on personal interviews. The conclusions drawn from my analysis are that two parallel control systems could complement each other?s weaknesses.

This is a Master´s Thesis based on my own idea instead of that of a company. It is a survey that focuses on finding out more about which part of the development process that is blocking the establishment of electronic scorecards on the golf market. Why has it not been introduced on the market in a larger scale yet, considering the technology we possess today? This question is investigated through interviews with the Swedish Golf association, and three companies that have chosen different paths to implement an electronic scorecard. The interviews focuses on finding out what developers and the association believe to be the main problem, before taking the next step in releasing electronic scorecards on a larger scale.

Purpose: The purpose with our study is to accomplish a quantitative research of all municipalities in Sweden and see why they apply Balanced Scorecard. The study will also investigate the spread of Balanced Scorecard, even the benefits and how they use it. Method: In our study we have chosen a quantitative research. The study has been accomplished with a questionnaire survey which we sent to all of the Swedish municipalities. We have also done a literature study to get more knowledge about relevant theories. Finally we have compiled the questionnaire in Netigate and Excel, and analysed the result from the questionnaire. Results: Balanced Scorecard is well-known in the Swedish municipalities and 36 percent of the municipalities use this scorecard in whole or in parts of the organisation.

This project was initiated by a veterinarian, that at stallion performance tests for breeding during a number of years, noted breed differences in various types of testicular disorders. Therefore it was of interests to examine the proportion of testicular disorders within certain breeds. The aim with the project was in a first part to study cryptorchidism in common horse breeds in Sweden. Information about castrations of stallions performed during a 10 year period (2000-2009) was collected from computerized case records at five animal hospitals. The case records showed the numbers of castrations, normal cases and cases preformed on stallions with cryptorchidism, abdominal respectively inguinal.

Ossification of the collateral cartilages of the distal phalanx has been studied primarily in cold blooded horses. The clinical relevance of this condition is unknown. Despite this fact, since 1939, all Swedish Ardenner stallions have had to be classified as being free from this ossification to be approved for breeding. Initially, palpation was used as a diagnostic method, but since 1982 radiology has been the only method used. The aim of this study was to assess the outcome of 68 years of breeding program. Dorsopalmar radiographs were taken of the front feet of 58 Ardenners (30 mares, 8 geldings and 20 stallions) and the ossification of the collateral cartilages was evaluated and graded according to three different scales; - Ruohoniemi (grade 0-5), - Swedish University of Agricultural Science (grade 0-3), - and a new scale (grade 0-3), developed for this study.

The genetic relationship between three Swedish horse breeds was investigated using microsatellite data from 144 loci in 30 horses. The North Swedish Trotter is believed to have been crossed with the Standardbred in the 1950?s to produce a faster trotter. If true, the North Swedish Trotter should be more alike the Standardbred than what the North Swedish Draught Horse is, from which they originate. This was investigated using F-statistics and Nei?s distance in GENEPOP and GENETIX and cluster assignment in STRUCTURE.