The aim of this thesis is to study whether social welfare secretaries experience occupational pride and what affects this feeling. Previously made research indicate that occupational pride is essential for performance and work-related health. Research has also shown that social welfare secretaries often experience unhealthiness due to working conditions and a lack of professional self-esteem.This thesis is based on four qualitative interviews which have focused especially on critical incidents, according to the critical incident technique. This study has a hermeneutic, interpretative approach. As a theoretical framework, Pierre Bourdieu? s theory on social space and positions aswell as Aaron Antonovsky´s theory on Sence of coherence have been used. The result shows that the interviewed social welfare secretaries do experience occupational pride.

Background: As a result of the financial markets ever ongoing product innovation a new derivative was introduced in the USA in 1997. A derivative that derived it's value, not from the price of an underlying asset, but instead from a climate factor. It's been known for a long time that revenue in certain industries are affected by weather conditions. The suppliers of weather derivatives claim that these weather sensitive businesses can user weather derivatives in order to lessen weather risk. Purpose: To do a critical evaluation of how weather derivatives can be used by companies as a risk management tool.

Computers together with Internet have been growing enormously, during the last decade and the area of information technology has been growing in the same speed. As long as the surrounding environment evolves, the business models must within the IT-area, keep the same pace. So, how do business corporations handle this change to attract customers? How do the dominant business models look like? In many cases, they are apparently much the same. But what differences can we see and what areas can be improved? We have showed that the IT area isn?t just one, it consist of several segments.

The economic growth in Ireland, during the 1990s, lead to changing migration patterns. Ireland became a destination country for immigrants instead of an emigration country. Before 2004 people who were born on the island of Ireland had a constitutional right to Irish citizenship. This right was removed after a referendum in 2004.National identity is a sense of community constructed through common history and defines who belongs to the nation. The purpose of this thesis is to do a critical discourse analysis of the debate in media before the referendum.The analysis was done on texts from The Irish Times, one of the major newspapers in Ireland.

The author of this report has created a Web-based invoice system and CRM at therequest of the company Webhouse.se. The purpose of the System is to makeeveryday tasks in the company easier. The system also needed to prevent mistakesand errors by managing orders and invoices.The system has been created with the company?s requests in focus. During thedevelopment of the system information security and interaction design have beenimportant aspects that have been taken into consideration.The system has been created using techniques such as PHP and MYSQL.

This thesis has been performed at the system development company Verendus System AB, together with the home care company Basic Care Unit (BCU).The thesis has consisted of developing a web based informationsystem for BCU in which they can administrate their business. At the time of writing this thesis, BCU was using a windows-application to administrate their activities, which was both costly aswell as resulting in an unnecessary burden. The aim the thesis has thus been to create a platform-independent information system that simplifies and streamlines BCUs work by being user-friendly aswell as imposing some simplifying features.The students has been developing the system by the help of a work method they themselves developed. The method consisted of working in several iterations that each had several milestones. The method resulted in the students knowing easily when each iteration was finished or not.The thesis resulted in a working platform independent prototype.

In past decades information technology has changed the conditions of organizations, not at least within the industry. Advanced IT systems have become a fact in order to cope with rapid changes in the market and to effectively manage an organization?s knowledge. When organizations became more flexible and customized expectations from customers and stakeholders also become higher. These expectations and guidelines are documented in a company?s management system, which can be designed differently depending on what standards the company chooses to implement.

The main purpose of this Master?s thesis is to contribute to anincreased understanding of student teacher?s informationseeking for their studies. The role of cognitive authorities andapproaches to the critical evaluation of sources are taken intoaccount as well as what student experiences of informationseeking imply for their future profession. The study takes asociocultural perspective and the empirical material is based oninterviews with six student teachers at the end of theireducation. The interviews have been analysed with a departurepoint in the research questions to the following themes; seekingand finding information, critical evaluation of sources and,analysing and using information.The major findings concern the teacher students? emphasis onthe importance of the critical evaluation of sources and theirscepticism towards Internet use, both for their own studies aswell as for their future pupils.

It is important to understand the process of appraisal of a business in order to establish its value. The purpose of our thesis is to establish which methods and models are used when evaluating a business and investigate the factors that may affect the value and price tag of a business. We have used a qualitative approach by conducting both indepth interviews and a survey as well as reading literature within the field. The main conslusion in our findings is that the common practice of discounted cash flow is widely used when bestowing a monetary value for a business, and in order to raise the value a well established customer relationship was the single most important factor. As far as lowering the value, the answers were of such a wide spread that a single factor could not be attributed.

The aim of this study was to investigate the production of knowledge that can emerge in the use of Practice Research by Mirror method. This by finding out what it is in the practical work that leads to the production of knowledge and how knowledge production takes form. The empirical data that form the basis for this study is recorded group within the Mirror method discussions and a focus group interview with social workers who participated in the discussions. Those who have participated are social workers with experience from working with financial aid support and only real cases have been used in the discussions. The results have been analyzed according to Lipsky's theory of street-level bureaucracy and their discretion and Fook and Gardner´s theory of critical reflection.

The aim of this thesis is to study whether social welfare secretaries experience occupational pride and what affects this feeling. Previously made research indicate that occupational pride is essential for performance and work-related health. Research has also shown that social welfare secretaries often experience unhealthiness due to working conditions and a lack of professional self-esteem.This thesis is based on four qualitative interviews which have focused especially on critical incidents, according to the critical incident technique. This study has a hermeneutic, interpretative approach. As a theoretical framework, Pierre Bourdieu? s theory on social space and positions aswell as Aaron Antonovsky´s theory on Sence of coherence have been used. The result shows that the interviewed social welfare secretaries do experience occupational pride.

Upon marketing the system in Europe and the USA cost savings generated from reduced work force have been prevailing. Since the cost of labour is much lower in the Asia Pacific region other factors have to be stressed. The parameters of flexibility and quality assurance may however cover any initial investment in a production system. Our purpose is to value flexibility and quality in a manufacturing context, applied to DAS, in order to use it in investment calculations. In order to make an adequate estimation of different companies, due to problems associated with acquiring correct figures, the Key Success Factors needs to be examined so that the gathering of numbers can be conducted with more focus.

In order to reduce the price for, and improve the performance of automatic control systems for magnetization of synchronus generators, the possibilities of using a PC based software PLC system, Programmable Logic Controller, has been investigated. The result is a system based on the CoDeSys software PLC with runtime environment from 3S-Software, communicating with external units via Modbus fieldbus. System price is reduced from ?5000 to ?2000 and system processing speed is reduced from 10 ms for a Siemens S7 PLC to 4 ms with the CoDeSys PLC system though unsolved problems with runtime seizure caused by improper settings in the PC BIOS..

The aim of this study is to, by developing ideal types, describe why studententrepreneurs participate in self organised business network. The investigation is based on answers from 41 participants in the business network ?Företagare på Lnu?, as well astwo semi-focused groups, which where analysed by using Webers (1978) ideal types.The investigation shows that there are several reasons for student entrepreneurs to participate in self organised business network. For instance some people participate to gather knowledge from other student entrepreneurs for their own future, since they have an idea of soon starting their own business. Others participate just for the fun of knowing what?s going on at the university..

The purpose of this study is to make a close and critical scrutiny of the EU Lisbon Strategy and the assumption of `sustainable growth´. A basic question is to clarify what is meant by `sustainability´ in the economic and the environmental dimension respectively, and also, to analyse the meaning of `sustainable growth´. Secondly, I try to investigate the relationship between the economical and environmental dimensions of the strategy. Are the goals of the dimensions compatible and mutually supporting or are they conflicting? By illuminating these issues the study moves towards a final set of questions: What are the arguments that encourage or counteract the Lisbon assumption of `sustainable growth´? Is the European Union approaching `sustainable growth´ looking at different economical and ecological indicators? What are the prospects for the Lisbon Strategy as a way towards global `sustainable development´?.