AbstractThis essay concerns a qualitative Case study seeking to understand six boys? reading habits and to investigate why it is that some boys who do not like reading nevertheless display good reading comprehension according to the results achieved for that skill in national tests. The study shows that the boys? perception of reading has a lot to do with the contact they have with books when they are small. Whether or not there are adult role models in the home and whether the early encounter with texts in school is a positive or negative experience is significant for the boys? later attitude to reading.

With an IT outsourcing project there are many factors affecting how efficiency andquality develop in the outsourced activity. The Purpose of this study is to identifythese factors through a Case study in a global company that is dissatisfied with theefficiency and quality of their outsourced helpdesk. For data collection methodsinterviews and observations were used. Interviews were conducted with people fromdifferent parts of the company in three different countries, all somehow involved inthe outsourced system. The observations were made with the outsourced company tosee how the employees work and fill information gaps that the interviews could notcover.

High quality within a Lean production system begins with standardised work, which creates stable processes able to generate predictable output. If nonconformity from the standard procedures occurs, routines are needed to analyse, correct and prevent the nonconformity from occurring again. In that way, the nonconformity can be a trigger for continuous improvements toward more stable processes. In takted production lines, where the operator follows a standard sequence with tasks set to be completed within the takt time, a nonconformity leads to downtime in the operator?s sequence, and no value is added.

The main purpose of the present study was to collect Swedishnorm data for the comprehension scale of the Reynell DevelopmentalLanguage Scales (RDLS III) for the ages of 4:6-4:11. According to theBritish manual the degree of difficulty increases gradually and therefore theorder of the sections was examined to see whether this was the case inSwedish. The study also examined the relationship between the test resultsand shared book reading. A total of 88 children and their caregiversparticipated in the study. The participants were recruited from preschools inGöteborg and Mölndal.

Background: A Balanced Scorecard can be used as a tool for communicating and presenting the vision and strategic goals of an organisation in a way that is easy to understand. Implementing a scorecard will support the learning process and dialog concerning the strategy of the organisation. It will also increase the employees understanding of the organisation and motivate them to reach the strategic targets.Purpose: To evaluate and describe employees opinions of a Balanced Scorecard that has been created by the management group from a management point of view. From that, our aim is to recommend our case company, Swedish Tissue, how to implement their Balanced Scorecard. We will also give more general recommendations on how to implement a scorecard.Method: The conclusions in this thesis are the result of a Case study.

We have chosen to analyze how four well known sex crimes were presented in the Swedish national daily newspapers in the 2000s. We chose this topic because sex crimes are considered one of the most terrible crimes. Sex crimes involve the media and upset the society. Our purpose was to analyze if we could identify stereotypes and prejudices about sex crimes in the press reports.The four sex crimes were: Rissne case in 2000, Tumba case in 2003, Hagamannen case in 2006 and the Stureplan case in 2007. We have read all the news stories from the Swedish national daily newspapers Svenska dagbladet and Expressen about our four cases.

The decisions for investment are forward-looking and the base of a long-term strategy. The research within investment have focused on diverse formulas which are used in financial assessment, which also should be complemented with qualitative evaluation. Consequently, the focus should not only be on the execution of the formulas. Less time have been spent on research concerning what actually initiates the investment proposals and affects the decision-making. This will be highlighted in this essay.

Många informationssystem befinner sig i dagsläget i systemförvaltningsfasen alltså fasen då verksamheten använder systemen i det dagliga arbetet. När slutfasen nås inom systemförvaltningen är det dags att studera det befintliga systemet och hitta brister och flaskhalsar. Detta görs ofta med hjälp av en modelleringsteknik.Syftet med detta examensarbete är att jämföra två modelleringstekniker. Teknikerna dataflödesmodellering och UML-Use Case har använts för att studera en orderprocess som utförs hos IBM i Västerås. Tanken med själva undersökningen var att efter kartläggningen jämföra dessa två tekniker med avseende på hur lätt de tolkades av användarna.

The last years? financial situation has contributed to an increased willingness from the banks to handle risks. The most important risk to cope with is a risk that is related to a customer?s ability to repay loans. Forecasts indicate that in the future, Swedish farmers will be facing profitability challenges, which points to a need to reconsider the banks procedures considering risk management in credit granting for agricultural businesses.Today?s risk management will be given two complements in this study.

This thesis is a Case study of the search function on the University of Uppsala?s web site. The search function in this study was chosen since it exists on a large and complex web site and there were apparent lacks in the old version of the search function. The thesis highlights some of the problems that can appear in the development of a search function on a local site. One interesting find is that one of the most difficult issues is organizational and not technical.

One of the biggest challenges in the human history is to prevent environmental pollution. Everybody has an indirect or direct influence on the environment through his or her consumption. The stakeholders are not just interested in price and quality, they are also interested in the circumstances of production and how this affects the environment. By taking environmental concern in public procurement it is possible to speed up the environmental adjustment of services and products. Environmental awareness has become more and more self evident in the environmental work.

Due to the growth of multinational concerns during the last decades, with large parts of international trade involving such corporations, the field of transfer pricing, including financial transactions such as internal loans, have received a great deal of attention in tax legislation. The internationally accepted foundation for transfer pricing is the so called Arm's length principle, expressed in Swedish law through the "Korrigeringsregeln". In the Diligentia court case, the concepts of transparency and control were given a crucial role in the calculation of an Arm's length's price of interest rates. The Swedish tax agency interpreted the ruling in that case as if a parent company always can be assumed to enjoy sufficient transparency and control to reduce the risk on their debt obligations. A great deal of uncertainty therefore surrounded their position and to what extent the Diligentia-ruling could be cited as precedent.

Organising knowledge in a corporate environment : a Case study at the development departments of Ecophon ABThe purpose of this master's thesis is to investigate how three development departments of a technical firm could organise their collection of documents and information resources to improve their management of information. Three sets of questions have been posed: 1) How does the target group of engineers deal with information, and what problems can be identified in this process? 2) What does their collection of resources consist of, how is it organised, and what problems are apparent? 3) How can principles of knowledge organisation be applied in a corporate environment?The investigation has been carried out as a Case study. Three main methods of collecting empirical data have been used: surveys, unstructured interviews and collection observations. The results of the study have highlighted three major problem areas: the collection's lack of structure and searchability, the absence of policy regarding how employers should deal with information, and the inadequate knowledge among staff on how to search for, use and disseminate information.By looking at previous research on knowledge organisation, we have been able to draw conclusions regarding how the target group could organise and manage its information and knowledge in order to achieve greater efficiency in dealing with information and carrying out work tasks.

This thesis aims to contribute to improved functional procurement of photovoltaic systems, PV systems. Functional procurement means that criteria concerning a function are set rather than specifying technical details or products. Possible advantages and difficulties in using functional procurement have been analyzed by interviews, simulations and a Case study. Electricity production and surplus production for different scenarios have been simulated via MATLAB. The MATLAB script was also used to generate rules of thumb on feasible solar fraction for six different load profiles; a church, a farm, a car mechanic, an office, an industry and an apartment building.

International Contract Law presently offers three sets of principles: the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts (the UNIDROIT Principles), the Principles of European Contract Law (the PECL) and the Draft Common Frame of Reference (the DCFR). These sets of principles contain general principles which are intended to serve as model rules. The three sets of principles have been published, but they have not been adopted. The UNIDROIT Principles and the PECL are not meant to be adopted either. There are different opinions as to whether the sets of principles can be considered to be a source of legal status at all.The sets of principles have been referred to in Swedish law.