This master's thesis analyses the concept of equality between men and women in parts ofRegion Västra Götaland's area of operation. With critical policy analysis I analyse how theproblem of inequality is represented in the European charter for equality of women and men inlocal life (CEMR) and the Region Västra Götaland's plan of action for the charter. Throughinterviews with people responsible for gender equality in different areas I analyse, withdiscourse theory, the ways in which the concept of gender equality is articulated in differentareas of Region Västra Götaland, and what kind of politics these articulations enables.In the analysis I show that a discursive struggle of how equality is to be defined canbetter be understood as a discursive negotiation. Equality between men and women isunderstood in several ways at the same time, as antidiscrimination and basic human rights, asbalance between the sexes, and as an approach critical of norms and stereotypes. Within thesenegotiations certain understandings of gender are made possible or impossible.

Year 1996 a new law was introduced in Sweden, the law of corporate restructuring, what purpose was to help companies in financial distress. Now, nine years later the procedure hasn?t been successful. This is what this thesis is trying to find out.This thesis main question is: What distinguishes the companies that have filed for a corporate restructuring, according to the financial position?The purpose of this thesis is to find out if key ratios can be used to distinguish the companies that filed for corporate restructuring.

Background: Companies with a high level of research, such as biotech companies, rarely generates any profit in the begining. Mostly their history is short and their pipelines usually consists of one or a few products only. Significant for the line of business is also a future very uncertain, where relevant objects of comparison are few. Altogether the facts above makes valuation of Biotech companies difficult. Swedish Biotech companies, compared to their american competitors, seem to be of relatively low value.

This essay is an enquiry about how companies as participated in a Lean pro¬duction education use this education. The essay describes also how one works with the implementation of Lean production and how they believe that they will work. The enquiry tries to create an advisory material for other companies that are in the beginning of implementing their own Lean production systems. There these companies? gets a picture of how other companies have done during their try to create a functioning Lean production system.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how e-commerce companies work with their relationships to customers. We have conducted a case study of two companies, Koll and Webbshoppen, both active in the e-commerce industry. Our empirical study has shown that it is important for e-commerce companies to create long-term relationships to their customers, but it can be difficult to create these relationships since the companies have little contact to the users of Internet. To build relationships, e-commerce companies market themselves through different types of media to create awareness. It is also essential to be situated high in search engines.

Jag har valt att studera uppkomsten av The African Charter On Human and Peoples Rights. Mitt huvudsyfte är att se vilken roll Afrikas historia har spelat för utformandet av den afrikanska stadgan för mänskliga rättigheter och vid sidan av detta även ta reda på om stadgan är effektiv. Jag har också valt att göra en jämförelse med Europakonventionen för att se vad som skiljer de två regionala systemen för mänskliga rättigheter åt. Jag har sökt information, granskat och tolkat det jag läst med hjälp av rättsvetenskaplig metod och en kvalitativ textanalys utefter en teori om universalism och en världssystemanalys. Något som krävt mycket och noggrann läsning. Mitt resultat pekar på en relativt ineffektiv stadga med starka regionala värderingar och stort fokus på kontinentens historia av kolonialism och de koloniala arven detta gett.

The purpose of this paper is to examine and analyze past development of mutual funds in large and small mutual fund companies and see if there are any differences between these two segments. Limitations on the number of funds have been made by choosing Nordic mutual fund companies that invest in emerging markets over an 11-year period. The study is made on 66 mutual funds managed by 13 mutual fund companies in which the segment of small fund companies includes seven fund companies with assets under management less than 100 billion SEK and the segment of large mutual fund companies includes six fund companies with assets under management more than 400 billion SEK. In the comparison of the segments the Sharpe ratio has been used to calculate the risk-adjusted return. The study shows small differences of the risk-adjusted return between the segments.

Since companies have realised the importance of customer loyalty and since the service sector has gained higher significance in recent years, we found it interesting to study what leads to customer loyalty in service companies. The theories we have chosen to consider are customer loyalty, service quality, service guarantees, affinity marketing, loyalty programmes and customer clubs, the customer in focus and other factors that influences customer loyalty. To find out how service companies are working with cus- tomer loyalty, we have conducted a case study within three service companies. Our findings are that customer loyalty has a significant importance for the companies we studied. Quality and personnel were the factors we found had the greatest impact in service companies concerning customer loyalty.

This study describes and reviews horse stable equipment from companies who builds and sells the equipment. In the study the companies various equipment was compared with regulations in the law of prevention of cruelty to animals. The purpose with this study was to find out if the companies stable equipment are approved according to the regulations within this area. The study used at five randomly picked companies.This study showed that three of the five examined companies refered, in one way or another, to the law of prevention of cruelty to animals on their website. Unfortunately not any of the companies referred to todays existing law of prevention of cruelty to animals.

Purpose:Only 60 percent of the newly started companies survive their three first years. The purpose of this report is to obtain a deeper understanding regarding how newly started companies work with their positioning and if there are some kind of a relationship between positioning and the survival rate of newly started companies.Research questions:Do newly started companies know what position is? Do they incorporate positioning in their day to day marketing?Approach:We have used a hypothetical-deductive way of reasoning and a qualitative study to gather the information needed. We have through interviews asked our questions to six newly started companies in three different cities.Findings:In our essay, we reached the conclusion that newly started companies do not spend sufficient time or energy on positioning their products. The companies interviewed only market their product as a good product.

The essay that you are now holding in your hand is a survey about how different companies calculate their logistic costs and the activities which are included. We have examined five companies within the county of Kalmar. The research objective has been to study how aware companies are about their logistic activities and costs. The conclusion of the report is that they put their logistic costs together with other costs which they distribute among their products. The companies identify additional logistic activities than costs which regarding to us is one step in the right direction towards the awareness concerning future effectiveness in the business..

When a crisis hits a company, it is very important that the company communicate with its customers. Communication is important for a company in crisis because this is a way for the company to tell their side of the story and thereby try to get the customers to see things their way. Because mass media reaches a lot of people, it is a simple and fast way for companies in crisis to get their message out to the world. Mass media can be very useful for a company, but it can also be a problem. Mass media and companies in crisis may or may not have the same purpose with the communication.

AbstractFrom 1st of July 2003 it is compulsory for companies with an average number of ten employees the latest two financial years to account sick leave in the annual report.The government?s purpose with accounting of sick leave was partly to evoke an action from the companies? side in terms of motion as an effect due to the awareness of the level of the sick leave. The government was of the opinion that the companies had too deficient knowledge in sick leave and that the knowledge about causes and costs had to increase.In this paper three companies affected by the compulsory accounting of sick leave have been interviewed. The paper defines to only concern private companies. The companies were interviewed in purpose to form an opinion of whether the companies have changed their health promoting actions due to the application of the law.

The aim of this study is to investigate which management control mechanisms evolve in companies that receive funding from Venture Capital companies and why the management control systems evolve in the way that they do. A case study was performed on three Swedish high technology companies, that all received funding from Venture Capital companies for the first time in 2006. Merchant?s framework, defining all management control mechanisms as either, results control, action control or personnel control, was used to structure the study. Results show that the companies that received Venture Capital all increased the use of management control mechanisms within results control, action control and personnel control.

The interest in companies that are based outside the cities has grown, and many of these companies have focused their activities around service. The countryside companies meet some difficulties in marketing and communication with other entrepreneurs. A network with service based companies in the countryside could help the individual companies to promote themselves and also give inspiration and new ideas to develop their business. The aim of this study is to investigate how a countryside network can be organized but also what conditions is needed to make the network function. The theory is based on a literature study of the three major topics "countryside", "networking" and "marketing".