Earlier quantitative entrepreneurial studies with a focus on poverty rate has centred their arguments and analyses entirely on income differences which has resulted in a high poverty rate among self-employed. Their results shows that variables such as age, gender, hours of labour and structure of the household significantly affect the poverty rate among self-employed. In this study we aim the focus on material living standards instead of income differences, thus using a more representative approach while studying entrepreneurial poverty. The purpose of the study was to examine how personality traits (big five) affect the material living standards among the self-employed in Sweden, using a group of employed as a control group. Variables earlier known to affect the poverty risk among self-employed where used as control variables together with education and household income.

The purpose of this study is to examine the actual political conditions that exist for the Iranian women. What is the political reality of the Iranian women and how can they exert political influence within the political system that exists in Iran today. This is done to see how the Iranian women's potential political influence affects Iran's democratic status. This will be answered through the overall research question: What opportunities do the Iranian women have to influence policy? This overall question is then split into three smaller research questions:1) What formal possibilities to political influence do the Iranian women have?2) What real possibilities to political influence do the Iranian women have?3) How have women in Iran tried to exert political influence outside the institutional framework?This will be done through a qualitative text analysis where texts concerning the Iranian women?s political influence are examined.

Friend lists allow Facebook users to group their friends and may be used to share certain information only with those in a specific list. This function has been around for several years, but has never gained any particular popularity among users, most of whom probably did not know it even existed a couple of years ago. In the fall of 2011, however, the function was updated and made more visible on the site.There are several possible uses of friend lists, such as privacy control, filtering of the news feed, self-presentation and targeted information sharing. This paper aims to investigate the extent to which friend lists are used by students today, as well as why students actually use their lists, i.e. for what purposes.Judging from the results of this study in comparison with earlier research, there seems to have been a somewhat recent increase in the awareness of the fact that friend lists actually do exist, but still most users tend not to utilize them.

A wastewater treatment plant has the task to refine the wastewater from substances that should not be released into the environment. The decomposition process can, in a simple way, be described as follows: micro-organisms breathe oxygen and eat unwanted substances. The environment in which the micro-organism lives is known as sludge and the correct amount of oxygen available in the sludge is important for the decomposition to be effective. The oxygenation of the sludge alone stands for about 30% of the plant?s energy consumption.

Arbetet ett företag lägger ner för att komma fram till ett beslut om en större investering i till exempel nya maskiner är oftast omfattande och ett resultat av ett strukturerat arbete med klara strategier för att i största möjliga mån uppfylla behovet som orsakade anskaffningen. Däremot har en investering i informationsteknologi av olika anledningar inte setts som vanliga investeringar utan ofta genomförts utan en ordentlig utvärdering. Med denna uppsats ville vi försöka ta reda på om det verkligen förhåller sig så att företag anskaffar IT-system utan att göra någon ordentlig analys av de problem eller behov som förorsakat anskaffningen eller om de följde de metoder och modeller som finns tillgängliga för att komma fram till ett beslut om anskaffning av ett IT-system. Vi utförde vår undersökning vid tre produktionsföretag som hade anskaffat liknande system. Vid vår analys valde vi att applicera förändringsanalysmetoden, FA/SIM och Simons vedertagna beslutsprocessmodell på det empiriska materialet.

This examination paper is a lead in the educational program Industrial Management at Jönköping University. The paper itself contains an analysis of the warehouse organisation and its efficiency at the furniture company Voice AB in Torsvik, just south of Jönköping, Sweden. The report also contains propositions to raise the level of efficiency in the company warehouse and warehouse management.In the investigation of the warehouse a number of possible improvements were found. Examples are lack of a system for labelling shelves and racks, lack of an efficient location system and development possibilities in work routines. For the empirical investigation both qualitative and quantitative methods ware used.

Företag behöver öka farten på införandet av mobila system för att kunna hänga med i den hårt ökande konkurrensen och globaliseringen som sker. För att satsa pengar i ny teknik är det dock viktigt att se tydliga affärsfördelar med investeringen. Här saknas kunskaper och medvetenhet hos företag om möjlig effektivisering som mobila system kan medföra i verksamheter. Syftet med undersökningen är att utvärdera Pågens mobila system utifrån ett organisatoriskt effektivitetsperspektiv. En fallstudie på Pågen AB har genomförts där effekterna av införandet av deras mobila orderhanteringssystem utvärderas.

Holmen Skog is one of the largest forestry companies in Scandinavia and they depend heavily on a large network of forest roads for production and logistics in connection to their forestry operations. The company recently introduced a new system for planning of road management. The system will also be developed with the intention to facilitate the monitoring of actions performed by road contractors. This report will provide information to support future decisions regarding further development of the system, after its introduction. In addition to a presentation of results from interviews, the report also provides a smaller study of the different subjects associated with roads, process work and process development. The study is largely based on interviews with road contractors that perform work for Holmen Skog today.

The purpose of this study is to research into the role of the citizen and the educational system in Sweden throughout periods of time based on previous theoretic works, and also to deepen the understanding of students with special needs in Swedish education focusing on the primary school years. This shall be carried out by illustrating the different points of view and choices within the educational system that are at hand for students with concentration difficulties and social difficulties.I will analyze these points through a cultural and social perspective on contemporary society in order to contribute towards today?s discourse on the norm. The result of this empirical investigation presents a dilemma existing in the democratic educational system of today. Nationally and internationally, the educational system has been structured around a normative system containing both rights and duties that effect everyone working within it.

This master thesis has been done at Enea Epact AB. The purpose of this thesis is to develop and implement a Link Quality Control algorithm for GPRS/EPGRS in the current testing tool. A Link Quality Control (LQC) shall take quality values from mobile stations and base stations and decide a codingsscheme that opimizes the throughput of data. The Advantage with LQC is that it adapts the used coding scheme to the channel quality. If the channel quality is too bad for the used coding scheme, a slower coding scheme with more redundancy should be selected.

Bakgrund och problem: Dagens företag verkar i en osäker och dynamisk miljö där marknaden ställer allt högre krav på snabba förändringar och anpassningar till kundernas behov. För att möta denna dynamiska omgivning har en rad nya produktionsfilosofier introducerats. En av dessa som fått stor uppmärksamhet och vars användning ökat är lean.Under senare år har det kommit att riktas stark kritik mot tillämpningen av traditionell ekonomistyrning och att denna kan vara skadlig vid tillämpningen vid lean. Andra forskare tar det steget längre och ställer sig frågan om det finns någon plats för ekonomistyrningen vid operationella koncept.Som ett svar på ovanstående kritik introducerades lean accounting, ett ämne som fortfarande är hårt debatterat inom managementlitteraturen. Andra forskare skiljer här på lean accounting och lean control, där lean control fokuserar på output, behavioral samt social control.

The purpose of this master thesis is to evaluate how internal vehicle information inScania buses and trucks can be used for evaluation of driver performance regardingfuel economy, vehicle wear, traffic safety, emissions and cargo damage. To someextent it was examined whether this information could be used for training the driverto a better driving style. In addition, a prototype for such a system was developed.By first defining what distinguishes a talented driver and how he/she differs from apoor driver, followed by a study of the internal vehicle communication, a system thatin real-time gathers and interprets vehicle data could be developed.The resulting system can with reasonably high reliability detect a number of trafficevents (such as braking, lane changing or hilltops). At each such event, the driver?sbehaviour can be evaluated.

This essay contains material of how the competence maintenance works on a chosen company and how a web based tool developed for its use can help companies with competence insur-ance. As competence maintenance is a major factor to have a long term profit it´s necessary to be aware of the company?s future needs in the competence sector. This essay describes the company?s competence maintenance occupation needs taken from internal documents; it also identifies the need for competence maintenance and presents multiple areas of possible im-provements.

In the end of 1998 the company Holmen Skog AB was certified accordint to the FSC system with an area of 1 036 000 hectare. After that Holmen Skog AB has been working actively with the nature conservation in the forestry. In order to control the quality of the company?s nature conservation in final fellings they started a yearly inventory which is called BAKRUS (Judgement of ecological and culture care in relations to policies for a persevering silviculture). After 1999 the control was expended to include all actions in the forest.

This masters thesis investigates the relation between China and the Information Society as it is manifested in the UN conference the World Summit on the Information Society WSIS. The first phase of this two-phase conference took place in Geneva 10-12 December 2003, with two documents, Declaration of principles DP and Plan of action PA, as main results. The information policy is central to an authoritarian rule in its efforts to keep control over the national identity. The thesis investigates the impact that the information revolution and Internet might have on the Chinese national identity through the acceptance of DP and PA in various aspects. With the use of the information science theories by Manuel Castells and Frank Webster, the vision of WSIS was compared with the Chinese information policy.