These days most companies conduct some form of work for the external environment, quality and safety. In connection with this work, some companies have chosen to get management systems certified by any applicable standard for one or more of the fields while other companies have chosen other ways that are not associated with certification.In light of the fact that the individual systems are becoming unmanageable an increasing number of these companies are faced with the decision whether to integrate and coordinate these different systems or not. In order to study the possibilities of a company?s system coordination an assessment of elements particularly interesting for the company was performed. The key elements and focuses in the evaluation were staff access to information, experiences from other companies and environmental work status for some of the organization's companies.

The aim of this study has been to, through a couple of chosen theories, examine in what way and for what purposes Japan has used its international aid system, How can the nation have been said to have implemented and acted in lines with the philosophies and principles set forth in the ODA declaration. What approaches, concerning positive and negative aid sanctions in the matters of aid to Cambodia and Burma, have been chosen and what have the motives for these choices been. What have been the determining factors of the outcome related to these sanctions - economic, political and/or matters of identity? I have found that a concern for possible decrease in economic profit and investment related areas, combined with a feared loss of political prestige and worsened diplomatic relations to the neighbouring countries in the Asian society, have come to overtrump the notion of advocating democracy, human rights, environmental and anti-militaristic issues..

The aim of this paper is to define the perceived consumer values that physical record stores create in order to compete with other distribution technologies. A qualitative method has been used, based on interviews with managers of three records stores in Stockholm. Interviews with their customers have been conducted also. The content has been analyzed with passable theories and the two sources have been compared when adequate.The conclusion of the study is that the physical record stores create many different consumer values, and that many of these are hard to transfer to other distribution technologies. One of the most important values for the consumer is that the personnel have a broad knowledge about music.

During the second part of the 20th Century celebrities became more commonly used for commercial purposes as they could enhance purchase intentions, word-of-mouth- intentions and change attitudes towards brands and products. Over the last few years blogs and bloggers have become more and more used for product placing and the bloggers? power over consumers? behaviour has grown rapidly. The aim of this study is to compare a celebrity?s and a blogger?s impact on consumer behaviour and try to understand the underlying reasons why they do have such power over their audiences.

Redovisningen har många olika nyanser, vilket beror på alla de möjliga val som en redovisareställs inför. Copeland (1968) säger att det finns 30 miljoner olika sätt, på vilket ett företagsresultat kan beräknas, inom ramen för de redovisningsstandarder som finns. Med det sagt, kanmanipulering av resultatet koordineras med en standard eller utan en standard. I bakgrundenav studien presenterar vi begreppet income smoothing och i problemdiskussionen utvecklar vibegreppet ett steg längre genom att utveckla ett koncept av tre relaterande begrepp; motivstruktur-resultat. Därefter såg vi det utifrån en praktisk synvinkel och utvecklade treforskningsfrågor: Hur utbrett är income smoothing bland stora svenska företag? Vilka motivoch vilken struktur har svenska börsnoterade företag för att jämna ut sina resultat? Vilkeneffekt får income smoothing på företagets börsvärde? Vidare har vår metod till största delvarit operationell då vi utvecklat konceptet motiv-struktur-resultat och använt finansiellarapporter som informationskälla.

This report is prepared in cooperation with Södra, Norra Halland SBO. The survey gives the members an opportunity to influence the services and also gives the staff at Södra a hint of the member?s demands.Södra is the largest co-operative forest company in Sweden with over 50 000 members and is divided into 31 areas. Norra Halland SBO is one of them.A questionnaire was sent to the members and 516 (or 53 %) of them answered. Of the respondents 68 % were between 60 and 69 years of age.

Managing credit risk might be the single most important business area for any commercial bank. The assessment of "good" and "bad" corporate clients is a important task for a creditor. A bad debtor is a corporate client with hardships in meeting the continous claims (interest payments) that a creditor requires. One way of evaluating or separating a "bad" client from a "good" client is to assess the propensity for the client to file for bankruptcy. This thesis examines 226 firms in the Swedsh market in the quest of predicting corporate bankruptcy.

Reliable methods to analyze food for the presence of almond are important ? not only for those allergic to almond, but also for monitoring the compliance with labelling regulations (EG directive 2003/89). Until now the Swedish National Food Administration has used methods like rocket immunoelectrophoresis and real-time PCR to detect almond in food. These methods are, however, not sensitive enough for protecting the most sensitive individuals. Therefore, the performance of a commercial ELISA kit was tested with regard to specificity/cross reactivity and limit of detection for almond both in solution and in different matrixes.The limit of quantitation was at least 3,1 ppm (mg/kg) in solution and similar concentrations were measured in bisquits and chocolate.

 Syftet med var att konstruera ett bussförlängartkort till Qbussen som gör Ethernet-baserad kommunikation med I/O:t möjlig. Kortet ska kunna anslutas till standard 100 Mbits nätverksutrustning och klara autoförhandling och låsning av hastighet och duplex. Detta minskar på många ställen kabeldragningen väsentligt och det är därför önskvärt att SSAB:s egna I/O ska kunna köras så över Ethernet, antingen över vanliga nätverket eller på dedikerad kabel..

Background: In 1999 the Swedish pension system was reformed with an aim to create a stable and high return on pension assets. First, Second, Third and Fourth general pension funds, hereby referred to as AP1-AP4, had an important part in the reform. AP1-AP4, also called the buffer funds, was assigned to secure long-term, big parts of the pension capital. The funds objective is by law, to manage the fund's assets in a manner that provides maximum benefit for the state pension. The funds will also invest pension assets with an overall low level of risk while achieving a sustainable high return.Aim: The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the First-Fourth AP-Funds is meeting its objectives regarding risk and return according to Swedish law.

Introduction: Dolomite AB was in need of a dummy arm for crutch testing, to complement their existing test capabilities. Background: A large number of people need crutches on a daily basis. For them it is essential that their crutches do not fail. ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) conducts ongoing work to guarantee the durability and function of e.g. crutches.

This thesis examines if commercial-of-the-shelf (COTS) systems meet the needs in different types of organizations. This was investigated through a case study of a COTS system. The system is built for contact centers and used in different types of organizations. Contextual inquiries with users from six different organizations were held together with interviews with stakeholders of the system. This gave an understanding for how the system is used and the needs to be met in the different organizations were recognized.

Uppsatsens syfte är att visa hur svenska börsnoterade företag på Nordiska börsens OMX30-lista redovisar sina immateriella tillgångar vid företagsförvärv på 2000-talet och därefter se vad som kan skapa bättre förståelse för redovisningreglerna genom att tillämpa institutionell teori. För att uppfylla uppsatsens syfte har författarna valt att genomföra en kvantitativ undersökning. Empirin består av 29 svenska börsnoterade koncerners årsredovisningar under åren 2000-2005. Sekundärdata som legat till grund för den teoretiska referensramen har framförallt inhämtats från internationella forskningstidskrifter.Den teoretiska basen för uppsatsen bygger på en genomgång och analys av redovisningstraditioner, redovisningsprinciper samt institutionell teori, vilka alla bidrar till att påverka standarder och därmed hur företagen redovisar. Den teoretiska referensramen används sedan för att analysera empiriresultaten.

This thesis has treated a three-axis robot which task is to serve a larger test machine tomove the modules to be tested, from the storage to the test site. The robot is composed ofthree linear actuators; two standard components of ball screw type and a custom-builtactuator of trapezoidal type. The work has mainly focused on the custom-built device to seeif it could be replaced with a standard component. Part of the work has been to look into thepicking tool and to see if there are any possibilities to improve its function.The report presents two different proposals which I decided to call Robot 1 and Robot 2 andthey aim to address the problems arising in the purpose-built linear unit and the X-axislinearity problems. Robot 1 focuses on eliminating the problems that arise around therobot's X-axis, with such simple means as possible and without making excessive materialchanges.

I dagsläget finns en rad olika certifierbara standarder för miljöledningssystem (MLS), exempelvis British Standard (BS7750), European standard (EMAS). Trots att ISO 14 000 serien har funnits på marknaden sedan 1996, finns det lite litteratur och forskning som behandlar dess ekonomiska effekter. ISO 14001 är en internationell standard för MLS och saknar absoluta krav på miljöarbetet. Kraven är mer riktade mot organisatoriska frågor, där företagen själva sätter upp sina mål. Detta examensarbete är utfört vid Skanska Sverige AB, Väg och Anläggning Norr, Distrikt Norrbotten, som är certifierade enligt ISO 14001 sedan år 2000.