New laws and recommendations within corporate governance during the last years have affected the way board of directors work. The board is said to have and fulfill three roles: a control role, a service role and a strategy role. These roles could be understood by three theoretical theories: the agency theory, the resource dependence theory and the stewardship theory. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether, and if so how, the board work differs between two small firms based on these roles, given that one of the firms is a publicly listed firm and the other is a privately owned firm. Using a qualitative case study as research method we find that the board work differs between the two companies when it comes to these roles.

This report of 10 credits is a C ? level essay in informatics.The report presents the result of our investigation. The purpose is to answer our problem statements:?How does computer-based graphical pedagogical tools work compared to traditional teaching aids? What is the users view upon the content? Is the information too hard or too easy? Does the structure work better than the traditional website design??Infact is a system that has as its primary goal to present information in a pedagogical way to let users of all ages and sexes learn from the contents. The information shown on the web page www.forskning.se is about Swedish and international research and the sites primary target users are high school students.In our investigation we asked a total of sixteen students divided into three groups a number of questions where after we started a discussion that we hoped would yield some answers about Infact and the homepage in general.Our main conclusion is that Infact is a good tool to use side by side with the textbooks and the traditional teaching aids.

The Veiled Party: A Discourse Analysis of Sweden Democratic Texts aims to further the understanding of the underlying ideology of the Sweden Democratic party, by revealing whether or not there is any ideological content that include race, racialization, and racism in the party?s political texts. The study offers a background description of the discursive change in the social and political climate of debate in Sweden, which opened a policy window for xenophobic agenda setting. In addition, the study delivers a presentation of the public debate regarding the Sweden Democrats, as well as statements by party representatives.Through a social constructionist and discourse analytic framework, the study aims at understanding how the application of racial ideas are done and mapped. The core of the theoretical framework is a critical race and whiteness theoretical approach.

With the political situation that prevails in the world, the need for contingency planning for the ecclesiastical heritage has become actualized with the aim of protecting the churches and their assets in war and armed conflicts. In accordance with Kulturmilj?lagen (SFS 1988:950) chapter 4 ? 15a, the Church of Sweden and its organizational parts are responsible for ensuring that contingency plans for the ecclesiastical heritage are established. In the legal statutes, it is not clear how this is to be carried out, who is responsible for all practical aspects or what is to be protected, something that creates gaps of knowledge regarding logistics, roles and selection. This means that there is currently a lack of principles and practice around the protection of the ecclesiastical cultural heritage, as contingency planning for cultural heritage is a fairly new phenomenon that has not been practiced in times of peace.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has recently become increasingly important for companies to integrate into their ongoing work. CSR is about social, environmental- and financial responsibilities. The tourism industry often involves large impacts especially on environmental and social factors, which is why CSR-work plays an important role according to previous studies. One trend that has increased among consumers in the tourism industry during recent years is to travel to the lowest possible price. It has for example become increasingly common to book airfare by budget airlines.

The aim of this study is to enlighten how todays working environment affects young individuals descriptions of how to reach success in work life, now often titled as ?career?. Our purpose has been to analyse how the term career is constituted discursively among young people in jobs characterized by flexibility. The study is based on six qualitative interviews with young adults in the media industry, all between 20-30 years old. By utilising a Foucaultdian discourse analysis we want to expose how the competing and dominating discourses, that our interviewees? statements are based on, can be associated with a wider social context.  The study reveals that our interviewees describe career in two separate ways, both positively and negatively.

Purpose: The purpose with our study is to accomplish a quantitative research of all municipalities in Sweden and see why they apply Balanced Scorecard. The study will also investigate the spread of Balanced Scorecard, even the benefits and how they use it. Method: In our study we have chosen a quantitative research. The study has been accomplished with a questionnaire survey which we sent to all of the Swedish municipalities. We have also done a literature study to get more knowledge about relevant theories.

There is consensus in research, policy, business and many other areas around the benefits of creativity. Previous research shows that creativity is only spurred under certain conditions. Usually creativity is not associated with concepts such as control, deadline or cost effectiveness. Companies, by contrast, have the need for control and management of their operations, which implies that the two processes can be difficult to reconcile. A company that wants a high creativity while maintaining control and management is forced into a series of organizational compromises.

Today, there are a number of different models and methods used to estimate the equity value of a company. A common tool for valuating stock prices is the usage of different multiples. This is a method used to determine the value of a company, by examining and comparing the financial ratios of relevant peer groups. The disadvantage with this method is that it does not take all the important aspects, such as risk, investments and capital structure, into consideration. However, this study investigates if the key value, called discounted cash flow (DCF), can be integrated with the valuation of the multiples.

In May 2004 eight former communist countries (EU-8) with close historical trade ties to Russia joined the European Union. According to integration theory, we expect that Russia ? a so called third country ? in some cases may suffer from trade diversion due to this. This thesis focuses on the possible effects on Russian trade resulting from the 2004 eastern enlargement of the European Union. It aims to find out whether any evidence of trade diversion can be found.

Our thesis focus on how retirees perceive Tv4s news casts of economy news where we focused on five different aspects: What is the relationship between the news cast and the viewer and how does the viewer express their understanding of the news cast and the way it is constructed? What are the viewers attitude towards the news content and how do they find the news cast useful for them personally?We choosed retirees as our target group due to their vulnerable economic position in today?s society and TV as an important medium for them due to the digital divide. The study was performed with twelve qualitative interviews and one group interview where six retirees took part.We discovered a big interest for economic news in the target group. The majority had a sympathetic view of the news cast they saw but they also expressed skepticism toward the economy segment and/or news castings. The majority expressed a lack of trust for the journalists and the experts brought in to share observations and make announcements, and the financial business overall.

The purpose with this study is to investigate funds that are environmentally friendly. Environment issues has become a large subject that affects all aspects in today?s society.  It is a global issue which has affected the awareness of environmentally friendly products and its benefits for the environment.How has this awareness affected the financial market?  In this study the authors have looked at six environmentally sound funds and six energy funds to answer the question if it´s better to have your money in traditional energy or in renewable energy.This study is made in an quantitative way, the data has been gathered from the internet database Morningstar. The energy funds have had its biggest assets in companies dealing with oil, and the environmentally sound funds have had its biggest assets in renewable energy. Bye looking at the different funds rate of return and relating that to risk managing theories of Sharpe and Treynor, the authors compared the two types of funds.During the period that was looked at during this study ( third quarter of 2007 until third quarter 2010) the energy funds outperformed the environmentally sound funds in every aspect. .

The increasing health problems in our society have been lifted to the surface and debated for quite some time now. Even though the statistics of bad health somewhat have dropped, the problems still remain. Many companies are wrestling with this and are suffering from huge financial losses due to the costs of people frequently calling in sick for work. This has resulted in an increasingly high expansion of different types of preventive measures in order to avert health problems. But far from all companies reach these goals and it is there for of high value to study how important resources can be used in a more efficient way.The purpose of this study is to achieve a deeper understanding for Health promotive services in companies and to understand which influential factors are crucial in the process of reaching successful strategic Health promotions.

Background: The construction industry is Sweden?s single most important industry branch with a significant influence on Sweden?s wealth. The political restrictions that once controlled the industry are today almost gone. This combined with an unbalanced supply and demand situation on the Swedish constructions market, caused by urbanisation, has led to increased pressure on the Swedish construction companies who now are forced to find new methods in their struggle to contain or increase their competitive advantage. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to survey: which strategic variables are of great importance in today?s Swedish construction industry with focus on the four main actors, JM, NCC, PEAB and Skanska.

Sandvik Group is a global engineering corporation within materials technology and produces, among other things, band sawsteel. In order to develop custom relations, custom benefits and the supply chain Sandvik wants to become more acquainted with its customers. Improved feedback means that Sandvik will be able to develop its products in a customized direction. This thesis is a tool for educating and developing sales staff. As a support a calculation tool that can be used as a sales aid has been developed.