There are many views in the concept of corporate reputation and the massive research in the area tends to result in many new definitions. Research has shown that a good corporate reputation has a positive relation to Sustainable Competitive Advantage, financial performance and attraction to competent employees. The many views in the concept make it especially interesting to examine the view on corporate reputation in a perspective of big Swedish corporations. Another interesting area to examine is whether the companies manage their reputation or not. The empirical findings of this essay are based on qualitative interviews to get a deeper understanding in the area of reputation.

Authorities, municipalities and county councils have great opportunities to pave the way to a sustainable society. In the public sector, the tax revenue is used and therefore it is important that both employees and societal stakeholders feel that they participate in the sector?s decisions and fields of application. Municipalities and county councils are primarily service organisations. The employees? commitment is necessary to be able to reach set goals, to develop procedures and policies that support the overall political goals, in other words, to be successful in the environmental work.

I denna studie testas tio hypoteser som relaterar till finansiell teori för att se hur väl teorin kan förklara skuldsättningsgraden i små börsnoterade bolag. De teorier som testas är avvägningsteorin (trade-off theory), hackordningsteorin (pecking order theory) samt teorier relaterade till asymmetrisk information och agentkostnader. Testen genomförs med multipel linjär regressionsanalys och de undersökta bolagen är samtliga bolag med färre än 200 anställda på tre av de mindre börslistorna i Sverige. Resultatet visar stöd för åtta av de tio undersökta hypoteserna och är i flera avseenden tydligare än i tidigare studier som testar onoterade små bolag eller ett bredare urval av bolag..

Syftet med detta examensarbete var att undersöka vilka faktorer som påverkat acceptansen hos användare, inom den kommunala verksamheten, vid införande av ett datoriserat system. Med acceptans menas att användarna ska kunna utföra sina arbetsuppgifter på ett bra och lätt sätt. Studien har gjorts utifrån användarnas perspektiv.Genom att genomföra en intervjuundersökning på ett flertal kommuner där användarna använder systemet Vabas/Duf, har undersökts hur användarnas upplevda acceptans påverkas av faktorerna delaktighet, användbarhet och lättanvändhet, vid införande av ett datoriserat system. Delaktigheten vid införandet av ett system innefattar även information och utbildning.Resultatet från undersökningen visade att delaktigheten ökade användarnas acceptans. Ingen avgörande slutsats kunde däremot dras mellan acceptans och faktorerna användbarhet och lättanvändhet, då resultatet från de båda grupperna inte visade någon märkbar skillnad..

The purpose of this essay is to define the meaning of the concept of crime victim and how the crime victim as a concept is constructed. The question is answered through an investigation of the discourse that constructs and reproduces the crime victim. Furthermore the purpose is to open a theoretical discussion which aims to clarify whether or not the crime victim is a subject or an object through an examination of how the individual is constructed as a crime victim by the crime victim discourse.The essay takes a theoretical point of view based on a mixture of Michel Foucault?s and Ernesto Laclau & Chantal Mouffe?s discourse theories. The method used to organize the research ? regarding the meaning of the concept of crime victim ? is Laclau & Mouffe?s discourse analysis which is an extension and a part of the theory mentioned above.The discourse analysis creates a model of the crime victim discourse which answers the question of how the concept of crime victim is constructed, and how this concept should be understood.

Bankruptcy is a problem for the society in form of high costs for including suppliers, customers, employees, investors, banks, insurance companies etc. The purpose of this study is to confirm or dismiss a bankruptcy prediction model that has been developed in a previous Swedish study, in order to predict bankruptcy with help of specific key figures. The model has only been tested in a larger perspective where the population consisted of all small firms in Sweden, in this study the model´s reliability is tested by that it instead been applied to a minor perspective, where the population only includes Stockholm. With a quantitative approach of 12 different key figures from a total of 60 Swedish smaller registered companies in Stockholm between the years 2005-2007, has been studied. The companies are divided into two groups, companies with good financial health and companies that have ended up in bankruptcy.The results shows that the model is applicable in a smaller population, but some of the key figures do not generate essential or any type of information about bankruptcy, but the majority of the key figures in the model did.

The aim of this study was to survey the labelling of drinks with pronounced healthbenefits found on the Swedish market today and to evaluate whether they are inaccordance to EU and national regulations or not. Especially the nutrition and healthclaims were looked into. This study shows that there are several drinks with claimedhealth effects being sold today. The process of approaching full functioningregulations in the EU on nutrition and health claims is proceeding slowly. A snapshotof today??s market of drinks with pronounced health effects shows that there aremultiple cases of misleading statements and interfering labelling on the products.Often it concerns nutritional labelling or health claims.

Since the late 50th century, the automobile has been normative in the Swedish society (Lundin 2008). This has led to an urban environment deeply characterized by the motor vehicle and its necessities, while other means of transportation, such as train and bicycle, have been ignored and put aside. However, over the past decades, a new trend has been seen in urban planning as a consequence of the increasing knowledge of the negative qualities caused by the car. As a result, the bicycle is seen as a conceivable transport mode.This thesis examines cycling on four issues:- Why is there a need of more cyclists? - How can the total number of cyclists as well as the number of satisfied cyclists increase? - Which factors affect the choice of transport mode? - Which factors affect the choice of route?The first two questions are discussed from a literature study that was conducted at the beginning of the thesis.

Background: As a result of the financial markets ever ongoing product innovation a new derivative was introduced in the USA in 1997. A derivative that derived it's value, not from the price of an underlying asset, but instead from a climate factor. It's been known for a long time that revenue in certain industries are affected by weather conditions. The suppliers of weather derivatives claim that these weather sensitive businesses can user weather derivatives in order to lessen weather risk. Purpose: To do a critical evaluation of how weather derivatives can be used by companies as a risk management tool.

The economic climate that has been going on for the last years has more or less affected everyone. This has created a need to get more knowledge about how our banks work and also how peoples own personal financial situation looks like. When our banks over this last period have compensated their employees with even greater deals of money, reactions has gone to the roof. This discussion has made us interested in the subject, which led to the decision to write an essay about remunerations within banks.The purpose of this essay is to investigate if our banks remunerations to their employees have any effect on their profit numbers. Does the size of the compensations vary with changes in the market? Do larger compensations contribute to a greater result?The study will look at Sweden?s four largest banks, Handelsbanken, SEB, Nordea and Swedbank.

ABSTRACTSofie Haag: Yrke: Operaproducent. En studie av operaproducentens roll och betydelse Sverige 2008. Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för musikvetenskap, 2009.The aim of this essay is to provide a better understanding of the role of the Swedish opera producer (often called "production manager") and the opera organisation in which he/she works. Very little has been written about this role, in Sweden as well as internationally. To fill this apparent gap, this study presents the results of inteviews with representatives of ten of Swedens´opera organisations, as well as three case studies.

Our aim with this essay is to examine if social work in the care of elderly tends to be salutogenetic or patogenetic oriented. A salutogenetic oriented activity means that the social workers focuses on the elderly peoples individual possibilities, and collaborate with the receiver of care in order to offer him or her aid and resources for meaningful living conditions. A patogenetic oriented activity on the other hand means that the social workers focuses on the elderly peoples most primary needs, their illnesses and to introduce adequate treatment. We also examine if social workers in the care of elderly tend to prefer male or female characteristic features in the receivers of care. Finally we wanted to find out if there were any gender distinctions, if the appraisal of aid were more affected by a male or female receiver of care.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to highlight three preschool teachers and three child nurses? views on the educational work tool pedagogical documentation and Reggio Emilia educational philosophy, often associated with pedagogical documentation. Preschool teachers and child nurses? are all employees under the same pre-school director, and works on three preschools located in the same area. The purpose of the selection of respondents is based on highlighting how far the staff describes the concept of educational documentation, and pedagogy of Reggio Emilia, and how far their statements are consistent with each other or not.Questions: The thesis is based on three questions;How does preschool teachers and child nurses? describe pedagogical documentation?How does preschool teachers and child nurses? describe the Reggio Emilia pedagogical philosophy?If there are differences between the preschool teachers and child nurses?, what could these mean for the pedagogical documentation in preschool?Method: The study is based on empirical data collected through qualitative interviews.

Title: Merkel with NSA on the telephoneThe aim of this essay is to study how Angela Merkel is being portrayed in context of NSAs surveillance in the Swedish newspapers Dagens Nyheter and Aftonbladet. The time period for the study is from the 24th of October to the 7th of November in the autumn of 2013. To concretize the aim three questions was formulated, how Angela Merkel was being portrayed in the material, how NSAs surveillance of Angela Merkel was being portrayed in the material and how different statements for various individuals in the material could affect the truth about the surveillance. The method chosen to study these questions was a discourse analysis, which also would contain parts of a linguistic analysis. The theories to support the method were Laclau & Mouffes discourse theory and Michel Foucault?s genealogical discourse analysis.

Recent studies show that manufacturing companies to a larger extent use historical cost accounting in their internal accounts, at the expense of calculated costs. The explanation behind this is claimed to be that firms are subject to careful scrutiny by the stock market. Consequently, top management stresses the need of evaluating all parts of the firm from external accounting. However, lower management levels express a general concern that the incentive to invest in machines will decrease. This master thesis aims to investigate whether or not there is an objective reason behind this concern.