This thesis studies private equity firms' implementation of management control systems in their portfolio companies and whether the systems are affected by cross-national differences. A comparative case study examines five different private equity firms to derive if there are any differences between the private equity firms' management control systems in the United States, Europe and China. The empirical observations are categorized according to the framework developed by Merchant (1985) and further developed by Merchant and Van der Stede (2003). Theory on the effect of multinationality on management control systems, also developed by Merchant and Van der Stede (2003), are used to explain possible findings. The applied theory includes the cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede (1984) and Hofstede and Bond (1988).

Development of services that?s provided through mobile application technology in today's modern IT society has become a full-fledged market where numerous players trying to make themselves heard in everything from innovative new services to the further development of existing services. In these services actors wants to find new areas of use by taking advantage of the mobile technology.We have investigated how value is created and how the value is captured in the services provided through mobile applications. Through this, we wanted to identify the critical success factors in how a newly developed service should be designed to create value. This has been done through a thorough literature review, together with an indepth evaluation of existing applications.

This thesis deals with classification of the subject field history of medicine. The two classification systems SAB and NLM are compared in order to find out which one is the most adequate to organize a small collection of history of medicine. SAB and NLM are the two most commonly used classification systems in medical libraries in Sweden today. NLM classification system specializes in medicine and SAB is a universal classification system. Our purpose with this study is to find out the pros and cons of each system, whether the systems treat the subject history of medicine in a satisfactory way and what kind of classification system that is better for this assignment, a specific one or a general one.

In the future network-based Swedish Defence (NBD), attaining information superiority will be of great importance. This will be achieved by a network of networks where decision-makers, information- and weapon-systems are linked together. As a part of the development of NBD, we have performed a study of user interface design for a future network-based tool package for analysis of sensor systems, referred to as the C2SR-system. This thesis was performed at Ericsson Microwave Systems AB, Sensor and Information Networks, during the autumn 2002. A pre-study concerning the requirements of usability, trustworthiness and functionality of a user interface for the C2SR-system was performed.

Real-time systems are required to answer to external stimuli within a specified time-period. For this to be possible, the systems behaviour must be predictable. The use of active databases in real-time systems introduces unpredictability in the system, e.g. due to their use of active rules. The behaviour in active databases is usually specified in ECA-rules.

The aim of this thesis is to study whether social welfare secretaries experience occupational pride and what affects this feeling. Previously made research indicate that occupational pride is essential for performance and work-related health. Research has also shown that social welfare secretaries often experience unhealthiness due to working conditions and a lack of professional self-esteem.This thesis is based on four qualitative interviews which have focused especially on critical incidents, according to the critical incident technique. This study has a hermeneutic, interpretative approach. As a theoretical framework, Pierre Bourdieu? s theory on social space and positions aswell as Aaron Antonovsky´s theory on Sence of coherence have been used. The result shows that the interviewed social welfare secretaries do experience occupational pride.

Bachelor thesis, Controller, Program of Master of Science in Business and Economics, School of Business and Economics at Linneaus University in Växjö, Sweden, Course Code: 2FE13E:3, Spring 2012 Authors: Jacob Cedergren, Adam Pettersson, Hampus SkelterwijkSupervisor: Anders JerrelingTitle: The ERP-systems impact of the management control - a case study of VIDA AB Original Title: Affärssystemens påverkan på ekonomistyrningen - en fallstudie på VIDA ABBackground: New technology has given businesses new opportunities to use and store information and the current information systems has changed the way of working in more or less all sectors and operations. ERP-systems have been one of the most important IT innovations in the past decade. The potential of a properly implemented ERP-system is great because it has got the ability to link the company?s different areas together. Despite its many advantages, there are several examples of cases where the acquisition and implementation has been a total failure.

The public relations business has grown from almost nothing to a large international industry the last decades. Throughout the history the industry has struggled with a lot of critique and public relations has become a negative symbol for manipulation of information. Because of this negative view of the industry and the medial change taking place, the purpose of this study is to investigate how two different generations think about public relations. More accurate, the study will through a qualitative interview study explore how young people from a highschool in Luleå and elder people from Luleå township thinks about pubic relations, and most imortant why they have this particular view. By creating four focus groups, two with men and two with women, this also enables a comparative study between the gender. The focus groups were later analyzed and compared to two selected groups of theories on public relations, the theories were positive and critical theories compound in two categories.

This study has examined if importation of waste for energy recovery can reduce the climate impacts of Waste Management Systems. Using Systems Analysis this study will try to examine the complex waste systems in a systematical and strictly logical way to see how these systems interact and affect each other. Specifically examining the climate impact of waste management systems in England. The traditional way of handling waste in England is through Landfills. Land filling leads to emissions of the greenhouse gas Methane. The EU has put in place a landfill directive that is supposed to lead the member states away from land filling as a method of waste management. Today in Sweden there is a competition for the waste available for incineration. The worsening economical situation together with less product packaging and an increase in source separation leads to a lack of waste available for incineration.

This paper describes how files and information can be shared in organisations and workplaces. We studied and compared the traditional file sharing in Microsoft Active Directory and the Social file sharing that comes with Microsoft SharePoint Sites. We used qualitative studies based on interviews with system administrators, management and by our own observations to acquire the necessary data. Using independent research, we were able to analyze the data and show the general difference between the traditional and the social file sharing systems. Social file sharing enables the user to easily store and share files in a flexible online environment.

In this report statistics concerning the reliability of sprinkler systems from seven countries has been analysed. The objective of the report has been to determine the reliability of sprinkler systems in Sweden and to present suggestions on measures to increase the reliability. The main conclusion that has been drawn is that the reliability of sprinkler systems in Sweden is 92 percent according to the analysis of Swedish statistics, and that this figure finds support in statistics from other countries. Further results are that the quality of design, installation, maintenance and inspection of sprinkler has to be improved and that the Swedish incident report has to be revised..

The thesis has been carried out in cooperation with Master Flow AB, Västervik owned by the EWEBE Group. The company produces and sells hot runner systems that are tailor made for the customers.The problem that MasterFlow AB has encountered is in the construction of complex hot runner systems in SolidWorks. With several different lengths, fronts and endcaps that builds the nozzles of the hot runner systems, is affecting the problems for MasterFlow AB. The purpose of this work is to automate the design of hot runner systems so it does not overload the CAD-system SolidWorks.To gain an understanding of the problem, there have been several studies and observations at the company, where the focus has been on how the work is done with the design of hot runner systems. By using help from the corporate management, enough information has been collected to find a solution to these problems.The implementation of design automation has been based on a flowchart that was created.

When constructing a new house many questions appear, from architecture to decisions regarding installations. Sweden is situated in a cold part of the planet and questions regarding which heating system to install face everyone who decides to build a new house. This thesis describes a construction solution of a villa in Kiruna. The extended essay analyzes which heating system is most suitable for the construction. The options are geothermal, district and pellet heating systems.

The aim of this thesis is to critically analyse the subject heading list in the database KVINNSAM at Kvinnohistoriska samlingarna. This list is intended for the retrieval of gender specific information and the subject heading women is implied. The main question is: which woman is represented in the list? The thesis analyses specifically the representation of disability, ethnicity and other sexualities than heterosexuality. Kvinnohistoriska samlingarna, the concept of gender studies and KVINNSAM is presented.

Real-time systems are required to answer to external stimuli within a specified time-period. For this to be possible, the systems behaviour must be predictable. The use of active databases in real-time systems introduces unpredictability in the system, e.g. due to their use of active rules. The behaviour in active databases is usually specified in ECA-rules.