Purpose: The purpose of the study is to in a comparative and causal way explore whether there is a relationship between risk and return and also how it is perceived on the Nordic financial markets.Theory: The theoretical frame of reference applied in the thesis is considered relevant inthe perspective of the study?s purpose and research questions. We have among other theories used The Capital Asset Pricing Model, The Efficient Market Hypothesis and various Behavioural finance theories.Method: The study has its starting point in a quantitative approach with a quantitative data analysis supported by secondary data extracted from Thomson Reuters.Empirics: The empirics contains regression analyses made from calculated secondary data of 240 randomly chosen companies from Nasdaq OMX Stockholm, NasdaqOMX Copenhagen, Nasdaq OMX Helsinki and Oslo Bors.Conclusion: The study conclusions show that there are both a negative and positive relationship between volatility and actual return on the investigated markets. Considering this prior statement we can conclude that the Capital Asset Pricing Model can?t correctly describe the actual relationship between the parameters investigated on the current sample.

In subsequent to Post-colonialism the African nations have dilated into different political directions. While some nations have established well-functioning democracies, others are still under authoritarian regimes. The aim of this thesis is to examine if civil society has an impact on democratic development in West Africa. Therefore the theoretical starting point is Putnam?s theory of social capital, but this study will also examine other possible causal explanations for democratic transition.This study will be based on a comparative analysis of Ghana and Guinea.

The group of elderly people in Sweden will increase significantly in the future and science point out that the future elderly people will not accept today?s standards and offers of assistance in today?s public elderly care. Therefore public elderly care stands before a significant challenge in terms of development that has to be sustainable. New research also points out that middle managers can be a great strategic resource, and a founder of success, in the challenge of sustainable development. The aim of the report was to increase the knowledge about what middle managers in public elderly care think sustainable development has to embrace, when it comes to quality and personnel administration, in order to meet the needs of the future elderly people.

The actual project presents the development of a testing rig for a steam engine. A short overviewabout the development of steam engines is presented, until arriving to the development of thepresent engine, which will require to be tested in different ways.The testing rig studied on this project (based on a Lanchester engine) will be used to testdifferent materials and layouts for the group Piston-Cylinder.The engine is a high performance steam power engine, which is going to have a highpower/dimensions ratio, what will lead to require high performance components and materials.An introduction to the testing rig is presented, and the entire design project is done in order toreplace the disappeared documentation of the current testing rig, built on the 1970?s. Also somemodifications done in the original testing rig are presented, as well as some detected problemsand their possible solutions..

This essay takes its point of departure in the need for modern day public libraries to legitimize their place in today?s society. Societal changes call for constant reinvention of libraries and as part of this reinvention, new light is being shed on the public library?s role as a meeting place. By investigating contemporary debate articles published in Bibliotek i samhälle and Biblioteksbladet, two major Swedish library magazines, this essay aims to categorize and compare different conceptions of the library?s function as a meeting place.

The EU Services Directive has caused an intense debate across Europe. Its purpose is to remove obstacles to trade and to open up the public sector to increased competition. The Swedish labour movement has been deeply involved in the policy process, and union leaders have proclaimed the compromise reached in the European Parliament in April 2006 as a success.In the paper two major aspects have been considered: the meaning of the Swedish model and the process of Europeanization. The Swedish model previously allowed for a strong labour movement, through a social democratic hegemony, but the EU membership has implied new conditions for union influence. The paper examines how this change has affected the strategic choices of the Swedish labour movement, and how it has been manifested in the union's work with the Services Directive.

The purpose of this examination paper is to get an understanding as an upcoming teacher about how friends make an important impact on children?s identity development in school, their choice of friends circle and what kind of groups there can occur among them. With a deeper comprehension of these circumstances should an educationalist be more considerate and adapt his or hers education to prevent negative group formations and to be an outsider. To achieve my results I used a qualitative research method where I through observation handpicked eight students from upper level of compulsory school with different friend circles from two classes for further interviews. Beside this I observed students in their school environment for three days.

As organizations are generating more business intelligence in their systems, more employees need access those systems. As a result some sort of permission management needs to be implemented to ensure the information remain safe. Access Control Matrix (ACM) is one way of managing permissions and is widely used among organizations. The issues that comes with ACM is that the matrix itself gets difficult to manage and overview as its complexity increases with the number of permissions. The study utilizes Action Design Research to develop a tool for visualizing permissions.

Tasmania is a state in Australia, and is also the country?s largest island. It is separated from the main land by a 429 kilometer wide strait. Every year, a large amount of people, cars and goods are transported to the island using a government owned ferry line, which generates approximately 300 million Australian dollars to the state?s economy ,every year. This bachelor thesis investigates the possibility of reducing the fuel consumption for the ferry traffic to and from Tasmania, which would also reduce the overall cost.

This study aims to illustrate the Leader approach and analyze the work of collaboration development within Leader. The idea has also been to describe some of the difficulties that might be encountered in this type of development work. By highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of this approach we hope to enhance the chance that future work in similar projects can be implemented more easily. Leader is a tool and methodology used in the European Union (EU) for work on sustainable rural development and it has been used since 1991. The purpose of Leader is that by supporting rural projects they will gain social capital and development in the rural communities.

Background: A large number of companies works as a link between manufacturers and final users. These companies buys and stores goods to be able to deliver when a need comes up later in the chain. The storage could have a negative effect on profitability and therefore places great demands on the management control systems. ABC as a method has been used with some success in manufacturing for over ten years. In wholesale companies the method is not frequently used.

The purpose of this essay is to study if and how five South African educators work with music as a special pedagogical tool in children's language development. To achieve the purpose of this study, two research questions were created. As method, interviews of a qualitative character were chosen.  The aim of the method is to give the educators the opportunity to think about and use their own experience before answering the questions.The result shows that the South African educators are not using music as a special educational tool. They rather use music as an everyday educational tool to promote children's language development. The result indicates that music in educational activities promotes children?s communication with each other.

This Master?s thesis is one of two parts of a combined project called Sustainable development around the Lake Victoria, the purpose of which is to investigate the importance of local anchoring and active participation in the work towards sustainable development. The present study aims to investigate whether men and women are empowered by the participatory rural appraisal (PRA) process promoted in their villages by the VI Agroforestry Project Masaka/Rakai. The study is primarily based on interviews with farmers within the project area and brings up a local perspective on the concepts sustainable development, active participation and empowerment. The study shows that to improve the farmers? livelihood and to create a sustainable development in the community, the farmers have to be actively involved in, and in control of, the process.

The gap between practise and theory is often described in negative words in teachers? professional lives. Learning study is a model for teachers´ professional development where a theoretical framework is used to enhance practice. The theoretical framework used by teachers in learning study is variation theory. In this study the research object is variation theory and the aim is to present how variation theory becomes a guiding principle to understand teaching and learning processes.

We have ourselves met misunderstandings about the tasks of librarians. The general opinion is that librarians are positioned behind the charging desk or are putting books on shelves. Other tasks are invisible and unknown to the public. The aim for this study is to explore the tasks that a selection of Swedish librarians does. The questions we have answered are: what do the librarians themselves claim to work with, which competences are necessary for this job, what does our study show regarding the librarian as generalist or specialist and finally; can the tasks that we find in our study help to understand the conceptions profession and status in relation to librarians.