Title:Product abandonment ? A comparative study of five ABB-units Level:Master thesis in Business administration, spring 2011.Purpose:The purpose of this paper is to through a comparative analysis examine how different companies, within the same group, works with product abandonment and what factors influence the process.Problem:How important is situational and product specific factors in a product abandonment process in which the organizational factors are constant?Method:This study is based on primary as well as secondary data where interviews represent the primary data. Interviews, following the same interview guide, were made with five companies within the same group.Result:The results from the empirical studies presented in the text below recurring themes derived from the framework.Conclusions:Our conclusions are that the importance of product specific factors is of significant matters in a product abandonment process, even when organizational factors are constant. We base that on that although the companies are within the same group, under the same strategic direction and constructed according to the same organizational structure the product abandonment process is different for the respective companies.Keywords:Product abandonment, product deletion, product elimination, weak products, ABB .

This paper investigates the grammatical construction intransitive motionconstruction with GOAL as it is used in Swedish (Swe. intransitivrörelsekonstruktion med MÅL).I examine in which ways the construction is productive, i.e. thepossibility to use the construction with new verbs as well as withordinary motion verbs with new functions. The notion of productivity isbased on the construction?s type frequency and semantic openness(Goldberg 1995, 2006; Barðdal 2008; Bybee 2010).

The aim was to evaluate and suggest improvements for the prototype TIVOLI (sign-learning via computer-based playful interaction). The game purposed to give children who need signing as augmentative and alternative communication enhanced signing skills. Three children in need of signs played TIVOLI at home during 4-5 weeks. Data contained parental interviews, Talking Mats interviews, assessment of signing competence before and after the evaluation period and game protocols. One game interaction per child was filmed.

Benchmarking is an established method of working which is often used in order to develop the quality of the organization. However, almost 70% of the organizations with benchmarking fail due to the lack of planning and structuring of the benchmarking exercise. Maintenance sections in the paper and pulp industry are one of those who have decided to conduct benchmarking. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to gain knowledge of how the maintenance sections in the paper and pulp industry deliberately structure and plan to use benchmarking as a driving force for quality development in the maintenance sections.The study is a hermeneutic case study. Telephone interviews and document analysis have been used as data acquisition methods.The results show that there is a lack of both planning and structuring in the benchmarking process, and lack of management commitment for quality improvements within industrial maintenance.

Interaction is an important part of children?s development. The school is a main arena in which children learn to interact, mainly through their playing. This study aims at investigating the role of interaction in a leisure school didactic setting. The aim of the study is to gain a better understanding for how the pupils develop though use of social interaction.

The aim with this study was to see how a few teachers with experience of young students with ADHD looks upon the need of special support through ICT and from which perspective of special needs education the support is formed.I related the informants? answers about their views on special needs support based on a relational and categorical perspective and came to the conclusion that all of the informants uses a bit of both depending on each individual students needs. Therefor I could see that the dilemma perspective is current in schools today. The most important need for the students with ADHD in general is, according to the informants, structure and routine.The result from this study also shows that general knowledge about ICT is lacking and needs to increase. This could in most cases be explained by the schools economic resources as that partly prevent purchase of new and more equipment but also forces the school to keep larger groups of students in each class.

Deliberative democracy theory has been prominent within political science research since the early 1990?s, often applied in studies on postnational democratic constellations, in particular the European Union. Of the main institutions of the union, the European Parliament stands out as somewhat understudied from this point of view, which is why the main aim of this thesis is to study the conditions for deliberative democracy in the European Parliament.From deliberative democratic theory four criteria have been selected to function as methodological framework in analysing the institutional structure and proceedings of the parliament. Each of the criteria is applied separately to the practice and function of the plenary sessions, the parliamentary committees and the political groups. The analysis shows that the conditions for deliberative democracy differ between the three fora, as do their respective roles in parliament, but all in all they supplement each other.

Collaborative planning ? a comparative study of theory and practice Why There is today, according to my experience, a growing interest and demand for a more inclusive and transparent planning process. Also, if we are going to be able to reach a truly sustainable society it is my belief that there is a need for a more integrated collaboration between different actors. Where the social, economic and ecological values can influence and benefit from each other. The question then is, how can the planning system accommodate that kind of collaboration? Purpose My aim for this thesis has been to study a selection of the theoretical work that exist about collaborative planning.

In this thesis I discuss how the western conception of reason is an aspect of power. I consider the western comprehension of rationality to be a masculine and ethnocentric understanding, though by itself acclaimed to be universal. My purpose with this thesis is to analyze how this western and masculine conceptualisation of reason follows a gramscian structure of power, which makes it reproduce itself in the postcolonial project of science.The theory of hegemony and ideology of Antonio Gramsci is central for analyzing the reproduction of the western subject of knowledge. The theoretical approach is also based on the understanding of the Other as essential for defining the identity of the self. My two main objects of study is one text of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, which discuss the problems of representation, and one of Chandra Talpade Mohanty, in which she examines the tendency to neocolonization in certain western postcolonial feminist research.

Abstract The purpose of this study is to examine how teachers in primary school reason about and problematize the phenomenon of concentration difficulties. I want to know what the teachers think characterizes concentration difficulties, the situations in which difficulties creates the most problems, and whether the teachers think that these difficulties solely depend on external factors. To examine this, I chose to do interviews with three teachers in years four to six. I have completed parts of my work with my colleague Elin Preisz. We have used the same purpose and issues in our studies, although Elin has interviewed teachers in preschool. With this we want to be able to compare the reasoning between teachers at different stages in school. The results of my study shows that the interviewees think that it is hard to describe what characterizes the problems in concentration difficulties because the problems is very individual.

SJ is a government-owned passenger train operator in Sweden. SJ currently uses asystem called Ford for control and monitoring of maintenance. Technical andorganizational factors have given Ford the character of a monolithic system withoutflexibility and conditions to meet SJ's increased requirements.The main purpose of this master's thesis is to investigate how data quality can bedefined at SJ and to examine the data quality in Ford. This will give SJ an indication ofwhat their quality efforts should focus on in the future.The technical data quality parameters found are: accuracy, timeliness, completenessand consistency. The user centred data quality parameters are: accessibility,understandability and reliability.

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..

The banking industry is a fundamental part of the economy in Sweden. Despite its importance, the competition and the concentration level within the Swedish banking sector is relatively unexplored. This paper aims to examine the development of the concentration level in the Swedish banking sector during a period of ten years, 2003 to 2013. The examined banks in the study are the four largest banks in Sweden; Handelsbanken, Nordea, SEB and Swedbank, and four selected niche banks, ICA banken, Ikano Bank, Länförsäkringar Bank and Skandiabanken. In order to examine the development in percentage change, there are six selected variables; loans, deposits and borrowings (both public and households), net interest income and return on equity, which are observed during a period of ten years.

Entrepreneurship as playing a important role for economic growth has been discussed by a number of theorists such as Joseph Schumpeter and Israel M. Kirzner. William J. Baumol developed these theories as he considered that all entrepreneurship doesn?t lead to economic growth, some entrepreneurial activities may even lead to stagnation.