When a country faces a decline in business activity, companies have to struggle to gain external capital. It is even more important for small enterprises to get capital, as they normally do not have enough collateral to receive traditional bank loans. In Bangladesh, Grameen Bank started with micro credit programs in the early 90?s, that included small capital loans and leasing of machines. Nowadays these micro credit programs have developed to function even in industrialized countries.

The acquisition process as an object for research and empirical studies have increased in importance during the past decade. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate this process further. This was done by reviewing previous research covering the area of mergers and acquisitions. Seven key factors that should be considered in an acquisition process emerged; acquisition project management, planning, communication between the acquirer and the potential target, goal alignment within management, company-cultures, a trade-off between a certain speed in integrating the companies and consideration of the employees, and finally the follow-up. These factors have been shown to increase the likelihood of value creation in acquisitions.

This thesis? objective is to evaluate the recently proposed Shy (2002) approach of estimating consumer switching costs. We apply Shy?s method for estimating switching costs on the Swedish markets for bank deposits and telecommunications. The evaluation has been achieved by comparing estimated results to economic theories, related empirical studies, and our expectations.

Students who regularly cause trouble in school, how can they learn anything? That is what we asked ourselves after having visited a special school for ?troublesome students? (in Swedish resursskola). Our main purpose has been to find out how these students have experienced the help they have been given in those schools.We have interviewed students, parents and a social worker in order to find out if the alternative pedagogical methods used by those schools give the students better opportunities to perform their schoolwork. The interviews have been made two or three years after the end of their studies in compulsory school (grade 9). We have used a qualitative method with semi structured interviews and also an evaluation model.

This text answers the questions how do we define what a campus is, how the concept of the campus came to exist and how it is used today, and how the Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH) campus can be designed according to site conditions and the conclusions drawn from case studies at Chalmers University of Technology and Karlstad University. The purpose of the case studies is to gain insight into their campuses advantages and disadvantages. This finally results in an interpretation of how the Blekinge Institute of Technology campus can be planned. A campus is the area of land on which a college or university and its surrounding buildings resides on. Campus as a concept meant a field at first, it later evolved at American universities due to their design of college campuses.

Syfte ? Syftet med denna studie är att identifiera om valutan utgör ett hinder i utlandshandeln för svenska småföretag och undersöka om ett medlemskap i Ekonomiska och Monetära Unionen (EMU) skulle kunna minska det motstånd som företag upplever inför utlandshandeln. Argumenten att EMU skulle underlätta för företagens utlandshandel har använts i debatten för eller emot ett medlemskap i över tio år.Metod? Metoden i denna studie har byggt på en kvantitativ undersökning i form av en enkät till 21 olika svenska småföretag. Svaren analyserades i ett spridningsdiagram och en regressionsanalys.

The visual representation of management (board of directors, chief executive officer and executive management) in annual reports is an area of scholarship that has not been explored much. In the present study a sample of 87 annual reports from business enterprises within a Swedish context, comprising about 300 photographs, was analyzed using an explorative method of analysis based on semiotics and grounded theory. The influence of the context on images raises a question discussed in the study: Should the photographs in the annual report be categorized as portraits, advertisements and others or should the annual report be regarded as a genre of its own? The photographs showed patterns of homogeneity regarding gender, dress, gestures, colours, pictorial compositions et cetera. The position of the (male) CEO is privileged, but he is also connected to the group through various means like dress and style, thereby further underscoring management as a male enterprise and demonstrating the importance of the suit and necktie in creating homosocial bonds.

This report evaluates whether normal approximation or resampling is to prefer for estimating the distribution of the sample mean and functions of the sample mean. The evaluation relies on simulation studies. The observations of the sample are allowed to be differently distributed. In the case of sample means they are also allowed to be dependent.For sample means the two approximations behaves very similar. The most important component whether we have a good or a bad approximation is how good the approximations catch the variance of the true distribution.

Purpose: To evaluate the management development course held at FöreningsSparbanken in Ronneby during 2000. The evaluation aims to map and describe what effects the course has had on the participants. We will assess to what degree the effects meets the objectives of the course set by the manager of the bank (future management recruitment, leadership, change catalyst, aligning the strive towards a shared organisational objective). Above mentioned also implies that the organisation should be influenced in some regards. Conclusion: Our conclusion is that all of the participants have as a result of the course increased their emotional intelligence in varying levels. We also conclude that the course participants? progress has not spread to the non-participants.

This master thesis covers the development of an automatic tuning process for the existing speed controller for drive systems. The drive systems are resonant two-mass systems where a motor is used to drive a load connected by a shaft. The developed method relies heavily on system identification and the construction of a complete mechanical model of the process. With this approach, the common problem with poor load speed control that derives from measuring only the motor speed can be addressed and solved for a majority of such processes.The automatic tuning method has along with general test functions been implemented in a complete tool for automatic tuning, testing and performance evaluation and reporting for drive systems..

The aim of this paper is to examine the youth library PUNKTmedis' work methods to adapt itself to the youth. Improved communication with this user group is the starting point for the new work methods. We have chosen to view the increased cooperation between the library and the youth as an adjustment to market demands. We have noticed the possible existence of an antagonism between on the one hand the traditional role of the public library of adult education and on the other hand an adjustment to the market demands. Adult education and the adjustment to market demands is seen as contributing to the image of PUNKTmedis.

Kreditbedömningar vid lån är en riskabel process för banker, vid felaktiga kreditbedömningar riskerar de inte bara sin egen lönsamhet utan det kan även påverka samhället finansiellt. En banktjänsteman baserar sin kreditbedömning på både finansiell- och icke finansiell information, banktjänstemännen har även möjlighet att använda affärssystem som ett datoriserat beslutsstöd vid sin kreditbedömning. Affärssystem har möjligheten att samla in finansiell information, hantera informationen samt generera ny information som kan användas som beslutsunderlag. Syftet med denna studie är att beskriva affärssystemets roll vid kreditbedömningar och hur affärssystemets roll påverkas av relationsfaktorer. Studien har en kvalitativ ansats som består av sju intervjuer av banktjänstemän som arbetar med kreditbedömningar på både företags- och privatsidan.

This master thesis is the documented work of the construction process and testing of a three hour laboratory session in mathematics aimed at high school level students. The purpose of the thesis was to create an interesting laboratory session for the science education center ?The House of Science? that could be used as a part of their regular program directed to schools. The thesis explores the possibilities for how one can construct a laboratory session on the topic ?molecular symmetry? as well as the underlying pedagogical theories used to describe learning processes in creative contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to identify significant factors of influence for the co-existence and team climate within working groups, and to examine their impact on the psychosocial work environment within a group. Team climate and interaction affect every individual in a group. The manager, however, is the one formally accountable for the psychosocial climate in a working group, which is the reason why this study uses the management perspective.As an introduction to the empiric study, an overview of the existing literature within the field was made. A qualitative method is used and the empiric data is based on semi-structured interviews. The study comprises six interviews with department managers within the Social Services in the City Council of Stockholm.

The aim of this study is to examine the investment decision process for investments that arise due to strategic changes and are of strategic importance to the company. At the foundation of this study is the previous research in this area, done by King (1975) and Bower (1970), which examines the investment process on a more generic level. At the core is the investment decision process pertaining to Projekt X, an investment performed by NordiCorp. Having conducted a case study including six interviews with employees from various parts of the organization, combined with a large number of internal documents, the process regarding the investment decision was carefully illuminated. The results show that in many regards, this process follows the more generic investment process.