Evaluating and choosing suppliers based on price alone, has traditionally been the dominant strategy for supplier selection within the purchasing function. With the origin of the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)-concept in the early 1990s, a new philosophy dawned that promoted the importance of knowing the effects of supplier performance on the buying firm?s internal costs. Since then, scholars have been arguing the case of TCO as a viable model for making purchasing decisions and conducting supplier evaluation. Still, after two decades little is known about its penetration and impact on the practices of buying corporations, leaving the questions of which costs are included in the purchasing organisations? decisions unanswered, and even more importantly why certain costs are considered and others not.

The cultural policy area has a tendency to be seen as a consensus area, where there are no big conflicts between the parties. The aim of this master?s thesis is to study the moderate party?s cultural motion 2005/06Kr:233 with the party leader Fredrik Reinfeldt as first author. If consensus rules, the party?s ideology should not be visible in the motion, but the assumption in the thesis is that it is visible.

Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är att identifiera vad som påverkar privatpersoners risktolerans och vilka informationskällor som används i samband med aktieinvesteringar. Studien ska även undersöka vilken syn privatpersoner har på ägarstruktur i börsnoterade bolag och huruvida ägarstrukturen påverkar investeringsbeslutet. Utifrån detta vill författarna skapa teoretisk och empirisk kunskap.Metod: Studien genomfördes med hjälp av flermetodsforskning. Detta skedde genom att både kvalitativ och kvantitativ metod användes för att samla in empiri. Den kvalitativa metoden användes för att samla in empiri genom semistrukturerade intervjuer med analytiker, privatrådgivare och aktiemäklare.

The new Swedish Companies Act allows Swedish companies to issue two instruments that were previously prohibited: mandatory convertibles and participating debentures. The aim of the thesis is to conduct a cross sectional study of Swedish corporate hybrid securities, especially in the light of the new Companies Act. The cross sectional study also includes areas such as credit rating, accounting and tax. The thesis concludes that it is possible, under Swedish law, to issue corporate hybrid securities that qualify for both high equity credit and tax deductible interest payments. The use of certain hybrid provisions are, however, restrained by Swedish company law.

With background in the acknowledgement of the current period of major change in the characteristics of traditional Swedish foreign policy, considering the membership in the European Union, as well as the new contextual scenarios that Sweden has been situated in after the end of the cold war, this thesis aims at scrutinizing the Swedish Foreign Policy from 1991 to 2010. The purpose of the thesis is further to localize continuity and change in the ideas which Sweden has explicitly stated in its foreign policy. Based on the theory of institutionalism, the thesis also aims to bring forward plausible explanations built on the main empirical findings. This has been done by identifying different types of goals and means within realism and liberalism as well as categorizing each theory within three ideal types.The chosen research method has been a qualitative text analysis with focus on an ideational analysis. The material on which the descriptive analysis is based upon is constituted by the annual statements of government policy in parliamentary debates on foreign affairs.The results of the thesis show that the ideas that are related to solidarity, consensus and active foreign policy are constant through the period of examination.

Leaders have many tools in their toolbox when it comes to managing their firms, assuring that they are moving in the right direction. One of these tools is vision. Vision can be a powerful tool for steering a company. But to be able to use it fully, you must also understand how vision is best conveyed to employees and followers. If you understand the vision as a tool, you can fully utilize it.

The purpose of this essay is to describe and analyze experiences of how the daily rounds and a persons role is changing when you go from being a family member to being a family member as well as being a kinship carer.Essential questions at issue was:- Which feelings are associated to the roll as kinship carer?- What are the motivations for the relative/family member to become a kinship carer?- What is the change of the role like before and after the disease.Six persons have been interviewed on the subject and symbolic interactionism and role theory has been our theoretical perspective. The essay has been related to the ideas of Meads on social interaction and to Goffmans theatre theorem.The result of the essay showed that feelings and motivations as regards to the daily rounds and the role of the kinship carer were individual, where similarities and differences occurred. When ones partner, parent or child got a disease/functional disability it generated in some changes regarding their daily rounds and it led to altering of roles. To assume a role was a natural result and often happened when a relative/family member got a disease or an injury..

AbstractAuthors: Carolina Magnusson and Johanna MagnussonTitle:  The balance between research and practice. A study of family therapist?s knowledge retrieval and the application of evidence-based practice.Supervisor: Jan Petersson Assessor: Peter HultgrenDuring our research we discovered that a very small amount of research had been conducted about the effect of the social services. It inspired us to fulfill this study. The aim of the study is to describe and analyze what knowledge family therapists in two Swedish municipalities use in family therapy work.

The purpose of this essay is to understand how children and adolescent regard participating infamily therapy sessions, and the children´s views on their own contribution to the therapy.Another focus is weather family therapy can strengthen children´s identity and sence ofcoherence, and thus help them being more able to coping with dificulties in the future.Important questions for this work is to investigate how the attitudes and abilities of familytherapists can help the children become participating subjects, and how the collaborativeapproach contribute to bringing new perspectives and opportunities in the family's relationalcontext and life situation. By using Antonovsky´s salutogenic theory and narrative theory, theaim of this paper is to bring forth ways to approach children as family therapist that helpsstrengthen the childrens identity, self-esteem and sence of coherence.By analyzing family therapists known for being child-focused, such as Jim Wilson, MichaelWhite, David Epston and Haldor Övreeide, and compare the approach as therapist to theconclusions of the recent studies, this paper wants to emphasize how to approach children,adolescents and parents in a way that helps children contribute to solving the problem and thatbrings forth new narratives about the childs identity and relational context..

This thesis discusses the Swedish drug policy and its principle of prohibition. In the world of today there is an ongoing discussion about prohibition and the concept of harm reduction. This thesis is an analysis of Swedish drug policy and an investigation as to whether the prohibition concept is in a state of decline. It tries to answer the question; is the Swedish drug policy moving away from its prohibition principle towards a harm reduction principle? The recent debate, articles, documents and earlier research has been analyzed in order to find answers to my questions.

This essay takes its starting point in the making of a new national general school curriculum for the Swedish elementary school. The purpose of this essay is to estimate what the policy makers intended with the new policy documents and relate that to how a few teachers perceive these changes. In order to get an understanding of how the teachers view these changes I have done qualitative interviews with four teachers which all work in the Swedish elementary school.Theories on "implementation" and "street-level bureaucracy" are used to analyse my empirical material. My results tell that there is a difference how teachers relate to the new curruculum and the policy makers' intentions with it. That can be explained by the fact that teachers' work is complex and as to they work in a complex organization..

Background: During extreme market conditions like the period during fall 2008 the discussion of what affects company value becomes apparent. The capital structure is the relation between borrowed capital and equity in a company´s financing mix. What impact changes in capital structure have on company value is a widely debated subject within the theory of finance. If a relationship between capital structure and company value exists the implication is that an optimal capital structure where company value is maximized also exists.Aim: The aim of the thesis is to study whether a certain relationship between capital structure and company value exists among selected stocks and companies listed on Stockholmsbörsens OMXS30.Implementation: With aim to fulfill the purpose of the thesis regression analysis has been performed among chosen stocks and companies. The empirical results eventuating from this have been analyzed from the view of elected relevant theory.Completion and results: We find that during normal market conditions a positive relationship between debt ratio and enterprise value (EV) can be established.

This study aimed to explore the perceived role and mandate of civil servants employed in municipalities in Kronoberg county. The study aimed to answer the question whether civil servants engaged in municipal economics have different perspectives on their mandate and role based on how said civil servants implement and manage policy tools available in Swedish municipalities. The study aimed to through policy tools theory explain how civil servants through four categories view the policy tools employed in the municipality. The study is based on the reasoning that policy tools influences exercise of authority that in turn influences view on policy tools. In order to study civil servants perspective on perceived mandate and role interviews were conducted with a sample of civil servants from each of the eight municipalities in Kronoberg county.

This paper aims at describing and explaining the bi-and multilateral negotiations that are, and have been, taking place between Sweden's chief negotiator Allan Larsson and European countries, and within the EU institutions in Brussels, in order to seek support for the Swedish offer to host the European Spallation Source, ESS. It applies a case study method using political science theories ? governance and government ? and to a large extent information from the involved actors in the policy process. The paper also presents a constructive position, in showing how the negotiations on ESS can turn into a process leading to a decision on the construction of this research facility. ESS is negotiated in networks on bi- and multilateral levels consisting of European research representatives and financiers.

This paper has bearing on the subject of foreign policy analysis and decision-making,but is nonetheless important to peace and conflict studies due to its emphasis onnuclear weapons and deterrence.I have constructed a theoretical framework for the analysis of foreign policydecision-making that I set out to test on a crucial case. The framework iscrosscutting, and takes into consideration four levels of analysis: the system-,regional-, state-, and individual level. It is centred on a key decision maker, andapplies a cognitive approach for determining his or hers belief system through whichthe inputs from the other levels are filtered in order for the decision maker toconstruct a perception of reality, from which the decision is then formulated within.The framework is applied to North Korean and its leader Kim Jong Il. It sets outto explain his behaviour in the matter of their claimed nuclear weapons program, andhis decision to conduct a nuclear weapons-test, getting inside his head trying to figureout why he chose to do it and for what reasons.The conclusion indicates that the basic structure of the framework and its generalapplicability is sound, but that it needs further testing in order to make it perfectly solid..