In a time of economic turmoil and financial crisis profitability matters rise higher and higher on company agendas. Many companies are pressured to find profitability to avoid layoffs or even bankruptcy. Profitability essentially depends on the margin on the product or service sold and the costs associated with selling these products or services and hence these areas are of vital importance if companies are to improve profitability. Previous research has focused, for the most part, on product profitability while customer profitability has received less attention. This study is based on a case study of a Swedish publishing house and aims to investigate how the company?s Cost-to-Serve varies between its distribution channels.

The aim of this study is to investigate how Swedish elementary school teachers proceed in cases of suspected child abuse, what knowledge teachers have in order to identify signs of child abuse and to make a report to social services, and also the obstacles teachers face during a report to social services. We used qualitative interviews with five practicing teachers; three was conducted at the teachers´ workplaces and the other two with the help of telephones. We used the role theory to analyze our results. We have concluded that teachers request more knowledge of signs of maltreatment and that they find their skills in discovering child abuse lacking. As obstacles to reporting, teachers identify their doubts and worries together with the difficulties that the often concealed child abuse brings.

In Sweden prostitution is by many considered to be a social problem that primarily affects women. To counteract prostitution is a political priority and as a result the purchase of sexual services is prohibited by law. Since the law that prohibits the purchase of sexual services entered into force it has been continuously debated and widely disputed. The aim of this thesis is to compare the image of prostitution found in the travaux préparatoires of the law with four sex workers? view of the phenomenon.

Technological developments have affected many different areas. Something that has undergone major changes in this respect is gambling. Because of technology, the accessibility to games has never been greater. Using smartphones, tablets and online casinos makes it possible to play virtually any time of day no matter where you are. This development has caused that more people, got stuck in a gambling addiction which have become an increasing problem in the last decade.

The aim of this study was to explore how social workers interpret the part of the Swedish social services act that regulates each municipality?s responsibility of the people staying in it. The study?s general methodological approach connects to sociology of law. The research questions were: (1) What factors are considered important by the social workers in assessments of responsible municipality? (2) Are there variations in the assessments of responsible municipality and in that case; how can the variations be explained? (3) What discretion do the social workers consider that they have in assessments of responsible municipality? Previous studies have found considerable differences in professional social work assessments in Sweden.

Background: The valuation of Biotechnology companies is difficult in many ways. Patent and human capital are hard to value and also there is a great uncertainty about the success of the compaines research programs. Are traditional valuation models really useful when it comes to research companies or do they result in false values of the companies? Purpose: To study what values different valuation models gives biotechnology companies and how they correspond to the market value. Method:We have studied financial litterature och found the most common used models today.

The recent history knows numerous examples of creditor?s inability to evaluate financial solvency of the client correctly. Creditors? risks do not only concern individual relations between the two parties but the economy in general. The standard loan-giving procedure considers evaluation based on a number of financial ratios.

The purpose of this study is to use a qualitative approach to get an understanding of what is expected of social workers targeted towards women managers in social services. Nine social workers were interviewed. The empirical data was then analyzed on the basis of gender theory. Respondents did not see their supervisor as a manager but more as a social worker with special tasks. Our empirical data indicates that there is a strong belief that men and women possess different properties.

Banks carry a great responsibility when it comes to the financial systems in our society. Disturbance in the credit system affects both lender and borrower. All financial institutions must therefore carefully estimate their risk exposure. This assessment enables them to cover themselves from losses with appropriate capital buffers as main guardian. In order to prevent bank crises and also to maintain financial stability in general, new regulations concerning analysis and preventive actions were introduced on the 1st of February 2007.

The communication with government and municipality through Internet has in-creased during the last couple of years. Therefore we have chosen to focus our bachelor thesis in this particularly area and the needs for usable web services for the citizens. In this bachelor thesis we are studying a increasing group users, namely elderly citizens. During the study we have analysed E-governments ser-vices usability through usability tests. The combination of conversations and meetings with individuals, observations of interactions and literature studies give us the opportunity to explore the users needs.

This thesis was conducted to assess how the privatization of Iran Air process managed in last efforts and how should it be in right way. It increases the knowledge about privatization in Iran and the need for it. Iran air as our case study is a flag-carrier airline company that is protected by government regulations and subsidies. We try to find the reasons for failure of privatization in Iran Air and their attempt on privatization.The method used to collect data was a qualitative methodology, consisting of semi-structured interviews with relevant managers, and knowledgeable professors and the official sites and press. In conclusion, we find that privatization is an important need for Iran Air Company and the main problems that are against Iran Air can be categorized to political, financial, and social.

The mobile revolution is here to stay, and today most people have (at least) one cell phone at home. Some even a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant)as a complement for the simpler tasks at the office, e.g sending e-mail, word processing, browsing the Internet etc. Many business have also given the employees the opportunity to do some of the business tasks inbetweeen customer visits with the help from a cell phone or PDA.Despite all this, the so called Internet connected mobile revolution is often mentioned as a big failure. Maybe because the people in general tended not to use the new technology as much as the companies predicted. This could be because they still haven't learned how it works, or just don't seem to have the need for services provided.After a couple of failures in the development process, almost every cell phone has support for mobile Internet today.

Traditionally, the majority of Swedish public libraries have carried out most of their acquisitions through Bibliotekstjänst's binding booklets. In recent years, however, many libraries have complemented the binding booklets and other services from Bibliotekstjänst by other ways of acquiring books, such as Internet bookshops, while other libraries have stopped using the binding booklets altogether. There are various reasons for this development, such as Information Technology making it possible for librarians to compare prizes and services from different retailers. Another important reason is the need for public libraries to meet new needs from their patrons, while remaining on a restrained budget, which often causes a need for reorganization of staff and resources.As a way of meeting the new needs for libraries, Bibliotekstjänst has created Profile Services (profiltjänster), a service in which a library outsources its acquisitions to Bibliotekstjänst. The staff of the library, in dialogue with Bibliotekstjänst, design a profile for the acquisitions for the library in question, in order to determinate which types and genres of literature the library and its patrons are requesting.

The field of the social economy and of the work integration social enterprises (WISE) in particular, is for many a more or less unknown area. Unlike ordinary enterprises the WISE's are different due to their aim of integrating disadvantaged people through work. In comparison with other small enterprises earlier research has shown that the WISE's are dealing with challenges regarding recruitment, participation, leadership, sustainable business ideas but above all, the access to funding. The purpose of this essay has therefore been to examine and analyze the financial situation of eight WISE's located in the Stockholm County. The results indicate that half of the enterprises perceive their economic situation as very unstable and as an obstacle to their further development.

Sustainability is a term that is constantly gaining focus in our society and we are becoming more and more aware of the need to take the next generation into consideration when making decisions. The sustainable activity within the core business is growing and is also connected to profitability in ways that have not been seen before. However, the activities that are not included in the core business have not yet reached this long-term perspective. These non-core businesses within an organization goes under the term Facilities Management (FM).This paper focuses onReal Estate businesses, FM-suppliers and the relation between them.The purpose is to investigate current knowledge regarding outsourced FM-services and the real estate organisation?s use of these services.