The structural rationalization of rural firms in Sweden has led to many new creative ways of developing companies. The agriculture sector is characterized by the need of capital in form of buildings, labor and inventory. The rationalization process has led to free capacity in rural firms when new technology make buildings and inventory not longer necessary for the production process. To get a better cost coverage this free capacity can be used to start-up new business areas that help the rural firm to growth.The study aims to identify factors that motives entrepreneurs in rural firms to develop new business areas. The purpose is also to analyze driving forces that lies behind development of rural firms and the forces that support or not support development in rural firms.The study is built upon five cases that all can be categorized as firms with different size and orientation.

Issuing convertible bonds for financing purposes has never become widespread practice amongst Swedish companies, in spite of the instrument being common in international markets. Economic theory based on efficient markets suggests that companies should gain no financial benefits from using convertibles and the Swedish situation could be interpreted as in line with this reasoning. However, there are Swedish companies that have chosen to issue convertibles and the Swedish market therefore seems both supportive and contradictory to the existence of benefits of convertible bond financing. Little research concerning the Swedish market has been conducted and the purpose of this explorative thesis is thus to enhance the understanding of the Swedish market for convertibles. This is achieved by conducting in-depth interviews with six listed Swedish companies that have recently issued convertible bonds.

Lean is one of the recent years most popular methods for organizations to use in order to increase efficiency, productivity and quality. Despite Lean's increased popularity, Lean is still difficult to define and can be explained and described in different ways. Previous studies have also shown that Lean is difficult to implement and challenging to maintain successfully. Knowledge of Lean is viewed as a necessity in the implementation of Lean, which leads to that organizations often chooses to bring in this knowledge through external consultants or other experts in order to implement Lean in their organization. Thus, it is interesting to examine the consultants view on Lean and the implementation process of Lean.

Today`s society requires that municipalities focus must be more on effectivity and quality. Because of this it is important for municipalities to look after the controlling systems. Many municipalities choose to adopt models that reflect the efficacy. The municipality of Vellinge has chosen to implement balanced scorecard in all their efficacies. We found it interesting when it was exposed that 70 % of all implementations of balanced scorecard fails.

Studien ämnar undersöka hur intressentdialogen initieras och vad som sker mellan ett vinstdrivande företag och ideella organisationer, även kallade NGOs. Företag har idag en stor påverkan på samhället, där NGOs är en av företagens viktigaste intressenter. NGOs kan utöva påverkan på företag genom dialoger och företagen kan med framgång ta hjälp av NGOs i arbetet med ansvar- och hållbarhetsfrågor, även benämnt som CSR. Med utgångspunkt i teorin om intressenter och Triple Bottom Line visar studien, via tre olika intressentdialoger, hur dialogen initieras, vad syftet är samt vilka frågor som diskuteras. Vidare identifieras vilka frågor det råder konsensus och i vilka det kan uppstå konflikter.

Being a student in the educational system is in itself a challenging exercise, considering the various parts that may matter in different extent for the students. There is a syllabus, there are different backgrounds and contexts for each student and there is also the knowledge in the subject to consider. This study sets out to explore to which extent teachers and students reflect about the transition from public school to upper secondary school/high school, specifically in the context of History as subject. What do they think about it and how do they work with it?By interviewing five teachers and letting 94 students in upper secondary school completing a survey about this subject (the transition), I can conclude that the matter is complex, both for students and teachers, however still a significant and important issue to discuss.

This study is based on the discussion of the rapid development and use of the Internet and its role in transforming the religious landscape. More specifically it focuses on the Swedish Muslim cyber landscape and how this has changed over the passed twelve years. Göran Larrsons study Svenska cybermuslimska miljöer i början av det 21 århundradet (Swedish Cybermuslim Enviroments in the start of the Twentyfirst Century) from 2001, is being used as a starting and reference point. The general purpose of this essay is to study religious change online. The specific aim is to investigate if and in that case, how and why the Swedish cyber-Islamic landscape has changed and developed in the last twelve years.The questions to be answered in this study are:- What Muslim actors (groups, individuals and organizations) are represented on Swedish web pages in 2013?- Have the Swedish Muslim cyber landscape changed with respect to the number of web pages, content and actors since 2001, and can these changes be understood and analyzed with the help of existing research on religion and new media and Islam and Muslims in Sweden?The result of this essay shows that there has been a dramatic change regarding the activity in the Swedish Muslim cyber landscape.

The thesis aims to examine the occurrence of Earnings Management (EM) preceding Seasoned Equity Offerings (SEOs) on the Swedish capital market. EM refers to activities and adjustments carried out by managers. The underlying purpose of these actions is to adjust net income. The procedure is typically done by borrowing income from future periods. Evidence of EM around SEOs has been documented on capital markets around the world, and the effects on firms' post-offering performance are severe.

This qualitative study involves the implementation of Lean and Kaizen methods in a Swedish service industry. Lean philosophy is based on a method to achieve more with less. In practical terms this means that the use of an organization's resources is improved. The origin of Lean is the Toyota Production System. Now, Kaizen methods give managers and employees a better more efficient system to reach their goals within the organization or company.

This essay focuses on different aspects of the concept of freedom of speech. The purpose is to examine the opinions and thoughts that upper secondary school students have on rights, responsibilities and limitations when it comes to freedom of speech, and to investigate theirschool experiences of the mentioned freedom. Focus groups have been used as method and two group interviews have been conducted, one at a vocational and the other at an academic upper secondary school. Overall, nine students from the third grade participated in the interviews.The essay's results show that the students believe that everyone in society should have theright to be heard, whether you have extreme or divergent opinions. The interviewed studentsexpresses that all people have great responsibility for their opinions, however that, opinionsdiffer on how to interpret the concept of responsibility.

Den här fallstudien syftar till öka kunskapen om hur Stena Line kan förbättra service genom lärandet från en e-learning utbildning samt om personalen har ett behov av uppföljning, och i så fall hur den ska utformas. Vi ville även öka vår kunskap om hur Stena Line kan förändra de anställdas beteenden med hjälp av e-learning och vilka förutsättningar som krävs för att personalen ska bli motiverade till att förändra sitt beteende.Fallstudien har genomförts genom metodkombination. Tillvägagångssättet har varit att inledningsvis dela ut en enkät, kvantitativ metod, för att skapa oss en uppfattning om arbetsplatsen. Därefter genomfördes semistrukturerade person-, och gruppintervjuer med ett strategiskt urval, kvalitativ metod, med en intervjuguide som utformats med hänsyn tagen till enkätens resultat. Det kvalitativa tillvägagångssättet har varit vår huvudsakliga metod.Vi har kommit fram till att hur utbildningen presenteras är viktigt för hur den mottas hos anställda, vilket i sin tur påverkar resultatet av utbildningen.

During the period 2009-2013, investments in the Swedish national grid increase by a factor of ten compared to previous years. In order to fulfil their mission to manage the national grid in a safe, efficient and environmentally sound way, Svenska Kraftnät (Swedish National Grid) needs to take all these perspectives into account while planning new investments. To compare and relate perspectives of technology, economy and environment the same yard stick must be used. That yard stick is commonly money. A problem arises however as environmental issues are difficult to price.The purpose of this master?s degree project was to develop a tool for evaluation of environmental impact related to investments in the Swedish national grid.

Unit testing is a type of testing technique which is becoming quite fashionable to the developers and companies that are in the business of creating and managing software. Alas there are seldom any concrete data to support the positive claims of the authors in unit testing methodology books. These claims are instead based on empirical studies and the experience of the authors. The problem that arises from this situation is that it becomes problematic for managers and also the developers themselves to convince both customers and their own management to use this type of testing as there is no exact return of investment model. This essay examines this problem from two points, the first point is from the literature itself and interviews conducted with a number of developers at a software company located in Umea, Sweden.

Orust Kretsloppsakademi is a nonprofit organisation, with a goal of annually generate the same amount of electrical energy that is consumed. Orust is an island on the west coast of Sweden, north of Gothenburg. The population of 15 000 reaches 40 000 during summer, due to the large amount of vacationer. The total electricity demand is 174 GWh a year with a maximum power need of 32 MW. This report presents an analysis for the plausibility of their plan and from a power system stability perspective, the effects on the electrical grid.The conclusion is that the restraints for development of power generation from wind, solar and wave generation, are the power systems capability to transfer power, primarily in the transformers of the grid.

This degree project deals with creating an Android application for managing representation orders placed in stores as well as evaluating Androids usage as a platform for that line of work. The evaluation will be based on tests of the application on an Android phone together with a survey consisting of written questions and a practical test of the application..