Detta examensarbete har genomförts vid Mälarenergi Elnät AB i Västerås. Undersökningen föranleddes av regeringsbeslutet om att elmätare måste avläsas en gång per månad från 2009. Konsekvensen för Mälarenergi är att de måste investera i ett automatiskt mätinsamlingssystem. Syftet med projektet har varit att skapa en generell investeringsmodell för att ekonomiskt utvärdera ett antal mätinsamlingssystem. I rapporten har Milabs, Seneas, Enermets, HM Powers, Iprobes samt Techems och Viterras system analyserats.

Svenska Kraftnät is (together with the other transmission system operators of the Nordic power system) responsible for keeping balance between the generated and demanded power in the Nordic power system. Spontaneous load variations and system disturbances, however, lead to power imbalance followed by frequency variations. The frequency deviations can be limited to an acceptable level by the spinning reserve, mainly by hydro power control. But there are also other system properties which have a great influence on the frequency and system stability. The frequency and voltage dependence of the loads have a direct influence on the power balance.

The aim of this study is to investigate which management control mechanisms evolve in companies that receive funding from Venture Capital companies and why the management control systems evolve in the way that they do. A case study was performed on three Swedish high technology companies, that all received funding from Venture Capital companies for the first time in 2006. Merchant?s framework, defining all management control mechanisms as either, results control, action control or personnel control, was used to structure the study. Results show that the companies that received Venture Capital all increased the use of management control mechanisms within results control, action control and personnel control.

Purpose: The main objective of this study is to research whether an announcement of an acquisition generates positive/negative abnormal short-term return towards the buying company?s shareholders. The secondary purpose is to research whether any differences could be due to selected factors: firm size and industry.Method: The study is quantitative in nature where the research aims at the stock price movement around the announcement of an acquisition. The sample size includes 30 companies between the years 2000-2010. The abnormal return is investigated by an Event Study.Conclusion: Our study shows that the publication gives a positive abnormal return in comparison to the respective sector indexes.

Agency theory describes the conflict of interest between the principal (stockholders) and the agent (CEO). Aligning the incentives of executives with those of the owners is the most direct way to mitigate the agency problem. If there is no meaningful link between CEO compensation and company performance, it is doubtful that the large sums of assets in public corporations are being managed efficiently. In theory the solution is simple reward the CEO when shareholders wealth increases. The purpose of this paper is to investigate if there is a relationship between company performance and CEO compensation among Swedish companies, in materials and information technology industry.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to contribute with knowledge regarding the connection between the socialization process and the organizational commitment perceived by junior accountants. Based on Van Maanen and Schein's (1979) model, we intend to identify and describe how selected socialization strategies affect junior accountants? perceived affective, continuous and normative commitment during the initial five years in the firm.Research methodology: Semi-structured interview was chosen as the key approach for gathering essential data. Interviews were conducted at three major accounting firms with a total of eight interview participants. The study has a qualitative approach because of the ability to go in depth on the studied phenomenon.Conclusion: The socialization process consists of individual, informal, sequential, fixed, serial, and investiture strategies.

The aim for this study was to investigate if it is less stressful for cow and calves in loose housing systems when separation is made so they can see and touch each other (Physical Contact-PC) instead of just hearing each other (Hearing Contact-HC). The behavior of eight cow- calf pairs (n=4 pairs per treatment) on an ecological dairy farm with cubicle housing were studied for four hours directly after separation and four hours the day after separation. The first four cows that gave birth were used for treatment PC, and the following four cows that gave birth were used for treatment HC. The only selection criteria used was that both cow and calf were healthy. Separation took place 3-4 days after birth and the calves were put separately in two different pens while the mothers were let loose into the cubicle system.

This report describes a master thesis performed at SICS (Swedish Institute of Computer Science) and KTH (The Royal Institute of Technology) in Stockholm.Ajax stands for "Asynchronous JavaScript and XML" and it's not a programming language, but a suite of technologies used to develop web applications with more interactivity than the traditional web pages.Ajax applications can be adapted for mobile and constrained devices. This has been called Mobile Ajax. While the technique is the same, Mobile Ajax generally is considered to be a special case of Ajax, because it deals with problems specific to the mobile market.The purpose of this thesis has been to examine which possibilities and disadvantages has the Mobile Ajax from developers and users perspective. In addition we compare Mobile Ajax with Java Micro Edition (Java ME) and Flash Lite.This has been done through literature studies and development of a databased chat client (MAIM -Mobile Ajax Instant Messenger). The application sends and receives direct messages in real time between differently mobile devices.

The aim of the project is to develop a tool for a management system at the advertising agency ofConfetti. The company has during a longer period of time felt a need of introducing a quality and environmentalsystem but have a lack in resources of knowledge, time and money. Their goal is to have aconcrete documentation which describes their quality policy and the function of the activity.The work has been performed by mapping and analyzing the processes of the company according tothe process model with focus on one pilot process. New routines have been developed and documentedin a management system.Confetti would like their management system to fulfil the ISO-standard so that they eventually inthe future can be certified. Therefore a literature study has been done according to management systemsand standards.

The Swedish armed forces has for many years educated squad leaders by letting them start their training two and a half months before the soldiers start their training. 2007, this system was used for the last time. I went trough this system myself in 2005 and had a positive experience and when I did my internship I experienced a slight difference in the attitude of the squad leader. I talked with my colleges at the company and they had felt the same. This essay will try to analyse if the squad leaders has lost any of there ability and if so, what could be the cause? To analyze the ability of the squad leader in this essay it will first analyze their ability through the Direct leadership theory, which is the theory that is presently used in the Swedish armed forces.

Until recently, the art market has expanded for several consecutive years. The primary art market is characterized by an unclear pricing mechanism and an infinite as well as limited supply. Previous business studies have so far primarily focused either on art as an investment or on the gallery?s activities. This thesis takes an explorative approach and aims to shed a light on the art collector?s behavior on the Swedish market for contemporary art.

For systems with multicore processors contention for shared resources is a problem that occurs when several memory-intensive processes are executed in parallel within the same memory domain. This contention has a direct influence on the performance of the system and is a complex problem that has been recognized for a long time. An attractive and actively studied way to minimize this problem is by using a process scheduler adapted to allocate processor cores in a way such that contention for shared resources is minimized.With the introduction of multicore NUMA-systems (Non-Uniform Memory Access) the situation has become even more complex. In these systems the access time for processor cores to different memory domains vary depending on factors such as distance and load. Thus, the process scheduler also has to consider where the memory of each process is placed to minimize the distance and balance the load on each memory domain.This report presents a user-level process scheduler for a NUMA-system based on the multicore processor Tilera TILEPro64.

Employers are becoming more and more aware of that the internal communication between employees is the reason why organizations are being held alive and also what impact the office environment has on employees work performances and their communication. The aim of our study was to gain an understanding of what significance an office's spatial design has for the communication between employees and managers in the workplace. We have through qualitative interviews with managers and employees from different business cases gotten a perception of their ways of communicating with each other. The results showed that employees and leaders thought that they shared the same picture of what their communication was like in reality, how they thought their ways of marking their territory in the office was understood and respected and what their opinions and expectations of how the communication between them and their leaders should be like. These results were then analyzed in consideration with relevant theory and previous research in the disciplines of office environment and communication studies.The main conclusions that have been drawn from the analysis are that the work environment's design can be both positive and negative at the same time and that what should be focused on is the leaders' communication. The leaders and their employees have to communicate more about their communication between them so thart misunderstandings can be avoided in the office environment - and therefore become more effective..

The purpose of this study is to investigate a loyalty card and its relation to accompanying promotional benefits, and their linkages to grocery retail service loyalty. Also, the aim sets out to find relationships between demographic variables and proneness towards the promotional benefits, the loyalty card, and loyalty. A quantitative approach has been assumed and empirical data has been collected through the use of questionnaires. The data has been analyzed through descriptive statistics, correlations, and regression analysis. An operationalization used to measure satisfaction of the loyalty card and attitudinal loyalty is also presented.

Multichannel-shopping has become a wide spread phenomenon in the retail industry due to a significant development of retail channels and formats. Consumers now shop for the same product category in many different retail settings and this trend is increasing. Therefore both the academic world and the retail industry are screaming for knowledge about the multichannel-shoppers. Several studies have focused on the characteristics of different channels and how multichannel strategies should be designed to minimize cannibalization. There is however a lack of research concerning what characterizes multichannel-shoppers and what drives them to shop in several channels.