Abstract The 1st of January 2009 there will be a new discrimination law in Sweden. That means that the Parliament finally will interpret three EC-directives in there entirety. The new law means that the present discrimination laws will be merged to one law. The situation for disabled persons on the labour market has improved, since the discrimination law was founded in 1999. The Labour Court got some cases to judge and media has attracted attention to disabled persons rights.

Several studies have investigated the relationship between different measures of innovative activity, such as patent statistics and R&D expenditures and some have looked deeper into the differences between large and small firms regarding number of patents issued per employee or per R&D dollar. In this paper, the objective is to find out if there are any indications of a barrier to entry (due to economical factors, lack of knowledge etc) for small firms to get into the field of patent handling. The approach is to first set up a hypothesis based on some simple assumptions about how firms would make decisions about whether to apply for a patent or not and thereafter use econometric methods in an empirical investigation. The data used for this study are figures on number of employees, number of patents granted and R&D expenditures for the Swedish firms in the pulp and paper industry. The main conclusion is that, based on the analysis of the data from this rather limited group of firms, no such barrier can be seen..

The aim of this masters thesis is to examine to what extent series books for children and youth are included in the acquisitions of public libraries. It also examines which needs series books fulfil among a group of 13-15 year old children. The main question of this thesis was: To what extent do libraries provide series books for children and youth? An inquiry investigation showed that a majority of the libraries in Sweden provide these books. The main reason to provide the books was that the demand is large.

The aim of this comparative study is to analyse the French and the Polish regional governance in order to see if there are any differences in their regional ruling systems. Further more I will study their different possibilities in taking part in the European Union regional political market. The shape of the regional systems will be explored both organisationally (study of the institutional entities of the regional construction) and functionally (study of the competencies of the regional body etcetera) to focus on its cause on the regional development. My over all focus will be to find out whether regional rule means differently in the countries France and Poland.Several questions are dealt with and the two main ones are as follows; How do the different structures of the form of government in France and Poland influence the governance on the regional level? Do Poland, as a new member state of the European Union, have what it takes to face the challenges of the new membership; or are there a complex of problems arising from the admittance that prevent its regions from fully taking part in the European regional political market?Some of my conclusions are as follows;There are major differences between the two countries when it comes to their regional ruling systems leading to different abilities in taking part in the European regional political market.

The purpose of this study is to look at the line extensions of the Swedish dairy company Skånemejerier. We have chosen to focus on how trends in ecological products and Functional Food influence the line extensions. The competition in the food sector have made it harder for companies to be seen in the market area and the companies have to make their brands more visible. That is one of the reasons why companies work with line extensions. The study is based on a qualitative approach because we wanted to come closer to our subject in order to establish a greater understanding for the case itself.

The purpose with this essay is to study how a micro enterprise builds a brand. This because the current situation makes it difficult to stand out from the vast amount of marketing messages available in the market without having an extensive marketing campaign. Small companies do not have the opportunity to put a lot of recourses as money into marketing as the large companies do. Neither do they afford to repair a brand failure.Brand building is a process that constantly is in progress in a company, large or small. To make this process concrete we have chosen to study the four factors; brand awareness, perceived quality, brand associations and brand loyalty.

Thesis purposeThe study aims to examine the effects vertical and horizontal line extensions might have on the total parent brand equity in terms of strength and its baseline product regarding of market share, loyalty and penetration under an elapsed period of time. The study aims to investigate a number of actual conducted line extensions effect on the above mentioned aspects of Kellers (1993) definition of brand strength as a part of the total brand equity. MethodologyThe effect of a number of line extensions of the parent brands and the baseline products is being examined in terms of market share, loyalty rate, cannibalization and market penetration. The thesis is focused on the correlations between these different parameters during a certain elapsed time ratio in order to test our theoretically routed hypothesizes in a deductive manner. Occasional correlations are derived from an indexation of data collected from the Gfk database.

The Swedish retail business has been characterized by a small number of ruling distributors. These distributors have been affected negatively by the internationalization which has made it possible for international distributors to establish their stores in the Swedish market. These international distributors are focused on low price stores. Their establishment on the Swedish market has led to a decrease in market shares for the Swedish distributors, which has damaged their profitability. Another change that has affected the Swedish distributors is that the behavior and needs of the customers has changed.

The purpose of this thesis is to find means of control that secure cost efficiency regarding the accommodation for the employees on missions abroad of the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Today the ministry?s cost for the employees? rented housing is 100 million SEK and there is a need of improvement in the control of these costs. A work method for organizational development will be used in order to reach the findings presented in the thesis. First we study the strengths and weaknesses in today?s control system.

The purpose of this study is to examine what characterizes brand identity and positioning regarding festivals on the current Swedish festival market. In relation to our purpose we are also going to analyze how festival attendees relate to a festivals brand identity. Our research question is as follows:What characterizes festivals brand identity and positioning on the current Swedish festival market?This study has been written with a qualitative research method and an inductive approach. Our empirical foundation is built on a rich content based on personal interviews.

This study is on how small companies can use the Internet as a part of their marketing strategy to gain a leverage on their competitors with small means to survive and expand in the global market. Many Swedish small companies still don?t have a sufficient knowledge on how to use the communication channel despite the various advantages the Internet offers.Case studies were conducted of how AdLibris, A-lotterierna AB and SF-bokhandeln perceived the importance of using the Internet as a part of their communications strategy.This new communication channel demand new ways of applying traditional marketing principals. Careful analysis of the interviews and how the answers relate to new and old marketing theories makes the bulk of this study. The conclusion is that the Internet solely is not enough, a combination with traditional marketing tools is the way to succeed in their marketing efforts.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine why graduates in librarian- and information science are employed by private companies. An initial explanation could be the influence of information technology and its impact on the librarian. A second factor relates to how employers regard the librarian outside the confines of the traditional labour market. The study is primarily based upon qualitative interviews with representatives of Swedish companies who have employed librarians since 1993, the year that the education achieved third level academic recognition. Theoretically we relied upon Manuel Castells discussion on the rise of the information society and its influence on companies and the labour market.

The purpose of this essay is to analyze theories about positioning that will create an image of the positioning process, which we later on shall benchmark with other companies way to position their brand. By this, we want to obtain a well-documented work on how Luma Metall AB should work with the positioning on its brand in the future. This essay is based on a qualitative method that is characterized by an abductive approach. The empirical materials we have gathered through interviews with 5 selected persons that are well experienced on the subject have given us important information. We have come to a conclusion how a small company in a B2B market can position itself.

The study - Hur skapas en journalist? - examines why so many people choose to turn tothe journalist profession when the conditions for a secure position on the labor market ispoor. The study also highlights how recently graduated journalist perceives their temporary and insecure position on the labor market.The study was performed trough ten biographical interviews with recently graduated journalists. Via the interviews I examined what has formed the individuals to perceive journalism as a rational or pragmatic choice for a career. The study shows that journalists, who come from families with high cultural capital, have been shaped by a particular culture of education, which focuses on education as a step towards selfrealization.

In this thesis we study the development of post-earnings announcement drift (PEAD) in the Swedish equity market from 2000 to 2009. By forming portfolios based on the stock price reaction to quarterly reporting we show that the characteristics of PEAD have changed. We demonstrate that negatively surprising companies show a positive drift during a holding period of six months sufficiently large to render the trading strategy unprofitable. This development holds from 2005 and onwards and these results contradict many a study which finds the same portfolio construction to be indeed profitable. We argue that this development is a trend that will not only affect our study but future studies as well..