The spruce bark beetle (Ips typographhus) is one of the 25 000 species of insects in Sweden, an insect of great economic importance because it can alone terminate forest of high value. During the past decade, insights of climate change received with increasing attention. If the future brings a milder climate in the north and therefore a longer growing season, one would think that it would only affect the forestry to the better? Yet in recent time, outbreaks after storm felling seems to occur more frequently. The Spruce bark beetle ruins millions of cubic meter of Norway spruce (Picea abies) in Sweden alone, with more frequent storm felling and a larger amount of wind thrown threes in the forests there will also be room for an advancing reproduction.

The energy sector of modern time is currently faced with several challenges. These are both production oriented and environmental oriented in nature. The energy of the future is intended to support an increasing demand while at the same time reduce its environmental affection. This stresses a development towards production methods of renewable energy. Among the existing methods, biogas is presented as an attractive alternative.

Efficient energy use in the housing sector is crucial for achieving a sustainable society. The expansion of this sector only represents a fraction of the existing houses, hence it?s within the existing houses the potential for energy savings lie. This potential has been analyzed in order to determine if it?s possible to cut the current energy demand in half.

Information technology (IT) with its enormous capacity involves more and more in our daily activities and public sector is using IT to make their activities more efficient. The government goal with electronic government (e-government) among other things is increasing the availability and service to the public as well as improving the democratic process. Democracy can be strengthened by involving citizens in public decision making process but this goal has not been achieved yet and the development of e-government has mostly been focused on improving efficiency within administration and electronic services (e-services). Promoting the democratic process has been postponed in the development of e-government because of the lack of political commitment and decision. Digital divide is also preventing public sector to promote democracy with the support of IT.

This report is a thesis work for a B.Sc. in Forestry exam at the School for Forest Engineers, SLU. The aim of the work was to compare fuel consumption during work in practical field conditions with a standardized method developed by Skogforsk (The Forestry Research Institute of Sweden), (Brunberg, 2005) for harvesters and forwarders from different manufacturers and of different sizes in order to promote the development of more fuel efficient machines. Two studies were carried out. - Statistics of fuel consumption were collected. - An inquiry was sent out in order to get more detailed information of different aspects influencing the fuel consumption. The studied machines were divided into two classes, large machines (> 150 kW), and average size machines (100 ? 150 kW), and of the manufacturer Timberjack and Valmet. Our results shows a 15 % lower fuel consumption for average size harvesters and an 8 % higher fuel consumption for large harvesters compared with Skogforsks model.

In 1994 a new Forestry Act was accepted in Sweden. One of the aims of the law is to raise consideration forpreservation of biodiversity. Since the new law got accepted and some time has passed, there now lie someinterest in examining whether the law has been effective towards its purpose. Methods suitable for analysishave been examined during this study. The content of this pilot study is based around five parameters whichcan be used to validate the effects of the new law.

This study was commissioned by the Västerbotten sports federation, whocalled for an overview of the policies that the municipalities inVästerbotten work after in the field of sport. The study aimed to identifysports policy programs or documents that have been produced by themunicipalities, and how they work with them. Furthermore, the studyhighlights the municipality?s politicians reasoning aboutsport andrecreation-sector,and how their sport policy-work was practiced. The datacollection was based on seven interviews and document-collections fromthe 15 municipalities.

This thesis studies whether private equity owned firms within the Swedish welfare sector distinguish themselves in terms of tax planning and short-termism from a control group consisting of other privately owned welfare firms. For the first time, the comparison is made on the entire welfare sector, between 14 matched pairs within education, health care and elderly care. We use financial metrics associated with tax planning and short-termism in sign tests to examine whether the private equity owned firms differ from our control group. The financial metrics tested are actual and paid tax rates, level of interest, book-tax gap, investments, personnel expenses per employee, and cash earnings. We find that the private equity owned firms in terms of tax planning only differ in the level of interest, while no notable differences are found in terms of short-termism..

Tourism is often being viewed as one of the worlds largest sectors and a great contribution to growth and development. There is a large motivation amongst developing countries to promote themselves as a tourist destination, since they expect the tourism to generate economic growth. The government of Thailand has been promoting tourism since 1960, and the number of foreign visitors has increased from 100 000 back then to 13.5 million in 2006. The purpose of this paper was to investigate weather the increasing tourism industry in Thailand has pulled resources away from other sectors of the economy towards the tourism sector, and in that way harming Thailand?s international competitiveness and causing deindustrialization.

Despite Sweden's ranking as one of the least corrupt countries in the world, recent studies suggest that the prevalence of corruption in the private sector is growing, now approaching international levels. Over the past couple of years, Sweden has witnessed a growing number of scandals involving unethical behavior on the part of its corporate sector. Corruption has gained the attention of authorities, legislators and the public - putting the private sector under pressure to take action to prevent such corporate misconduct. As a result, companies increasingly prioritize strategies and policies aiming to prevent corruption. This study aims to contribute to the understanding of the role of leadership in such preventive work.

This is a thesis report from SLU in Skinnskatteberg, the Swedish university of agricultural sciences. This study is an evaluation of a course in attitudes and behavior for participants of the ETT- project led by Skogforsk, the forestry research institute of Sweden. They do research for the benefit of Swedish forestry. The ETT-project is a project where there are both 74 tons ST-trucks and 90 tons ETT-trucks in test on the public roads. This study is concentrated on the ST-trucks and their drivers, company owners and logistics managers. The evaluation is done by interviews with the various participants.

Uppsats för avläggande av filosofie kandidatexamen iKulturvård, Landskapsvårdens hantverk, 15 hp, 2013.

Managers operating within the dynamic society of today are said to rely on intuition when effective and quick decisions are to be made. This skill or phenomenon has aroused an interest within the academic world of management whom has explored intuition, its relation to decision making and its influencing factors, especially in the private sector. Intuitive decision making is however not isolated solely to this sector but also involved in decision making associated to the public sector. Therefore, the aim of the thesis is to investigate whether managers at the hospital Akademiska in Uppsala involve intuition in decision making and to what extent the factors time, amount of information, individual experience and decision complexity influence the intuition.The theoretical framework includes academic research regarding how intuition and rationality affect decisions, the concept of intuition and factors influencing the intuitiveness of decision making. Furthermore the theoretical discussion explores intuition connected to leadership, negative aspects of intuitive decisions and a comparison between different factors that separates public and private sector in terms of decision making.

The number of silvicultural contractors has significantly increased in the last decades, and among its main clients are the forest companies. The purpose with this study was to describe the contractors that worked with planting in Norrbotten and Västerbotten in 2009 for Holmen Skog, Norra Skogsägarna, SCA Skog and Sveaskog and also examine if there was any correlation between the contractors? competence and the quality in the planting they achieved. A survey was made among 47 contractors with a questionnaire who performed planting for the forestry companies in 2009. 27 contractors answered the questionnaire and 4 representatives of these contracting companies took part in an extensive interview.

The forest property Fagerdal 2:10 was donated to the Swedish University of Agriculture in 1995 by Erik Rönnberg. The dominating species is Norwegian spruce (Picea Abies) and the average age is high due to selective cutting. The aim of this study has been to analyze how the forest on the property should be managed and demonstrate how a better estimated forest data affects the future management. The impact of the management on the carbon stock of the property was also examined. A forestry plan established in 2009 by Skogssällskapet was used as a basis for the analyses.