Socially Responsible Investments (SRI) and Active Ownership have become increasingly important concepts when it comes to the corporate governance of investors today. Institutional owners highlight the importance of engaging in dialogue, in their pursuit to influence the companies to become sustainable. However, stakeholders and academia are requesting more insight into the workings of these dialogues, concerning their purpose, design and function. This study attempts to increase the existing knowledge of dialogue as a tool for active engagement, used by institutional investors in Sweden. The performed study is based on interviews with five public and private Swedish institutional investors, an SRI consultant firm as well as representatives from two NGOs.

From a democratic point of view the existing organisation with municipality sections in the city of Malmö, Sweden will be examined. The matter of how an alternative organisation should be structured will also be discussed. Two incompatible models of democracy theories will be arranged: libertarian democracy and participation democracy. The intentions with the reform were primary to increase the civic participation. By applying those values that are used to characterize participation democracy it will be shown whether the local participation has actually increased.

The object of this essay was to illustrate and analyse what determines that a contract treatment investigation for a drug addict is initiated and what factors influence the investigation itself, from the probation service officer's perspective.We selected the following two questions:- What does the probation service officer see as being the deciding factor for a contract treatment investigation to be initiated?- What questions appear in a contract treatment investigation and how do they influence the investigation, according to the probation service officer?To find answers to these questions we conducted interviews with 11 probation service officers, during November and December 2005, at three different locations across Skåne. We decided to use the qualitative method for collecting the data we needed.In our essay we came to the conclusion that the will and motivation of the client is a deciding factor whether or not a contract treatment investigation is to be initiated. An important collaborator in this process is the social services. According to the probation service officers, many of the problems that may appear in the co-operation are due to the tough economic constraints experienced by the social services.

The purpose of this essay has been to investigate the research and national initiatives regarding film and Cineliteracy in the Swedish curriculum.The results show that, after all research, national initiatives and the continual clarification from the Swedish National Agency for Education concerning film's place in the Swedish subject, the vision of students cineliteracy not at all obtain an obvious place in the curriculum.The research points out the main causes behind this result to be teachers' lack of expertise and the fact that the formal education for future teachers in the subject still upholds traditional views on the subject of Swedish.The initiative presented in this essay also show lack of continuity, lack of adequate professional development opportunities for teachers and lack of practical guidance manuals to help teachers to develop and educate their pupils in line with current research and visions. .

Research has concluded that meaningless differentiation with trivial attributes sometimes can be a successful strategy. However, the effect varies with respect to certain aspects such as the price of the product and the decision context. How the characteristics of the consumer influence the effect of trivial attributes has until now been unknown. This thesis investigates how the consumer?s level of knowledge and personal involvement influence the effects of trivial attributes on product preferences and product attitudes.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the relationship between user education at high schools and the context in which it takes place. In order to accomplish this qualitative interviews have been executed with librarians at five Swedish high schools. The theoretical framework of this thesis is based on the sociocultural perspective and four approaches to user education developed by Olof Sundin. Based on the empirical material six themes have been identified. Each one represents a contextual factor which influences the user education.

In this report female farmers use of technical equipment is investigated. There is little research made on this subject in Sweden, therefore this report can be seen as an explorative study. Research makes it clear that machinery, throughout history and even today, has been seen as a male area. Heavy machines are often associated with the same attributes as masculinity. Force, power, efficiency and control are some examples.

Mergers and Acquisitions have become more and more in common knower days among the companies. Factors that might influence could be such as power of competition or it could even be the aim of new strategies of the company. In mergers is it not only the buildings and the physical objects that is put together, also the human beings within the organization are put together. Each person contributes to the culture, which makes the situation more complicated. In making a merger successful, it is important to pay attention to the organizational culture.

Information is one of the organization's essential resources, and as such it needs strategic management. The authors use the information audit, which was developed by Orna 1999 and Henczel 2000 as a tool to evaluate how well an organization's information activities connect to its mission, goals, and objectives, to evaluate the municipal politicians' information support in Härryda municipality. The decision situations met by politicians often are complex; they are ambiguous and unstructured, with a high level of uncertainty. Human information sources meet needs arising in this kind of decision situations best. Since most of the politicians work full-time besides being politicians, Härryda municipality has to substitute the human sources by textual ones composed of highly summarized information.

This study investigates, through parental evaluations, communicativeand adaptive abilities within a group of children with various developmentaldisorders, after the parents had participated in AKKTIV (Augmentative andAlternative Communication ? Early Intervention) parental education. The studyalso investigates through case studies how parents experience the influence ofAKKTIV-intervention in their children?s development a few years aftercompletion. The parents estimated their children?s abilities using three differentquestionnaires; the Swedish Communicative Developmental Inventories(SECDI), Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales-II (VABS-II) and parts of theform? Parents? perception of the interaction with their child?, before and afterthe intervention.

In this essay I present an outline and examination of the Finnish Luther research, withan aim to learn more about some different aspects of Luther?s teaching on justificationas sanctification, and sanctification as the growth of the new man. I will also draw myattention to the formal language of metaphysics, as it is continuously employed by Luther to depict the issues and the content of his reformation theology. Apart from the program of research in Helsinki, I have turned to the writings of Luther himself; and I have as well tried to engage in a broader survey of Luther-scholars, some of which seem to, or in fact, support the Finnish interpretation, others which raise a critical stance towards it. The later portion of the essay picks up on the Finnish critique of dominant 19th and 20th century German Lutheran theologians, such as Albrecht Ritschl and Gerhard Ebeling.

The parental education groups are an activity that attracts the majority of all couples that awaits their first child. Therefore this is a forum with strong influence on the formulation of the parenting. The aim of the study was to examine how parental education within Swedish child health care, affects the construction and shaping of parenthood. We have also studied this from a gender perspective. The starting point for our understanding of parenting is that it is socially constructed.

This master thesis is intended to give an increased understanding of the stress state in an axle, which is assembled in one of Atlas Copco?s mountain drilling rigs. The main problems investigated were how the axle is affected when the bearing is worn, when the pretension is varied, and how to dimension the axle. Answers to these questions were found by using hand calculations, practical testing and with Finite Element analyzes. The dimensioning of the axle is currently based on the bending stress, but the author?s opinion is that the axle should be dimensioned considering the equivalent stress.

A radical change is taking place in the world today: some former colonies are now booming economically while several former colonizers are suffering from economic crisis. Postcolonial theory states that old structures from the colonization are keeping the South poor and the North rich. Today there?s a shift in these structures as former colonizers Spain and Portugal are forced to ask for economical support from their former colonies.The colonial discourse separated white from black and depicted the population in the colonies as the absolute antithesis of the Europeans. In Portugal circulated also lusotropicalism, an ideology that claimed Portugal as absolutely free of racism, a statement with great influence in the postcolonial Portugal.On the basis of semi-structured focus groups I will in this paper do a discourse analysis of young, university educated Portuguese identity/ies in relation to the former colonies and the changing relations to these countries.

Denna uppsats är en C-uppsats i socialt arbete. Syftet med uppsatsen är att förstå och beskriva hörselskadades situation avseende högskolestudier. Fyra specifika frågeställningar har formulerats: - Hur ser tillgängligheten ut, hur ser de formella mötena ut, hur ser de informella mötena ut och på vad sätt inverkar hörselskadan?Studien har en kvalitativ ansats med hermeneutiska inslag. Intervjuer har gjorts med sex hörselskadade som berättat om sina upplevelser kring sin egen studiesituation.