Consultancy as a profession has always been a debated topic and has constantly been surrounded with a kind of secrecy. People have a hard time defining what consultants actually do and how they do it. It seems that they are simply waving their magic wands, performing wonders. We have therefore decided that the purpose of this study is to unveil the secrecy around the profession. By conducting interviews and analysing literature we have examined recruitment processes in three different consulting industries and their wanted personal characteristics.

AbstractA continuous improvement of products and production is an important goal for a modern industrial company. A small engineering group located in Sweden came in touch with the authors of this report during the spring semester of 2014. The aim of this report is, as part of the group´s ambition of improvement, to analyse ways in which the quality of component casted parts can be verified. Non-destructive testing (NDT), and methods to use it for quality control, is the main focus of this report. However, fields such as material standards, component casting and quality engineering are analysed as well.

The aim of this literature review was to describe how the literature presents parents? need for information and how parents perceive the information from care personnel when their child 0-18 years of age is diagnosed with diabetes. The literature search was performed in the databases PubMed and Cinahl. Thirteen articles that met the inclusion criteria were studied. The results showed that when a child is diagnosed with diabetes the whole family faces a new situation and the parents are in great need for adequate information from care personnel to be able to deal with the new life situation and participate in the care.

This study is made in cooperation with the insurance company, Skandia. Skandia is a part of Old Mutual group?s Nordic division and is one of Swedens largest insurance companies with a total of 1.9 million customers. The company offers traditional life assurance, unit-linked insurance, private healthcare insurance and banking services. Insurance companies such as Skandia operate in a highly competitive environment.

AbstractThis paper intends, through a qualitative study to examine and analyze how a particular type of financial firms cooperate, and what this entails. The case study issue which shall be answered is "What does the firms Credit Suisse and Orn & Cie SA gain out of cooperating with each other?". By setting the general theories in the subject joint ventures, partnerships, against the empirical material gathered via interviews and data collection in Geneva, Switzerland  answers to what the cooperation between the two parties has resulted in for the respective companies has been found. The survey shows that the prevailing model of cooperation creates significant benefits for the two companies.

In the beginning of the 1990?s ratite breeding for meat production was introduced in many European countries, including Sweden. The knowledge of ostrich farming and diseases of ratites is increasing internationally but is still often limited among veterinarians. This report consists of a literature study and a summary of pathology findings from ratites submitted for necropsy to the National Veterinary Institute (SVA) in Uppsala, during 1995 to 2001. The purpose is to give a general introduction to ostrich and ratite breeding and to give an overview of the most common diseases. The necropsy data from 1995 to 2001, indicate that many of the diseases are management related rather than caused by infectious agents. Due to cold climate ostrich breeders in Sweden need to supply well designed buildings and good care of the animal.

The aim of this thesis was to study librarians approach upon reference questions and available resources and also to find out if there is any connection between the nature of the reference question and the choice of resource. The purpose was also to give a deeper understanding of the reference work. Nine librarians were given ten reference questions and their reference work was tape recorded. The study was completed with seven interviews sent by email. Some of the reflections were translated under the headlines of form, subject, time, language and availability.

The main purpose of this essay is to investigate if Latvia´s pattern of trade has become more similar to the mature market economies, after Latvia´s independence 1991.Today, the intra-industry trade (IIT) dominates the trade of mature market economies. One of the pioneers of intra-industrial trade is Paul Krugman, who was the first to emphasize the importance "of scale and consumers' desire for variety" in explaining the basis for modern commerce. Customers get more variety and usually cheaper goods when the market gets bigger. I mainly use the modern trade theories to explain the trade pattern in Latvia. To measure how Latvia has developed its intra-industry trade, and thereby is approaching the mature market economies´ trade pattern, I use the Grubel-Lloyd index (GL-index).

The most important conclusion of this study is that the negotiations between the parties ends when conflicts arise from property owners, and with this the time will be extended and be more costly. During the study it has been shown that good communication is the key to an effective and successful negotiation between the parties.The purpose of this study is to investigate how the practical procedure under expropriation is in relation to the legal text, in other words, describe and analyze the procedure for expropriation under current rules but also to explain how it operated in practice. This is to get a picture of how the process works and what effects it receives.Three methods were used for the study. A literature review for understanding how expropriation relates according to the law. A case study from an ongoing expropriation in Sundsvall municipality, and an interview with seven affected interested parties from the expropriation.Reviewed literature describes how the application of the Expropriation Act must go to as well as other research on the topic.

Background: Pressure ulcers are a common problem and cause great suffering for those who develop it, and are also an expensive cost to the society. Aim: To describe nursing measures for prevention of pressure ulcers among elderly people in ordinary and nursing homes. Method: A literature review by structured analyze of scientific articles. Result: The analyze resulted in six subjects for prevention of pressure ulcers. These subjects were; risk assesment, nutrition, repositioning, skin/hygiene, nurse knowledge and documentation.

The purpose with this thesis is to investigate how a number of municipalities in Stockholm County proceed when they allocate land and establish land allocation agreements for exploitation, and to investigate how a number of municipalities define land allocations and land allocation agreements on the occasion of public land sales. The aim of this thesis is to describe the allocation methods a municipally uses when they offer land for sale and to give an insight regarding which correlation different land allocation agreements have in different municipalities.Methods used are: (1) a literature review where the underlying theory for land allocations and land allocation agreements have been studied; (2) a questionnaire have been done to complement the literature review and to provide a picture of how a number of different municipalities in Stockholm County use and apply land allocations; (3) an agreement audit have been done to see the extent to which different agreement terms exists.Responses from the questionnaire, together with the definitions form different municipality?s land allocation policies and the literature review, resulted in a definition of a land allocation and a land allocation agreement. The agreement audit shows that agreement terms regarding: price or price indication, location, cost-sharing and planning costs are the most common agreement terms within the municipalities we have investigated.The study suggests that there is some confusion regarding land allocation agreements and the meaning of these, that became apparent when agreements where gathered, despite a careful explanation that it was land allocation agreements we requested, we still got exploitation agreements and purchase agreements. Therefore, we consider it necessary with an official definition of a land allocation agreement well anchored in the Planning and Building Act together with the rules of development agreements or other legislation.That there is a lack of research within the subject becomes evident when reports, essays, and other literature generally refers so the same sources.Keywords: land allocation, land allocation agreement and public land sales.

This paper attempts to illustrate a gap when it comes to the knowledge about unpaid volunteers in Swedish organisations. The person-oriented explanations of individual preferences when choosing an orientation in which to volunteer does not suffice to explain and enlighten the fact that there is a gender-based division that orientates women towards voluntary work within organisations with a social direction, while men tend to choose sports-oriented voluntary tasks. This illustrates a pattern that is common in society in general. Eight interviews including four women volunteering in socially oriented organisations and four men in sports-oriented organisations have been conducted. An attempt has been made to explain results from earlier research as well as the respondents reasoning about their voluntary work with gender related theories.

The objective of the present study was to highlight preschool children?s encounters with children?s literature, in a heterogeneous language context.  The idea was to identify significant features in the linkages between the reading of children?s literature, didactic activities and children?s learning, language development and emergent literacy activities.  Our interest was directed towards the activities connected with read-alouds, as well as the preschool teacher?s perceptions of those activities.  The empiric material was collected by use of participant observations of four read-aloud sessions. After the observations the preschool teacher in charge of the observed read-aloud was in-depth interviewed. In addition, the physical print environment in the actual preschool was observed. The results indicate that the physical and social reading environment interact with each other.  Furthermore, the preschool  teachers? approaches and ways of working with literature does not always optimize the language, literacy and content area  learning opportunities for the children.

This report is focusing on problems with introducing standard enterprise resource planning systems (ERP) in businesses. A study has been carried out on a service and support department at a Swedish heat metering company, SVM North Node. The study aims to help the company become a better customer in choice and customization of a new ERP system. We make a description of the department studied and the work carried out there, on the basis of learning, knowledge and cooperation. As a final point we present some ideas on how computer systems could support their work, hoping that this will result in them making adequate demands on a new ERP system.

The aim of this thesis is to establish a ?förvaltningsplans? template to Fastighetskontoret in Vasteras city. Further general information about the mission was given at our first meeting with Rolf Haraldsson, who happened to be our mentor and works at Fastighetskontoret in Vasteras city.We agreed that using the software Excel was the most appropriate way to establish the template, because Fastighetskontoret also make use of Excel in their internal system, and also because Excel has a more friendly user interface and it is more easier to use compared to other software that have complex templates.One of the first things we did was to get in contact with different fastighetskontors around Sweden so that we could either take part of their ?förvaltningsplaner? or get referred to other material that could have been used. But this turned out to be an unsuccessful strategy.