Entrepreneurial firms face unique challenges in attracting and acquiring human resources due to difficulties associated with resource constraint and organization legitimacy, often described as liabilities of "smallness" and "newness". The aim of this paper is to examine the "smallness" and "newness" challenges met by small entrepreneurial firms, which strategies they apply to counter these challenges, and if these strategies can be explained by the firm's HR philosophy. Since few studies on Human Resource Management (HRM) in small entrepreneurial firms exist, a framework combining theory from the research fields of HRM, entrepreneurship and small firms has been developed. Employing a qualitative case study design of five small Swedish entrepreneurial firms, our findings demonstrate four "smallness" and "newness" challenges and seven strategies that either counteract or prevent them. Furthermore, results showed that the strategies applied seemed to have no significance with regards to the firm's HR philosophy.

This case study examines how upper secondary schools in a municipality in the northern parts of Sweden structure their special pedagogy with students who have ADHD and dyslexia, students? and parents? experiences of this, and what regulates the schools management in this particular aspect. The results show that all the schools have special pedagogues and other support staff employed, though in varied extent. Furthermore, the resources are distributed differently from school to school. The focus, however, is always around communication between the concerned parties.

This thesis examines organisations as mediators and how different kinds of organisations have different prerequisites to act as mediators. Global, regional and subregional organisations are often asked to mediate in conflicts, but considering the circumstances, who should mediate?In a mediating process the mediator should be considered as important an actor as the disputing parties and should hence be scrutinized as one. Mediation is a complex subject to study and theoretically the opinions differ on what characterises a good mediator. I have taken many of the different views in consideration and constructed a model from which organisations and their prerequisites can be compared and evaluated.

The aim of the thesis is to highlight external factors to explain why the EMU was created. The external factor considered here is the monetary policy of the United States, which often conflicted with European interests. The statistical data in the thesis, as well as previous research, show that even though the EU economically in many ways had become an equal partner of the US during the second half of the 20th century, the union still faced US influence and dependence.The results of the thesis can be explained with neorealist theories on power measured as an actor's distribution of capabilities and balancing of power. An actor that is equipped with the world's leading currency is more independent from others. Other actors, on the other hand, become increasingly dependent on the major currency and the policy of its owner.

AbstractThis study aims to describe and analyze how the 15 municipalities of Västerbotten County consider regional targets of development in their comprehensive plans. The study also investigate if there´s any need of improvements for the consideration of regional targets in comprehensive planning.This paper is based on studies of comprehensive plans in Västerbotten County and on three interviews with employers of different municipalities in the county. An thematic analysis were used to analyze documents and interviews.The result shows that a new comprehensive plan generally takes more consideration to regional targets of development than older plans. The consideration varies a lot between the municipalities of Västerbotten County and it can be explained by many reasons. The informant?s points out that lack of resources- and competence plus a deficient dialog between municipalities and regional organizations are the mainly causes.Keywords; regional development, comprehensive planning, strategy for regional development, regional development program, land-use planning.

Through analysis of the work of scheduling the doctors at the hospitals of Sundsvall,Gävle and Karolinska in Stockholm this thesis presents some conclusion about howand why a computer system would benefit these very tasks. The reason for doing thisis mainly to save money through more efficient scheduling, but also to minimizeerrors and maximize comfort for scheduler and doctor alike.Scheduling consists of collecting doctors? requests, assessing the need of staff,distribute the available doctors and make sure all tasks are covered throughout thescheduled period of time. The work is often very complex and involves manyvariables ranging from competence to personal whishes and economical constraints.Solving these problems takes a lot of time and energy which could be better spentcuring patients.The conclusion of this thesis is that there is reason to develop such a system to savetime and optimize resources. A description of the system is found in numerous lists ofroles, tasks and prototype sketches which combined shape the content andfunctionality.

Labour and its conditions is a subject constantly in focus. Therefore this study aims to shed some light on different factors which constitutes the basis for the definition of optimal labour conditions, as well as creating a need for change of labour conditions. In this case these factors are changes in society and cultures. The study describes how different levels of society - government, employer and employee ? are affected by, or wishes to affect the labor conditions in terms of location, working hours and leisure.

In this essay we aimed to find how economic scarcity among children and youth presents itself in school, according to how school staff experience it. We have conducted interviews with student welfare staff to hear their experiences of this subject and how the schools try to help these pupils. We have used interpretative phenomenology as a base for our work. We have also used some of this traditions most important notions along with notions of Erving Goffman and Sara Ahmed during our processing off the material.  With help from these, we report our most interesting results. We have seen that a lack of resources exists among youth today and that everyone not has easy access to things many of us might take for granted.

The PhonePages of Sweden is a company that develops software for mobile units, especially cell phones. This thesis treats the development of, and contingencies for, a mobile phone directory, using the limited resources found in a mobile unit. The project was implemented and executed at The PhonePages with the intention of creating a product to sell to a third party.By studying different solutions, their benefits and drawbacks, an abstract picture of the product was constructed. Problems covered include compatibility problems caused by todays platform diversity as well as problems with saving, organizing and presenting data.The main goal was to create a phone directory which does not make external information retrievals. The service should contain both company and personal information, with name and phonenumber.

Outsourcing in IS/IT offers organizations the possibility to use external resources, maximize flexibility and focus on core business, this prompts many organizations today to be less keen on developing IS/IT-services in-house. Sourcing IS/IT is however a complex activity in itself thus requiring competencies in many areas of expertise and lots of organizations has experienced the challenge of managing the necessary competencies to ensure successful Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO). A literature review in the field of outsourcing revealed the lack of a comprehensive competency management framework with the ability to guide competency resource planning in ITO projects. In order to highlight the problem area, an extensive and thorough literature review and an empirical case study which investigated the skills and assets in ITO projects at ten major Swedish organizations was conducted. The study found that it is possible for organizations through structured analysis of their intellectual capital, using the competency framework developed within the study, to plan sourcing processes and prepare the necessary changes to ensure the ITO projects can be implemented with the desired effect..

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.

The thoughts of a common school for all children have been around since the 1800?s but was something that was introduced in Sweden first in 1962. When the curriculum for primary school came in 1980 there was a new concept, a school for all. With a school for all it was aimed that all children should have the right to participation and a common education no matter what needs they could have.During my education I have come across the concept a school for all and that is something that interested me. Today?s curricula and school laws aim to ensure that all children have the right to equal education and inclusion whatever needs you have.The purpose of this study is to find out some pedagogues? thoughts and work around the concept a school for all.

How does a corporation work during the recruitment phase to entice and motivate younger members to work for their organization?The aim is to examine in which grade corporations and organizations? recruitment needs to adapt to encounter Generation Y on the labour market.The base in our method is abduction and our research is based on a qualitative method. We have fulfilled interviews with corporations such as Scania, Skatteverket, Swedbank and Appelqvist & Ottoson HR AB.Corporations need in a sense change their recruitment and emphasis their resources to sell the whole corporation and its image to the young job applicant. The younger members demand a total impression of the corporation to implement an interest and to get motivated to work there. Together with our respondents we have realized that Generation Y has higher demands on their workplace than earlier generations..

Abstract  This paper examines the Copenhagen Climate Conference held in the Bella Center in Copenhagen, December 2009. The aim of this paper was to analyse the highly anticipated conference, and why it did not result in a binding protocol between the world?s states. The focus of this paper was to examine two key actors in the Copenhagen negotiations: the people?s republic of China and the European Union.

Hybridasp (Populus x wettsteinii) är en snabbväxande hybrid mellan europeisk asp (Populus tremula L.) och nordamerikansk asp (Populus tremuloides Mich.). Det finns svenskt hybridaspmaterial framtaget för odling i Götaland men inte för övriga delar av Sverige. För odling av hybridasp i övriga delar av Sverige rekommenderas ofta finländskt odlingsmaterial. Hybridasp lämpar sig väl som biobränsle tack vare dess höga tillväxt och då efterfrågan på biobränslen förväntas öka är det viktigt att ta fram ett hybridaspmaterial som har högre härdighet och tillväxt än de hybridaspkloner som finns på marknaden idag. Målet med denna studie var att göra ett urval av lämpliga hybridaspkloner för odling i södra och mellersta Norrland utifrån försök med nyframtagna korsningar.