Every year, Swedish municipalities transfer considerable amounts of profit from public housing companies to the owner municipality. Municipalities are allowed to do this, provided that the money is used to pay for certain purposes. But there are no legal repercussions if they do not comply. Not all municipalities choose to transfer profits. Based on partisan theory, this difference could be explained by the political governance of the municipality.

European cities of today are under the challenge to find ways to stay competitive and flourish in a rapidly changing world, where the old patterns of centrality and periphery not necessarily holds true. New and improved communication networks, a changed political geography in Europe, and the globalisation of not only the financial and industrial markets but also to a certain extent the globalisation of people, have all led to great challenges for cities and regions.In a changed spatial reality the classic monocentric models are challenged by newer models of urbanisation. The polycentric urban region is one such model which has been used to describe urban regions like the Randstad in the Netherlands and the Rhein-Ruhr region in Germany. Regions which lack the single dominant central city of the monocentric models of old, and instead shows a high degree of more equal-sized and sometimes more specialised cities in regional cooperation. The polycentric urban region is in that aspect a possible model for how other urbanised regions in Europe may act to be able to position themselves as attractive urban regions and regional hubs in the European urban network.Polycentric urban regions are not a universal solution, though.

Syfte: Syftet med studien är att undersöka huruvida bolagsstyrning har en påverkan på ett bolags rapportering av CSR på den svenska marknaden. Liknande studier finns utförda i andra länder men det finns ett kunskapsgap i Sverige och förhoppningen är att komma med ett resultat som är mer tillämpbart för svenska förhållanden. Eventuella resultat kan komma till nytta för företag som vill förändra sina CSR policyer.Metod: Vi använder oss av en kvantitativ ansats för att med hjälp av statistiska metoder svara på vår problemformulering. De metoder vi har använt är korrelationsanalys, för att undvika problem med multikollinearitet, och därefter en multipel regressionsanalys för att testa sambandet mellan beroendevariablerna (CSR rapportering) oberoende variablerna (styrelsens sammansättning) och våra kontrollvariabler.Slutsats: Vår slutsats är att en bolagsstyrelses sammansättning påverkar företagets rapportering av CSR. Fler kvinnliga ledamöter i styrelsen leder till en ökad rapportering av både miljömässig och social CSR.

This thesis is concerned with investigating the Roma, a group that is left out in most of the territory bound theories. The theoretical purposes are to develop theories that increase the understanding for the Roma as a diasporic nation without state and the advocacy networks they are organised in. The main empirical purpose has been to study two organisations as cases and how they position themselves against the European Union concerning identity politics. The two organisations are European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) and Dzeno. They are a part of the same network that works on different levels with the rights of Roma.

This paper analyzes governance of cultural and ethnic integration. The study has a comparative perspective between five municipalities in Skåne. One aim in this thesis is to clearify the ratio between the state and municipal authority and how municipalities exercise their autonomy. I analyze the advantages and disadvantages in different governance methods linked to how the municipalities are working in practice and what problem the integration policy is intended to eliminate. I also resolve the influence of officials and citizens in the policy process.My conclusion is that direct ruling to a large extent is limited by indirect control.

Concern about personal privacy continues to grow among online users along with the fact that new technologies help online companies to share user's private information. Still the usage of online entities such as social networks and e-commerce sites continue to increase. This raises the question of why online users act in such a contradictory and irrational way.Our study examines what impact one recently developed application called social login, which is provided by several social networks and used by millions of online companies, has on consumer's evaluation of online brands when they are primed for various types of information concerning privacy issues. Our assumptions are built up on the theory of cognitive, dissonance and suggest that there will be no differences in evaluation of the brands due to the human need to rationalize their existing behavior and attitudes when they receive new or contradicting information. The potential effects are measured by a manipulation presented in a survey distributed in an online environment to a sample of users (n=,154).

The purpose for this Masters thesis is to describe childrens librarians work in supplying literature to children with emphasis on easy-reader materials. Our main questions are: · What do librarians believe characterizes an easy-reader book, and what do they base their decision on when classifying a book as easy-to-read? · How have the libraries in our study solved the hands-on difficulties associated with easy readers childrens literature? · Which factors do librarians consider to be important when supplying literature to children that are not used to reading or are not good readers? The theories we have used are Aidan Chambers Reading Circle and Karner Smidts view on the librarians professional roles when supplying literature. We have used a case study method, which means that we have gathered information through observation, objective papers and interviews. This has been done at six libraries.

BakgrundUnder de senare åren har ett flertal länder drabbats av bolagsskandaler som bidragit till en snabb utveckling inom corporate governance. För att förhindra liknande skandaler har mer eller mindre frivilliga regler för bolagsstyrning införts, så kallade koder. Bolagsskandaler har även inträffat i Sverige och 1 juli år 2005 infördes svensk kod för bolagsstyrning. Koden skall bidra till förbättrad styrning av bolag, stärka konkurrenskraften och främja förtroendet på kapitalmarknaden.SyfteUppsatsens syfte är att beskriva och analysera om roll- och ansvarsfördelningen har förändrats mellan bolagsorganen efter införandet av svensk kod för bolagsstyrning.GenomförandeDenna studie bygger på kvalitativ metod och tio intervjuer har genomförts. Intervjuer har skett med representanter från ägare, styrelse, bolagsledning, revisor samt respondenter med god kunskap inom bolagsstyrning.ResultatStudien visar att svensk kod för bolagsstyrning inte har haft någon större effekt på roll- och ansvarsfördelningen.

The purpose of this thesis is to develop an application for mobile phones that simplifies communication. The company Doberman wanted to look at possibilities to develop such an application that uses Bluetooth? technol-ogy to communicate in ad-hoc networks. The aim has been an application to run on mobile phones in which you can send messages and files to other devices and also add a user profile with personal information to share with others. The communication will take place in temporary networks created when Bluetooth enabled devices is in range of each other.The market for mobile phones has grown rapidly over the past years and is still growing.

The purpose of this paper is to study how the TV program Border Security: Australia?s FrontLine (Gränsbevakarna Australien) can be seen to reproduce networks of human and non-human actors. The aim is thus to investigate how boundaries between nations are upheld and how people, as a consequence, are discoursively categorized and what preconditions this create for people?sidentity- and meaning-making practices.The theoretical and methodical framework is built upon Bruno Latour?s work on Actor-Network-Theory, and discourse analysis inspired by Michel Foucault. The empirical material consists of two episodes of the TV program.

This Bachelor's thesis in Environmental Science studies the quality of an index of performance measurement of Swedish municipalities' sustainability governance offered by the environmental magazine Miljöaktuellt. Executed for six consecutive years, this evaluation is arguably the most comprehensive and widely spread local sustainability assessment in Sweden. Contextualizing this quantitative measurement tool in the paradigm of New Public Management, the research questions posed are: 'to what extent does the index employed by Miljöaktuellt correspond to the requirements of a set of quality criteria for sustainability assessment?' and 'is the index appropriate as a measure of, or a goal for, Swedish municipalities' internal sustainability efforts?' Through the perspective of evaluation theory, Miljöaktuellt's index is seen as a performance evaluation, thus categorizing this study as a meta-evaluation. Through a qualitative thematic approach, the index is analyzed using the 8 BellagioSTAMP-principles that were developed as tools for assessing quality of sustainability assessments as themes for the analysis.

Syfte: Syftet med denna uppsats är att beskriva arbetet i ett antal revisionsutskott samt att diskutera hur detta arbete har påverkat extern revision och intern kontroll. Metod: En kombination av kvantitativ och kvalitativ metod har använts. Datainsamling har genomförts i form av intervjuer och dokumentstudier. Uppsatsens forskningsansats har varit abduktiv och deskriptiv. Teoretiskt perspektiv: De teoretiska perspektiv som använts är tagna från Svensk kod för bolagsstyrning, dels den gällande dels den reviderade.

Human capital is professional service firms' most valuable resource and its quality is closely linked to the quality of its services. The purpose of this study is to investigate how professional service firms appraise their employees. A comparative study between an architecture firm and a management consulting firm is conducted with the aim to identify and explain similarities and differences in performance appraisal. Two qualitative case studies are performed and interviews as well as documents are used to explore the area. The thesis builds on a critical perspective and it has an explorative approach.

The overall purpose of this study is to make a survey of the extent as to which youths have witnessed acts of violence and or violence in close relationships, and which underlying factors, sex, class, and ethnicity ? characterize youths with such experiences. The study also aims to explore their attitudes and strategies and what the consequences are for youths of witnessing acts of violence, with respect to attachment to adults and other social networks. The primary data have been collected in two upper secondary schools. The study includes 101 students.

The knowledge of early employment experiences has evolved over the last decade in countries such as Australia and Great Britain. In Sweden, this type of research is still unusual and the aim of this study was to break new ground by highlighting some areas that could be of extra interest in the Swedish early employment research to come. A focus in the study was to give an overview of what job sectors school students work in; and the amount of jobs aquired through school-organized work placement, private social networks or personal marketing of own merits. In addition to this, a multi variate analysis was carried out to find patterns in the picture of early employment experiences among students at upper secondary school. The findings of the study has relevance for ways of conducting career counselling and therefore the general aim of this study is to point out the importance of developing the practises of vocational psychology.A survey among 74 teenaged school students with economics as their main subject has been carried out in a mid-size Swedish city May 2012.