Background: The importance of creativity and innovation is frequently stressed in modern literature on management. The significance of innovation gives entrepreneurs the reason to prior to the commencement of a relationship with a venture capitalist, obtain necessary insights regarding the influences such a relationship may have, in terms of innovation. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to scrutinise the influence of venture capital firms on their portfolio companies regarding their ability to be innovative. Delimitations: The intent is to study the impact of a venture capitalist from the viewpoint of its portfolio companies. In other words, what the portfolio companies have perceived as changes is our main area of concern, rather than what the venture capitalist has perceived as change.

On the 17th of January 2002 the Swedish government presented a bill to theSwedish parliament, proposing ways of strengthening the Swedish democracythrough reforms for increased elements of participatory democracy. A publicreport on the state of the Swedish democracy had been released two years earlierwith similar enthusiasm for participatory democracy. However, the participatoryideals of these two documents were strongly criticised by a group of scholars.The aim of this thesis is to analyze and compare the arguments articulatedbetween the years 2000 and 2002 by the actors mentioned above, and to examinetheir relation to arguments concerning political participation, articulated bythinkers from previous times. By classifying the arguments into different groupsdepending on their content I find that both parties in the Swedish argumentationfocus on the effects of participatory democracy on political equality, on theefficiency of the political decision-making and the quality of the decisions beingmade, and finally on the personal character of the citizens. Among the argumentsarticulated by thinkers from previous times, similarities with the Swedishargumentation can be seen as well as important differences.

The aim of this study is to create an increased understanding of shared leadership and how it takes shape in the relationship between first-line managers in human service organizations. Shared leadership is seen as a complement to the traditional one-man leadership and briefly means that two managers share the role that usually is held by a single leader. The study has a qualitative approach based on semi-structured interviews with managers in human service organizations. The interviews mention the mangers thoughts and experiences about shared leadership and gain approval in the hermeneutic science field. The study is analyzed based on symbolic interactionism where perspectives from the theoreticians Mead and Goffman are used.

In 2002 the local council of Lund, Sweden, decides to implement the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. A number of actors, such as the state, the civil society, the political society and the bureaucracy, participate in the political process with different authority and points of departure. This thesis studies the actors´ interactions from an inside perspective by applying concepts such as political power, democracy and implementation. The methodological departure is action research from within, a local NGO, the local board of Save the Children Sweden. The results of the study indicate that governance and steering of the implementation process at the communal level is weak.

This paper examines the reasons behind firms considering backsourcing. While firms experience problems with their outsourcing activities, backsourcing emerges as an alternative solution. Firms primarily take cost considerations into account when reconsidering their outsourcing practices, but this only scratches the surface. A deeper analysis is needed, since cost increases arise from issues such as quality defects and cooperation problems. Even though production costs are low, outsourcing always implies transaction costs.

This study is based on interviews with five directors of educational administration within the Stockholm County. The purpose is to investigate how the directors of educational administrations, in the different municipalities, describe the relationship between the administration and the local school units. Moreover, the aim is also to describe the administration director?s work in relation to the various levels of the administration. To what extent can it be identified as a dimension of the learning organization described in this report.The study shows that skepticism is usually directed upwards toward the next level in the organization and that the decision-making right for local schools is consistently safeguarded.

Background: A company?s choice of capital structure is influenced by the access to internal and external capital but also by the opportunities and threats that the management perceives in the environment and the management?s attitude towards risk. How an individual perceives and interpret the environment depends on the cognitive structures, which are shaped by personality, background and earlier experiences. Accordingly cognitive structures can be expected to influence the choice of capital structure. Purpose: Out of a cognitive perspective we intend to study the relationship between the way a company views it?s environment and what capital structure it chooses to have, in order to contribute to an increased understanding about what lies behind a company?s capital structure policy.

The purpose of this paper is to create an understanding of the negotiation process behind the decision of who will stay at home with a sick child and to develop the knowledge of the mechanisms considered to affect the negotiation process, in particular, the mechanisms likely to contribute to an uneven use of care leave. In the study six interviews were conducted with three sets of parents. These interviews were then analysed with Janet Finch?s (1989) definition of negotiation of family responsibilities. The study finds that the negotiation on care leave is a result of the negotiation of the shared view of reality.

Retail marketing is a field with many different enbranchements. Some of these can be considered relatively well explored, while the lack of knowledge concerning others is almost total. For example, the existing knowledge regardng the possible impact that non-musical sound can have on the customer can be considered non-existent. With this in mind, the intention with the thesis was to closer investigate how non-musical sound can influence the customer's decision process and attitude in and to a grocery store. The authors started out with theories on associative networks and automatic processing.

This paper is part of the research programme ViSuCity, a programme with the goal of creating more sustainable urban planning through the development of better visual tools, which ultimately means better communication between various parties of public planning. The paper concerns the implementation of MCE into a 3D program for visualization. Multi criteria evaluation (MCE) is a technique that has been developed during the last 20 years. It merges GIS with AHP, forming a decision making tool for localization of, for example, new buildings.The result is an automated tool that enables advanced analysis of geographic areas.The tool has a very high potential due to the completely automated MCE and it is adapted for people without a technical background, let alone formal training in MCE. It provides great opportunities to test different scenarios, something that should be an important advantage.

Natten mellan den 19 och 20 mars 2003 inledde koalitionstrupper Operation Iraqi Freedom. Detta var slutet på det som kom att gå till historien som Irakkrisen.30 år tidigare formulerade Graham Allison en teori, i form av tre modeller, för att förklara utrikespolitiskt agerande utifrån Kubakrisen. Vi har prövat huruvida Allisons teori fortfarande kan förklara utrikespolitiskt agerande genom att pröva den på Irakkrisen. Detta har operationaliserats genom en systematisk genomgång av tillgängligt material som behandlar uppsatsämnet.Efter att ha betraktat Irakkrisen utifrån Allisons tre olika modeller kan vi konstatera att teorin fortfarande är bärkraftig. Dock behövs viss komplettering till den 30 år gamla teorin ? i form av en inrikespolitisk analys, bredare organisationsanalys samt en djupare value- och beliefsystem-analys ? för att kunna åstadkomma en fylligare undersökning som förenar Allisons modeller med dagens verklighet..

I ambulansyrket hamnar sjukvårdspersonalen i situationer där de möter kritiska patienter. Då är det är viktigt att de fattar snabba beslut. Den här studien har undersökt i hur stor utsträckning ambulanspersonal får intuitiva känslor och fattar intuitiva beslut i kritiska lägen. Studien har också undersökt i vilken utsträckning ambulanspersonal förlitar sig på magkänslan samt hur stor vikt intuition har för yrkeskompetensen.Nio semistrukturerade intervjuer genomfördes utifrån Critical Decision Method (Klein et al., 1999), en metod grundad i teori kring naturalistiskt beslutsfattande. Resultatet visade att ambulanspersonal fattar intuitiva beslut vid varje patientmöte där patienten är i ett kritiskt tillstånd.

Citizens? interaction with governments is an area with unique implications for channel management. Governments need to take the citizens perspective into further consideration in order to be successful in delivering high-quality e-services. This paper aims to determine if a categorization of citizen-initiated contacts from a citizen-centric perspective can be a valuable basis for decisions regarding e-service development. The study consisted of three steps.

My analysis consists of an in-depth study of the experience of a group of development programme participants who were exposed to the use of art and artistic work in organisation and leadership development, resulting in positive effects. My starting point is creativity as a concept according to paediatrician and psychoanalyst DW Winnicott who stresses how important playing and creativity is for us, even as an adult, for us to utilise our full potential. He believes that we have a psychological space ? a crossover area ? where the outer, objective reality and the inner, subjective reality meet. Playing, creative development and experiences occur in this space.

My analysis consists of an in-depth study of the experience of a group of development programme participants who were exposed to the use of art and artistic work in organisation and leadership development, resulting in positive effects. My starting point is creativity as a concept according to paediatrician and psychoanalyst DW Winnicott who stresses how important playing and creativity is for us, even as an adult, for us to utilise our full potential. He believes that we have a psychological space ? a crossover area ? where the outer, objective reality and the inner, subjective reality meet. Playing, creative development and experiences occur in this space.