In 1974 the three municipalities of Åsele, Dorotea and Fredrika were amalgamated despite of hunger strikes, mass protests and a serious threat of violence. But after six years the marriage shattered as Dorotea left the other two after years of continued struggle. In 2005 the idea of an amalgamation of Åsele, Dorotea and Vilhelmina municipalities was brought to life by an older and ever declining population.By creating a democratic ideal type consisting of the three variables ? legitimacy, participation and identity ? this study assesses what impact an amalgamation of the three municipalities might have on local democracy.Combining a qualitative and a quantitative approach this study concludes that amalgamating the municipalities today could create a democratic unit lacking legitimacy, having a weak identity and impeding participation. But the study also brings forth that the impact of an amalgamation upon the variables of the ideal type as defined is not written in stone.

This essay deals with children?s and adolescents? use of interactive media as a tool for doing relations with each other. The purpose is to increase the understanding of the impact interactive media has on pupils? relations and identity development both in school and on their spare time. The school system?s mission is not only to teach formal knowledge and facts but also to train children?s social skills and abilities.

The purpose of this essay was to study the implementation of a policy document, which concerns questions of integration, in a municipality with an indirect government. I have especially focused on issues regarding how civil servants describe the usage of a specific policy document and to what extent their autonomy and the indirect government have had an impact on implementation, and to what extent signals from surrounding institutions have had an impact on the creation of the policy document. The study was based on qualitative interviews in groups, pairs and with single individuals with twenty-seven civil servants and politicians working with issues concerning the specific policy document.One of the conclusions of my study is that the reason for producing the document in the first place is that the municipality as an organization strives to acquire a sense of legitimacy. The intentions of the document have only partly been implemented by the civil servants and politicians, since the document is not used in their daily work. Here, their autonomy has played an important part, as the choice to not use the document is the servants' own.

Regulation of rivers by dams and reservoirs is a good example where anthropogenic impact could be considerable both in the local environment, but also has major implications upstream and downstream. This study was accomplished as a literature study of the river Nile, which is extremely important for water supply. The purpose of this study was to investigate the consequences of the construction of the Aswan High Dam, to obtain a consistent flow for water supply, irrigation and power generation in Egypt. Since Egypt has a very hot and dry climate large amounts of water in reservoir is lost to the Nubian aquifer system and by evaporation. The consequences from constructing the dam are considerable.

In recent decades, demands has emerged that the companies shall take a greater social responsibility for the impact that they have on their environment and that this impact shall be reported, which is known as Sustainability Reporting. The Sustainability Report is based on a number of general principles that ensure the content and the quality of the Sustainability Report. One of these principles is the principle of completeness. In the research, this principle seems to have been interpreted in terms of number of reported aspects and indicators, which can be a limited view where only the existence of the aspects and indicators is observed. By including the degree of the reporting in terms of full, partial and no reporting as well as a comparison between the real and the alleged reporting, our intention is to extend the principle of completeness and to develop a tool that we also apply through an empirical survey in a particular area.

The purpose of the study was to find out how Swedbank Insurance view of health characterizes wellness work at the company. It was a qualitative study in which five persons involved in their health and wellness work were interviewed. Their business plan was based generally on the basis of the biomedical approach, but the results proved otherwise. The four categories that were set up after the results were; Health is to feel good physically as well as psychologically, health is the absence of illness, wellness is to do things together in a healthy environment and wellness is to challenge their co-workers with different kinds of challenges..

An environmental review has been carried out at FORIA AB, a transportation- and machine service company, to analyze the company?s environmental aspects from the transportation segment. This report describes the essential background and the methods of identifying and evaluate the environmental aspects. It also describes how the work with the environmental aspects often vary between different actors. The design of the ISO 14001 is intentionally broad in order to apply on all sorts of activities and organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore to what extent some Swedish bishops (1972-2014), mainly archbishops, were influenced by postmodernity as described by Lyotard in his report La Condition postmoderne (1979).This report had a tremendous impact on the western cultural and philosophical debate in general during the very end of the twentieth century. I am trying to find out if this impact could also be observed in the religious sphere and particularly in the Church of Sweden. My theory used, is mainly based on the ideas presented in La Condition postmoderne and my method is a hermeneutical reading of eight pastoral letters. These letters were written during the time that the Church of Sweden transformed from being an officially recognized national church to a free church among other free churches and in this respect ended to be a part of the official governmental power. The terms postmodernism or post-modernity were scarcely used at all in the pastoral letters but on the other hand the bishops seemed to share many of the ideas that Lyotard presented, such as the view on the metahistory/metanarrative and the connection of knowledge to power, the necessity of dialogue and openness and the importance and the role of creating and maintaining language games..

AimThe aim of this study is to examine the long term effects of e12 and how they have influenced the lifestyle and perceived awareness about nutrition and exercise in relation to factors from Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) that e12 took in consideration. The questions asked were; How has e12 affected the attitudes, skills, self-efficacy and knowledge relative to exercise? How has e12 influenced the individual?s habits of exercise? How has e12 affected the perceived awareness regarding the impact of nutrition and exercise on the body weight?MethodThe study is pursued by a qualitative method using semi structured interviews on six individuals between the ages of 16-18 years old that completed the project 4-5 years ago. A questionnaire regarding nutrition and exercise habits was also used as part of the study. All individuals from the year of interest were first contacted by the senior physician connected to the project.

Pathogenic microorganisms pose a big threat towards food production. Meanwhile, negative impacts on humans and environment are seen by the use of pesticides. Biological control agents are an alternative to the use of chemical pesticides, and plant-growth promoting rhizobacteria, such as Bacillus amyloliquefaciens has been shown to have good properties as biocontrol agents. Before these bacteria can be used commercially their impact on other soil organisms has to be evaluated. This thesis looks into what biocontrol bacteria are and how they might affect earthworms.

Storm water is rain and melted snow that runs off, primarily from impervious surfaces.Future storm water management is facing the challenges of increased precipitation, asclimate changes, and increased areas of impervious surfaces due to the expansion anddensification of the cities. Impervious surfaces reduce the potential for water to infiltratein the ground leading to increased surface runoff and higher peak discharge.The runoff coefficient is closely related to the percentage of impervious surfaces andrepresents the maximum percentage of a catchment that can contribute to runoff. In thisstudy, the objective was to evaluate the weighted runoff coefficient for three differenturban types; apartment buildings, townhouses and residential areas and a comparisonbetween today and the 1970`s was made.The runoff coefficient was determined by manual mapping of the different surface typesin each area based on data in the form of orthophotos and aerial photographs. The surfacetypes that were mapped were asphalt, permeable areas, tiles, sand/gravel and roof.Tiles and sand/gravel were the most difficult surface types to map. In order to see towhat extent these categories influenced the weighted runoff coefficient a sensitivityanalysis was carried out and the runoff coefficient based on surface type was changed indifferent scenarios.The results of the sensitivity analysis showed that the surface types tiles and sand/gravelhad little impact on the weighted runoff coefficient which in mainly due to the fact thatthe percentage of these surfaces types of the total area is small.The result of the study showed that the largest change in the runoff coefficient occurredin residential areas where the increase in the percentage of impervious surfaces causedby new roofs in the form of porches and garages and from paved or tiled driveways.

The purpose with this paper is to examine if tertiary education and democracy have an impact on economic growth. In order to decide how democratic the examined countries are the democracy index constructed by The Economist is used. Besides the two central theories the purpose is also to explain why these variables could affect growth and to examine direct and indirect effects. Indirect effects mean that one variable affects another variable which thereafter has an impact on economic growth.34 OECD countries are compared in order to investigate whether education and democracy are strongly correlated with BNP per capita. Therefore a statistical design is used as method.The empirical results suggest that there is significant correlation between democracy and economic growth.

Presently environmental and ethical matters are in the centre of attention and companies producing sustainability reports have become more common. It has also started to become more and more ordinary to assure these sustainability reports by an external part. However, the amount of assured sustainability reports differs a lot between different countries.There can be several reasons for why the companies chose to get the sustainability report assured. Previous studies state that the choice to produce sustainability reports can be re-lated to theories like the legitimacy theory, stakeholder theory and the agent theory. Other aspects that can affect the decision to construct a sustainability report can according to prior studies be different company characteristics and the national culture in the country in which the company is operating.

Organic material used for biogas production can also undergo other treatments. The emissions and impact from the different treatments are evaluated in this environmental assessment, with a focus on energy and climate. The materials included in the study are organic household waste, slaughterhouse waste and liquid manure. Other than biogas production, the possible treatments for organic household waste and slaughterhouse waste are incineration and composting, and for liquid manure storing and spreading. The analysis is based on data and information from current and relevant literature, and relates to the conditions in the Swedish energy system.

The aim of the study was to investigate the importance of the interaction between the physiotherapist and the patient. Semistructured interviews were carried out with three patients and one physiotherapist. A qualitative design with content analysis was used. The data analysis led to classification of four categories. These were communication, confidence, expectations and participation.