Due to increasing international competition and new technology IT-consultants has been forced to oversee their business models lately. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the process and consequences of a shift in business model for a consultant by using a methodology based on action research. The empirical foundation consists of a field study with observations, notes, interviews and business related documents. The case describes a consultant?s process of shifting business model from profits based on man-hours to selling a standardized system.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine in what way the introducing of library plans in three municipalities have affected the work in library organizations. We base our study on a new institutionalist perspective, which focuses on changes in organizations from a social and interpretative perspective. By using this theoretical framework, it is possible to study how interpersonal relations affect the development in library organizations. Through qualitative interviews with ten librarians, we investigate how the establishing of library plans has influenced, and been influenced by, the library field and by the environment, i.e.

Efter en tid av stabila utdelningsnivåer har ett flertal svenska börsnoterade bolag sänkt sina utdelningar under 2009. För att undersöka hur marknaden reagerar på en förändring i utdelningsnivå kan utdelningars signaleffekter studeras. Syftet med studien är att undersöka om det föreligger ett samband mellan ett företags utdelningsnivå och dess signaleffekter samt att undersöka eventuella skillnader i förändring av utdelningsnivå för räkenskapsåren 2007 och 2008. Vidare syftar vi även till att undersöka om annan information har en signaleffekt och därför studeras tre kontrollvariabler; räntabilitet på eget kapital, skuldsättningsgrad och kassaberedskap.Studien utgår från teorin om den effektiva marknaden och principal-agentteorin. En kvantitativ metod har använts för att inhämta data från 55 olika bolag från Stockholmsbörsens Large-cap och Mid-cap listor.

Abstract"The Care of Work" is a study whose background comes from the problems surrounding work-life balance and equality that permeates social debates today. The problematic work-life-balance and gender equality are just as relevant today as they were 35 years ago. The aim of the study was to investigate whether or not men and women have a satisfactory work-life balance and if the organization they work for is doing something to make their life puzzles function. Last, but not least, the purpose is to see if gender equality is in the interest of the individual or the state.The study is based on work-life balance, gender equality and gender as the theoretical frames of reference. Eight respondents, four men and four women, from established IT companies were interviewed.

On Nasdaq OMX Nordic Stockholm there has been a large increase in issues of preferred stocks since the financial crisis 2008. Aiming to explain whether preferred stocks have most of their characteristics relating to debt or equity, we answer four sub questions. Do all preferred stocks share the same features, or do they differ from each other? Our population is similar in characteristics, except for the preferred stock of Swedbank which is convertible and deviates when it comes to participation in dividends - instead of convertible the others are limited and redeemable. Further, the second sub question treats preferred stock in relation to the common stock quantitatively, in market data.

Abstract"The Care of Work" is a study whose background comes from the problems surrounding work-life balance and equality that permeates social debates today. The problematic work-life-balance and gender equality are just as relevant today as they were 35 years ago. The aim of the study was to investigate whether or not men and women have a satisfactory work-life balance and if the organization they work for is doing something to make their life puzzles function. Last, but not least, the purpose is to see if gender equality is in the interest of the individual or the state.The study is based on work-life balance, gender equality and gender as the theoretical frames of reference. Eight respondents, four men and four women, from established IT companies were interviewed.

The aim of this bachelor thesis was to examine attitudes among social workers, particularly their attitudes toward their clients? poverty and towards economic counseling as a method. A further aim was to study the relationship between attitudes towards poverty and economic counseling. Primary data used for the study was assembled among social workers (n = 111) with the use of an electronic questionnaire that was sent out to social welfare offices in 34 city districts in Stockholm,Gothenburg and Malmö. The findings showed that a majority of the social workers had a structural understanding of poverty and a positive attitude towards economic counseling.

This paper is a research review in the realm of censorship systems andfiltering systems. It applies ethical considerations to the creation of censorshipsystems bringing forward discussion on the ethics of technology with thepurpose of limiting access to information.There is active research being done in the area of automatic content filteringand censorship systems. These are systems that can filter out undesiredmaterial, typically from the Internet, automatically. Used in some nations,many schools and even mandated in some libraries there are many ethicalquestions raised concerning censorship and access to information.Part of the review concerns the level of accuracy of these systems presentedby researchers in the field and the different approaches used. Reviewedarticles centre around automatic content classification and filtering ofpotentially harmful materials with regards to minors while some relate tocensorship technology in a wider sense.Results show a general lack of discussion concerning the ethics of thetechnology in the research reviewed.

This thesis deals with the characterization of Japan and Japanese people by Swedish travelers during the Meiji period. It seeks to answer what aspects of Japanese people two Swedish travelers chose to highlight, and how these aspects were presented in their travelogues. This thesis also has a second aim. By applying Edward Said?s theory of orientalism, it wants to answer if Swedish travelogues were influenced by western 19th century ideas of colonialism and imperialism.

This essay examines how the meaning of an absurd play may be affected by how the reader understands the text. To address this problem I have turned to Wolfgang Isers theory of reception. Primarily I have taken on that the creation of meaning comes about when the reader fills in blanks in the text. I have also used Martin Esslins work on the theater of the absurd. I have mainly studied his research on Harold Pinter.

This report describes the development and implementation of a system for transmitting digital information at high speeds from a miniaturized submersible developed by the Ångström Space Technology Centre at Uppsala University. For instance, the vehicle shall transmit image data ? even stream live video - through an optical fibre to a monitor in a ground station. Hence, the system shall be used both to convert the image data to make it transmittable, and to recreate it at the receiver.The work includes a pre-study of the programming language and the technology used. A concept for the solution is presented together with main components later broken down into internal functions.

The purpose of this study is to illustrate teacher humor by critically examining it from an interpersonal- and humor communicative-perspective; and to discuss teacher interpersonal humor communication-skills in relation to the Swedish high school curriculum, collegial relationships and pedagogical aspects. The study?s empiric material consists of semi-structured interviews with six high school-teachers currently working at the same school, but of different age and gender. The interviews indicate that the informants all have developed humor competence, an interpersonal communicative-skill that allows them to use humor efficiently. Moreover, the result demonstrates that the teachers have various humor approaches but that they all use humor in the classroom for much of the same reasons.

The thesis of this work has been to investigate the information behaviour of archaeologists. Interviews were made, between March-September 2002, with ten archaeologists, employed in one Swedish organisation, conducting rescue archaeology. The archaeologists were all experienced in working positions as project leaders. Our thesis could be expressed in following questions: - Which sources of information did the archaeologists use in their work? - Which external and internal factors had influence on the information behaviour? The results of this study have been analysed within a theoretical framework of T.D Wilson, Lars Seldén, Lars Höglund and Olle Persson, among others.

Life is for us humans a social life. We are constantly in different social communities with various purposes. Throughout life we are part of different groups, for better or worse. The basic social communities, in our society, are the groups we live, work, learn and grow in. This essay deals with the groups children develop and learn in, in school and leisure time center.

The following essay is a study about how migrant workers and immigration policies were discussed from Livsmedelsarbetareförbundets union press, Mål och Medel, to the members of the union between the years 1960-1973. To find this out I set these questions: What sort of information appear in Mål och Medel concerning migrant workers and immigrant policies, and how does this change over time? How does Mål och Medel present the immigrant workers opinions? The method for the study is based on analyzing articles, interviews and others texts found in Livsmedelsarbetareförbundets union press, Mål och Medel, and what they want to inform the members of the union about. The study?s results have found that during the early parts of the 1960s immigrant workers were not included in the union press at all. Towards the late 1960s the immigrants were discussed, but in a manner which implied that immigrants are naturally exploited and therefore must the immigration be controlled better. It also discussed immigrants had some sort of ?adaptation problem? to the Swedish norm.