This study deals with sustainability reporting in three governmental and three non-governmental Swedish companies in different industries. With increasing demands from the society regarding company?s CSR - Corporate social responsibility, the perspective of accounting gets broader and covers even non-financial information to meet not only the owners? demands but also others stakeholders' requirements. Sustainability has become an important tool for creating company?s business value and a positive sustainable external image.

In view of the difficulty of recruiting staff to care profession and in terms of the increasing need to find ways of ensuring a good language level in the profession, have an interest in language tests been revealed. The purpose of this paper is therefore to highlight the use of language tests for admission to the care courses for adults in Värmland. What provided This is a survey of the prevalence and an examination of the validity of the test. The issue that this study assumed is: How is language test in connection with admission to the certified health and social care courses for adults in Värmland? How well correlates intent of the use of the language test with the test's validity and reliability?The methods used to seek answers to these questions has been a combination of questionnaires and experiments.

This is a study about employment officers at the Swedish public employment service. The aim of this study was to examine how they understand and use their discretion in their daily work. We used a qualitative method and the data was gathered by semi-structured interviews with eight employment officers working at the same office in a small town in Sweden. Lipskys theory about street-level bureaucracy and Lazarus description of coping theory are applied to analyze the empirical data. The work for the Swedish employment officers have changed over the last years with an increasing focus on control and administration.

Background: Resources that are hard to put a value on and cannot be classified as assets in the balance sheet as well as the development towards the information society has led to an increasing need and use for voluntary information in the annual reports. The increase of voluntary information can foremost be seen in the field of human resources.Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to describe the development of voluntary information about human resources in the annual report of a number of Swedish quoted companies. The purpose is also to see if there is a difference in the development between manufacturing companies and service companies.Method: Six manufacturing companies and six service companies were chosen from the Stockholm exchange A-list. Using both a qualitative and quantitative research method the annual reports of the chosencompanies were studied for the years 1995, 1997, 1999, 2001, and 2003. A model consisting of seven categories; health, diversity, recruitment, staff turnover and comfort, benefits and motivation, education and competence development, was developed to clarify were the development took place.Conclusions: After finishing the study one can tell that the amount of voluntary information about human resources in the annual report has increased even though the percentage share of the total annual report only has increased appreciably for manufacturing companies.

The development of farm-operated biogas plants in Sweden is increasing. This study investigates the process that firms go through in developing such ventures. The aim is to identify obstacles and opportunities that individual farmers have encountered during the implementation process, and through a comparative analysis find similarities and differences between cases. The overall goal is to increase understanding of the factors that influence farmers? development of farm-based biogas production, and more specifically, explore opportunities for support organizations to contribute to the innovation process. Findings indicate that the implementation process has changed over time.

Today, buildings utilize 40 % of the total energy consumption. New energyrestrictions and directives have entered the construction industry. Photovoltaic is asustainable, clean and quiet solution that integrates well in the urban environment buthave not yet reached a breakthrough on the Swedish market. The conditions for solarenergy production are often set in the early planning stages where they rarely arebeing prioritized.This master of engineering project focuses on identifying problems regardingimplementation of photovoltaic in city development projects and giving suggestions topossible improvements in the planning- and construction process. It also givesrecommendations on how the conditions for energy production can be optimized inthe early zoning stage.By conducting simulations with PVsystV5.21, on three ongoing city developmentprojects in Umeå, Malmö and Stockholm and by carry out and analyzing interviewswith city planners, constructors and architects, some conclusions have been made.Several improvements, both politically, with changes in the subsidization systemand/or instatement of a new law with feed-in tariffs, and within the solar- andconstruction industry itself, with better communication between different parts of theprocess as well as better use of experience, can be made.

Objective: In recent years there has been an increasing interest within the clinical (medical) science in measuring people?s health. When estimating quality of life, present practise is to use the EQ-5D questionnaire and an index which weighs the different questions. The question is what happens if the individuals estimate there own health, would it differ from the public preferences? The aim is to make a new prediction model based on the opinion of patients and compare it to the present model based on public preferences.Method: A sample of 362 patients with unstable coronary artery disease from the Frisc II trial, valued their quality of life in the acute phase and after 3, 6 and 12 months.

The dissertation were performed on SP, Technical Institute of Sweden. The dissertation were carried out on the measurement technical department, this dissertation is a part of a bigger project, project ClampCal. One of SP?s returning assignments are flow-measurement. When flow-measurement is performed, the flow has to be stopped so that a meter can be installed in the pipes where measurement is going to take place. At every stop there is time delay in the flow which causes the customers to loose money. This is why SP wanted to find a better solution so that measurement can be done without any stops in the flow. Usage of a so-called Clamp-on meter was considered, but since the measurement uncertainty is too large it takes some investigation on the parts where the largest uncertainties occur and thus find a solution that can diminish the uncertainty as much as possible. The parts that were considered to have an opportunity to reduce measurement uncertainties were the fluid temperature, its characteristics and the pipe geometry and its characteristics. For the fluid temperature a Pt100-sensor with four different radii for various pipes was used.

ABSTRACTBackground: The incidence of type 2 diabetes is increasing worldwide. Early intervention in form of medication, advice on self-management and lifestyle changes is necessary to avoid complications. Few Swedish studies are made on the diabetes nurse?s views on promotion of self- management.Purpose: To examine the diabetes specialist nurse?s experience of promoting self-management to patients with type 2 diabetes in primary care.  Method: A qualitative explorative study where eight diabetes nurses were interviewed. The interview guide consisted of semistructed questions concerning the promotion of self-management.Results: The diabetes nurse?s role in promoting patient self-management is significant, if resources are available in the form of adequate time for the patient and good team work.

One of our big public health problems in Sweden is that human beings are too inactive in outdoor settings. That is why stress related diseases increase and influence humans both mentally and physical. The physical activity is halved among many children when they start school and the older they become the less they enjoy school. It is also an increasing problem that children and youth in today's society have lack of worthwhile experiences in the nature. The aim of this study was therefore to examine how the experience of outdoor environment had importance for health and learning on upper secondary school pupils.

The purpose of this report is to investigate the possibilities with drain water heat recovery (DWHR) in residential buildings. Information and relevant theory has been collected and summarized in this report. Calculations have been done for given scenarios to evaluate profits. DWHR heat exchangers use simple technology and have long life-time. The heat exchanger is connected to outgoing drainage pipe and incoming cold-water supply so countercurrent flow is accomplished.

Background: Thanks to the globalization and the EU the international trade is growing faster than ever and companies are able to change ownership across the borders of the nations. Today one can talk about global marketplace with a deeper integration of the economies of the world. The rapidly growing list of mergers of Swedish companies since the last 10 years indicates that the global companies of today is using mergers as a strategic tool for continue their growth. However the number of unsuccessful mergers is big. The need of understanding and knowledge about different cultures is growing in the global business climate of today, since the collaborations across de national borders are increasing.Problem formulation: Which international strategies are fortunate in international mergers with Swedish companies?Purpose: The purpose is to analyze the integration of the three mergers; Vin&Sprit ? Pernod Ricard, Astra - Zeneca and Telia ? Sonera.Method: This study is a case study with a qualitative approach.

The last decades the populations of wild boar (Sus scrofa) has increased rapidly over the species? entire European range, including Sweden. This is followed by increasing human-wildlife conflicts as a result of the wild boar foraging behavior, causing damage to agricultural crop fields due to trampling and feeding. To be able to minimize damage we need more knowledge of where in the fields the risk of damage is high and what features in the landscape that affect this risk. I analyzed damage distribution in relation to the distance to six different landscape features; forest, road, ditch, building, game field and bait station, in the study area, the Island Mörkö in eastern central Sweden.

Background: Overweight and obesity has become an increasing health issue around the world, which leads to an increase of cardiovascular diseases. The reason for this is a lack of physical activity in combination with an overconsumption of unhealthy food. In the primary healthcare is the ordination of physical activity on prescription offered as a treatment, which is an important health preventive action. When clients get physical activity on prescription they are given the opportunity to receive health counseling as a way to motivate a change in an unhealthy way of living.Objectives: This study aim to examine the experience of the health counseling of individuals with overweight related problems, in combination with the prescription of physical activity.Method: Qualitative interviews were chosen as method. Nine individuals participated in the study, seven females and two males, who had been to health counseling at Friskvården in Värmland.

In view of the difficulty of recruiting staff to care profession and in terms of the increasing need to find ways of ensuring a good language level in the profession, have an interest in language tests been revealed. The purpose of this paper is therefore to highlight the use of language tests for admission to the care courses for adults in Värmland. What provided This is a survey of the prevalence and an examination of the validity of the test. The issue that this study assumed is: How is language test in connection with admission to the certified health and social care courses for adults in Värmland? How well correlates intent of the use of the language test with the test's validity and reliability?The methods used to seek answers to these questions has been a combination of questionnaires and experiments.