The increasing significance of social economy as a concept is linked to general global processes such as the crisis of the welfare state, neoliberal globalization, anti-bureaucracy tendencies and decentralization, but also to a growing political interest in human rights and social development. In Sweden the idea of the social economy generates wide support within civil society as well as within the government and across party political boundaries. Furthermore, what is problematic in this context is the fact that the discussions on the subject tend to be relatively uncritical and often it seems as if though the expansion itself is the main objective. The emphasis on cooperation and the third sector in terms of welfare production implies a set of risks in relation to state responsibility, democracy and the autonomy of civil society. This paper aims to explore those risks and how they can be dealt with within the Swedish context..

In 2005 over 48 000 senior citizens fell so badly that the needed medical care and almost 1200 of them died. This makes falls in the elderly one of our biggest public health problems. Research in this area is extensive and although we know what causes a fall and how we in theory should work to prevent their occurrence, this is a problem that is increasing. There seems to be a gap between research and practice, and research into why this gap occurs is very narrow. The purpose of this study was to identify success factors with fall prevention from a staff- perspective.

The urbanization of the world is increasing. How it affects bird populations have been well studied during the last decade, and comparisons between urban and non-urban habitats have been carried out. A common method for measuring habitat quality is to calculate the population density. This method is easy to use, but have been criticized during the last couple of years. In this study, data of population densities was compared with data on reproduction success.

The industry of management training programs is increasing rapidly. Every year numerous organizations sponsor expensive management training programs for their managers, hoping that this will pay off and make the organizations more profitable. The companies that offer these management training programs could be seen as important conveyers of conceptions of leadership. Thus, the purpose of this thesis is to identify similarities between a number of management training programs and see how they are related to different leadership theories , and based on this try to recognize the conceptions of leadership that are conveyed. The study is of qualitative nature and is based on interviews with representatives from five management training companies in Sweden along with a text analysis of written material presented by the companies.

The milk production has developed rapidly the last years. The milk production per cow is increasing and the production units are larger with an increasing number of animals and a decreasing number of workers. Many milk producers invest in automatic milking systems (AM) to meet this change. In these systems the cows can voluntary decide milking frequency and usually the milking frequency are higher than two times per day. But how does the milking frequency effect the composition of the milk? The aim of the present study was to study the effect of milking frequency on the milk composition and the milk fat quality.

The market for management training programs is growing and the supply of the service is increasing and getting further diversified. A consequence is a market with a wide variety of definitions of the very concept of development, and subsequently a wide variety of practices and methods to achieve development. The individuals that are subject to these programs seldom know what they are purchasing, or what to expect. When assuming a transfer of the developers view on development to the subject, a need for a greater understanding of the concept arises. The purpose of this thesis is to understand what views on development do exist among management trainers and map underlying dimensions of the views to increase the understanding of the concept of development.

Background: Diabetes Mellitus Type 1 is increasing among children on large parts of the world. The disease strikes not only the child but affects the whole family. The parents are those who are responsible for the child?s treatment and well being. Purpose: The purpose of the literature review was to describe how parents to children with Diabetes Mellitus Type 1 experience and handle the situation around the child?s disease.

The western societies is characterized by a strong future concern and the members of the society are valued most of all according to their capability to produce. In our time the elder ness is representing a rapidly increasing number of relatively well kept elders. What sight of the future does the aging human have? Are one meditating of what kind of service and care one are going to need? The purpose with this study was to describe how individuals in ages between 60 and 96 sees, both the future and their coming need for care in relation to sex, age, social activities and experienced health. The material was taken from ?SNAC-Blekinge? witch is a part of a bigger national study; SNAC (The Swedish National study on Aging and Care).

The topic of this bachelor thesis is the promotion of easy-to-read fiction for 10-12 year old children in public libraries. The number of easy-to-read fiction books is increasing on the book market. This can be expected to affect the public library. The hypotheses for the study are: 1) Public libraries expose easy-to-read fiction and use it in their reading promotion activities and, 2) The acquisition of easy-to-read books and the use of easy-to-read books in reading promotion activities have increased over the last five years. A self-completion questionnaire was distributed to 44 public libraries in Sweden.

Children?s use of mobile devices is constantly increasing and has become very popular withchildren as young as toddlers. Schools in Sweden have made large investments to expand theuse of information technology (IT), and the use of mobile devices in preschools is already acommon support tool for learning. Children?s use of IT is a relatively new phenomenon,which means that is it also a relatively new area of research.

The use of vision applications are growing and the demand for integration and connectivity with other industrial automation control devices is increasing. Some businesses that are using vision technology follow US Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) regulation concerning audit trail. This thesis investigates the possibility to use vision technology for counting objects, achieving connectivity and to follow FDAs audit trail regulation. A market survey has been used to select suitable hardware and software to be used in the design of an application that is able to count objects and that uses standard industrial network connection i.e. OPC data access and Microsoft?s .NET components over Ethernet.

This essay intends to investigate the view on freedom of speech in Sweden. The expanding of the hate crime law rises the question if there is a current changing view on freedom of speech. By comparing motions concerning an expanding of the hate crime law from different periods, I am able to conclude if and how the view on the term freedom of speech has taken place. This is done in a descriptive analysis of terms, where the different values and arguments for a change is compared. The material is taken from the period 1991-1993 and 2000-2001.

The Swedish academic libraries have gone trough radical changes during the last decades. The development of information technology, the educational expansion and new pedagogical ways of learning within the higher educational system have changed the conditions, not only for the academic libraries, but also in many ways for the librarians. The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine how Swedish librarians experience their pedagogic role and task in the context of an academic library. The following four questions in this investigation were asked: How do the librarians experience the formal task that they have? How do the librarians experience the physical library environment? How do the librarians experience the co-operation with others involved in their work? How do the librarians experience their own pedagogic knowledge and competence in their daily practice? The study showed that these librarians believed the physical environment to be very important and is seen as a pedagogical tool in their daily work.

The increasing holdings by institutional investors have raised concerns about the institutions passive investment strategies and the implications for corporate governance. A way for investors to address moral hazard and opportunistic behaviour of management is to demand conservatism in accounting practices. This paper analyses the relation between institutional ownership and accounting conservatism in the Swedish market by studying firms on the Nasdaq OMX Stockholm over a three-year period. Furthermore, the study investigates whether ownership by institutions with high probability of monitoring managers leads to higher conservatism in financial reporting. To measure accounting conservatism this study uses the asymmetric timeliness measure developed by Basu (1997).

As today, companies are facing an increasing competition; markets are expanding while customers are getting more informed and fastidious toward companies and their products. For this reason it is crucial for enterprises to create loyal customers, or at best hyper loyal customers. With today's prerequisite this creation is difficult and it is therefore of highly interest to examine possible and alternative ways for enterprises to attain this type of hyper loyal customer. In this thesis we have examine hyper loyal football supporters with the aim to identify mechanisms that create and characterize this type of loyalty. By means of a survey and a focus group we were able to identify six loyalty mechanisms; the ability to influence, vicarious achievement, self-esteem, group affiliation, family and social relations.