Background: The board of directors is a key player in corporate governance. Their role is to ensure that the corporations are run with the interest of the shareholders as the main focus. In the beginning of the 21st century, a survey was made about the confidence of the Swedish business community and in which criticism was directed to the board of directors. The boards were deemed inadequate in their function and were often solely composed by members with similar experiences and competence, therefore lacking in diversity. In order to improve the competence and work of the board of directors, the Swedish code of corporate governance was introduced and its recommendations comprehend the boards? size and composition.

Since 1996 the Swedish households have ten folded their volume of loans for own homes that is attached to a floating interest rate. Also in 1996 the Swedish electric market was deregulated. These two facts have increased the volatility in the household expenses for these two commodities. This thesis studies the risk for homeowners attached to the exposure against the electric and the credit market. The risk model used is Cost-at-Risk which is usually used by public authorities for analysing the risk involved with national debt.

In this study, I will discuss Hegel?s words on the death of God as they are stated in his Phenomenology of Spirit and Faith and Knowledge. I will present a reading of what I consider to be the two different usages of these words, and relate their meanings to each other. Focus lies on what Hegel refers to as the ?unhappy consciousness? and its experience of a disenchantment of the world, and on Christianity as the answer to this position.

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 community Vessigebro, in Falkenberg and its surrounding areas housing one percent of all dairy cattle and two percent of all pigs in Sweden. This means that there is a large amount of manure as a basis for producing biogas in the area. A number of farmers have therefore formed a cooperative named Vessigebro biogas and started the project Green Vessigebro, with the goal of creating the conditions for a more profitable and more sustainable agriculture production.The study deals with the conditions and sale opportunities of the feasibility study Green Vessigebro. The study has looked at the work that was previously carried out for the biogas that could be produced on the farms in Vessigebro, The main pipeline for natural gas on the Swedish west coast and its operators, the Swedish Competition Act , Electricity Act , Natural Gas Act, the District Heating Act , Sustainability Act , previously proposed measures, municipality interest in biogas from Vessigebro , possible collaborations, possible sale opportunities and perform calculations with data from the municipality Ljungby for a suggested transportation of biogas between Vessigebro and Ljungby.The study shows that there are several interesting sale opportunities for biogas from Vessigebro. The production and use of biogas in Sweden is increasing and the trend seems set to continue.

The purpose of the thesis is to describe how environmental compensation is carried through when it comes to exploitation of Natura 2000. The thesis also relates to the three theories of planning synoptic, advocacy and transactive. Three cases of environmental compensation have been studied from three different countries where an exploitation of the Natura 2000 is done. Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands have all been working with environmental impact assessments as a demand to be able to carry through their projects. The projects concern the development of a railway track, an industry and a port which all have been approved by the EU-commission to carry on because of socioeconomic reasons.

The use of hallucinogenic plants has throughout human history been used for religiouspurposes, in order to induce mystical states of mind, often interpreted as meeting with godsand spirits. In recent years, this practice has been taken up by people interested in theexploration of their psyche and spiritual side. This group of people, referred to as?psychonauts?, communicate with each other through internet based forum, where theyshare their experiences in so called ?trip reports?. The aim of this study was to see whatrole psychedelic drugs can play when used in a spiritual/religious context, and whetherthese sorts of mystical states of mind could tell us about more traditional mysticalexperiences.

In the middle of the 19th century came an opposite reaction against the hospitals? treatment of their patients and a more human way was requested. A link between crowded housing, bad hygien and other bad conditions had been noticed and nature was considered to be healthy. Hospitals and sanatiories moved closer to nature due to influences from England, USA and Germany, and cities began building public parks. Employment was seen as calming and healthy for the patients.

This study investigates the potential of a rhetorical theory of knowledge to expand beyond its own domain and into political theory, specifically theories of deliberative democracy. Despite the increasing interest in communication in democratic theory in the last decades, the majority of theorists have not turned their interest towards rhetorical science. On the contrary, theorists often regard rhetoric as dangerous and incompatible with the deliberative ideal of reason. The aim of this study is therefore to defend rhetorical science by investigating how the rhetorical theory of knowledge ? as it is presented by Chaïm Perelman and Oldbrecht Tyteca, and further developed by Mats Rosengren and Maria Wolrath Söderberg ? can contribute to the understanding of deliberative democracy.

Episodic gaming is a relatively new phenomenon, that hasn?t been as extensively explored as other areas in game research. In this paper we research how episodic narratives and gameplay engage players compared to regular continuous storytelling. By exploring this we get a better understanding of how to design games that captivate players to the point of them wanting to play the next episode.  A user study is conducted where ten players play two episodes each of an episodic game. We apply observations and interviews to capture a large amount of empirical data.

The increased media clutter requires of brand managers to be innovative and creative in their choices of marketing communications in order for brands to be salient in the minds of consumers. Recent studies emphasize incongruent marketing as a means of "standing out" from this competitive clutter and reaching existing and new potential customers. The aim of this thesis is to examine the effects of brand incongruent sponsorships (sponsorships which are incongruent with established brand associations) on consumer response to well-established brands from the perspective of high and low levels of loyalty. A quantitative survey was conducted and the results show that incongruent sponsorships improve brand attitude, brand interest and brand credibility, while not affecting ad attitude, purchase intention and word-of-mouth intention for customers of low loyalty. For highly loyal customers the findings were that brand attitude, brand interest, brand credibility, purchase intention and word-of-mouth intention remained unchanged while ad attitude decreased.

Deciduous forests are, according to the National Environmental Quality Objectives, a priority area. Deciduous forests are rich in species and the occurrence of dead wood is an important factor for biodiversity. In order to identify valuable deciduous forests for bio-diversity, conservation needs good analyses and planning tools. Habitat models combined with geographic information systems can be used to study the spatial structure of suitable habitat. The Lesser spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos minor) has been proposed as an indicator species for deciduous forests, since this species is highly specialized on insect larvae in dead wood and requires large areas of deciduous-rich environments. Many riparian forest with high species richness and high nature conservation values are found along the Ume river in Umeå municipality.

The wind power increase of Gotland as well as other parts of Sweden during the last ten year period has meant that this renewable energy source has increased its share over other fossil sources. The year of 2011 became the first when the wind power produced more energy than an average nuclear reactor. Now that wind power is in an expansive phase, the land issue will be of great interest. Land with good wind resources will be of interest to wind energy developers. The problems that this essay is based on are; how can landowners altering the economic conditions at a wind power establishment? What opportunities and obstacles exist for landowners who choose to set up wind power on their land? The purpose of this essay is to highlight the economic conditions that exist for landowners for the establishment of wind farms, with regard to compensation for the leasing and return on invested capital.

Today there is a shortage of skilled IT-technicians in Sweden. It is approximated that Swedish companies can hire 31 000 IT-technicians in 2015 and the need seems to increase in the coming years. One proposed solution to this problem is to make programming more desirable to youths. In this study we attempt to investigate the effects of an introductory course in computer science on youths? (16-17 years old) in a classroom setting.

This report is focused on a research to find out if the Customer Relation Management (CRM) of Quicknet AB works and if their customers are satisfied with it. During this investigation I tried to see if the customers had a need for taking the CRM and use a tool called Social CRM. The report will conclude if the clients of Quicknet think that there is something that can be done in the relation between both parts and how it can be improved. At the same time I am going to build an application which relates to the problems of this report.To solve the problem I am going to do a survey which will include the CRM and also try to find out if the customers of Quicknet share the same thoughts about having a Social Customer Relation Management. Also if this survey shows what the customers think about the CRM, it could improve the relation between Quicknet and themselves. The result from the survey showed two things.