Our social lives and where we live shape our choices in life. One of those choices is which party we vote for in the general election. The aim of this thesis is to see if there are any connections between the Swedish general election of 2010, demography, socioeconomic factors and geography. This is done with regression analysis and chosen variables. Another aim is to see where in Sweden the chosen variables aren?t enough to explain the results of the election.

A large proportion of businesses around the world is today ISO 9001 certified and is consequently conducting internal audits on a regular basis. It has however not been possible to conclude that internal audits always add value to the organisation, despite the large utilisation of this tool. Some authors, e.g. Alic & Rusjan (2010) and Wealleans (2000), mean that there are possibilities that internal audits may be used as a value-adding improvement tool. This has led to the emergence of this master?s thesis.The purpose of the case study was therefore formulated to examine how internal quality audits can be made more effective and used as an improvement tool.

This thesis gives an introduction to securitization in general and the tranching of collateralized debt obligations in particular. It does this by using a firm-value model to simulate the underlying portfolio via monte-carlo simulations.The simulations in turn give a loss-distribution from which the various tranchings of the CDO?s are derived. To get an understanding of the influence of different variables involved in the tranching the simulations are repeated several times where the portfolio variables are changed to generate different tranchings. This to give a understanding of the influence different variables have on the tranching and consequently risks involved in CDO?s in particular but also general risks and problems of securitizations..

This thesis describes an optimising compiler for translating from SMV to CLP(B). The optimisation is aimed at reducing the number of required variables in order to decrease the size of the resulting BDDs. Also a partitioning of the transition relation is performed. The compiler uses an internal representation of a FSM that is built up from the SMV description. A number of rewrite steps are performed on the problem description such as encoding to a Boolean domain and performing the optimisations.

The aim of this thesis is that through a case study, analyze and evaluate whether the customer is high - or low involved and connect with the choice of marketing strategy using a celebrity.This thesis is about how a celebrity can be used in marketing to affect a company's customers. The essay is facing the fashion retail industry, where three companies, Lindex, H&M and MQ, has been studied and compared. Lindex is using celebritiy Emma Wiklund by an internal collaboration within the enterprise. MQ is using various celebrities in various campaigns throughout the year and use them in external advertising campaigns. H&M is using interactive marketing with different celebrities in the form of, for example, guest collections for the company.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the managers? perspective on leadership in relation to the motivation of the employees by an example of a manning and recruitment agencies. This is implemented by framing of two questions; What kind of leadership can be identified by middle managers to motivate their employees? Which motivation factors are relevant to employees based on the perspective of the managers? To answer the question and identify leadership strategies and motivational factors and the relationship in between, we have conducted eight interviews with persons who hold a middle management position. Through a qualitative investigation we have been able to go into depth and had access to these managers reflections, thoughts and experiences.

This master deals with the theme youth and public libraries. The essay is based on observationsand qualitative interviews with young people at the ages of 13 to 16 years old, whovisited the public library of Skara, employees at the library, and politicians in the community.The main issue in the study is; what is and what can be done to increase youth utilization ofpublic libraries. I have emphasized on the media stock, the organization of books, theenvironment and the staff of the library, marketing, specific target group, activities, andcooperation with both internal and external forces.Theories about youth culture and some projects concerning young peoples behaviour in librariesare also presented..

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to study the relations between internal information and the principal business objectives in a knowledge organization. The questions are: how does the organization behave to its internal information resources, how is the information management related to the principal objectives and strategies, what information policy does the organization develop, and how is the management experienced by the employees. The purpose was to study the supply and management of information designed for internal use and the study was carried out with qualitative, semi-structured interviews to get a picture of the internal information management. The informants were mostly key persons with deep knowledge of internal information.

This thesis will explore how swedish Talang 2010 used their strategic communication in Kalmar and Stockholm and how the effect of this work was shown in the two cities. With a focus on how the sender was working with the external communication in the two cities, the heart of the research was studying Talang 2010?s communication strategy in these two contexts. The research was made with surveys during two audition days in Kalmar and two days in Stockholm. The competitors, the audience and the general public were answering different surveys but with the same base to study the effect.

In connection with that the last few decades have been characterized by major changes where also the rate of change has increased, changes in organizations has become a natural part of today's organizational activities. Every change involves a learning challenge and because of that every change is unique, its output is unclear. However, there is much research that highlights various factors critical to creating an effective change, among others internal communication.The purpose of this study is to investigate whether Engeström's theory can be applied to a completed organizational change and see whether an expansive learning has been promoted in connection with this. This is accomplished through interviews with six employees, all working in one of Sweden's leading property companies. Engeström's theory of expansive learning is applied in order to analyze whether learning is promoted in connection with the organizational change.The result of the study shows that Engeström's theory can be applied to a completed organizational change in order to analyze whether an expansive learning has been promoted in connection with this.

The main objective of this study is to divide a number of colorectal cancer cases into subgroups based on their molecular features using cluster analysis. The data used is supplied by a research group at Pathology, the Department of Medical Biosciences, Umeå University, and consists, after some preparation, of 455 observations which is a larger data set than many similar studies. The molecular variables that the clustering is based on are CIMP (CpG Island Methylator Phenotype), MSI (Micro Satellite Instability), BRAF- and KRAS-mutations. These are categorical variables and consequently the clustering method used is PAM (Partitioning Around Medoids) which is particularly useful with data on diverse variable level. The final analysis results in four subgroups that are represented by different combinations of attributes on the aforementioned variables.

The work of the board in owner-managed firms often differ compared to the work of the board in large listed companies. Since the owners are working in different roles, the board in owner-managed firms might discuss topics outside the typical boards agenda, such as questions relating to ownership structure and operational matters. This thesis examines what external board members can contribute with in owner-managed firms, and which the most frequent difficulties are for the owners when deciding to recruit external board members. Through qualitative interviews, three owner-managed firms have been studied, which together with two expert interviews and five seminars, creates the empirics. In the analysis, the empirics are compared to what the earlier theory states.

Background: The design industry is relatively immature in Sweden but large on the international market, where companies have used services from industrial design firms for a long time. Companies incresignly realise that design is an efficient mean to gain competitive advantages on the market. Several design companies fancy growth and to receive a wider market share to expand on the international market. One of them is Design Communicaton who has made a couple of acquisitions, to receive wider comptences and to cover different segments. That has lead to an increased brand portfolio with different subbrands, which can be complicated to handle efficiently in the internal and external communication.

Increasing volatility and less political intervention from the CAP in the market price of wheat is making it more difficult than in the past for Swedish farmers to determine the price at which they should sell their wheat. In the past, the Swedish farmer-owned company Lantmännen has traditionally set a guideline price for Swedish wheat every year to which farmers could adapt, but ceased doing so last year. Therefore this study sought to identify the parameters on which the price of wheat is dependent on by using a reduced form model. The perspective adopted was that of farmers. The model proved able to identify the main factors determining the annual price fluctuations in wheat, with all variables included having an impact on the wheat price, except export quantity in the previous year.

The main objective of this study is to divide a number of colorectal cancer cases into subgroups based on their molecular features using cluster analysis. The data used is supplied by a research group at Pathology, the Department of Medical Biosciences, Umeå University, and consists, after some preparation, of 455 observations which is a larger data set than many similar studies. The molecular variables that the clustering is based on are CIMP (CpG Island Methylator Phenotype), MSI (Micro Satellite Instability), BRAF- and KRAS-mutations. These are categorical variables and consequently the clustering method used is PAM (Partitioning Around Medoids) which is particularly useful with data on diverse variable level. The final analysis results in four subgroups that are represented by different combinations of attributes on the aforementioned variables.