The goal of this paper is to examine whether the introduction of a qualifying day in the use of sick insurance in the Swedish welfare system resulted in an increase in the use of parental benefits as substitute to avoid the qualifying day. We believe that this could be the case because of the higher gain from the welfare system. We use OLS to perform a linear regression from a data set from the data base LINDA during 1991-1996. The results in this paper are that there is a significant increase in the parental benefit after the reform although there is a negative trend for parental benefit during the examined period..

It might seem obvious that public opinions should be included in the planning process. However, it is not clear to what extent. Statutory forms of public participation attract little interest since many people feel that it is hard to make a difference. The purpose of this study was to engage those that normally do not get to speak their mind in the planning process. In this study, two methods for conducting ?on-street surveys? were investigated.

The purpose with this essay is to study how a micro enterprise builds a brand. This because the current situation makes it difficult to stand out from the vast amount of marketing messages available in the market without having an extensive marketing campaign. Small companies do not have the opportunity to put a lot of recourses as money into marketing as the large companies do. Neither do they afford to repair a brand failure.Brand building is a process that constantly is in progress in a company, large or small. To make this process concrete we have chosen to study the four factors; brand awareness, perceived quality, brand associations and brand loyalty.

The actual project presents the development of a testing rig for a steam engine. A short overviewabout the development of steam engines is presented, until arriving to the development of thepresent engine, which will require to be tested in different ways.The testing rig studied on this project (based on a Lanchester engine) will be used to testdifferent materials and layouts for the group Piston-Cylinder.The engine is a high performance steam power engine, which is going to have a highpower/dimensions ratio, what will lead to require high performance components and materials.An introduction to the testing rig is presented, and the entire design project is done in order toreplace the disappeared documentation of the current testing rig, built on the 1970?s. Also somemodifications done in the original testing rig are presented, as well as some detected problemsand their possible solutions..

At Sandvik Materials Technology, Argon gas is used as furnace atmosphere when heattreating hot rolled wire. Upon heating chromium steel wire, a rich oxidelayer forms on the wire surface. The abstract of this masters thesis is to enhance the understanding of the constitution of the oxidelayers and the influence of the furnace atmosphere. This will be achieved by performing a number of annealing experiments on laboratory level. Also, the aim is to understand the chemical reactions and physical mecanisms controlling the pickling process.

Syftet med den här uppsatsen är att jag vill dokumentera min kreativa process från första gången jag börja skriva nytt material, till att för första gången framföra det för en publik för att sedan utveckla till en hel (examens) konsert. Huvudfråga: hur fungerar min kreativa process och hur förhåller jag mig till den? Jag har använt mig av att skriva processdagbok under ett och ett halvt år. Jag har kommit fram till att jag i min kreativitet behöver vara strukturerad och ha ett visst mått av disciplin och rutiner och försöka hålla en distans mellan mig och mitt skapande och samtidigt våga vara öppen och driva processen framåt även om jag inte riktigt vet vad slutmålet blir.Min uppfattning om ordet kreativitet har också under arbetet med denna uppsats förändrats. Från att vara något abstrakt och mystiskt med en bild av att de som kallades kreativa var speciella människor, genier, som mer eller mindre hade en speciell gåva till en uppfattning om att kreativitet är en egenskap vi alla har som med rätt förutsättningar och sammanhang kan övas och utvecklas..

Title: ?? Then came the realization that I was just like them. That I have a gambling addiction?? This is a qualitative study of four former gamblers and their experience of getting out of the gambling addiction. The study is about how individuals have overcome a gambling addiction.

Colours have been proven to have both a great physical and psychological impact on human beings. This essay investigates the rebranding of 37 Health Care Centers, located in Norrbotten, Sweden, and how 10 interviewees have experienced the new choice of colour on the logotypes of these Health Care Centers.The theoretical framework used in this research process, consists of theories related to rebranding, the communication process, encoding/decoding and Goethe?s Theory of Colours.To gather information about how the 10 inhabitants have experienced the new choice of colour, a semistructured form of interview was used. In addition to these interviews, three people employed by Norrbotten County Council (NLL) were interviewed, to get to know more about the rebranding process and the message behind the chosen colours of the logotype.Results show that the inhabitants had an overall positive reaction to the new colour choices, but that younger target groups lacked information about the new logotype and the rebranding.Due to these results, recommendations were made that NLL should expand the quantity of media channels to reach these younger target groups, and thereby be able to attract more patients to their Health Care Centers. NLL would also profit from investigating the inhabitants experiences related to the new colour choices themselves, but in a larger scale, to achieve greater knowledge of how to proceed with colour choices in the future..

During the milling of Sandvik Coromant?s world leading Drill with replaceable inserts,the CoroDrill880©, burrs appear around the milled surfaces. The burrs are removedusing different methods, one of which is deburring with special brushing machines thatare integrated into milling cells. The machines of the type Sinjet, use a Siemensguidance system. The deburring results are not satisfying and manual deburring isrequired afterwards.

Background: In our case study we have been studying a company that during the last seven years have tried to implement the control system Balanced Scorecard. They have during this period made three attempts. According to Kaplan and Norton, the creators of Balanced Scorecard, it should take about 16 weeks to implement a Balanced Scorecard. Purpose: Our purpose is to investigate which factors that influence the possibility to implement Balanced Scorecard. Method: We have conducted a case study where we have studied implementation at three levels in a company.

The first part of the thesis consists of a brief introduction to the general principles of target detection and the sensor-systems used. In the following part there is a theoretical description of the algorithms this thesis focuses on. The detection algorithms described in this paper are called Cell Average, Ordered Statistics, 2parameter and Gammadetector. Two different discriminators called Extended Fractal Features and Quadratic Gamma Discriminator are also described. The algorithms are tested on three different types of data, simulated SAR-pictures, authentic SAR-targets and IR-pictures.

The purpose of the present investigation was to identify how knowledge about goal-setting is developed and applied in practice of male players in the Swedish national floorball team, by using a qualitative methodology. Participants were 6 players playing for the Swedish national team. They were asked to respond to the interview questions in relation to their perception of setting goals for a successful outcome in sports, how their goal- setting process has developed and how they deal with goal setbacks and goal attainment. Results revealed that Swedish national players in floorball employed goal setting often for both individual and team goals in practice and competition. In addition, many interesting findings regarding the process of goal setting emerged in the result.

I chose to study how the Swedish Air force carries out their work with setting goals for their work to improve flight safety and compare this with how the Swedish nuclear power plant Forsmark performs their work with improving nuclear safety. The study showed that both organisations have a lot to improve on in their ways of how to work. Especially when it comes to engaging the employees in the process, both in letting the employees be a part of coming up with areas to work on and in letting the employees evaluate which progress that has been made. It also showed that both organisations need to improve their methods for evaluating the work that has been done. This is especially important for the Air Force which evaluates on many levels and locations and did not have a set standard for how to conduct the evaluation.

The purpose of this essay is to compare a theoretical strategic process model with the strategic work in a Swedish bank. The reason of the comparison was to identify which key success factors that is essential in strategic implementation processes. To make this study feasible three qualitative interviews were executed and it also presents data from a quantitative survey performed by the bank. The theory of the study examines eight different parts that needs to be looked at attentively when new strategies are formulated. The results points out that the work at large correspond, nevertheless the theoretical framework points out the importance of the business mission to impregnate the whole strategic process.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the regulatory power, efficiency and impact of export control on Swedish arms export from the 1980s onwards, linked to the delegation of authority of permit license to the Inspectorate of Strategic Products in 1997. An increase in the administrative sector, based on a collective decision making process and established criteria and guidelines, aimed to strengthen the control of arms export to non-democratic and problematic states. In short, the aim of the study is to investigate and analyze whether there was a decrease in the arms export to problematic states or not. On one hand, it is reasonable to assume that the introduction of the new regulation entailed a more strict arms export policy. However, previous research has showed that regulations are sometimes not effective since incentives to breach these may be present.The study begins by examining the Swedish case and situation in terms of arms manufacturing and export, as well as the delegation of authority and legislation applied to the field over time.