The North-American sociologist Michael Lipsky has characterized social workers as street-level bureaucrats with a substantial discretion in the relationship between the welfare state and its citizens. Within Lipsky´s theoretical framework social workers appear as a powerful group that socializes the citizens to uphold certain expectations towards the welfare state and its (re)distributional programs. From this point of view, it is important to learn more about social workers and the attitudes they express towards the welfare state. The aim of this study is to analyze how the welfare-political attitudes of future social workers are affected by their social background (e.g. class background and ancestral homeland).

The connection between management control systems for controlling sustainability and a firm's motivation for engaging in sustainability is not completely understood (Arjaliès & Mundy, 2013). The aim of this thesis is to develop a more profound understanding for management control in achieving sustainable companies. To do this, we raise the question: How and to what extent do companies use management control systems to achieve sustainability compliance Simons's Levers of Control (1995) are applied to this question in order to get a consistent and thorough insight of management control systems. Hence, a case study of ABB:s work to achieve material compliance in accordance with EU-regulation was conducted. The findings of the case study reveal that ABB uses the regulations as explicit goals and implement them in sustainability procedures.

This final thesis was performed at Ericsson in Gävle between April and June of 2008. Ericsson is a world leading manufacturer of radio base stations (RBS), which handles mobile phone traffic with 2G and 3G technology. The main purpose of this study is to examine if two different types of products (RBS and site material) should have different terms and conditions, today the terms and conditions are the same for both types. During the course of our study we have tried to think of the terms reliability, validity and generalization. The intention in doing that was to keep the thesis at a high academic level. To name an example of this we have tried to keep our minds at an objective level during the interviews and informal conversations.

Organic animal husbandry has received a lot of criticism lately. The aim of this literature review was to examine if the rules and principles of organic pig farming give better or worse welfare in comparison to the conventional systems in Sweden. Health, physiology and behaviour have been used as indicators of welfare in this study. This is due to the importance of using more than one indicator in welfare assessments. Studies have shown that organic pigs have more remarks on joints when slaughtered, but these remarks can be reduced by vaccination against erysipelas.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) is widely regarded as a significant catalyst for economic development especially in emerging and developing economies. While previous research has found different effects from foreign direct investments in different countries this study aims to explore the varying effects of FDI in Serbia and Montenegro. The study focuses on how FDI influences key economic indicators, specifically GDP per capita and employment rates, in the context of their aspirations to join the European Union (EU). Employing a comparative approach, the thesis examines the differing trajectories of Montenegro and Serbia in utilizing FDI for economic advancement. The research reveals that while Serbia shows significant positive correlation between FDI and both GDP per capita and employment rates, Montenegro displays no significant relationship in these aspects.

In Economic Geography, there has been a strong interest of how different forms of proximity impacts businesses. In addition, there is also a strong interest in business agglomeration, as a result businesses cluster together through physical proximity, networks and knowledge. In the development sector, there is a strong interest on how to best support the creations and growth of small enterprises.This essay emphasises on the business cluster formations in Katutura, a suburb to Windhoek the capital city of Namibia. It oversees the impacts of different types of cluster formations and their effects on the businesses. In addition, this essay will identify the main clusters in Katutura and state what makes them unique from each other and what is a common cluster feature.

Ett styrverktyg som används flitigt i dagens företag är målstyrning. Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka processens utformning när övergripande mål bryts ner till försäljningsmål och dess påverkan på medarbetarnas motivation. Med utgångspunkt i Latham och Lockes målsättningsteori påvisas hur målens utformning inverkar på medarbetarnas motivation. Angreppssättet för studien var kvalitativa intervjuer. I uppsatsens slutsatser konstateras att målen utformas centralt i det företag som studien utförts på.

Credits are considered as a natural financing form for all types of companies. The financial market in Sweden is dominated by four banks and the credit appraisals that are done by these banks are partly based on credit reports from external companies. This thesis? purpose is to increase the knowledge of which the consequences of payment remarks can imply for companies in relation to the banks. A qualitative study has been done to relay to the purpose, through the means of interviews with four companies, four banks, one rating institute and a collecting agency.

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to study the causal relationship between bank sector development and economic growth in four Nordic countries (Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway).Method: Our thesis is based on a quantitative method. The study consists of a compilation and analysis of key financial indicators that represent economic growth and bank sector development. A Granger causality test has been conducted on the time series in order to measure the causal link between economic growth and bank sector development.Theoretical framework: The study is based on the theory of endogenous growth and the causal relationship between bank sector development and economic growth also known as the demand following and supply leading hypothesis. Results: The results of the four countries are ambiguous. Except for Denmark, that follows the supply leading hypothesis, the remaining countries do not show a unanimous result..

Enligt Socialstyrelsens föreskrifter om ledningssystem för kvalitet och patientsäkerhet i hälso- och sjukvården, SOSFS 2005:12, krävs det av vårdgivaren att denne arbetar efter mål. Att formulera mål inom hälso- och sjukvården kräver eftertanke. Målen måste vara mätbara och inkludera flera olika delar av verksamheten. Varje förbättringsprojekt är unikt och bör relateras till de resurser som avsatts. Ett stort problem vid kontinuerlig uppföljning är att välja ut parametrar som ger tillräcklig information och är lätta att skapa.

AbstractThis study explores how well teachers think they succeed in their mission to include children with special needs into their ordinary groups of children. Interviews were carried out with five teachers in practice of the public school (year 2,3,5 and 6). The teachers were asked what support they have got from the schools manager, initially and ongoing, (information, necessary education, supportive expertise personnel, assistant teacher to the child and schoolmaterial.) The teachers were also asked how inclusion is arranged by three indicators of participation: physically, socially (interaction) and didactically -in educational situations of reading and writing. One finding of the study was that inclusion is difficult to arrange if  parents of included children demand secrecy of the diagnosis their child has. Three cases reveal severe problems of acceptance for the included child by the peers.

Background: Businesses are traditionally valued with the so called Discounted Cash Flow-model. When valuing newly-started businesses, surrounded by high uncertainty, and whose capital mostly consists of unrealized business opportunities, the Discounted Cash Flow-model needs to be complemented if the total value of the business is to be captured. A valuation with the help of real options is capable of valuing these unrealized opportunities, which often exist in newly-started businesses. The unrealized opportunities are to be found in the business plan of the business, why this needs to be valued to capture the total value of a newly-started business. Purpose: To demonstrate what the use of real options can result in when valuing businesses.

The purpose of this study was to examine the differences between non-audited and audited sustainability reports and in that way indicate the significance of auditing to the contents of a sustainability report. The study was delimited to include three companies that create sustainability reports according to GRI guidelines, and also have changed from non-audited to audited reports.The study is an exploratory study where we started from companies that follow GRI's standard and who have changed from being non-assured to assured and certified. In order to examine any differences we have started out from corporate sustainability reports and with the basis of these latter gather those changes which may have occurred during the changeover. We therefore chose to conduct a literature review on each company's non-audited sustainability reports and compare them with each company's audited and certified sustainability reports. Furthermore our study has been made on the basis of an assessment model based on the concepts of materiality, completeness and comparability.The study showed that the audited sustainability reports in all companies were more focused and more detailed about the aspects GRI established for the performance indicators.

There has been an increasing interest for ranking of Swedish health care and a lot of emphasis has been placed on the creation of indicators in order to rank hospital units. However, essays on to what extent the choice of statistical method affects the final result of the ranking of health care units have not been given the same attention. For this particular reason, the main objective of this essay has been to investigate whether the choice of statistical model has a significant impact or not on the final result, by using five different, more or less common, statistical approaches: bar charts (with and without confidence intervals), control charts, logistic regression, multi-level analysis using shrunken residuals. The analyzed material in the essay comprises 24119 patients that all have been prescribed some form of the lipid-reducing medicine statin. According to directives given by Region Skåne, doctors are encouraged to prescribe a particular type of statin medicine, namely Simvastatin, which has been proved to be equally effective, but significantly cheaper than other statin medicines.

Swedish agricultural businesses are facing challenges in order to achieve long-term profitability. The opportunity to improve profitability and efficiency on farm level may be enhanced by management. One way to work with leadership is to use Lean. It is a management system that aims to improve competitiveness. Currently, there is a project where Lean is implemented into 100 agricultural firms.