Title: Global Reporting Initiative - A comparative study on compliance with the initiative's guidelines between Ericsson and Vattenfall.Authors: Peter Leidhammar, Mattias ThorénSupervisor: Bo EnquistExaminer: Margareta BjurkloSeminar Date: 2009-01-14Background and problem formulation: The interest and the requirements that stakeholders have for companies sustainability issues are becoming increasingly important. Thus more companies are increasing their work on their sustainability reports. As there are no laws governing how these are to be designed, standards have been created by various organizations that companies voluntarily can follow. Now, after the Swedish government gave them the directive to follow the GRI's guidelines the Swedish public companies have started to follow this trend. The question then stand how much the private companies' sustainability reports differ from state companies and whether this can be traced to the differences in the companies' ownership and their stakeholders picture.Objective: The purpose of the paper is:· analyze how the GRI's guidelines are followed by the two organizations· highlight differences between them from a theoretical perspectiveLimitations: This paper is limited to two companies, one company owned by the government and one privately-owned company.

Background and problemThe biggest difference between companies and non-profit organizations are their purposes. Companies? purpose is to generate profit to the shareholders. Non-profit organizations do not have any shareholders and their purpose is to offer service to receivers of benefits.There are a lot of non-profit organizations today and the competition for the donations is rough. Non-profit organizations can influence the publics? decision of who to support by creating a financial reporting that appeal to the public.PurposeThe purpose of this essay is to examine how non-profit goals are measured in non-profit organizations and if there are a practice on the subject.MethodologyWe choose a qualitative approach as we wanted to understand the reality by explaining it with words.

The main subject with this master thesis is to take a closer look on how some of the university libraries of Gothenburg have evaluated their electronic services (such as search-systems, Internet-based services, CD-ROM etc.). The information technology has made its way into the library field during the past century and needs to be evaluated and quality measured to ensure the best possible service to the users. Since evaluation of electronic services is a new area in the evaluation field, some problems has arisen in terms of choosing evaluation strategies and finding the appropriate performance indicators for the evaluation process. The main questions asked in the thesis are; - Which are the most common theoretical strategies for evaluation? - How do some of the university libraries of Gothenburg perform evaluation in practice? - How does the various strategies for evaluation apply to the context of this thesis? The results show that specific strategies for evaluation aren't used in the reports discussed in this thesis.

With new energy directives in place, the Swedish Social Service (SSS) stands beforethe challenge how to reduce the energy demand in its locales. It is a complex matter,as the locales are rented from various property owners and it becomes a question ofhow to reduce the operational electricity and influence the property owners to workmore with energy efficiency. This thesis takes a balanced research approach in threeparts. Firstly a qualitative part in form of interviews with personnel at the SSS and itsproperty owners, secondly a quantitative part of descriptive nature in form of energystatistics and thirdly a literature review of Energy Management (EM) Supply ChainManagement(SCM), Green Supply Chain Management(GSCM) and EnviromentalPerformance Indicators (EPI). This in order to be able to give normativerecommendations of how the SSS should act to reduce its energy consumption in itslocales and provide new insights on how EM, SCM, GSCM and EPI can be applied ineffect.

The purpose of this essay is on the one hand to study Sub-Saharan Africa from a comparative perspective to analyze different explanations to democratization and on the other hand to compare the democratization of the most interesting cases found. To fulfil the purpose, the essay is divided into a quantitative and a qualitative part. The quantitative part starts from four different theories of democratization and thus has a deductive theory testing approach. We intend to use four theories: the modernization theory, the theory of stable institutions as a prerequisite for democratization, political culture and ethnic diversity as an obstacle for democratization, to test how they correspond with the democratic situation in Africa, and at the same time find deviant cases. The second part of the study takes its start from an inductive perspective and examines institutions and citizens of the deviant cases.

Assessing the emotional state in animals is important in order to establish the quality of their welfare, therefore it is important to investigate under what circumstances animals experience these emotions and to find indicators of their existence. The aim of this thesis was to detect possible behavioural indicators for positive emotions in dogs. These behavioural indicators could be helpful to increase both dogs? and humans? overall well-being in today?s society since they could help e.g. dog owners and caretakers to interpret behaviours displayed by dogs and their intentions so they can respond accordingly.The subjects used were 9 research beagles and each dog participated in three different treatments, assumed to be experienced as positive situations, where communicative interaction was initiated with the dog by engaging in 1) physical contact (P), 2) verbal contact (V) or 3) both physical and verbal contact simultaneously (PV).

This thesis has been performed as a part of the Bachelor degree in Industrial Engineering and Management at the School of Engineering in Jönköping. The thesis is written on behalf of Pallco AB, which is an engineering company that performs subcontracting, surface treatment, and assembly of components, mainly in steel and aluminium. The thesis focuses on identifying and analyzing the customer order fulfillment process of three customers at Pallco AB.The main objective of the thesis is to distinguish time differences in the company?s administrative work for each of the three customers. Furthermore, Lean thinking is following as a thread through the whole thesis.

Mattias MogardGustav von HeijneSammanfattningFör framgångsrika företag är det essentiellt att ha kontroll över sina resurser. Studien tar upp ett ämne som handlar om att skapa en överblick och en medvetenhet om resurseffektivitet inom ett företags produktion.Performance measurement är ett tillvägagångssätt för att kvantifiera aktiviteterna inom en produktion. Data struktureras genom nyckeltal, Key performance indicators (KPI:er), till övergriplig och användbar information. ISO 22400 är en uppsättning standardiserade nyckeltal med ändamålet att appliceras på automatiserad produktion. Studiens syfte är hitta vilka av nyckeltalen från ISO 22400 som är lämpliga att använda vid mätningen av en helt automatiserad produktionskedja som tillverkar motorblock.

The purpose of this study is to illustrate if structural factors to welfare indicators and the internal organisation of handle social assistance in combination with dominating ways of living with their values and norms can be used to explain why the costs of social assistance are low in Säffle township. The character of this study is exploratory, though important aspects in this case was unknown. The empiricism come from descriptive secondary statistics and from qualitative interwievs with three inhabitants in Säffle, whom are experts which means they know the township of Säffle and it´s inhabitants well. Säffle has been studied from four perspectives, of which the first two have a top- or macroperspective. In the study appears two divergent pictures.

The use and attention given to the certification system ?Miljöbyggnad? has increasedin recent years. The system is completely Swedish and was initiated in 2005 by theBygga-Bo-Dialogen. Miljöbyggnad aims to create a healthy indoor environment, reduceenergy consumption and discourage the use of hazardous chemical substances. Thegrades that can be obtained are Classified, Brons, Silver and finally Gold.The work has been to examine three different models and conclude how the designof the models affect the grades in the certification system Miljöbyggnad.

The aim of this master?s thesis is to examine how managers in some public libraries are using performance measurements and to what extent decision making is based on the results. The main questions posed are:??What performance measurements and indicators are used in the libraries examined???What is the attitude towards performance measurements among library managers???How and to what extent are performance measurements and indicators used in the process of decision making???What improvement would library managers wish regarding the development of performance measurements in public libraries?The theory is based on a model of evaluation of the public sector in addition to general steps of evaluation of quality and performance measurement results. The investigation is based on qualitative interviews with seven managers of public libraries in Sweden.

The governance and control of healthcare organizations has traditionally been run byprofessions inside the organization (Fölster et al., 2003). During the last decades Swedishhealthcare has undergone an institutional transformation where the governance has changedfrom professional governance to a more market like one (Sahlin-Andersson, 2006). Governingof healthcare can however be problematic as professional work is characterized by a highlevel of autonomy and tacit knowledge (cf. Tsoukas, 1997, Freidson, 2001). An expression ofthe new kind of governance is the annually published report ?Öppna jämförelser av hälso- ochsjukvårdens kvalitet och effektivitet?.

I takt med att inköp har fått en allt mer betydande roll inom företag krävs det också att strategier för inköp utformas på ett sätt som möjliggör att de kan efterlevas och följas upp, framförallt när det rör sig om koncernövergripande strategier som kräver samordning. I dagsläget är det inköpsrådet på Saab som styr över och samordnar projekt och initiativ som sker inom inköp. Inköpsrådet ansvarar även för framtagandet av inköpsstrategier och arbetet utifrån dessa för hela koncernen. En första klassificering av Saabs leverantörer utefter Kraljics matris genomfördes år 2010 och i samband med detta har ett ökat intresse påvisats för att på ett differentierat sätt mäta och följa upp leverantörer. Syftet med studien är därmed att se vilka Key Performance Indicators (KPI:er) som är tillämpliga i en indelning av leverantörer enligt Kraljics matris, det vill säga om olika KPI:er är fördelaktiga för att genomföra mätning och uppföljning av olika typer av leverantörer enligt Kraljics matris.En betydande slutsats med indelning av KPI:er enligt Kraljics matris är att studien ska påvisa vilka mätetal som är mest väsentliga att ha vid uppföljning av leverantörer kopplade till respektive kvadrant i Kraljics matris.

Att köra eller inte köra is a qualitative study aiming to show how environmentally conscious people who utilizes cars deal with their dissonant behavior, but at the sametime maintain an identity as environmentally conscious. The study is based on the fact that a third of those who drive cars in the municipality of Växjö would like to decrease their use of cars while at the same time having the infrastructural conditions to utilize other means of transportation. The study investigates inner obstacles in the form of habits and lifestyle, but also the different strategies the motorists use to reduce their cognitive dissonance and maintain a green identity. The indicators show that the reason the majority of the motorists continue to utilize cars is part due to inner obstacles (it's adeeply rooted habit, but also a big part of their lifestyles), part due to that the individuals have defenses for their use of their cars, defenses designed to have a dissonance reducing effect. The indicators also show that the motorists value their family higher than the environment, and in this way they can legitimize many of their car uses.

The scope of this master thesis is the scientific publishing at Uppsala University's Faculty of Arts. The aim of the thesis is to investigate publication patterns and publishing strategies. To investigate how the publication patterns of the faculty is structured and what priorities and considerations the researchers have regarding scientific publishing. Furthermore, the aim is to compare these publishing strategies and publication patterns to incentives and selection principles of the bibliometric indicators in the performance based research funding systems on the national and local scale.The thesis is based on the theories of disciplinary differences developed by Richard Whitley and Tony Becher and Paul R. Trowler. These theories suggest a framework based on organizational and sociological perspectives, that offers ways to explain differences in publication patterns between different scientific fields.The study is based on two empirical studies of the faculty.