This thesis has aimed to study steering process and institutionalization in the context of educational policy work. This has been conducted by using empirical material from the political decision-making process that preceded the implementation of a new national program on how principals should be educated and certified. By using an aggregated theoretical point of view containing new institutionalism and traditional Swedish curriculum theory, the process was analyzed from different perspectives. The results depict a process that contained several actors who tried to shape the principal education program differently. From the theoretical perspectives, the decision-making process could be understood as an act of both self-interest as well as trust in their own beliefs and cultural values.

The credit rating industry is a complex and fascinating industry. Its history stretches back more than 150 years and has gradually increased in importance. During its history the dynamics of the industry have changed. The extended-principal-agent model was developed by synthesizing different principal-agent-relationships into one model. This model provides a holistic understanding of the credit rating industry and illustrates the interdependence between the different relationships.

This paper examines how debt cancellation, given under the HIPC-initiative, has affected corruption over the period 2000-2006. The examination is foremost interesting due to earlier research showing that high corruption leads to unequal distribution of economic resources. This, combined with the objective of the HIPC initiative to reduce poverty, indicates that combating corruption must be successful in order to fulfill the goals of the initiative. A linear regression shows that countries that have benefited from the HIPC-initiative indeed have a lower corruption than other countries. A panel-data analysis shows on the other hand that no effect on corruption due to debt cancellation or reforms undertaken in the program can be confirmed..

This is a study on individual development plans (IDPs) in pre-school and their relationship with the teaching performed. Skolverket does not mention the IDPs in their steering documents for pre-school, and have in a separate memo discouraged from the use. Yet reports show that many of the pre-schools in Sweden are using IDPs. Teaching in pre-school is expected to be a mixture of care and learning without clear boundaries to the scientific topics pre-school aims to introduce children to. The purpose of this study is to investigate if the use of IDPs affect the teaching in pre-school.

The goal of this thesis work is to enable an existing UHF radar to operate in the VHF band instead. In order to achieve this, new coherent local oscillators are required. Different options are suggested and one of them is implemented and analyzed..

The purpose of this study has been to make an inventory of combustible waste in the region around Norrköping and to investigate the composition of domestic waste, industrial waste and two different types of sludge. The work was performed at the request of Norrköping Miljö & Energi, due to the planning of an incineration plant. The inventory of the waste was performed through inspection of environmental impact reports, from waste disposal plants in a number of local government areas in the region. The quantities were also compared to another inventory, carried out in a different way. The characterisation of the wastes was compared to the fuel specification determined by Norrköping Miljö & Energi.

This study has investigated how urban vegetation can be used in a multifunctional way to support ecosystem services in urban environments. Nacka municipality is in the start-up phase of building what is to become Nacka city. This provides a unique possibility to study and analyse what role the vegetation play in making the city a healthy living environment and how it needs to be adapted in order to be resilient against changing climate conditions and how the effects of those changes can be regulated. The study further investigates how airborne pollution, caused by urbanization processes, can be regulated or reduced by vegetation or species selection. Methods used in this study were a combination of qualitative interviews and literature studies, seeking to answer the questions: Which specific ecosystem functions are needed in the urban environment and which aspects will influence the ecosystems ability to deliver the functions in demand? And which plant species have the right mechanisms needed to deliver those functions? These questions have been studied and analysed in a local based context where the local conditions ands site specific needs of Nacka define criteria for plant selection.

The purpose of this study was to examine the goals, possibilities and rationales that could be found in the discussions concerning the digging of ditches by governmental subsidiaries in order to drain the peat bogs of late nineteenth century Sweden. A further aim was to look at the effect on the landscape on a local level i.e. Släthults moss in Bäckaby parish, Småland in the south eastern part of Sweden. In order to be able to explain the connections between politics and landscape changes in a local population and its deciding bodies, influenced by ideas, science and production, a quadruple helix model developed from a triple helix model by Björn-Ola Linér was used. As a model of environmental history, three step thought was used, borrowed from Donald Worster.

This essay studies the relationship between politicians and municipal chief officers from the point of view of the bureaucracy and its role in democracy and the substance of the chief position. I conducted interviews and observations with politicians and senior officials from the local public administration in Bromölla. The roles of the chief officer and politicians have certain common characteristics which makes it difficult to separate them. Senior officials working full time in contrast to part time politicians give them an advantage in the political process. Budget cut backs both enhance the role of politicians and chief officers in the administrative organisation.

The aim of the study was to gain a deeper understanding of the administrative officials work with assessments in home studies of adoption. To answer the purpose, we chose to focus on the guidelines for administrative official?s assessments in home studies of adoption and what assessment areas that is fundamental to the administrative official?s assessments. The study is structured on the basis of a qualitative approach where we have used semi-structured interviews. We interviewed seven administrative officials in the social services which conducted home studies of adoption.

Current technology offers many possibilities for remotecommunication. Nevertheless, people with cognitive and communicativedisabilities have limited access to common communication technology like textmessaging via a mobile phone. This study is part of the project Text messagingwith picture symbols - a possibility for AAC users and people with cognitiveimpairments. Semi structured interviews were used to investigate three menand four women?s experiences of using Windows mobiles with adaptedfunctions for text messaging.

The aim of this study has been to examine if an implementation of a One Stop Shop in the public sector and its IT-support can serve as a motor for business development. By examine the relation between the One Stop Shop and the public administrations we have tried to answer this question. The municipality that we have examined underwent a big change, seven years ago, when they implemented a One Stop Shop including a IT-support called Flexite. But despite these seven years and the fact that Flexite has changed approach from a Case Management System to a Support System for Business Development the municipality have not adapted to this change. .

In the present thesis, we have studied the management control system in Enskede-Årsta-Vantör, one of Stockholm?s municipal districts, with focus on theories about New Public Management (NPM). When NPM was introduced, a number of complications arose. Some of these, along with the district?s solutions of the complications, are described and analyzed using e.g.

The rising demand for electricity and heat raises a big challange for the society and engineers. Many products have been introduced to the market to supply more energy to the energy systems. Absolicon AB is a Swedish company that develops and markets a combined heat and power generating product. The product, Absolicon X10, uses a parabolic trough to concentrate the radiation of the sun onto a receiver. The receiveris equipped with mono crystalline solar cells and is cooled by a circulating liquid media.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the democratization process in Kurdistan on the basis of consolidation democracy with focus on arenas defined by Linz and Stepan (1997), namely economic, political, legal, civil society and arenas of state bureaucracy. Furthermore, I intend to explain Kurdistan?s road toward democratization in Kurdistan from 1991 until today, with a focus on the years 2003-2012. The main results are that Kurdistan has developed conditions that support a future consolidation of democracy. However, there are weaknesses in the economic situation, rule of law and the arena of bureaucracy.