The aim of this small thesis is to investigate if the probability of business failure is higher at the time of divestment than at the time of acquisition for portfolio companies that have been subject to private equity ownership. The background for this thesis is the widespread critique aimed at private equity firms, claiming that they increase the risk in their portfolio companies. We have performed a study of 53 buyout transactions, involving Swedish manufacturing companies, covering a time span of 13 years, from 1995 to 2007. We find evidence of an increased risk of business failure for the portfolio companies with a short forecasting horizon (within one year). The absolute increase in the sample is however small.

This essay discusses children?s rights and control and system of rules in HVB-homes that provide treatment for adolescences with drug abuse prob­lems or criminal behavior. The results of this study are based on interviews with four persons working in managerial positions on different HVB-homes and shows the difficulties of having a children?s rights perspective in a con­text where a higher level of control is necessary to protect the best interest of the child. The study suggests that the question of balance between children?s right and the need for controlling system of rules needs to be fur­ther dis­cussed to improve, and as far as possible guarantee that these adoles­cence receive best possible care and do not suffer unfair restrictions on liber­ties..

The elderly care is an area of great importance to women. Women are more often in need of elderly care; they work with the service and provide a majority of the informal service. Research shows that managers? work-related prerequisites are significantly different between the male dominated technical administration and the female dominated care and educational administration. Studies also show that what the highest managerial organisation gives priority to, often permeate the whole organisation.

AbstractOur purpose for making this study is to study the implementation, the use of and the effects of Lean within our case objects.  We chose to make this thesis by case studies. The three themes mentioned above is also the main research questions that we aim to find an answer to by this study. We have chosen to do a cross section analysis where we conducted structured interviews to find answers to these questions. The theoretical reference frame consists partly of traditional theoreticians within Lean but also more recent research within the subject as well as theory specifically for Lean within the Health Care sector.The result of this study shows in all our case studies that the Management has been supporting the implementation, but that the implementation process proceeds faster if also the professionals are involved in the process.  To succeed with the implementation there is a great need for good reasons and strives that can benefit the professionals. By the use of Lean our case studies have evaluated its processes, with the main intentions being to reduce waste activities and to create flows with ?pull systems?.

This thesis focuses on RM and customer relationships and tries to answer two research questions: how firms can retain customers and how to generate profitable customer relationships by using relationship marketing. We conducted case studies on JOB media, a company in Luleå, and Polardörren, a company in Öjebyn, Piteå. Our research has revealed that in many ways our case study companies conform in major ways to the theory in this particular area. However there are differences between how these two firms go about in regard to customer retention and establishing profitable customer relationship. We have discovered that JOB media, which is a service company is more inclined to maintaining close and long-term relationships with its customers.

With good knowledge about the disease and the treatment, the fear and worry of children and parents can be reduced. Children may be helped by painting to express their experiences. In order to have a good care, the care-personnel need to see and understand what the children need. It is important to live an as regular life as possible during the disease and its treatment. The aim of this study was to elucidate how children experience chemotherapy in conection with their cancer disease.

Every day in medical care the nurse and the patient meet, they are not just represented as the care giver and the care taker, but also as two unique individuals. The meeting is a very important part in caring and few studies have been made on this topic from the patient.s perspective. The purpose of this study was to describe the patient.s perspective on the meeting with the nurse. The study is a literature review, where articles have been reviewed, encoded, and then categorized. The result builds on our four main categories, confirmed as a unique indidual, the meaning of the information according to the patient, the humanistic side of the nurse, and the importance of humor in the meeting.

This thesis has examined a co-operation called SSP, between the social authorities, the school and the police, located in Malmö. The intention with SSP is to prevent crime and drug use among juveniles but also to evolve a structure for a long-term co-operation between the authorities.The purpose of the thesis was to understand and analyse what the co- operation represented and stood for. The study also examined how the co- operation was effected by differences in the organisation of the three parts.The main questions were the following; what does SSP contain, is SSP preventive and for whom, what motivates the co-operation and how is the cooperation effected by the view the authorities have on the target group?The method used for answering the questions was based on qualitative interviews with the three authorities involved. We have also searched for literature on the subjects involved.The main content of the thesis has showed that the limits of SSP are diffuse, and the focus of the co- operation lies at a structural level.

Advanced homecare, district nurses experiences, palliative care, quality of life,Advanced homecare is an arranged specialized medical service doing nursing round-the-clock. The care is preformed in cooperation with a multi-professional team formed of different professions. Advanced home care is mostly palliative care. The purpose is to give the patient better quality of life and anticipate, survey and palliate symptoms. The aim of this study was to describe the experiences of district nurses using advanced homecare when nursing patients with palliative care at home.

Construction of an autonomous wind station was a project with the goal of creating a product that could collect wind data from a sensor and then transfer this data to a server wirelessly over the GSM network. The device would be powered by batteries and solar cells and function fully without requiring external power supply. This required that a small computer was constructed and programmed to store and send data at predetermined cycle times and programming of a server that received the sent data. The project also required optimization of power consumption and dimensioning of solar cells and batteries based on this. The construction of this station demanded research both for the selection of hardware and programming software. The computer was based on a microcontroller and a GSM module that sent the data over the 2G network.

Aim: Compare occurrences of first-time-events reported by mothers and fathers with children at high tech NICU according to kangaroo-mother-care method in two university hospitals. Method: Descriptive, quantitative design. Fourty-five couples of parents, with premature children born and cared for at university hospitals in Uppsala or Örebro, answered questionnaires about first-time-events: interaction-events, measures-of-care-events and sleeping-place-events. Results: All differences regarding the children?s age at first-time-events showed Uppsala-children to be younger than Örebro-children. Interaction-events were reported first in children?s lives, measures-of-care-events and sleeping-place-events later.

Background: During the 1980s, the fear of HIV spread over the world. Health professionals'attitudes to patients with HIV, was negatively impacted because of their fear to be infected.Patients with HIV have therefore,during disease history's first two decades, experienced stigma and discrimination in the response from health professionals. Because of the increasing knowledge of HIV it is of interest to study patients' contemporary experiences of the encounter with health professionals. Aim:To explore how patients with HIV experiencing the meeting with health professionals. Method:Literature study with seven qualitative and three quantitative articles.

Hip-hop music has long been an expressive medium used by individuals from marginalized areas in Sweden to address social issues and shape their identities. Through interviews with Swedish hip-hop artists and analysis of lyrics, this bachelor thesis explores the self-expression of the artists and how they express their views of society. It focuses on how social problems are expressed and understood, as well as on how the artists view the depiction of contemporary Swedish hip-hop music in media. Additionally, the study investigates how hip-hop artists themselves perceive the significance of their music lyrics. Furthermore, I explore the impact of music on the identity of hip-hop artists from marginalized areas, as perceived by the artists themselves. To gain a comprehensive understanding, the ethnographic study employs semi-structured interviews and participant observation with four non-ethnically Swedish hiphop artists who live or have grown up in disadvantaged areas in Sweden.

In the thesis we discuss South African teachers? conceptions of democracy in general and school democracy in particular. The essay is based on interviews with twelve teachers, working in South African high schools. We have asked questions concerning different views of democracy, such as what the term means to the teachers and how they define a democratic school. We take our stand in different theoretical approaches such as school being the ultimate link between a state and its people to make the citizens think and act democratically.

The aim of this study was to, using previously collected data from self-declared antisocial behaviour questionnaires, examine if the crime frequency has been different between adolescents that have either been referred to two different forms of open care in social service, child and youth psychiatric inpatient care or have been sent to Homes for Specialised Supervision. The criminality frequency and the most common crimes committed were compared between the study groups and further between genders in each particular study group. Statistical significance testing was used and the results of the survey revealed that juvenile delinquents that had committed severe criminal acts were represented in all four groups. The study group with adolescents in national care was the most different from other groups. These youths seemed to have had a lower crime frequency than the other groups with the exception assault and robbery.