The aim of the study was to examine collaboration and professional perspectives on the best interest of the child in regards to working with unaccompanied asylum seeking children. Firstly, our result show that counselling is available for the unaccompanied children from case workers, staff, school counsellors and emergency psychiatric care. All of the participants in this study describe the need for long-term counselling for unaccompanied children, however, providing the long-term counselling is not the primary purpose of the organisations in question. Therefore an additional service-provider working with counselling is a necessity. Secondly, the study explores the participants? professional perspectives on the best interest of the child.

Traditional financial management has lately been criticized, since it gives inadequate and unilateral information for decisions and strategy of the operation. The purpose of this essay is to investigate if a balanced scorecard is able to work together with a budget and become a stronger control system for the management. Essential theory underlies the gathering of data as well as the analysis, and the empirical investigation is based on personal interviews. The conclusions drawn from my analysis are that two parallel control systems could complement each other?s weaknesses.

The largest project at the AICG lab at Linköping University, Cognitive models for virtual characters, focuses on creating an agent architecture for intelligent, virtual characters. The goal is to create an agent that acts naturally and gives a realistic user experience. The purpose of this thesis is to develop and implement an appropriate learning model that fits the existing agent architecture using an agile project methodology. The model developed can be seen as an online unsupervised reinforcement learning model that enhances experiences through reward. The model is based on Maes model where new effects are created depending on whether the agent is fulfilling its goals or not.The model we have developed is based on constant monitoring of the system.

Mental illness is today the leading cause of long-term sick leave and insomnia, anxiety, depression and burnout are among the most common conditions. The aim of the study was to investigate the stability of these conditions and how this is influenced by gender and age, as well as the extent to which these states are risk factors for each other. The participants were a random sample (n = 2336) from the general population in the age of 18-79 years. The results showed that stable illness was more common among women than men, and that stable illness decreased with aging. The stability itself was not affected by gender or age. Relations between the conditions were bidirectional and they constitute major risk factors for each other (odds ratios, OK = 2.37 to 6.46). The largest risk factor for a condition is, however, previous occurrence of the same problem. Previous burnout was found to be a significantly larger risk factor for future burnout than previous insomnia for future insomnia (OK = 9.63 and 5.74, respectively). The results suggest that insomnia, anxiety, depression and burnout, despite their differences, are similar regarding symptoms and underlying causes. The importance of early interventions to prevent comorbid conditions which are more complicated and more difficult to treat is emphasized..

Management control systems are a popular area of research and a lot of new research has been done over the past years. This development has been looking into new situations and circumstances, and interdisciplinary studies are being made to further understand the connection between different fields of study. A new field of study that has grown significantly over the past few years is the connection between management control systems and entrepreneurship. Leading researchers have proposed a number of questions for further research and one of them is the board of directors? use of management control systems in entrepreneurial firms.The purpose of this study was to examine the differences and similarities in the board of directors? use of management control systems between entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial firms.The study was conducted as a deductive qualitative study through interviews with respondents from entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial firms.

One year Master's thesis, Degree of master in Business and Economics, School ofBusiness and Economics at Linnaeus University, Management, 4FE10E SpringSemester 2014.Author: Johanna Björklund and Sarah Gustafsson.Mentor: Magnus Forslund.Title: Lean in the public sector - Potential barriers to a long-term Lean work.Background: Organizational changes are something that is constantly done inorganizations, and in the last decade, there has arisen a plethora of different changemodels. A reorganization that is popular among companies today is Lean. Lean is aconcept that was developed within the Japanese automotive industry, but has evolvedfrom the Japanese shop floor and is now a concept that can be found in, for example,several Swedish municipalities.Purpose: The purpose of this study was to create an understanding of why the conceptLean may have difficulty getting a hold in the in the long term.Methodology: The study was done with a qualitative research approach and through anabductive approach. As we intended to create an understanding, of what potentialbarriers that may affect that a Lean work, in some cases, does not become a long-termcondition, it seemed natural to choose a hermeneutic approach to knowledge. Theempirical data collected via individual unstructured interviews, through a groupinterview, and by non-participant observations.

Today's unsustainable resource use is influenced by many factors. One key factor isproduction methods and patterns. Trough change of production patterns enterprises can bepart of the solution to a more sustainable society. This case study has analyzed environmentalperformance of the printer company Edita Västra Aros Ltd (EVA), who has gained awards forits environmental work, and what driving forces they have had during this work. The survey isbased on a qualitative method and the collected data consists of documents and staffinterviews, which have been analyzed with content analysis.

The manufacturing industry is currently in a short-term downturn while the competition is increasing. The result of this is that companies must find new ways to bring out their products. Traditional competitive strategies, such as low pricing, is not sufficient today as the customer is inquiring something more than just a good product. Higher demands are presented on an accurate, well functional, communication between customer and companies, as this has become an important strategic factor in achieving long-term profitability.The aim of this independent project was to analyze and evaluate the communication process between a company and its sales companies.In order to illustrate this process, a case study was carried out at Alfa Laval, their sales companies and employees at their distribution center in Tumba. In order to see the differences in attitudes between the management, the sales companies and the employees regarding communication and involvement a gap analysis were used.The theoretical part of the study considers theories about business mission, communication, involvement, quality and creating value.The result showed that a smaller gap exists between the sales companies and the management while a slightly larger one exists between the employees and the management.

One year Master's thesis, Degree of master in Business and Economics, School ofBusiness and Economics at Linnaeus University, Management, 4FE10E SpringSemester 2014.Author: Johanna Björklund and Sarah Gustafsson.Mentor: Magnus Forslund.Title: Lean in the public sector - Potential barriers to a long-term Lean work.Background: Organizational changes are something that is constantly done inorganizations, and in the last decade, there has arisen a plethora of different changemodels. A reorganization that is popular among companies today is Lean. Lean is aconcept that was developed within the Japanese automotive industry, but has evolvedfrom the Japanese shop floor and is now a concept that can be found in, for example,several Swedish municipalities.Purpose: The purpose of this study was to create an understanding of why the conceptLean may have difficulty getting a hold in the in the long term.Methodology: The study was done with a qualitative research approach and through anabductive approach. As we intended to create an understanding, of what potentialbarriers that may affect that a Lean work, in some cases, does not become a long-termcondition, it seemed natural to choose a hermeneutic approach to knowledge. Theempirical data collected via individual unstructured interviews, through a groupinterview, and by non-participant observations.

This paper thoroughly investigates needs and requirements for overhead distribution feeder inspection and develops models to investigate possible relations between short term inspections remarks and outages. The study was conducted in collaboration with Fortum Distribution AB that supplied extensive information about their overhead power feeders concerning both inspection and power outages. The investigated models where lognormal linear model, Poisson generalized linear model and negative binomial generalized linear model. All models were implemented utilizing offset terms to compensate for differences in feeder length and amount of overhead versus underground feeders. The Poisson generalized linear model was rejected at an early stage due to overdispersion and neither of the remaining models fit the data perfectly.

Many persons with long-term illness experience a decline in their quality of life. Perceived Quality of Life is a subjective term based on prior personal experiences and is highly individual. The aim of this qualitative study was to investigate perceived Quality of Life in persons with Multiple Sclerosis and to get knowledge if physical therapy changes a person?s quality of life. Three women and three men with a range of disability were interviewed in depth.

Construction production always contains different disciplines whose priorities andinterests can be very diverse. Good communication and coordination are essential tominimize misunderstandings and achieve good quality in the end result. This makesplanning a central part of the production management. In a world where conditionscan change as often as daily, being well prepared increases the opportunities to stayflexible and decrease negative effects of the changes.This study has been done in association with Skanska Foundations district North inStockholm in order to investigate how visual planning can be used in the productionmanagement to optimize the coordination and the quality.The history of Lean started at Toyota, but the concept are now spread over theworld and are used wide outside of the car industry nowadays. What?s challengingabout Lean in foundation projects is to embrace a long-term perspective and invest insolutions that are profitable in the longer term, instead of solve problems by onlytreating the symptoms.A holistic perspective is crucial in order to truly understand Lean.

Health care costs in relation to GDP are escalating all over Europe and the Swedish health care industry is not an exception. Between 30 and 50 percent of resources used in health care are considered waste, in the sense that they don't contribute to increased health. This illustrates the big need for hospitals to become more efficient which is why many hospitals today are trying to move towards a process-oriented organization. This paper therefore aims to identify the elements necessary for this type of organizational change, the barriers encountered when moving from a functional to process oriented hospital as well as how to overcome them. The case study was conducted at Karolinska Universitetssjukhuset and shows the importance of not just transmitting a sense of urgency but also communicating that the upcoming change is long term.

Vocational rehabilitation is an ongoing issue that directly or indirectly affects everyone at a workplace. In recent years, laws and rules have changed. The 1st July 2008 changes were made in the General Insurance Act (SFS 1962:381). These changes have meant that there is now a so-called rehabilitation chain.  The rehabilitation chain contains time frames for when sick people will have their ability to work tested against their normal work or to other jobs. If a person is considered having enough capacity to be able to work he or she will lose their entitlement to sick pay.The aim of our study is to investigate managers? perceptions of the new rehabilitation chain, with a focus on vocational rehabilitation of long-term sick to get them back to work.The method used was qualitative and data collection was done through nine semi-structured interviews.

This Master of Science thesis project handles issues around managing data from the digital tachographsystem. European legislation states that companies must download the data of the digital tachograph systemand store it for at least one year for control purposes. The system stores data on the vehicle unit located inthe driving compartment and on smart cards personal for each driver.Acquiring data from the previous analogue tachograph was done instantaneously since the data wasphysically printed to a circular paper chart when driving. To acquire data from the digital system one mustperform a download from the vehicle unit and later transfer it to some form of backup solution for longterm storage. Data must also be downloaded from the driver smart cards.Download of data from the vehicle unit is the most time consuming task and may take up to 30minutes pervehicle.