The Private Equity industry has over the past years been booming and major external environmental changes have made the industry transform rapidly. Increased competition between Private Equity firms is one of the reasons why the industry has been and is being forced to focus more on addition of value through increased operational management. Consequently, the focus of value addition is by some said to be transferred away from deal Making and financial skills, and into active operative management. This case study investigates how the portfolio management, and more specifically the measuring and management of performance, is carried out in a number of leading Swedish Private Equity funds with investments in the biotech sector. The biotech sector is characterized by extensive research and development, and many biotech companies often lack income and other measurable financial parameters in the initial phase.

Ethical evaluation of scientific studies carried out using animals is legally mandated in many countries and has been so in Sweden for over three decades. The animal ethics committees (AECs) responsible for the task have however been subjected to criticism; common critique being that the wrong issues are discussed and that the ethical evaluation is thus incomplete, that there is a lack of coherence across committees and that the committees are not as democratic as they might appear. This study investigates the view of Swedish AEC members on a number of issues in order to shed some light on the mandate and functioning of the committees, and on the grounds for ongoing criticism. In a survey and interviews AEC members and other persons connected to the committees gave their views on the AEC task in relation to their roles, the ethical evaluation per se and whether or not emotions such as empathy play any part in it. There were significant differences found between AEC member categories and several issues were encountered, many of which have been stressed in previous studies.

A performance measurement system can be used as a means to evaluate past performances and to communicate prioritizations. It has also been proposed that a performance measurement system can serve as a method to execute strategies, guide in operational decisions and constitute a tool for Making the organization more efficient. Yet one may question if such a system will ever reach this capacity if operating managers do not utilize it as a management tool, but rather treat it as a mere report in the bunch. This paper explores how middle managers in fact apply performance measures and what obstacles there are to integrating them in the management of subunits. Furthermore it serves to investigate whether these managers experience a conflict between how they are expected to use the measures and what they deem possible to adopt.

In today's society, the availability of energy plays an integral part in our everyday lives. Unfortunately, the price of energy in Sweden has increased in recent decades. A large part of our energy consumption goes to heating modules for houses, where heating methods that depend on energy sources such as electricity, district heating, fuel oil, gas and biofuels are the most common ones. During the winter period, the increase in energy costs becomes significantly evident, especially for small property owners. This increase in energy cost is most noticeable for home owners with electric heating.This thesis is written at the Halmstad University, in cooperation with a company, which makes parts of this thesis confidential.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the conflict of interest between shareholders, life insurance companies and insurers in stock life insurance companies operated on a mutual basis from an agency-theoretic perspective. Further, this thesis aims to explore from an ownership-theoretical perspective, why this conflict of interest exist. A qualitative research has been performed and the empirical data is foremost based on interviews with persons from the life insurance industry and public prints. The study concludes that the stock life insurance company operated on a mutual basis has two principals whose interests are in conflict. History has shown that stockowners? interests have been prioritized on the expense of the insurers.

This thesis deals with past and present political attitudes towards the Öresund bridge. It describes the decision Making process which preceded the construction of the bridge, and has a short historical introduction to it. It then presents the attitudes towards the bridge of five different political parties, all represented by regional politicians. This empirical information was obtained through interviews with politicians and literature studies. The author then analyzes the empirical information with the help of the human ecological triangle developed by Steiner, and the center-periphery theories of Wallerstein and Persson.To conclude, the author describes what the central problem is in the case of the Öresund bridge from a human ecological perspective and analyzes the empirical data collected..

The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate different types of measures for Making buildings more energy efficient and to estimate their profitability. The calculations were performed with the building simulation program VIP+ and the evaluation of the profitability with the life cycle cost method. Furthermore, it was examined how losses in the distribution of secondary systems of district heating can be avoided. Options to replace district heating with a local district heating system based on bio-energy have been investigated. The possibilities of achieving more efficient thermal energy consumption and production for the chosen estate were also examined.The object of the study has been a residential estate with 133 detached houses in Uppsala, built in 1974.

According to the national legislation concerning discrimination within labour law, it is prohibited to discriminate on the grounds of sex, ethnic belonging, religion or other religious belief, functional disability, sexual nature and part-time work or time-limited employment. The EC-law goes further and also prohibits discrimination on the ground of age. According to an EC-directive the member states must incorporate a national provision against age discrimination by the 2nd of December 2006 and the Swedish legislator is now in the progress to implement this into Swedish law.Even though national legislation does not contain any provision on the area, the EC-law directive has a certain influence at national law. Measures that are in breach of the purpose of the directive can for example not be taken. When the time for implementation has expired, the directive has direct effect and can be referred to within the member states.

This thesis aims to describe how enterprises can approach and reach older citizens inorder to sell new technology products. For that they need information about aspectsaffecting elderlies purchase decisions regarding these kind of products. The study isbased on 13 qualitative interviews where we have applied semi structured interviews andobservations of the elderlies behaviour towards an Ipad which we used as a study objectduring the interviews.The results of this study shows several aspects which affect the elderlies purchasedecision regarding new technology but it all comes down to one matter, lack ofknowledge. In order to overcome that obstacle, enterprises need to modify theircommunication strategy. They will be needing information about elderlies preferencesand their self-image, meaning how they perceive themselves which is connected to howreceptive they are towards new technology.

The implementation problem refers to the situation when political decisions are not implemented as intended by the decision makers. In this thesis I examine how one part of the new school reform GY11 has been implemented in Social Science in high school in Sweden. The part that interests me is entrepreneurial learning. Using implementation theory, and the actor properties understand, can and will, as described by Lennart Lundquist, I have interviewed five high school Social Science teachers in Malmö and Lund. The result was that they all understood the concept of entrepreneurial learning.

As IT service departments in organisations are becoming more complex and customised, the indirect costs are increasing in relation to the total costs. The difficulty of fully estimating and identifying the spread of the cost in the IT service department is increasing. As a result, firms tend to budget the business unit as a total cost rather than as a spread of defined costs. In order to deal with this challenge an ABC calculation will be applied. The Time Driven ABC model will be conducted in OMX´s Servicedesk unit within the IT services.

A major issue that has been a subject for quite some time is whether there will be a scarcity of metals in the bedrock in the future and whether or not we might end up with a problem similar to that of the big oil crisis in the mid-seventies. Following the oil crisis many oil companies started up with risk management to control future risks. This work presents how Swedish mining companies work with risk management to handle risks that might come up in the future due to metal scarceness. How Swedish mining companies look at the possible metal scarceness and if they use risk management in their decision-Making process is studied. By doing interviews with Swedish owned mining companies it was found that the mining companies did not see the future metal scarcity as a risk, even though 2/3 of the companies acknowledged the scarceness to be a reality.

Telefonrådgivning är en av arbetsuppgifterna för ögonsjuksköterskor, men studier om telefonrådgivning inom ögonsjukvård är begränsat. Syftet var att beskriva ögonsjuksköterskors upplevelser av användandet av beslutsstöd vid telefonrådgivning. Metoden var kvalitativ beskrivande. Sex ögonsjuksköterskor vid tre olika ögonkliniker intervjuades. Data analyserades enligt kvalitativ innehållsanalys.

The mobile revolution is here to stay, and today most people have (at least) one cell phone at home. Some even a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant)as a complement for the simpler tasks at the office, e.g sending e-mail, word processing, browsing the Internet etc. Many business have also given the employees the opportunity to do some of the business tasks inbetweeen customer visits with the help from a cell phone or PDA.Despite all this, the so called Internet connected mobile revolution is often mentioned as a big failure. Maybe because the people in general tended not to use the new technology as much as the companies predicted. This could be because they still haven't learned how it works, or just don't seem to have the need for services provided.After a couple of failures in the development process, almost every cell phone has support for mobile Internet today.

The master thesis deals with three completely different areas: the place, the light and the design, which all are parts of the subject landscape architecture. The Place in this paper is the graveyard, the Light is the artificial and the Design is an illumination. The common denominator is the graveyard at Galärvarvet in Stockholm, Galärvarvskyrkogården, where the three parts meet in a clear and outspoken need of new lighting. The problem formulation is: Is it possible for a graveyard to be looked upon and used as a park? How do the administrators and the designers reason in this matter and what are the consequences for example the illumination at a graveyard? This is being investigated and discussed in general and thereafter the thesis is specifically focussed on the needs and solutions for the graveyard at Galärvarvet. The thesis, which is mainly based on facts from litterature, location studies and interviews, contains of pure parts of fact, discussion parts, different types of analyses, reflections of the author, illustrations and photos from the graveyard at Galärvarvet and also a lighting proposal for the graveyard and its close environment. The purpose of this work is to show the connection between the usage of the graveyard and its illumination. All to simplify for the administrators, planners and designers. Hopefully this thesis will be of use in the deciscion Making process for future lighting projects for the graveyard administration in Stockholm as a basis for their discussion and decision process for future lighting projects..