AbstractC-level essay in political science, by Frida Orlinder, spring semester 2008Supervisor: Susan Marton?Good contracting? ? A study of contracting in public procurement regarding the transportation of school children?Over the last decades models influenced by the market have been gaining influence in public administration all over the world. New Public Management has been presented as a theoretical ?shopping basket? from which concepts can be applied to the administration of municipal services. The purpose of this essay is to investigate in an explorative way how New Public Management (NPM) views contracting and the role of the internal customer in contracting.

The purpose of this essay is to apply Activity Based Costing on a Service and Support function in order to identify and allocate costs for providing support for IT deliverables..

The traditional view of maintenance is machine-based, where acute maintenance tasks are highly valued. Preventive maintenance is viewed as secondary and less desirable to work with. The more modern view is to regard maintenance as a process. The machine-driven tasks are still necessary but are viewed as a part of the big picture.The purpose of this study is to examine how to high light general difficulties concerning maintenance management to aid organizations to reflecting upon their own situation. The study is based upon a pilot study initiated by ProcessIT concerning relevant key figures in maintenance.

Problem discussion: Syncron experience a challenge in realizing the full market potential of its newly developed IT-based price management system, Global Price Management (GPM). The system has already been implemented and is currently running with success within the IT-structures of the first customer. The fact that the development of the system has been initiated by a customer, and thereby has left Syncron oblivious of the real underlying drivers and incentives for the development, is part of the problem. Understanding the customers? incentives for developing their pricing process thus reducing the application uncertainty is a good starting point.

The purpose of this study has been to examine how collaborations between clothingcompanies and fashion designers can influence their brands. Our ambition has been todescribe this phenomenon by describing how collaborations can affect and influencethe clothing companies? brand identity, image and positioning. Furthermore, we wantto describe how these collaborations have changed the fashion industry and what thefuture holds for it. We find this topic relevant since collaborations are becoming anadvantage for companies in a competitive industry that is constantly in change.

I denna studie undersöker vi om det förekommer earnings management i resultathöjande syfte bland svenska börsnoterade företag vid tiden av en nyemission. Studier om earnings management vid nyemissioner har gjorts förut av exempelvis av (Shivakumar, 2000). Han kommer fram till att earnings management förekommer tiden precis innan en nyemission. Vi hittar dock ingen studie utförd på svenska företag, vilket vi vill undersöka närmare. Syftet med resultatet av studien är att visa intressenter till företagen att de kan bli vilseledda när de ska investera sitt kapital när earnings management förekommer..

Servicescape is a research area within service management which processes the effect that the environment has on the service experience. The purpose of this essay is to find out how servicescape, with focus on the ?background music?, affects customer behavior in a clothing retail store. Through manipulation of the background music?s tempo the essay aim to explore to what extent this part of the servicescape a) affect the customers approach and avoidance behavior, b) is affected by customers with a hedonic or utilitarian shopping behavior, c) affects pleasure, arousal and dominance perceptions for the customer, and d) how the servicescape is perceived.Key words: Servicescape, approach-avoidance behaviour, pleasure, arousal, dominance, hedonic-utilitarian behaviour..

SUMMARYThe demands on the public environment are big and in particular on the environment of communication which we spend a lot of time in on our way to work, school etc. The city-approach is a road section that leads from the periphery of the city to the centre of the city, often through boring and meaningless industrial areas that displays the back side of the city to the voyager on the city-approach. The intentions of this thesis in landscape architecture has been to study one of the two city-approaches to the city of Luleå, the close surroundings and contextual position in the city and not at least give suggestions of ways how the city-approach can be changed, clarified and improved. The study of the city-approach has been made by studying literature that concern city-approaches and the architecture of roads in general. Studies of different analysis methods has been made to find appropriate approaches to work with the specific study of the city-approach to Luleå.

Syftet med examensarbetet är att tillföra ny kunskap inom den svenska earnings management forskningen genom att undersöka kapitalstrukturens eventuella korrelation med earnings management. Uppsatsen har en kvantitativ metodansats, paneldata regressionsanalys används för att genomföra studien. Arbetet grundar sig i tidigare forskning på earnings management området. Vidare prövas Debt-to-Equity teorin mot den svenska marknaden. Den empiriska undersökningen utgår från 231 företag listade på den svenska börsen under tidsperioden 2003-2007 och en negativ korrelation konstateras mellan earnings management och kapitalstruktur.

Title: Artists? identity and image ? a brand perspective The purpose of this study has been to create an understanding of how artists in the music business can be seen as brands and to see what stands out when having this approach. During the study we have focused on the two terms identity and image. We find this issue interesting and relevant since branding has been widely discussed in business economy, but not enough when it comes to artists in the music business. To answer our research question we have targeted three aims for this essay, which is to clarify and analyze:? Identity and image when people are viewed as brands? What specifically characterizes the image of the artists when they are seen as brands and what it might mean that artists are considered as brands? How artists identity and image can be highlighted, shaped, influenced and how it can changeIn this study we have used a qualitative approach to get the topic in depth and gain a greater understanding for the subject.

The aim of this thesis was to find out how the teachers I have interviewed, felt that they worked with and looked at conflict management. The aim was also to find similarities and differences in teachers' ways of working with conflict. With the help of my questions, I got answers to what I wanted to explore in my essay. I used these questions: What strategies do the teachers I interviewed for managing conflicts in preschool? What tools do the teachers I interviewed see as most effective in the process of conflict management? Are there differences and similarities in the way that the teachers I interviewed work with current conflict? What factors, according to the informants starts a conflict? What is the teachers? definition of a conflict and how does their definition affect their approach when working with conflicts?In my study, I have used a qualitative approach in the form of structured interview, to get material for my thesis.

Background: It is today common for companies to provide some sort of incentive for CEO's and senior management positions to motivate, retain and benefit employees within a company. This is in order to drive the goals of the CEO and management in the direction that is desired by the owner. Currently, the Swedish centre-right government has forbidden the use of such variable pay within state-owned companies. There are two different attitudes to variable pay, one that is in favour and one that rejects it. However most people agree on the fact that a well-functioning incentive scheme can be of great strategic importance for a company.Approach: has variable pay to CEO's had any effect on the company's profitability.Aim: the aim of the study is to compare companies who use variable pay to CEO's with companies that do not in relation to their profitability in terms of profit margins, yearly performance, returns on total capital and returns on equity.Method: the study uses a quantitative approach.

This thesis examines the implications of a shorter  intensive action research  project on  the formative assessments  key  strategies  four  and  five  that  are  activating  learners  as  learning  resources  for  one another and activating learners as owners of their own learning.  The research questions were ?How do the pupils experience the formative approach?? ?What didactic consequences does the formative approach  mean  for  the  role  of  the  teacher??  and  ?How  does  the  formative  approach  affects  the pupils?  results  on a  short term??. The results were that the  majority of the pupils liked the approach and that they felt like their efficiency increased. The didactic consequences were that the teacher had to spend more time on evaluation but had more time during the lesson to listen to and discuss with the pupils. The pupils? results were not changed in comparison with the control group..

The aim with this thesis is to study the risk management in construction projects at the Swedish Road Administration, SRA. Furthermore, the aim is to find the effects of the risk management. The theorem of this thesis is that the positive effects of the risk management in construction projects create additional value to the project. These additional values are that the project itself becomes resilient and that the project goals are achieved without any significant disturbances.This thesis shows that the risk management in construction projects do not follow the guidelines set out by the SRA. This is due to a lack of education in the method and a difficult method all together.

en small case studie av event med olika karaktär föregås av en kartläggning av begreppet event. vidare identifieras kritiska faktorer för framgång och huruvida den arbetsprocess i vilken eventen växer fram överensstämmer på de olika eventen. vilka likheter respektive skillnader kan identifieras..