Background: When firms grow through acquisitions it is commonly debated whether the two entities ought to be better off as standalone companies rather than as a merged company. This thesis aims at discussing this issue of M&As advantages and disadvantages in terms of source of synergies from the perspective of resource allocation. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyze to what extent pre-M&A differences (against similarities) in resource allocation and corporate culture between the acquiring and target firm have an impact on the post-M&A performance. Theoretical framework: Efficient market hypothesis, resource based view, strategic fit. Methodology: A longitudinal study is conducted on the EU market during 1992 to 2002 based on balance sheet and income statement data.

Homelessness has always been and will always be a problem in every society. How should we organize the work and care for these people? There are three different types of welfare states, the liberal, the conservative and the social democratic. In the liberal welfare state the market is the supplier of the public good. In the conservative state the family and church and in the social democratic the state is the supplier of the public welfare.The Swedish welfare state has been the archetype of social democratic welfare with de principal of ?Folkhemmet? in focus.

The gas turbines in the Swedish secondary reserve are reaching the end of their technical lifetime, hence alternative solutions need to be considered. One of the solutions thought to have the greatest potential is the use of so called consumptionreduction. By entering contracts with large consumers, agreements are made to reduce consumption in the event of major disturbances in the power system and thus being used as a secondary reserve. This thesis investigates the feasibility of consumption reduction as part of the secondary reserve. This has been achieved by developing a requirement specification for the disturbance reserve and by studying the technical and economic potential for consumption reduction among a range of consumers.The technical potential for consumption reduction that fulfils the requirements for participating in the secondary reserve are on average 750 MW in SE 3 and 98 MW in SE 4.

During my final examination project, I have been working with a design process to develop a new set of candle lanterns for the company Sagaform AB. This company has a large and significant role on the Swedish interior design and retail market. The assignment was developed when the company stated that they would like to supplement and expand its existing range of products. The research and surveys I have done have helped me to create eight different concepts and one of them ready to compete with the existing candle lanterns on the market. The result of my concept proposal expected to be included in Sagaform?s 2013 spring catalogue. During the project I have developed 3D-rendered images, a physical model, and a solid foundation for making prototypes. The Balloon has an attractive design language that fits both every day and more festive events.

Logosol is a company that produce small-scale wood processing products. To be able to expand the business Logosol have decided to increase exports, their target markets are the US, Russia, Germany and Norway. The expansion has mainly been through subsidiaries situated on the abroad markets. The subsidiaries have done poor results and that has influenced the whole company. CEO Bengt-Olov Byström made a decision to sell out the units to the people who worked in the business.

This master thesis aims to examine how public libraries in Sweden are practically and ideologically equipped to deal with e-books, outside of the dominant distributor Elib. The study also aims to find out what?s required of the book market and the public libraries to make further progress in the question of e-books. In Sweden e-books are still representing only a small amount of all the library loans and an even smaller amount of the commercial book market.The methodological and theoretical ground for the thesis is Grounded Theory, and the survey is based on interviews with publishers, librarians and distributors.The conclusions of this thesis are that the public libraries lack resources to invest in e-books, and that they also lack in knowledge about the media and its readers. It also exposes that both internal and external collaboration efforts need to be further developed.

This Master?s thesis aims to study how the concept ?youth? is understood and used in papers and publications about public libraries, written at The Swedish School of Library and Information Science from 1972 to 2002. It does this by answering three questions: Firstly, how is the concept ?youth? formulated in papers and publications at SSLIS from 1972 - 2002? Secondly, has the concept ?youth? changed in the analysed texts during the chosen time and, if that is the case, what constitutes this change? And, finally, what types of consequences for the understanding of the users can this have for the writers and readers of these texts? Discourse analysis is used to analyze how this concept is constituted, transformed and understood. Among the things studied in the discourse analysis is the interdiscursivity and intertextuality of the texts, as well as the meaning of the word, the wordings and modality of the analysed texts.

The insurance industryis challengedby major changesthrough internationalizationand thusgrowingcompetitionwithmore optionsand greater availabilityfor customers.Solvency II, a new regulatoryframework and anew standard forinsurance companies,is therefore implemented in a steptowardsa more competitive Europeaninsurancemarket. Solvency II will result in extensive structural changes for many insurance companies. Newstandards andinternal models must also be implemented by the companies. Solvency IIhasa tightening effect on thesolvency capital requirements forinsurance companies. At the same time it also leads tomajor changesandincreased demandon risk management andinternal control, alongside with demands fordisclosure of informationto the market.

This paper examines dialect as a rhetorical means of persuasion. A survey containing inquires about four different Swedish dialects have been handed out mainly in Södertörn University and Stockholm University, in order to research the values and connotations of theese dialects. The four chosen dialects are as following: Göteborgska, Stockholmska, Norrländska and Skånska. The results of the survey are processed and compiled to see which attitudes these values and connotations may indicate to each dialect. These attitudes and values are then discussed in correlation with five rhetorical theories: Attitude as a means of persuation, Ethos, Persona, Rhetorical Agency and Pierre Bourdieu?s theory of Field and Habitus.

This paper examines the film distribution and exhibition sector in Europe. The general analysis of these sectors? situation was made. Moreover, the comparative and more in depth analysis of three countries by the Porter?s five forces model was made; These were United Kingdom, France and Denmark.

Social policy has now received an increased attention in the European Union. The European welfare states experience a high level of unemployment, which the EU now tries to handle through the European Employment Strategy (EES). The core of this essay is whether the welfare institutions of the European member states are integrating through an institutionalization process or not. Within the EU four different types of welfare models can be identified: the Scandinavian, the Continental, the Southern and the Anglo-Saxon. The welfare models differ in the institutional settings e.g.

Syfte/purpose: Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka hur den svenska spelmarknaden har påverkats av Internets framväxt. Uppsatsen avgränsas till att se hur Svenska Spel bemöter de nya konkurrenterna på Internet. Det vill säga vilka marknadsstrategier Svenska Spel använder sig av, dessutom undersöks hur spelarna värderar de nya spelmöjligheter som framkommit. / The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how the development of the Internet has affected the Swedish betting market. The thesis is limited to see how Svenska Spel is facing the new competitors on the Internet.

The mining company LKAB extracts iron ore in three areas in the north of Sweden, Kiruna, Malmberget and Svappavaara. The iron ore is refined and in the pelletizing plants the material is rolled to finished pellet product. The different steps of pelletizing plants causes among other things emissions to the air. It occurs occasionally stops in the production and the emissions are vented via an emergency chimney without purification. The aim for this work is to look into how LKAB may improve their monitoring of air emissions and control of ambient air quality and the analysis methods which are suitable for measuring.

The purpose of this essay is to present a thesis work that has been executed during a period of 10 weeks, as part of a bachelor degree in Graphic Design and Communication and also to present what has led to the design of a sales brochure for the freely distributed lifestyle magazine LKPG. The purpose of the thesis work was to examine the answers to the questions ?What does clients and local company owners want to achieve from their advertising in newspapers and magazines?? and ?How should a sales brochure for a freely distributed lifestyle magazine be designed to be at most advantage and out of most interest to its clients??. The work has been carried out through an competitors analysis, qualitative interviews, literature studies and a survey on the target group. The findings of the work are that the market of freely distributed  magazines, both nationally and locally, is extremely wide and has many similar competitors.

The purpose of this essay was to examine municipal guidelines regarding the administration of the social assistance, collected from 18 municipalities in the Stockholm-area to achieve a greater understanding on how they were constructed in respect to the legislation and how the language mediated their contents. The legal aspects of the social assistance was studied through a jurisprudential method in which the legislative history, texts of laws and case laws were examined. The empirical aspect of this essay was studied through a hermeneutical method and analyzed through theories of social constructionism and legal pluralism. The results from the jurisprudential study were also used to understand how the municipal guidelines were constructed in relation to the law. The results of this essay corresponded well with previous studies in this field where considerable divergences in the approval of social assistance have been established.