The Swedish public inquiries and most of the political science advocate reforms in the spirit of participatory democracy to strengthen the democracy. Although it is striking how limited and narrow the scientific documentation is in analysing the effects of participatory democratic reforms. Still, many of the local governments in Sweden are reshaping their organisations according to the participatory democracy model. Is it a trend and a symbolic action or a veritable action of good-will of the politicians?The paper argues that the idea of participatory democracy has become popular and widely spread.

In 2010, SAS received the "On time performance service" award by Flightstats. This award was an affirmation of long-term work, both in projects and as an ongoing process, which the company sought to systematically improve punctuality on its flights. The extent to which SAS followed the values and the underlying theories of the cornerstone model for total quality management was the main issue in this essay. Whether there are conditions for the company to get even further by working in other ways was also investigated. In addition, the importance of punctuality in relation to customer satisfaction was discussed.

Purpose: To investigate if Altman´s Z´-score model, which calculates financial distress, can be applied on companies established in Sweden and if the financial crisis in 2008 made previously healthy companies go bankrupt.Methodology: Quantitative studies with a positivistic foundation. Empirical data will be collected in order to examine if there is generalizability among the studied objects. Conclusions will be made by comparing the empirical data with the theoretical foundation. Financial distress in firms will be measured.Theoretical perspectives: Altman´s Z´-score model, designed to predict financial distress in private firms.Empirical foundation: A selection of 93 private firms that have gone bankrupt in the years 2008, 2009 or 2010. The firms selected all have a turnover that exceeds 20 million SEK.

Trots att många menar att Human Resources har en allt viktigare roll i förändringsprocesser råder det brist på studier som undersöker på vilket sätt de i sitt dagliga arbete är involverade i förändringsprocesser och hur de interagerar med andra aktörer inom organisationen under processen.Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka vad HR bidrar med kopplat till processen vid planerade organisationsförändringar. Undersökningens frågeställning inriktades på vilka olika roller HR kan ta vid planerade organisationsförändringar samt vilka faktorer som påverkar HR´s delaktighet i dessa. Studien har en kvalitativ hermeneutisk ansats och baseras på sex semistrukturerade intervjuer med HR-medarbetare på två olika organisationer inom privat sektor.Resultatet visar på att HR framförallt tar två olika typer av roller som vi har benämnt supportrollen och den självständiga rollen. Dessa kopplar vi i analysen sedan till två övergripande roller som HR kan utgå ifrån i sitt agerande. De faktorer vi har sett i vår studie som påverkar HR´s delaktighet i förändringsprocesser är brist på tid, stort avstånd till kärnverksamheten och medarbetarna, vilken relation de har till cheferna samt vilken typ av förändring det handlar om..

Denna magisteruppsats handlar om vilken betydelse Human Resource arbetet har för kompetensutvecklingen inom två olika organisationer. Under senare år har relativt stora satsningar gjorts på personalutbildning och andra kompetensutvecklingsinsatser i arbetslivet. Forskning har visat att kunskapsproduktionen i samhället ökar ständigt och för att finna en lösning på detta har många företag valt att satsa på kompetensutveckling. Det bakomliggande antagandet har varit att det i allt högre grad är kunskap och kompetens än kapital som växer i framtiden. Därför bör såväl privata som offentliga organisationer satsa på kompetensutveckling både kortsiktligt och långsiktligt för att kunna möta de framtida kraven.

This bachelor thesis has the purpose to visualize and document the air movementsprovided by different ventilation principles in an operating theatre. The visualizationwill be made as simple as possible in a physical model. The model and thedocumentation should be able to use in educational purposes.The study is based on the two most common systems for airflow, currently used inoperating theatres. The first principle is displacement ventilation in which the air issupplied at low velocity along the floor. The second principle is vertical parallel laminarairflow in which the air is compressed like a piston from ceiling to the floor.A review of literature resulted in the choice of size, design, and scale factor for themodel, as well as choices of ventilation principles and airflows.

Human trafficking is one of the biggest social problems in Nepal with over 12.000 Nepali women and children being trafficked over the border to India every year. Despite the scale and the severe consequences of trafficking in the Nepalese society, very little is known about efforts to rehabilitate survivors of human trafficking. The purpose of this study was to illustrate the rehabilitation methods and interventions in Nepal. It is based on the results from five interviews with three different nongovernmental organizations in Nepal. The result from this study shows that counseling is the main intervention for rehabilitation of the mental health of victims of trafficking.

This bachelor thesis has the purpose to visualize and document the air movementsprovided by different ventilation principles in an operating theatre. The visualizationwill be made as simple as possible in a physical model. The model and thedocumentation should be able to use in educational purposes.The study is based on the two most common systems for airflow, currently used inoperating theatres. The first principle is displacement ventilation in which the air issupplied at low velocity along the floor. The second principle is vertical parallel laminarairflow in which the air is compressed like a piston from ceiling to the floor.A review of literature resulted in the choice of size, design, and scale factor for themodel, as well as choices of ventilation principles and airflows.

The primary intention of this paper was to visually compare film trailers without considering semantic information, through use of a self-developed Matlab program, resembling that of human perception. Circa 150 people participated in an online survey where they were shown two film trailers and asked to rate their visual similarities. The result from the program was weighted against the survey results in such a way that the weights corresponded to a 75% accuracy between the program?s and the participant?s (for participants with prior experience in the field of photography and/or film) comparisons.How accurate can we compare still images from film trailers, and find similar trailers for the human viewer, by analyzing saturation, color tone, contrast and lightness with a self-developed Matlab program..

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate and increase the understanding of Swedish Public Library Websites and to determinate which activity they mediate. To analyse the Public Library Websites Andersson and Skot-Hansen?s model of roles for the Public Library has been used. This model in¬cludes four roles for the library: the library as a cultural centre, a knowledge centre, as an information centre and as a social centre.

This paper analyses how Swedish fine-art oil paintings sold at auctions has performed as a monetary investment during the period autumn 1985 until spring 2006. An average price technique as well as a hedonic regression technique, applied to a sample of 19 213 auction sales, is used to construct price indices. The indices show somewhat different results, which is explained by the inability of the average price model to adjust for relative differences in quality between periods. The hedonic regression model on the other hand captures this effect, why the hedonic index is applied in a financial return model. By adjusting for transaction cost, the financial return of an average investment in paintings is calculated.

This Master Thesis treats the non monetarian aspect about the Internet Portal from a consumer and company perspective. The purpose of this thesis i st o give or create a picture and a tool, a model for how the Internetportal could be evaluated an valued. By creating a so called Dynamic Scorecard the authors of this Thesis have created a model throug which the purpose of this thesis is served. Through this model the authors have come to the conclusion that the Internet Portal can be evaluated through both economic, social, service and technical factors as well as through what relationship the companies or consumers value concerning the Internet provider. The product of conclusions of this Thesis is that there are three main factors upon wich the Internet Portal is valued.

Introduction The genetic skin disease epidermolytic ichtyosis is caused by mutations in either keratin gene 1 or 10 and leads to blisters and hyperkeratosis of the epidermis. At cellular level the disease is seen as aggregates in the keratin filaments. Since medicines are hard to investigate and produce mainly due to lack of reproducible model systems, there is no good treatment available for this disease today. In this article we describe how an in vitro model consisting of cells from a stable cell line transfected with expression plasmids to mimic patient cells, may be a possible alternative for screening compounds for therapies. The first step was to generate an expression plasmid required to complete the in vitro model.

In this paper we have examined why seniors do not use e-business to the same extent as other age groups. Seniors belong to the age group that, according to statistics from Statistics Sweden (SCB) in 2011, utilizes e-business the least in relation to the number who use the internet. To understand how seniors reason and perceive the possibility to shop on the internet, we have conducted four interviews with people from 65 years and older. We have let the respondents answer questions regarding utility aspects, e-business interfaces, general shopping habits, risks, and whether or not they usually shop online. We also found out how seniors reason when they sell products and services.

This masters thesis concerns a modeling project performed at Volvo Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. The main purpose of the project has been to develop a physical model of the climate in construction vehicles that later on can be used in the development of an electronic climate controller. The focus of the work has been on one type of wheel loader and one type of excavator. The temperature inside the compartment has been set equal to the notion climate. With physical theories about air flow and heat transfer in respect, relations between the components in the climate unit and the compartment has been calculated.