This thesis studies private equity firms' implementation of management control systems in their portfolio companies and whether the systems are affected by cross-national differences. A comparative case study examines five different private equity firms to derive if there are any differences between the private equity firms' management control systems in the United States, Europe and China. The empirical observations are categorized according to the framework developed by Merchant (1985) and further developed by Merchant and Van der Stede (2003). Theory on the effect of multinationality on management control systems, also developed by Merchant and Van der Stede (2003), are used to explain possible findings. The applied theory includes the cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede (1984) and Hofstede and Bond (1988).

When being in preschool, I have come across children who I have had difficulties to really meet, and I have felt that the communication between me and the child has been deficient. Since I believe that the meeting of child and pedagogue is essential to learning and development, I find this an important subject of further study.The purpose of my study is to investigate if, and how, teachers regard a possible connection between language capability and behaviour. Furthermore I investigate how they work with language acquisition and communication, and what argument the pedagogues have for this work.To answer these questions I have interviewed two pedagogues who have great knowledge and experience of this subject, and also have special interest in children?s language and communication.In my literary review I give an account of how language acquisition is described in literature, and then compare it with how language impairment reveals. I also describe earlier research on how to work with language development, and what the national curriculum for preschools (Lpfö 98) say on this topic.The result shows that my informants divide in their view of how to connect language capability to behaviour.

Turistiskt kulturutövande ? en studie om autentiska kulturarv fiktiva kontexter i Skara och Skottland, är en magisteruppsats som studerar ett fenomen kallat för ?fiktiva kulturarv?. Två fallstudier, ?Arnfenomenet? och ?Da Vinci- effekten?, analyseras utifrån uppkomst, kulturturistisk form och marknadsföring. Turistiskt kulturutövande har allt mer börjat innebära samarbetsprojekt mellan kultursektorn och turismnäringen vilket fört med sig både positiva och negativa reaktioner.

Detta är en komparativ uppsats som beskriver likheter och skillnader mellan Sydafrikas läroplan, Revised National Curriculum Statement for Schools (Grades R-9), Svenska läroplanen Lpo 94 och kursplanen i religion.Hur en läroplan utformas beror mycket på landets historia. Att Sydafrika har haft mycket problem med exempelvis apartheid speglas också i läroplanen. Demokrati är något som tycks vara mycket viktigt för den sydafrikanska skolan. I Sverige har vi haft demokrati relativt länge, och det verkar nästan som att vi börjar ta detta för givet. Hur stort utrymme demokratin tar i läroplanerna och kursplanen i religion är en av sakerna jag tar upp i denna uppsats.Jag jämför också hur man beskriver religionsämnet i respektive läroplan/kursplan.

The intention of this study was to examine the interaction between authorities. More specifically it had a purpose to look at the ongoing cooperation between social workers and staff of special homes of closed institutional youth care. The sanction system for young offenders? reform of 1999 where young people between the ages of 15-17 who have committed serious crimes, can be sentenced to secure institutional treatment instead of prison, aims to counteract the harm which can result from a stay in prison. The social welfare board in the young person´s local authority and the national board of institutional care shall cooperate during the youth?s placement at the special home of closed institutional youth care.

The aim of my study is to investigate if and in that case how the writing process and texts written by students in the upper secondary school are affected by the writing tool; does it matter if they write their texts on a computer or by longhand? Another objective is to compare such an effect with the findings of previous studies performed on earlier generations of writers. The first part of my study was a survey. It showed that two thirds of the 67 students participating thought that they would have written better texts in the national writing test if they had been able to use computers. In the second part of the study each of the fourteen participants wrote one text on computer and another by hand.

The aim of this thesis is to examine how the EU directive 2004/35/EC on environmental liability impacts the Swedish administrative legal order. The thesis examines the directive through two main EU principles - the principle of good administration and the principle of procedural autonomy. The EU principle of good administration as a concept contains various procedural and substantive obligations that make up the subject for examination of the directive, both as regulated in the directive and as general principles of EU law. The directive is analyzed using a comparative method to determine to what extent the procedural and substantive principles of the directive impacts the Swedish administrative law, and weather or not the Swedish regulations comply with the EU principle of good administration.The results of the study shows that, althought there?s a general principle of national procedural autonomy, the EU principles of good administration do affect the Swedish administrative regulation in various aspects, through the implementaion of the directive on environmental liability as well as general principles of EU law.

The aim of this thesis is to describe and analyse the ideology behind Sida's cultural aid by using postcolonial theory. We want to analyse the discourse on cultural aid that is found mainly in Sida's publications. The interpretation of the sources is made with a hermeneutic base and by using postcolonial theory in combination with Paul Ricoeur's theories on the function of ideology: 1. ideology as distortion, 2. ideology as legitimation, and 3.

AbstractLarge states are not as interdependent as small countries are. Due to the extent of the home market, producers in large countries can sell the greater part of their products at home. Accordingly large countries become less dependent of other states. Large states are consequently in a better position to promote their self- interests internationally than smaller states are. Applying this reasoning on a large state such as France I come to conclude that she probably exerts this policy of self- interest in an area like free trade.

This study is focusing on students at compulsory level and their performance in national exam tests when the students first language is taken into account. Students in Swedish schools with non-Swedish speaking parents commonly follow language classes for limited Swedish proficient students. How does this affect their results when tested in other subjects as physics,biology and chemistry? A general claim is that national tests can provide data for balancedand fair grades. This view is challenged in this paper, through Principal Component Analysisof test results that shows a difference between schools when the schools social position and share of limited Swedish proficient students are measured.

The aim of this study is to describe and analyze how the European union relates to the different dimensions of abortion. What kind of problem is abortion and whose right is it? Does difference framings of the problem enable different solutions?By analyzing debates from the European parliament through Carol Lee Bacchis method ?What?s the problem approach? I have come to see that different representations of a problem changes the problem it self. This emphasis that a problem is a problem in one context, but not in an other.Depending on the work of, among others, Barbara Hobson and Ailbhe Smyth I have focused upon the European union as a economical project, leaving social issues to national competence. This makes the EU a patriarchal project that fails to guarantee women?s rights.

The aim of this paper is two-fold. Firstly, it is the production of a historical and chronological narrative describing the development of the Swedish Red Cross Hospital in Pusan during the years 1950-58. Secondly, it is the investigation of the objectives and aspirations of the organisations and institutions involved and how they affected how the hospital developed during the wartime years and up until the inauguration of the Scandinavian educational hospital, the National Medical Centre, in Seoul. Shortly after the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 Sweden, a neutral nation, offered to send a contingent for the establishment of a 200 bed mobile field hospital which was to be subjected to the command of the Eighth US Army in Korea. In the end a larger semimobile evacuation hospital was set up in Pusan where both UN soldiers and PoWs were treated, and it came to be known as the Swedish Red Cross Hospital. The decrease in and finally the cessation of hostilities in 1953 opened up for treatment of Korean civilian patients and such work was conducted not only at the Swedish hospital but all over Pusan, though initially it was not formally sanctioned by American and UN authorities.

This thesis deals with the supranational organization of European trade unions. The European trade union movement is, via its umbrella organization the ETUC, an institutionalized social partner within the European Union. The ETUC is a very diverse organization with great potential of conflicting interest among its members. This thesis therefore seeks to explore the dynamics and interest heterogeneity of the ETUC. Drawing on previous research and literature it formulates a number of hypothesises to test what variables that influence the member organizations policy preferences (i.e.

AbstractEssay in political Science (c-level) by Karin Forsling, Spring 2007A school for the best interest of the child? - The Swedish School System according to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.Supervisor: Stig MontinThe purpose of this essay is to investigate how the Swedish governments work with the im-plementation of this convention and what progress has been made. The inquiry of this study is to describe how the changing in the Swedish School System correspond to the national strat-egy for implementation of UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in Sweden and how the political protagonists.I have read some of the most relevant documents from the authorities and organisations work-ing with children?s rights in Sweden and papers and communications from the political pro-tagonists.Since UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was ratified by Sweden in 1990 the work for implementation has been quite successful but there are still lots to do. There are still some problems in School such as bullying, insulting, insecurity and lack of peaceful and harmoni-ous school environment.

The aim of this study was to analyze how discourses about domestic violence emerges in policy and practice, and to investigate how those discourses may change from a structural, political level to a local, practical level. The research questions focused how the problem of domestic violence is formulated at national and local level, scrutinizing the different discourses framing and reproducing the causes and solutions of the problem, and also to deduce how different context affects formulations. The empirical material consists of policy plans and interviews with social workers. The findings indicates that the issue of domestic violence is articulated differently on different levels. In action plans on the national level, the domestic violence is formulated within a structural discourse, being a problem on a (gender-) political level, whereas professional social workers recognizes domestic violence as a personal problem within an individual oriented discourse.