Executive summary This master thesis was originally based on a specific assignment given to the authors from ABB Full Service, a unit specializing in providing maintenance outsourcing: ?How can ABB Full Service expand its offering of providing fundamental maintenance by seamlessly incorporating the business concept with competencies and solutions from other ABB divisions?? The academic issue was developed throughout the thesis, resulting in the following formulation: ?From an organizational perspective; how can service providers bring continuous added value to intra-organizational outsourcing partnerships?? Many of the key findings of this thesis are reflected in the issue. The term intra-organizational outsourcing is a proposed addition to the terminology in the academic discourse on outsourcing. The definition of the term is: ? Where an organization outsources a business process interlinked with the physical operations, requiring the service provider to take over a preexisting unit and its employees.This is an accurate description of the form of outsourcing that ABB Full Service is engaged in.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the ongoing changes in German family policy. It explores the issue of whether the German welfare state, in this policy field, can still be regarded as a conservative welfare model or rather approaches a more liberal or social democratic model. A qualitative method is used to analyze the material, especially from the German government, including press releases, other public documents and also articles from the political weekly magazines Der Spiegel and Die Zeit. The changes analyzed are the new parental benefit, the expansion of child care, the concept of whole-day schools and the system of joint taxation. The point of departure is Gösta Esping-Andersen?s categorization of three types of welfare states: the social democratic, the conservative and the liberal.

Large areas of forests in the tropical region have during the last decades been lost and converted to new land uses while other areas have been degraded into secondary forests. These secondary forests need to be restored and rehabilitation through enrichment planting and liberation may help to speed up the recovery process. The objective of this thesis was to evaluate a rehabilitation method that includes enrichment planting, slashing of weeds and girdling of unwanted trees. The site for the project is situated in Sabah, Borneo in a secondary forest which had been logged and burnt by a wildfire. The project?s goal is to rehabilitate and increase biodiversity through enrichment planting of seedlings mainly belonging to the family Dipterocarpeaceae (dipterocarps).

The aim was to evaluate and suggest improvements for the prototype TIVOLI (sign-learning via computer-based playful interaction). The game purposed to give children who need signing as augmentative and alternative communication enhanced signing skills. Three children in need of signs played TIVOLI at home during 4-5 weeks. Data contained parental interviews, Talking Mats interviews, assessment of signing competence before and after the evaluation period and game protocols. One game interaction per child was filmed.

Enligt Bandura (1997) är self-efficacy tron på den egna förmågan att slutföra uppgifter och nå mål. Denna studie undersökte sambandet mellan upplevd beslutsfrihet under sena tonåren, upplevd stress från föräldrar under sena tonåren, upplevd optimism under sena tonåren och self-efficacy. Stickprovet på 133 studenter, varav 35 män och två av okänt kön skattade sina upplevelser och self-efficacy. En multipel hierarkisk regressionsanalys visade att self-efficacy korrelerade positivt med både beslutsfrihet och optimism vilket gav stöd för hypotes 1 och 3. Variationen i de oberoende variablerna och kontrollvariablerna kunde förklara 12% av variationen i self-efficacy.

The use of chainsaws in both private forestry and commercial companies is highly associated with personal injuries and accidents with deadly outcome. As a result to this, a driver?s license for chainsaws was presented in the year 2005. To get the license you have to attend a course given by the Swedish Forest Agency or one of several private educators. This study is an evaluation of one course given by the Swedish Forest Agency in Uppsala.

In this study we have examined the possible quality standards and methods for applications with service workshops in the forest industry. The purpose of the methods presented here was to start the work of standarardising the maintenance service in the industry and be of use for service providers in their quality effort.The methods we used to accomplish the study were interviews and field visits together with a comprehensive literature research. Our results are presented in the form of four solution proposals: a standard based on existing SIS standards for terminology and key indicators, checklists that are filled in by mechanics with customer participation, the construction of a instructions database, and the implementation of the method 5s.We believe our suggestions can help the service providers in the four problem areas that we have identified: long term strategy, documentation, recruitment of competent technicians, and standard procedures in their operations. These improvements will be beneficial for both the service provider and the customer..

The maintenance phase within software projects is typically very expensive in terms of resources. The activities of this phase are largely focused around some form of modification of program code. This leads one to consider if there are alternative methods of code production that results in code that allows for less costly modifications. This thesis has its basis in a subset of those concepts which research has shown to provide more flexible code. Once this subset is established, connections are made between the concepts within the subset and claims of benefits provided by the use of Test Driven Development (TDD) methodology.

Journalists´ role in society has traditionally been of representative nature with a task to distribute news and scrutinize those in power. But technological changes have created a new publishing world outside the traditional media institutions. In today?s redactional society anyone can become a publisher in a blog or through other channels on online. This process can be seen as contributing to increased democratization giving everyone the opportunity to publish.

Tidigare har målteorier, föräldrastöd och karriärutveckling studerats men hur upplever unga vuxna sin anställningsbarhet i relation till sitt sociala arv från föräldrarna? Detta är studiens syfte att undersöka. Intervjuer genomfördes med 15 deltagare från två klasser på en gymnasiefriskola. En kvalitativ innehållsanalys för kategorisering och tematisering utfördes. Det uppkom tre teman: handling, medvetet betydelsefullt och teoretiskt betydelsefullt.

Syftet med studien var att studera föräldrainvolvering och barns motivation till tennis utifrån föräldrars perspektiv relaterat till Tennis Syds pågående projekt Tennis10s. I studien deltog 64 föräldrar i åldrarna 31-58 år (m=41,69 sd=5,14) varav 26 var kvinnor (m=40,08 sd=4,98) och 38 män (m=42,79 sd=5,01) som hade barn aktiva inom tennis i åldrarna 6-11 år. I studien användes instrumenten Motivation Till Idrott samt Parental Involvement Sport Questionnaire. Resultaten visade att föräldrar rangordnade kompisskap, laganda, glädje och kompetens som de främsta motivationsfaktorerna till att sitt barn spelar tennis. Föräldrarna rangordnade beröm och förståelse samt aktiv involvering som de mest förekommande beteendena i sitt upplevda engagemang kring sitt barns tennis deltagande.

In this paper, a navigation support approach for speech-only interaction based on auditory icons for room-based designs is presented, i.e. naturally occurring sounds that have a natural mapping to the system's underlying design metaphor. In contrast to many recent investigations that have focused on multi-modal or augmented reality systems, this paper concerns a unimodal speech and sound-only system. An auditory icon based prototype system for buildings maintenance support using a room-based metaphor was developed. The design was evaluated in a comparison with earcons and no-sound designs.

Parenting is increasingly seen as a profession which requires training and support with the purpose of creating improved interaction. A central question appears to be how the concept of interaction is defined. The aim of this study is to examine how training programs, trainers and parents perceive this concept, whether they define it the same way and whether trainers succeed in reaching parents with the message of what it actually is that will improve in the area of interaction. The study uses a phenomenological approach and a qualitative method.The research subject is the parental training program Komet, a manual-based education program for parents. The goal of the program is to offer families training in methods that have strong scientific support in order to reduce conflicts and to improve the relation and interaction between children and parents.One important result of the study is that parents and trainers viewed the concept of interaction from different perspectives.

The aim of this research is to examine how the homes of children, in cooperation with the schools, are offered opportunities to communicate and discuss mathematics together with the children in relevant situations. The overall intent of the study is manifest in scientific questions with focus on how parents view the subject and the opportunities to support their children with math homework as well as possibilities to actively support their child´s mathematics progress. The paper has a pfenomenographic approach, which means that it in a qualitative way describes similarities and differences in the ways the homes perceive this issue. The examination is implemented through a survey in which responds from 73 parents in four classes have been studied. Within this study six semi constructed interviews have been conducted.

The purpose of the present pilot study was to evaluate the parentalintervention ComAlong at the Division of Child Language, for parents ofchildren with severe language impairment. ComAlong is one of the parentalinterventions developed in the AKKTIV project. AKKTIV stands foraugmentative and alternative communication ?early intervention. Thepresent study consists of a case study, a compilation of course evaluationsand an interview with the two leaders of the course.