The purpose of this study is to research whether or not gender has an impact on assessments regarding the support for persons with special nedds (LSS personkrets 3). Administrators working in disability care are to make decisions on the basis of the individual's needs when assessing the need for aid and support. This study is based on qualitative interviews, with six administrators, and one head of operations. The empirical data collected has been thoroughly analysed from a gender perspective, rooted in Butler's theory regarding performativity and subversive actions, as well as Connell's gender regime, and Hirdman's gender contracts. Results show that administrators have ackknowledged and noticed differences in how male and female users express their needs, where the difference lies in the communication; females seem more reserved and shy, whereas males seem more outward and extroverted.

The aim of this thesis is to examine how salesperson control can be exercised in a retail store environment. A case study has been performed on a Swedish fashion company emphasizing the relationship between the company?s upper level management and their retail store operations in order to describe, analyze and classify the prevailing management control mechanisms. The paper presents an agency theoretical approach to the relationship applying behavior- and outcome based control theory, performance measurement theory and incentives theory in order to give a comprehensive image of the control system. The main finding is that the company?s management control system as applied to the sales force in its retail stores can be categorized as mainly behavior-based despite several explicit outcome-based features..

With an IT outsourcing project there are many factors affecting how efficiency andquality develop in the outsourced activity. The Purpose of this study is to identifythese factors through a case study in a global company that is dissatisfied with theefficiency and quality of their outsourced helpdesk. For data collection methodsinterviews and observations were used. Interviews were conducted with people fromdifferent parts of the company in three different countries, all somehow involved inthe outsourced system. The observations were made with the outsourced company tosee how the employees work and fill information gaps that the interviews could notcover.

Lansen Technology develops and sells alarm systems. The communication between the system devices are wireless. The radio protocol used by the system is developed by Lansen with the purpose to be energy efficient. The alarm systems target groups are individuals, businesses and government agencies. The current system is installed, configured and controlled from a control panel for all audiences.

Begreppet Counterinsurgency har fått stor uppmärksamhet, speciellt efter NATOs operationer i Afghanistan och Irak. Sedan den svenska Försvarsmakten ingått som medlem i NATO- samarbetet PFP (Partnership for Peace) är även Sverige sedan en tid tillbaka involverade i konflikten i Afghanistan. Mycket av det doktrinära arbetet i länder, involverade i dessa konflikter, har varit inriktat mot irreguljära konflikter och Counterinsurgency-operationer. Stora mängder forskning görs inom ämnet bland annat av den franska COIN-teoretikern David Galula. Galula utkom 1964 med sin bok Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice, och är internationellt erkänd som ett av de stora namnen inom COIN-teorin.Den sovjetiska invasionen av Afghanistan är en av modern tids största militära operationer.

This thesis focuses on the perception of immigration and refugees in the commonEuropean refugee and immigration policy. It identifies different discourses andstudies their development and interrelated power structures.Using the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe, documents from theEuropean Council, the Commission, the Justice and Home Affairs Council andParliament debates are analysed. The study is defined in the time span of 1999-2006, i.e. from the European Council's first agreement on developing a commonEuropean asylum system, following the period up till today.Four discourses are distinguished, focusing respectively on rights, security,European Union's needs, and cultural identity. I use Sandra Lavenex theory ofrealism and idealism to analyse one of the main points in the thesis: There is afundamental schism between the one rights-based discourse, focusing on universalhuman rights, and the three sharing a particularistic focus on immigration as asecurity concern.

The purpose of this study is to explore and understand the social and structural dynamics of an organization working with questions regarding development. The organization in question is Vi-agroforestry, a Swedish based NGO that works around the lake Victoria basin and the focus will be on their office in Rwanda. I have used a qualitative approach and conducted participatory observation as well as semi-structured interviews to gather data. I have emanated from the individuals in the organization by using a theory of microsociological organisationperspecive to understand how the employees create and is created by the existing social structures. (Blomberg, 2003) Even though the office in Rwanda only is a relatively small part of Vi-agroforestry?s operations it is still highly individual and independent from the rest of the organization.

This Masters thesis work describes a comparison between two different methods for estimation of the down channel (base station to mobile subscriber) in Wide-band Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA). The first estimation method, Optimal Feed-forward Channel Estimation (OFCE), is a conventional method that bases the estimates on data that is known to both sender and receiver, so called pilots. The second method, Decision Directed Channel Estimation (DDCE), is an elaboration of OFCE. It also uses user data for estimation. Simulations show that DDCE, in comparison to OFCE, does not attain an improvement in signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) for high bit error rates (BER).

Nato:s planeringsmodell Comprehensive Operations Planning Directive ska framgent användas för nationell militär planering. Anpassning till svenska förhållanden kommer att genomföras. Överbefälhavaren betonar redan i inledningen på ny Militärstrategisk doktrin att uppdragstaktik ska vara grunden för ledning i Försvarsmakten. Forskningen i uppsatsen fokuserar till mötet mellan planeringsmetod och betoning av att uppdragstaktik ska vara grunden för ledning.Syftet är att identifiera om operativ planering enligt COPD och doktrinens betoning av uppdragstaktik harmonierar. Genom det kan uppsatsen bidra med ny kunskap inom området och med ett analysverktyg för uppdragstaktik.För att genomföra analys av COPD har ett analysverktyg skapats, baserat på olika forskares teorier om vad som stödjer och motverkar uppdragstaktik.Forskningen visar att COPD i hög grad stödjer uppdragstaktik i ett filosofiskt perspektiv, men i lägre grad i praktiken.

Companies will increasingly begin to link their applications, and the technology that makesthis possible is called integration. The more applications that are connected, the more of the company's data flows through these integrations. It is also clear that data analyses to create business value and to get competitive advantages against its competitors are important. In this paper, we examine how companies create business value and competitive advantages throughthe integration platforms and metadata from the integrations. We have interviewedpeople from three companies in the industrial sector, each with an integration platform.We have also interviewed Enfo Zystems, a company that provides development andmanagement of integration platforms to these customers.

The topic of this thesis interest is the relation between branding as a place making/marketing technology and the process of regionalization. The main proposition advocated is that the officially communicated image of the Øresund Region, as a cohesive place and community, is a space that has been configured with branding and can be described as a territorial simulation. The concept of territorial simulation consists of two conjoined terms: simulation which aim at explaining the idiosyncratic brand image, as a social formation, which does not represent the place it imitates but commoditise it; and territorial which seeks to visualize the process of the unfolding of this image as a territory. The main argument is made in the third chapter, which traces the process of actualization of the brand image as a territory: ?Øresund?.

This report presents the development process of a mobile interface for the C2-monitor. A monitoring tool used to support the operations for the broadcasting services of Ericsson Broadcasting and Media Services (EBMS). With the support of the C2-monitor, operators can monitor hundreds of channels and services produced from EBMS. To enhance a more flexible working environment, the C2-monitor needs to be developed further to support mobile devices with a customized design to take advantage of mobile phones features and functionality. Established and well-recognized design methods and principles have been applied in the development process and user testing have been made iteratively throughout the project.

The purpose of this paper is to study how Swedish CFOs perceive that the requirement for companies to issue quarterly reports affect business operations in the company. The fact that it is regulations on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, and not the law, that requires companies to issue quarterly reports makes Sweden unique in Europe. The paper is based on interviews with CFOs from 32 companies quoted on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. The major finding in the study is that a majority of the CFOs perceive that the pressure for short term results, created by quarterly reports, affect their work and the investment decisions made in the company. Also CFOs feel that the market over interprets the information given in quarterly reports.

This thesis aims at studying representatives from three groups in the Egyptian society with an ethnographic method and with regards to their experiences, reflections and stories of the Egyptian revolution. The material of the thesis is based on ethnographic fieldwork and on interviews.The purpose of the study is to explore different themes in the informants? stories related to society, freedom, social justice, human values, peace and civility. The purpose is also to examine the informants' stories with emphasis on various informal learning processes that occurred in the Egyptian social change.The study finds that according to the informants a society should be characterized, among other things, by human values, social justice, non-violence and peaceful methods and approaches. Various informal learning processes involving both individual citizens and active members of civil society and NGO groups were found to be practiced to be able to accomplish these changes in the Egyptian society to create a better future.The degrees of involvement of the various learning processes not only reflect differences between informants regarding the social and cultural background.

The purpose of this essay was to inquire how workplace conflicts are managed at a number of public social services offices in south-western Skåne. This essay's main research questions were: What organizational factors determine how conflicts arise and are managed in a work environment? To what extent are such factors prevalent at the above-mentioned social services offices? Are certain conflicts typically prevalent in the public social services? If so, what are they? How does the workplace in question manage the conflicts that arise? The inquiry was conducted among the staff of three public social services offices, applying the vignette method. According to previous research, certain system conflicts are typically prevalent in public sector organizations, which adversely affect the work conditions of social workers at the organization's professional level. Two examples each of this conflict type and of interpersonal conflict were included in the inquiry.