Outdoor recreation habits in metropolis and rural areasThis study aims to examine the perception of nature and outdoor recreation habits from an urban-rural prospective. The urbanization process continues in Sweden and the populations of the cities are growing continuously. Trends to build more compact and ?climate smart? reigns and with this a risk that green areas and areas where outdoor recreation can be practiced are situated further and further away from the urban population. Analyzing the responses from a survey made by the research program Friluftsliv i förändring 2007 we have examined if and which differences exists between urban and rural areas regarding their perception of nature, outdoor recreation habits and factors influencing the practice of outdoor recreation.

The agricultural sector has historically seen stable prices and a relatively constant demand for its products. Companies within the sector have generally had few loans and large sums of money tied in assets. The profitability of the companies has on the other hand been low. Together these circumstances have determined the creditors? demands on the companies within the sector and have formed the rules and regulations that exist today.

In today?s consumption society, the image and core values of a company have become more important in order to secure the attention on the market. All entrepreneurs have to distinguish themselves in the extremely tight competition.This thesis examines how product photos can reach out to the consumers successfully. Both students have previous experiences from model shoots ? but now want to study the possibilities to sell a product without a human model.The purpose of the thesis is to examine how to convey core values by commercial product photos - how to best capture the attention of a customer.

Background: When companies decentralize their operations into profit centers, transfer pricing often becomes an integral part in intracompany trade. A profit center may affect both revenues and costs and seek to maximize profit. Transfer Pricing is a complex subject because it is affected by a large number of factors including the profit centers will to generate profits. This leads us to the subject of decision-making in a transfer pricing-systems. On what grounds are decisions made? Are transfer pricing purposes, factors and interests taken into consideration? What type of information is used in such decisions, how is the transfer price issue perceived and how is it used?Aim: The purpose of this thesis is to analyze which type of information that is makes up transfer prices, how the transfer price is perceived by different parties and how it is used for decision-making.Completion: A qualitative study has been performed with current theory as a starting point.

Based on 30 years of work experience in TV and film production, I have made a phenomenological analysis of my perception of meaning in work - how it arises and how it is undermined. The story starts in my experience of early professional film making in the 1980's and describes how a change to work in TV production required the development of a new professional identity. The text also illustrates how as a female director I have managed my role in a male dominated and structured work environment. Being defined as an exception from the male norm has pushed me towards femininist reflection and the need to redefine my own work role - the generally accepted view having felt uncomfortable. An analysis of structural change in TV and film production shows how market pressures and ways of thought have increasingly invaded cultural endeavour. Professional spheres of influence are weakened, while developments in the media are characterised by a commercialism which encroaches more and more upon artistic, spiritual and moral values. This attitude, where quality is in retreat, has transformedprogramme makers from creative originators into becoming suppliers of raw material in a factory- like process geared to produce great volume at low cost.The aim of this essay is to show how changes in society and in TV and film making have affected my perception of my work.

Employers are becoming more and more aware of that the internal communication between employees is the reason why organizations are being held alive and also what impact the office environment has on employees work performances and their communication. The aim of our study was to gain an understanding of what significance an office's spatial design has for the communication between employees and managers in the workplace. We have through qualitative interviews with managers and employees from different business cases gotten a perception of their ways of communicating with each other. The results showed that employees and leaders thought that they shared the same picture of what their communication was like in reality, how they thought their ways of marking their territory in the office was understood and respected and what their opinions and expectations of how the communication between them and their leaders should be like. These results were then analyzed in consideration with relevant theory and previous research in the disciplines of office environment and communication studies.The main conclusions that have been drawn from the analysis are that the work environment's design can be both positive and negative at the same time and that what should be focused on is the leaders' communication. The leaders and their employees have to communicate more about their communication between them so thart misunderstandings can be avoided in the office environment - and therefore become more effective..

The Smart Grid technology has during the last decade been established as a way to create a greater flexibility on the electricity grid that will be needed as the development moves towards an increased share of renewable primary energy sources in the electricity production. One part of the Smart Grid technology is the ability to shift loads in time, to adapt to either price or emissions, known as Demand Response. This project, which was conducted at KTH in collaboration with the consulting corporation Capgemini, examines the economic, environmental and social aspects of the Demand Response technology. In the project, three household products are used in a model that derives the potential savings in costs and emissions of CO2e. The results show that the actual savings measured in SEK are small, but that the savings measured in percent can be as high as 20 percent. Reduction of CO2e emissions is slightly lower.

The independent audit function plays an important role in our modern society as it strengthens the credibility of information given out by firms. A fundamental condition for the maintenance of confidence towards the audit function is the auditor?s independence. This phenomenon has been acknowledged threw several well-known audit scandals during the last decade, including the classical Enronscandal. In the repercussions of these huge auditing scandals, governments all over the world were now founding more restrictive rules and laws about audit independence.

Commercial strategies are becoming more common in an increasing number of sports - Swedish golf is no exception. Previous research shows that new opportunities for non-profit organizations, to assign parts of their operations to a limited company, do not have any economic importance. The supplementary question arises why more golf clubs nonetheless choose to corporatize its activities? Is the purpose of commercial strategies generally linked to business- or sport-related success? This paper, containing two studies, aims to create an understanding of the underlying drivers of commercialization, and furthermore to quantitatively demonstrate how commercialization is reflected within Swedish golf in terms of strategy and marketing. Swedish golf clubs were categorized as more or less commercial, and examined based on business-related variables such as communications, brand awareness and price discrimination, as well as sports-related variables as success factors and success indicators.

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 aim of this bachelor thesis has been to investigate what affected the body ideals of teenage girls attending the Swedish upper secondary school and thus, the questions for the investigation were: Who/what ?gives? teenage girls their body ideals today and what is considered as an influence of these young teenage girls today with regard to their perception of their own body? The theoretical perspective on the thesis were symbolic interactionism, Gidden's theory on "late"-modernity as well as Ziehe's theory on reflexivity. A quantitative survey were conducted where questionnaires were the starting point. For convenience and simplicity , the author chose to perform the survey on a number of high schools in her vicinity. The headmasters in these schools were contacted and she got the contact infomation for the concerned teachers or the school social pedagogue.

The debate on the future of Nuclear power in Sweden has increased with the discussion on global warming. The uncertainty of fossil fuel- and carbonprices the latest years has aroused considerable interest in Nuclear from power companies, industry and politicians. Nuclear power plants have negligible CO2 emissions and are not directly affected by increased price of emission rights and fossil fuels. The future power production needs to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases to become sustainable. The purpose of this study is to examine the value for power producers to have the option to invest in Nuclear power and how a Nuclear power venture would affect future electricity prices. The study uses two methods, a traditional cash flow model and real option analysis, to estimate the value of Nuclear power.

Evaluating and choosing suppliers based on price alone, has traditionally been the dominant strategy for supplier selection within the purchasing function. With the origin of the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)-concept in the early 1990s, a new philosophy dawned that promoted the importance of knowing the effects of supplier performance on the buying firm?s internal costs. Since then, scholars have been arguing the case of TCO as a viable model for making purchasing decisions and conducting supplier evaluation. Still, after two decades little is known about its penetration and impact on the practices of buying corporations, leaving the questions of which costs are included in the purchasing organisations? decisions unanswered, and even more importantly why certain costs are considered and others not.

The interest for children´s clothing has increased in society. More and more children are born and parents are older when they have children. Education has become a natural feature in most people´s life, just as both parents often work today. The households have therefore better economy and thus greater consumption opportunities. Parents are, in greater extent, looking for personal and different clothing with focus on quality and, to some extent, exclusivity rather than just a cheap and functional garment.

Nearly 74 percent of the Swedish population invests in funds and the options are therefore various. The Swedish private investors can choose between active and passively managed funds. Fund managers, who seek to generate higher returns than the market, manage active managed funds. Unlike the active managed funds, passively managed funds do not require any active investment decisions.Fama?s (1970) efficient market theory reflects all available information in the stock price, therefore it is not possible to predict how the stock price changes.