?CSR and political consumption ? a study of Nike?s and Puma?s CSR-reports?The purpose of this dissertation is to examine if political consumption has influenced multinational corporations to improve their Corporate Social Responsibility reports and policies more, than a company who has not been a target for political consumption.This dissertation is a content analysis of Nike?s and Puma?s first (Nike 2001, Puma 2001) and latest (Nike 2007/09, Puma 2007/08) CSR- reports. Archie Carroll?s model of Corporate Social Responsibility is used as theoretical framework in this study. The model is used to focus on four areas within CSR; economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic.

Our study is focused on how the public sector can collaborate with the private sector on a certain issue. The public sector wanted to create a project to increase bicycling in the municipality of Kalmar. Our problem was to develop a sustainable way to collaborate between the two parties. We managed to present a suggestion on how the public sector with communication could improve their Public Relations with the private sector and therefore letting the parties benefit from their differences, thus making it possible to release synergy.Using semi-structured interviews and a workshop, we could clarify the values and attitudes of the parties to bring forth the core values to develop a shared vision. Where the identified differences were found, we used a dialog strategy based on intercultural conflict management as a communication tool.

Simulation of different systems can be done using a graphical model description of the system based on block diagrams. The simulation software Matlab/Simulink offers a lot of possibilities to describe a huge number of systems, which can be linear as well as nonlinear. The simulation using Matlab/Simulink is done by integration based on different kinds of numerical methods.When nonlinear Simulink-models are simulated, it is often interesting to apply a Kalman filter to handle the noise that may occur within the process as well as corrupting the measurement. However, application of such a filter leads to an extensive time-consumption despite using fast computers. The reason is that the existing Matlab functions are not constructed for time optimal evaluation.

Sammanfattning Utvecklingen och utbredningen av Leveraged buyouts förvärv har ökat i Sverige de senaste 5-15 åren, detta kan vara ett resultat av ett mer flöde på kapital och intresse av att investera. Dessutom har förmodligen den allt mer mogna private equity marknad tillsammans med det ökande behovet av effektivisering av bolagen bidragit till att allt fler förvärv sker med belånat kapital. Vi har i denna kvalitativa uppsats intervjuat tre private equity företag med syfte att försöka klargöra vilka investeringskriterier som ligger till grund för en leveraged buyout-transaktion, samt vilka branscher som lockar dessa private equity företagen. I slutsatsen har det framkommit att PE-företagen gör investeringar i mogna företag utan några preferenser på specifika branscher. Vidare har vi funnit att de två viktigaste faktorer som PE-företagen tar i beaktning vid investeringar är stabila kassaflöden och kompetent företagsledning i målbolagen..

Titel: Private equity-ägande och dess ekonomiska konsekvenser hos portföljbolagBakgrund: Det finns omstridda resultat inom den akademiska världen när det gäller vilka ekonomiska konsekvenser private equity-ägande leder till. Olika studier har kommit fram till att private equity-ägda portföljbolag både över- och underpresterar gentemot jämförbara företag. Skillnaderna i studiernas resultat tycks påverkas av vilken marknad som studien är utförd på. Detta då studier som är gjorda på marknader med spridd ägarkoncentration tenderar att visa på att private equity-ägande leder till positiva ekonomiska konsekvenser och tvärtom på marknader med koncentrerat ägande. Tidigare studier har också valt att fokusera på att studera private equity-ägda portföljbolag under högkonjunktur eller under både hög- och lågkonjunktur, det finns således till vår kännedom ingen tidigare studie som isolerar sin studie till att endast inkludera lågkonjunktur, vilket understryker relevansen av denna studie.Syfte: Syftet med denna uppsats är att genom en empirisk analys avgöra om och vilka ekonomiska konsekvenser PE-ägande får hos portföljbolag under en lågkonjunktur på den svenska marknaden som präglas av hög ägarkoncentration.Metod: Denna studie har en deduktiv ansats där fokus ligger på teorier som berör private equity-bolags applicering av strategiska och organisatoriska förändringar hos portföljbolag.

Venture capital firms and private equity firms have been the subject of much controversy in the last decade. During this period economies throughout the world have seen a steady increase of these types of firms as owners of companies. In Sweden this has certainly been the case and many argue that this trend will continue to grow stronger in the future. This trend is by many regarded as dangerous and as a threat to the ownership model that has characterized the Swedish economy for decades. Family ownership has been widely regarded as the most beneficial and responsible ownership model in Sweden.

The objective of this work was to evaluate and implement a number of energy saving functions for a specific embedded system. The functions were then grouped into a number of energy levels with known properties in terms of functionality, energy consumption, and transition time between the levels.The embedded system consisted of an AT91 ARM9 processor, GSM/GPRS modem, display, Ethernet and other peripheral units. Some energy saving methods that were considered were suspend to RAM, suspend to disk, frequency scaling, and methods for saving energy in the modem, Ethernet, USB and display backlight. The functions were grouped into levels and an interface was specified for controlling the energy level.It proved possible to get known properties within the defined energy levels, even though the paritioning of functions into these levels proved to be sub-optimal in a typical application usage scenario because it was designed for mainly energy consumption, not usage.The final result is a number of energy saving functions grouped into levels, which are controllable via an application interface. Each of the levels have a known energy consumption in both loaded and un-loaded mode..

The aim of this study is, using the Swedish expression ?kulturtant? (cultured lady) as starting point, to understand how and why women consume the products of the culture industry more eagerly than men. The study is using the concepts put forward by Pierre Bourdieu; fields, capital and habitus. It is a qualitative study based on discussions in focus groups, interviews and material gathered through Google Alerts. In the literature this gap between the sexes with regard to the higher consumption on behalf of women has been referred to as the ?puzzle? of women´s cultural consumption.The empirical results show that the women in the study are well aware of what they want to gain by participating in cultural activities like reading, going to concerts, watching plays or going to the movies.

The purpose of this study is to see how adolescent students in high school formulate their thoughts of death and if a belief in transcendent existence affects their thoughts. The study was done on two separate schools, one municipal school and one private religious school, in minor cities in Sweden. The method used was qualitative inquiries and the amount of participants was four from each school, eight in total. The result of the study showed that six out of eight participants had a belief of a transcendent existence, three from the municipal school and three from the religious private school. The result also showed that the participants from the municipal school that had a belief in an transcendent existence also had a belief in a form of ?afterlife?, this was however not reflected on the students in the religious private school where result showed that one out of four had a belief in a form of ?afterlife? and three view death as the final stage of existence..

The objective of this work was to evaluate and implement a number of energy saving functions for a specific embedded system. The functions were then grouped into a number of energy levels with known properties in terms of functionality, energy consumption, and transition time between the levels.The embedded system consisted of an AT91 ARM9 processor, GSM/GPRS modem, display, Ethernet and other peripheral units. Some energy saving methods that were considered were suspend to RAM, suspend to disk, frequency scaling, and methods for saving energy in the modem, Ethernet, USB and display backlight. The functions were grouped into levels and an interface was specified for controlling the energy level.It proved possible to get known properties within the defined energy levels, even though the paritioning of functions into these levels proved to be sub-optimal in a typical application usage scenario because it was designed for mainly energy consumption, not usage.The final result is a number of energy saving functions grouped into levels, which are controllable via an application interface. Each of the levels have a known energy consumption in both loaded and un-loaded mode..

Heat is distributed to the district heating customers through pipes with water as a heat carrier. The district heating system is complex. To decide what is leakages from the district heating net versus what is the water consumption of the plant, is difficult. Therefore, the purpose of this master thesis is to establish a model where the district heating net?s leakages but also the water consumption of the plant can be followed daily. The project is performed at Vattenfall´s district heating power plant in Uppsala. Information is gathered through discussions, drawings of the plant and guided tours of the plant.

Stump harvest could be found in the late 1970?s and the early 1980?s. And now when the prices on energy are high it has become an interesting topic again. This work has been conducted within Holmen Skog?s stump harvest testing in Norrköping.

Many grocery stores have products marked whit there private brands. The information about these brands is poor. We wanted to find out what the stores own brands stand for and what the manager of purchase thinks it stands for. We choose to concentrate on meat and cured meat and limit our study to ICA, Axfood and Coop because they are the three main actors in the Swedish branch of grocery. The supplier has traditionally manufactured products and made there own brands. These products have been distributed and sold to the consumer thru stores.

Syftet med denna rapport är att ta fram en specifikation för ett datorverktyg som visualiserar händelseupptäckt i aktiva databaser.Konventionella databashanteringssystem (DBHS) är passiva i den mening att data är skapad, hämtad, modifierad och raderad endast när en användare eller ett applikationsprogram explicit angivit detta. Många applikationer, såsom process control och power generation/distribution networks, kräver en snabb respons i kritiska situationer, och därför räcker inte ett passivt DBHS till. För dessa applikationer måste man kunna definiera villkor som övervakas av databasen. När dessa villkor sedan uppfylls utförs specificerade åtgärder/handlingar.Consumption modes är ett svårt och komplext område inom aktiva databaser. Som ett resultat av detta finns ett intresse i att använda visualisering för att lättare förstå de olika consumption modes som finns.En prototyp utformades för att fungera som underlag vid de intervjuer som senare genomfördes.

The aim of this thesis is to study how the form of ownership affects the freedom within an artistic organization such as a museum or an art gallery. I have compared a publicly owned organization, Moderna Museet, with a privately owned organization, Magasin 3. The study is limited to only investigating the area of exhibition activities. A qualitative method has been chosen, and the empirics have mainly been collected through semi-structured interviews.The result shows that the form of ownership affects the freedom. Overall, one can conclude that the missions of the organizations look different, where the privately owned organization is given a greater freedom within their mission than the publicly owned organization.