During the last decades major changes has occurred at the financial markets, meaning an increasing supply and a greater variation of financial instruments. The saving habits of the Swedish people have gone from traditional bank deposits to investments in equities, funds and bonds. All this together with the great rise in the stock market at the late 90?s has brought words like risk and return up-to-date, and is the background to the development of a new law concerning financial advising which come into force the 1th of July 2004. The contents of the thesis can be described as three bricks, representing the survey questions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the image of the Titanic disaster in two Swedish newspapers reports of the disaster. By analysing various newspapers reporting of the disaster, we wish to investigate whether there are differences in reporting of gender and class in order to say something about the contemporary outlook and the prevailing social beliefs.The source material that the study is based upon comes from the Swedish newspapers Aftonbladet and Svenska Dagbladet and their reports from the 15 April to the 30 April 1912 and the reporting from the time of the sea-hearings completion (22 May and 31 July 1912).The study finds that news reporting follows the same standards, however, are different in style of performance because of the newspapers' differing positions.The study finds that a distinction is made between the reporting of men's and women's behaviour. Whether a man followed or violated norms leads him criticized or praised in the newspapers. Women's behaviour is hailed independent if they followed the standard of what was feminine or masculine behaviour in a disaster.The study also finds that a distinction is made between passengers of the various classes in the reporting. The majority of reports concerning individuals in the First Class are in positive terms.

In theory, the logic behind partnerships is simple: All organisations have strengths, but no organisation has all the strength required to do everything. Triggered by global perspectives and challenged by sustainability objectives, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 pointed out needs for corporate responsibility. In this conference, Private-public partnership, PPP, was identified as a potential way to work towards sustainability, especially as a way to emphasize a corporate responsibility commitment. Nowadays, organizations exist to satisfy the needs and interests of all their stakeholders, such as customers, markets, shareholders, as well as secondary stakeholders such as media, NGOs, and society at large. Addressing all stakeholders and working towards a sustainable business development makes PPP a potential solution, but also a source of challenges.

Over the last decade, the private insurance market has undergone a stable growth in turnover and growing demand for insurance products in all Member States of the European Union. Therefore, the creation of a single market in insurance will enable consumers to have access to wider choice of insurance products, and insurance companies to gain access to markets in various Member States and compete effectively. The EU legal framework for the insurance industry embraces the Treaty freedoms of services, establishment and capital, the EC Directives and the ECJ case-law. The present thesis identifies numerous factors that hinder the Community insurance market integration and offers possible remedies. The summary of the market obstacles is all-inclusive and reflects the responses to the questionnaires and the Commission surveys.

Managers operating within the dynamic society of today are said to rely on intuition when effective and quick decisions are to be made. This skill or phenomenon has aroused an interest within the academic world of management whom has explored intuition, its relation to decision making and its influencing factors, especially in the private sector. Intuitive decision making is however not isolated solely to this sector but also involved in decision making associated to the public sector. Therefore, the aim of the thesis is to investigate whether managers at the hospital Akademiska in Uppsala involve intuition in decision making and to what extent the factors time, amount of information, individual experience and decision complexity influence the intuition.The theoretical framework includes academic research regarding how intuition and rationality affect decisions, the concept of intuition and factors influencing the intuitiveness of decision making. Furthermore the theoretical discussion explores intuition connected to leadership, negative aspects of intuitive decisions and a comparison between different factors that separates public and private sector in terms of decision making.

The purpose of the study was to find out whether the interaction between mentally disabled individuals and pet positively affects the individual and gives a feeling of well-being to the extent that this might be implicated in the psychologically disabled people?s everyday life in some form of rehabilitation measure. The study is qualitative and builds on an ethnographic design. Data collection was performed through six observations, six interviews and reflections. Interviews were also conducted with relatives and assistants for greater opportunity for follow-up questions, and descriptions of the situation.

Aim: The aim of this study was to explore the care providers' experiences in enabling communionship and solitude in daily living for elderly living in old age homes in a South African context. Method: This study was done using a qualitative analysing method, with empirical data obtained from nursing staff of elderly. The study was phenomenological which aims at deepen the understanding of human experiences as phenomenon. The data was collected by using a groupinterview which included five informants from an old age home in Pretoria. The analysis included two steps; Naive reading and structural analysis in order to transform the individual elucidations into an abstract which had no individual touch.

Introduction: A general guideline was introduced on October first 2010 regarding a mortgage cap, limiting the degree of leverage of housing as collateral. Through the new guidelines the marked conditions concerning consumers? choice of mortgage has changed. The consumers are limited in the sense that they can?t only use mortgage when purchasing a house.

Background: The Swedish Parliament passed a law change in late 2010, suspending the former requirement for all Swedish incorporated companies to have an auditor. The new limit values allow the smallest incorporated companies to dismiss the auditor of the company (or not appoint one in the case of a newly started company). The opinions of abolishing mandatory audit vary, and little research has been done post to the law change. However, a new situation has arisen, meaning the optional choice of voluntary audit, for some companies.Aims and research questions: The aim of the thesis is to examine the reasons behind voluntary audit in Sweden, as well as what value companies, having chosen audit, see in their auditor. The following research questions have been used in order to fulfill the aim of the thesis: ?Why do small private owner-led incorporated companies in Sweden voluntarily choose audit?? and ?What value does the voluntarily chosen auditor add to the companies??Methodology: The research questions were formulated after reviewing relevant literature and scientific articles regarding the topic of voluntary audit, as well as the recent law change in Sweden.

We want to identify the gap that consists of the expectations we have of Brazilian / Swedish culture with the self-image of these individuals included in the culture of question. This gap, we believe, creates a problem for business across borders. The reader is therefore made aware of the issues that affect our expectations and our self-image, and how this can be used to explain cultural differences..

Objective: In recent years there has been an increasing interest within the clinical (medical) science in measuring people?s health. When estimating quality of life, present practise is to use the EQ-5D questionnaire and an index which weighs the different questions. The question is what happens if the individuals estimate there own health, would it differ from the public preferences? The aim is to make a new prediction model based on the opinion of patients and compare it to the present model based on public preferences.Method: A sample of 362 patients with unstable coronary artery disease from the Frisc II trial, valued their quality of life in the acute phase and after 3, 6 and 12 months.

Historically Sweden had a confessional teaching of religion in school, that is the starting point ofthis essay. In the Swedish school system the students have the right to believe whatever they wantbut they will be introduced to different beliefs in the subject religion. Even the church focuses onthe individuals own beliefs during confirmation. This essay explores if there is something in aconfessional teaching that contributes to the students' knowledge in religion as a school subject.Therefore a quantitative study have been performed. The study aimed to investigate the grades ofthe students that participated in confirmation and how the grades changed after the confirmation.

The purpose of this study was to examine how the needs of social assistance for people with substance abuse are assessed in accordance to The Swedish Social Services Act 4th chapter 1§. The purpose was also to examine how substance abuse is assessed as a social problem by social workers, how the municipal guidelines concerning social assistance for substance abuser were constructed in relation to the Social Service Act and finally how social workers made their assessments of the need of social assistance to people with substance abuse in relation to the legislation. The sample was made among the municipalities in the county of Stockholm. Municipal guidelines were studied in 18 municipalities by content analysis. A sample of 11 social workers was chosen from 5 municipalities.

Most descriptions of stereotypic behaviours have in common that these repetitive behaviours only has been observed in captive animals and therefore it has been proposed that stereotypies exist because we house animals in environments that are sub-optimal to them. Some scientists claim that performance of stereotypies in itself decreases the animal's welfare due to costs in time, energy and health and a poorer quality of life. Other scientists assert that individuals performing stereotypies may have a better welfare compared to the rest of the animals in the same environment, since these individuals have developed strategies to cope with stress. Studies have estimated the prevalence of abnormal behaviours in horses to 18-30 % of the population. Several studies on cribbing have revealed a prevalence of 4-5 %, although some results indicate that more than 10 % of the horse population performs this stereotypy.

Weblogs, or blogs, are frequently modified web pages with a series of archived entries, generally in reverse chronological sequence. This thesis focuses on the rapid-growing phenomenon of weblogs and the fact that individuals with a background in library and information science are frequent users of weblogs. Since this is an explorative inductive study the ultimate purpose can be described as to find out what ?blogging? as activity is about. The research questions posed are: Why do individuals with a background in library and information science use weblogs? How does their professional identity affect their blogging? And finally; how do they use the weblog to create networks with other bloggers? The empirical material consists of audiotaped interviews with five informants who are all employed in knowledge work, either as librarians or information specialists.