Efficiency has become an important objective for many providers of welfare services. Among Swedish schools, both private and public, increased administrative demands seemingly influence operations, and affect teachers negatively through perceived stress. Simultaneously, Swedish students scored an all-time low in the latest PISA survey, and are now performing below the OECD-average in science, mathematics and reading. A central administrative task in the Swedish elementary school is the parent-teacher conference, which is an important activity in supporting the development of the student's knowledge and social skills. Lean is a well-established operations framework, which has proven successful in order to improve process efficiency.

This thesis investigates how web agencys in Stockholm use, value and incoroprate the terms usability, user experience and interaction design in their work process. The purpose of this study is to investigate how creative professionals works with the notions of usability, user experience and interaction design with focus on the end user. Our definition of creative professionals is every employee at a web agency involved in the work process of developing digital artefacts in any capacity. We wanted to investigate how these notions are considered, consciously or unconsciously, during the workprocess. Semi-structured interviews were conducted at three different web agencys with eight different employees.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate how large Swedish corporations within the same industry protect themselves against foreign exchange risks and to determine if there is a general practice for how the protection is done. What is the responsibility structure at these corporations regarding the handling of exposure to foreign exchange?.

The object for this study is a company developing and manufacturing vehicles for heavy transportation. The company distributes their products on a global market. Therefore the company is required to have efficient internal production development processes in order to successfully beat the competition. The purpose of this master thesis is to study how this particular company intends to implement their standardized theoretical product development process within their organization and how well it is done. We intend to identify and specify if the process has any unexploited capacity.

The forest in the county of Småland has been utilised for a long time. One of the most important forms of utilisation of wood has been charcoaling for the benefit of the iron industry. Shortage of forest in relation to the iron industry, was discussed already in the 17th century in Sweden. The aim of this study was to analyse the purchase and consumption of charcoal at Storebro Bruk, an ironwork in Småland, during the period 1793-1850, as well as analyse the shortage of forest at the time. To determine the utilisation of the forest in the area, I have used historical sources from Storebro Bruksarkiv.

Since 2007, I´ve been working in the steel industry in a place called ?SSAB?. That?s why itseemed right to contact them for this thesis.The SSAB concern is global, but SSAB Sweden involves raw steel producing in Luleå, heavyplate producing in Oxelösund, and sheet metal producing in Borlänge..

The aim of the study is to show how a selected part of the European Language Portfolio, ELP, can support the assessment process for teachers. All the checklists at level A1 and My Language Goals from the Language Biography, a part of the ELP, are implemented and communicated in teaching in a 4th grade class of students. Two teachers are interviewed and both of their classes are compared in the study. One group worked for two weeks with the selected part of the Language Portfolio and the second group followed the regular curriculum for the same period of time. The teachers are interviewed before and after the ELP through support of mind maps.Results show that by using checklists at level A1 and My Language Goals students become aware of their own learning process.

The music industry has been subject to great changes during the last ten years. The most significant factor contributing to this change is the increasing usage of broadband and thereby the increasing frequency of downloading music illegally. Music piracy and file sharing have caused record sales to plummet. Consumers have now moved on to consuming music in a digital format, not only through downloading but also from streaming music online, an activity partly made possible by social media channels such as YouTube. As the consumption patterns have changed companies within the music industry have been forced to find other sources of income than record sales and they have also needed to find alternate ways to market their artists.

This paper aims to derive the Black-Scholes equation for readers without advanced knowledge in finance and mathematics. To succeed, this paper contains a theoretical chapter in which concepts such as options, interest rate, differential equations and stochastic variable are explained. This paper also presents the theory of stochastic processes such as the Wiener process and Ito process. In the chapter on the Black-Scholes model the Ito process is used to describe price of shares and with the help of Ito's lemma Black-Scholes equation can be derived. In the paper, assumptions are listed that apply to the Black-Scholes model and then uses the Black-Scholes equation to calculate the price of a European call option.

Mergers and Acuisitions are becoming increasingly common. This can be explained with the fact that the competition is increasing. Therefore many companies are forced to join other markets. This thesis inquires into the process of Mergers and Acqusitions when one company buys another company. The main focus is set on how three different banks handle the process of Mergers and Acqusitions and what results this leads to. These are: Kaupthing Bank, Nordea and Citibank.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how key performance indicators are being used as performance management tools within the production industry. Specifically the purpose is to investigate how the KPI:s within the telecommunications industry drives reusability regarding production test systems. This thesis will also highlight today?s cost models and suggest improvements of the KPI and what new ones could be introduced. A case study at Ericsson AB has been performed.

During year 2004 Ålö AB made significant change in their production process. The production of front loaders is nowadays highly automated with short operation times. To be able to control their process in a better way Ålö recently decided that they needed a tool for simulation of their production and to shift patterns. This final thesis started with a pilot study in Ålö?s factory in Brännland.

The most common preventive and treatment service for children in child welfare services in Sweden is the contact family program. The number of children who are involved in the program has steadily increased. Usually it is a single mother who apply for or is offered this service. The aim with a contact family is that the parent should get respite and that the child should have its network enlarged and sometimes get a male role model.The purpose of this study was to look into how children´s perspective was considered in the contact family process. I have studied the process in order to see how it works and to see to what extent children is participating.

Traditionally, mining has been performed mechanically with implementation ofyesterdays (and older) data. Several mining companies have started to useautonomous technology and robotics in the production areas although the harshmining environments make it unsuitable for today's electronic equipment. Despite allthe obstacles along the way of digitization, there seems to be no end in sight as thisdevelopment continues. This thesis focuses on what the mining industry is aiming forand why the mining companies are interested in these technologies. The actors of themining industry can be found to have a vision for the future mine, a production with ahigher degree of digitization and resemblances to a factory.

The main argument of the thesis is that multinational companies (MNCs) can promote democracy through corporate social responsibility (CSR). MNCs hold some prerequisites giving them the means to create positive changes. But they lack one important prerequisite: knowledge about local conditions. Therefore the best CSR result is reached through partnerships with local NGOs.H&M's CSR-work in Bangladesh, including a partnership with the Bangladeshi women's rights organisation Karmojibi Nari, serves as an illustrating case. It is argued that the CSR-work promotes democracy through strengthening the civil society, through indirectly implementing national laws concerning labour legislation and human rights and through raising awareness about rights and legislation among the workers.The CSR process changes the terms for both NGOs and MNCs.