Due to the globalization and the changes in the market, companies have now realized the importance of a strong brand. This has led to the phenomena outsourcing. The relation between the branding consultant and his or her client has changed. Earlier the consultants worked as a single unit and were given a task to independently accomplish the assignment. Today there has to be co-operation between the two parties.

There are lots of theories about participatory democracy, but rather few examples of how to create it in practice. In the 1930´s, scientists at the Chicago School, implemented some projects within the Chicago Area Project, with the aim to decrease the youth delinquency in the socio disadvantaged areas surrounding Chicago. In this thesis, I assess wether these projects, and in particular the one at the Russell Square Area, have some common features with the thoughts of two of the most famous participatory democrats, Carole Pateman and Benjamin Barber. My question is if the Chicago Area Project could be seen as an experiment in participatory democracy. I find that participatory democrats could benefit from the experiences of the Chicago Area Project.

Syftet med den här studien är att beskriva processen som leder från utbrändhet till en ny vardag; en process som här benämns ?vägen tillbaka?. Studien är kvalitativ i sin karaktär och utgår från intervjuer med sex personer som erfarit utbrändhet. Vidare belyses de faktorer som informanterna upplever har bidragit till att de ?kommit tillbaka?, de hinder som försvårat i ?vägen tillbaka? samt hur identitet och självbild påverkats i processen.

The Swedish State Road Administration has since 1992 procured operations and maintenance of state roads on the open market. The procurement has been termed ?Grundpaket Drift?, GPD, and comprises mostly operational measures for road networks.The clients of GPD, SRA regions, have gradually changed the original documentation in order to adapt it to local conditions. This process has gradually led to that some parts of the documentation are creating problems for contractors interested in procuring jobs.This thesis tries to analyze GPD and clarify the differences that may be essential to the procurement process and to facilitate future joint working projects and processing descriptions..

In this paper we have chosen to work with both the background to the Library Act § 7a and followed the process of creating the library plan of Helsingborg City Library. We have tried to follow the process through the public text documents that are available. We start by giving a background to the library act and its additional § 7a. Then we give a recap of the emergence of the modern public libraries in Sweden during the last century until today. When the working group at the City Library in Helsingborg was working with the library plan, they had to take in count the strategic goals set up by Region Skåne, since Helsingborg is place in that area.

The aim of this study was to analyze the assessment of the primary school, from the teacher?s perspective. There has been an ongoing discussion regarding assessment and about the purposes of assessment for a long time. But there is a paucity of research on what teachers believe about. This study examined primary teachers? beliefs on major purposes of assessment.Assessment is the process of gathering and interpreting information about students? learning.

Research about social support and social networks has mostly concerned the impact on a person?s wellbeing and health. However an aspect largely neglected is how social support within the social networks can affect the process of giving up a drug abuse. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of what role the social support within different relationships can have on the process of giving up drug abuse. Furthermore the aim is to examine how a self-help group can provide social support in the transitional period after leaving a drug abuse.

This study has been carried out as a part of the EC funded project, SMARTDOC IST-2000-28137, with the objective of developing application components that provide highly interactive visualization and collaboration functionalities. The low-level components from the graphics library AVS OpenViz 2.0 are used as the development basis. The application components can be inserted into electronic documents that allow embedded controls such as web documents or Microsoft Word or PowerPoint documents. Instead of displaying results as static images, a SMARTDOC component provides the ability to visualize data and interact with it inside the document. Although the principal goal of the SMARTDOC project is to create components in a number of different application domains this study concentrates on developing a medical imaging application component in collaboration with the project partners AETmed and professor Alan Jackson at the University of Manchester.

China is one of the fastest growing markets of today and attracts billions of dollars in foreign direct investments. Swedish companies have not been late to follow and operate on the Chinese market driven by opportunities in sales, production, and sourcing. However, there has been limited research made on how and why Swedish companies extend their sourcing efforts in China. By combining research within the internationalization of export activities, concepts from global sourcing, and gathered empirical data from leading Swedish companies operating in China, the thesis develops a framework for analyzing the internationalization process of sourcing in China..

Sammanfattning Titel: Processer för Know-how transfer Seminarium: 2007-01-16 Nivå: Magisteruppsats i företagsekonomi 10p Författare: Emma Salde och Kristina Korelic Handledare: Carl R Hellberg och Anette Svingstedt Nyckelord: Know-how transfer, tacit kunskap, process, inlärning och kommunikation Problem: ? Varför satsar man på know-how transfer? Finns det någon speciell anledning eller faktor som påverkar företag till att genomföra detta? ? Hur går man tillväga för att samla den know-how som finns inom ett företag och skapa en produkt - tjänst av den som man säljer till kunder? ? Vad finns det för svårigheter och kritiska faktorer som påverkar denna process? Syfte: Syftet är att beskriva och analysera processen för know-how transfer. Metod: Vårt tillvägagångssätt har varit en fördjupning av de teoretiska studierna med komplement av intervjuer med två olika företag som är verksamma inom know-how transfer. Innan intervjuerna genomfördes så gick vi igenom sekundärdata. Vår empiriska undersökning är av kvalitativ karaktär, med frågeschema som utgångspunkt.

As the media attention society on the world climate change, interest in the environment and social impact has increased. This has in turn made even more companies choose to maintain a sustainability report that contains the three aspects of economic, environment and social impact. The demand for sustainability reports has increased among stakeholders. It has made the companies that establish this form of reports experienced economic benefits. The sustainability report than became a useful way to compete among businesses.

There is an increased pressure for firms to provide the financial market with additional information. Such disclosure is attached with different kinds of costs. In spite of these costs, and in spite of increased mandatory disclosures, firms choose to voluntary disclosure financial information to analysts and others. This indicates that firms also benefit from providing additional information. The subjects of this study is 431 annual reports from firms listed at the Stockholm Stock Exchange for 2002 and 2005 and the objective is to survey factors that can explain variations in firms? voluntary disclosure.

The aim with this study was to investigate the effects a change of manufacturing process would have on the mechanical properties of drill bits made of a WC/Co composite used for stone cutting. The method used today is sintering, where the material is heated in a conventional sintering oven. The other method was microwave sintering, where the material is heated by radiation in the microwave region. Also an investigation of the manufacturing cost were made.The main difference between the two heating methods is that the conventional way is a rather slow process and the microwave method is very fast. The material is also heated homogeniously in the method with mirowaves, aposed to the case with the conventional sintering where the material is heated from the outside in.This makes the material harder and more wear resistent.

The eld of Brain-computer interfaces (BCI) concerns linking together an external device with the brain of a human or an animal. By doing this the conventional use of a mouse or keyboard can be circumvented, which can greatly benefit people with different types of diseases that cause paralysis or other loss of motor control, such as Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). A BCI can also be used for cognitive training of either healthy or mentally impaired subjects to increase cognitive capabilities.In this thesis an implementation of an interface is made against such a device, the Emotiv EPOC Headset. The result is meant to be a stable basis for further study using the device. An in-depth study of the history of EEG and its current use in clinical work and research in the topics of BCI as well as Human-computer interaction (HCI) is presented.

Åtta semi-strukturerade djupintervjuer genomfördes i syfte att kartlägga svenska formgivares och förlagsanställdas strategiska och kreativa arbetsprocess samt olika attityder vid arbetet med praktverk och coffee table-böcker. Dessa böckers termer och definitioner diskuterades även, samt boktypens förut-sättningar och utmaningar på marknaden. I denna rapport presenteras funna teman rörande dessa tankemönster och attity-der, samt en generell beskrivning av arbetsprocessen. Produktionen av coffee table-böcker och praktverk fanns vara komplex på grund av att den involverade många personer, tog lång tid i anspråk, var kost-sam och hade relativt små vinstmarginaler vilket därmed kunde förenas med vissa risker. Respondenterna upplevde generellt arbetet som spännande, roligt och givande.Studien belyser även förekomsten av en viss diskrepans vad gäller associationerna till termerna ?coffee table-bok? och ?praktverk?.