AbstractTitle:The Impact of Management Control Systems on the Purchaser Function - A study of Scania and Sandvik Authors: Mohammad Reza Akhbari and Johanna Sullivan Svensson Published: 2011 Keywords: Management control, purchasing function, impact, control, control instruments, Key Performance Indicators, measurement, communication and organizational structure. Background and problem formulation: In order for a company?s business idea or vision to be fulfilled, the management of a company needs assistance from various means to intentionally affect the operation in the desired direction. Management control concerns activities of both financial and non-financial character in order to implement the strategy of a company and to reach profitability. Since the purchaser function is responsible of spending 50 percent of a company?s total revenue, the function has an optimal starting point to be a key actor in the shaping and execution of a company?s strategic plan.

The public sector is a major purchaser of goods and services. By setting requirements for environmental and social considerations in public procurement, an authority has the possibility to use consumer power to influence the actors in a market. The purpose of this paper is to investigate public procurement of textile products in a municipality, in order to gain knowledge about factors that may be important for the use of environmental and social criteria. Håkan Hydén´s (professor in sociology of law) norm model was used as the basis of the analysis, where the conduct was investigated along three dimensions of the norm ? willingness, knowledge and system conditions ? in order to identify underlying factors that can influence the process.The results ? analyzed by using interviews and documents ? show that the procurer's willingness, motivation and knowledge are important factors in this context, as well as the political priority of the municipality.

The main purpose of this Master?s thesis is to investigate how the transfer from academic studies into professional life is experienced in retrospect by professional librarians. The aim is also to examine in which context the studies in library- and information science in Sweden has been formed. To attain the purpose of the thesis four main questions is being asked: In which context has LIS-studies from the period 1993-2007 been formed? Which competence does the professional librarian consider to be the most fundamental in professional life? Does the professional librarian experience that the knowledge attained from LIS-studies is sufficient for the actual tasks? Which are the differences between tasks at different types of libraries? The study is performed through a questionnaire survey in which 94 professional librarians express their experiences of their LIS-studies in retrospect.

Background: Many companies have outsourced their IT-operations and their expectations of what this IT-outsourcing will contribute to the business are high. Cost cuts are not always a natural outcome of IT-outsourcing. Many companies that have outsourced their IT-operations consider it to be problematic and complex to exercise management control and reach cost control which was the purpose of the IT-outsourcing. Purpose: To describe and analyze what affect IT-outsourcing has on a company?s management control system and a company?s possibility to exercise cost control.

The thermal response of a borehole field is often described by non?dimensional response factors called gfunctions.The g?function was firstly generated as a numerical solution based on SBM (Superposition BoreholeModel). An analytical approach, the FLS (Finite Line Source), is also accepted for generating the g?function. In thiswork the potential to numerically produce g?functions is studied for circular borehole fields using the commercialsoftware COMSOL.

Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) is a way to graphically draw a diagram of a business process. A BPMN diagram consists of several so-called flow objects. These are interconnected in the graph through sequence  flows. BPMN models are merely graphical representations of business process and there is a need to simulate these diagrams for different purposes. The simulation that now is available for BPMN is that the model is evaluated by checking if it is correct.

Sexual function in men with Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) is usually affected to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the type of injury and physiological prerequisites. Social contexts and psychological factors are other aspects that affect sexual function. Sexual dysfunction can lead to an impaired quality of life, depression and other illnesses. Aim: To study reported experiences of sexual function in men with SCI who have participated in The Nordic Spinal Injury Registry (NSCIR) five years follow-up. Design: Quantitative method consisting of a register study based on secondary data.

We started out the study with a preconception of culture as something that creates difference between groups of people, which had been verified by our prior research. We also had a sense of culture as a polysemous term. Our assumption is also that there is an opinion within social work practice that Swedish social workers are faced with a cultural barrier when encountering immigrant clients.In this study our aim is to examine constructions of the terms cultural competence and culture. Constructions of the terms ethnicity and ethnic diversity are also observed, although the main reason for this is to show what relation these terms have to the terms cultural competence and culture, and how they may give each other meaning, according to the theory of social construction. In addition to constructions, we also aim to bring out discourses around the terms, upon which we will create a discussion about power and dominance informed by post-colonial theory and critical discourse analysis (CDA).

The aim of this study was to examine the knowledge and the experience that school counsellors have about tics and Tourette syndrome. This study is based on a qualitative research which we conducted with semi-structured interviews. We have done five interviews with different school counsellors in a small municipality in southern Sweden. The theoretical approach that was used in this study was theory of knowledge as a comprehensive theory and professional competence which includes formal knowledge and tacit knowledge. Some of the study?s conclusions are that the School Counsellors had different professional competence about tics and Tourette syndrome.

The aim of this study was to gain insight into how two enterprises work with competence development and thereby study how the relationship between competence development and workers, employees, look like. The focus was on the workers motives and motivation towards a participation in a competence development course, their attitude to education, and how the transfer of skills gained from the course, into the workplace looks like. Further on, the work situations influence on the workers competence development has been taken into account.In the study, six people were interviewed in the role of either manager, coach or course participant who are employed in two different enterprises in the south of Sweden.The results showed that the participants were motivated by a strive for personal development or that the participants viewed education implementation as a part of the professionalcareer, which has resulted in a positive attitude towards the competence development course. The managers? motive for decisions about education was to change the prevailing attitude among the staff for the better and thereby strengthen the company?s brand. The work situation has encouraged the desire to participate in developmental education as the feeling of control has encouraged the workers to further development.

Atlas Copco Tools develops and manufactures handheld industrial tools. Heat and surface treatments are used to provide the tools with certain properties. There are no routines for the choice of treatment or for how to specify treatment on drawings. Production documents that are sent for production abroad may not be clear enough. Some treatments are known as trademarks and there are no instructions for how to specify these on drawings and in CAD-models.The purpose of this master thesis work is to create recommendations for the procedure of choosing heat and surface treatment.

During the past decade Information Technology (IT) and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) have become the main tools in teaching. Authors and early educators who are treated in the study talks about how technology has come to change the school's approach to teaching and didactic tools. The technology has also affected students´ and teachers´ ways to work because the technology's versatility makes demands on the user's expertise and competence. The technical skills have long been associated as a male domain, where men are expected to master the technology´s versatility. These expectations are not the same for women.

Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) is a way to graphically draw a diagram of a business process. A BPMN diagram consists of several so-called flow objects. These are interconnected in the graph through sequence  flows. BPMN models are merely graphical representations of business process and there is a need to simulate these diagrams for different purposes. The simulation that now is available for BPMN is that the model is evaluated by checking if it is correct.

The study aims to investigate student participation as a tool for democratic development in secondary school from a student perspective. Furthermore, students' perceptions of the school's work with student participation in formal and informal contexts are also investigated, with basis in the teaching structure. The results are based on interviews conducted with students who all attend the same class in their last year of high school. Subsequently, an analysis is made based mainly on three different theories: democracy, curricula and sociocultural theory. The result shows that students feel that they are able to practice student participation but the amount of influence they get differs between individuals depending on devotion and commitment.

This Thesis in Military Technology deals with experiences drawn from the forced introduction of Weapons Station 01, 2009. The work aims to identify the experiences regarding the forced procurement of military equipment to see how they can develop normal and fast procurement of equipment. The main conclusions of  this work, is to achieve greater capability and increase the military utility, are: -          Common objectives and priorities of stakeholders-          Response and joint types shall determine requirements for system-          Ensure an integrated project team also at lower levels-          Engage the integrated logistic support early in the materiel process-          Include Armed Forces staff as early as possible in the testing and validation-          Prioritize work to facilitate the rapid development of decision on use (BOA)-          Provide back up for increased redundancy in the mission area .