This report describes the bachelor degree project called ?A case study in strategic product design in collaboration with Elfa? carried out by Mathieu Gustafsson and Pär Rickberg,students at Carl Malmsten Furniture Studies.We had the opportunity to do our degree project in collaboration with ELFA after a previous school project where we made suggestions for new products. Initially the brief was to develop new products for the company which was based on previous proposals.Reasoning led us in to design strategies and how to use such a strategy to develop newproducts for ELFA. During our first superficial analysis of ELFA and its current products, we found that we wanted to recast the framework of identity and context in which the product would be created. According to the researches made by SVID (The Swedish Industrial Design Foundation),companies that continually are working with design strategies strengthens the brand, its competitiveness and become more innovative.

As a result of an increased consumption, waste volumes has grown steadily throughout the 1900s, and this puts great demands on an efficient and ecological sustainable waste management on both local and national level. In order to evaluate collection and disposal of household waste, a large number of Sweden´s municipalities are using waste analyses. The overall aim of this study has been to summarize and assess results from waste analyses executed in Härjedalen´s municipality during the years 2007-2011.The evaluation has given information about the household waste´s composition, quantity and change in time. The report´s objective has been to create a basis which the municipality can use in planning of future information efforts and other measures, and give some proposals on how these can be designed and targeted. Therefore, the report also highlights research on motivations factors that affects environmentally conscious behavior such as recycling, and how different instruments like information can be used to promote this.

Swedish government aid is divided into three main themes: democracy and human rights, the environment and climate, and gender equality and women's role in development. These three themes in aid are considered by the government to be vital in order to fight poverty and create fair and sustainable development. This study will examine two of the four focus areas designated under the theme of "environment and climate". The study observes the relationship between projects in energy and water and how it promotes a sustainable lifestyle. A survey on environmental habits will be conducted.

The aim of this text is to study how sectional managers in the care of the elderly work so as to promote basic human values. Semi-structured interviews generated qualitative data from five sectional managers. A hermeneutical approach was applied for interpreting the interviews. The result shows that the respondents are conscious of the fact that it takes a lot of long term work before a change in current procedures will happen. Also, the common everyday principles of work and basic values will continue to be part of the care of the elderly.

The industrialization in Sweden has increased the large number of areas that have been contaminated with various types of pollution. One of those sites are the property Höjen 3:24 in Arboga where ?Arboga Mekaniska Verkstad? once been. The property wants to increase the use of the old former foundry building with the adjacent ?plate-workshop? and believe there are two options for the building: That the building either should be used as a warehouse/concert hall, or rebuilt into a cultural center. An environmental evaluation has shown that the levels of heavy metals are over the Swedish environmental protection agency guidelines of less sensitive land.

During the last decade working with competence has emerged as a more strategically important area. Today the human resources in a company are considered a competitive advance and the HR-units play a significant role when it comes to HR-management. Different motives for investing in strategies that promote competence development and learning also exist. The purpose of this paper was to examine how the process of competence development was managed at a large global company. The empirical material consisted of four persons who were interviewed and the analysis of the material was inspired by grounded theory.From the analysis four major themes or core factors emerged as central to the interviewed persons' understanding of the competence development process; solid preparatory work in relation to competence development, communication, awareness of responsibilities and finally the taking action and evaluation of the action.

Uncertainty is a well-known phenomenon that is recurring in biographies, imaginative literature and science, but is less studied in nursing science. The aim of this participatory action research project was to, in collaboration with nursing students; explore nursing activities for relieving patients? uncertainty. A qualitative approach was chosen with focus groups and the text was content analyzed. The students studied their third semester on a nursing program.

The thesis has been carried out at Nedis AB in Jönköping. The aim was to develop proposals on approaches that could help the company to continually improve their warehouse operations by eliminating unnecessary operations, making the warehouse more structured and how they better could use the staff's suggestions for improve-ment. The collection of data consists of observations, interviews with a total of nine people from the staff of Nedis AB and a benchmarking conducted at Husqvarna AB. A number of shortcomings and weaknesses in procedures at the warehouse were iden-tified. Packing stations were not standardized and they were seen as poorly structured and messy.

Many enterprises have shortcomings in the transfer of information between different departments. Furthermore, routines for maintaining knowledge in order to be able to use this experience in the future are often lacking. Time and resources spent on improving these systems and procedures can provide significant benefits in terms of saved time and reduced costs in the later stages of a project. The benefit of this is not only a greater clarity and a reduced risk of misunderstandings, but also the preservation of knowledge that would otherwise be lost.The aim of this study has been to examine the process of information transfer and the transfer of knowledge between the calculus department and production manager in projects at Erlandsson Bygg i Öst AB. An additional aim was suggestions for improvements in the calculation handover and at the end of a project, where it was possible.The study was primarily conducted through literature studies and interviews.

This thesis is about how students see their education, creativity and future based on our understanding of the concept of entrepreneurial learning. The aim is to highlight if and how this relatively new concept in the school world is rooted in pupils everyday lives. To get answers to our questions, we talked to students about their thoughts and reflections on their schooling, but also their views on how they think their future will look like. We have also examined what students associate to the concept of creativity by letting the pupils make a mind map during the interview sessions. Research and theories are talking about how to conduct school education, but despite all this knowledge the results in today´s schools drops.

Several scenarios point toward a future where we are far more people on Earth than today, where most of those people will live in cities and where oil no longer dominates in the transport systems and in agriculture as an energy source and where less energy will be available to us. The report investigates what areas in traditional ecological knowledge that can contribute to the transition that follows a future with less energy and establishes three areas with the potential of becoming important: areaspecific biological knowledge in societies that are more dependent upon its surrounding environment and its natural prerequisitesthe local management of these biological resources, which often means a fair sharing and sustainable handling of the resources and which has been observed in Nobel price awarded Elinor Ostrom?s researchthe world views that lie behind how the environment is considered and managed, world views that can inspire and point toward how we in the future should formulate world views that do not give the destructive modern management of the environment It is also noted that the magnitude of the city living in the future is a historical news and that very little research has been done in how traditional knowledge can be transferred into this kind of living..

The construction industry is currently receiving much criticism for inefficiency and slow development while demands for reduced built in moisture and efficiency increases. This report examines whether the use of field factories can meet these requirements and what factors that will be critical for future use of field factories. Industrialized construction with field factory is compared with traditional loose timber construction and industrial construction in the fields of execution, logistics and working environment. The aim of this report is to provide a basis for field factories current and future use and development. To achieve the aim of the report, people with experience in the use of the various methods was interviewed and literature studies in the various fields done.

This Masters thesis aims at presenting a picture of, and critically examining, the Swedish debate concerning the public library and the future by way of 21 articles in three library periodicals. The questions examined are: -What are the views concerning the future public library in Swedish library press? -What characterizes the debate and why? Theories on political institutions and information society are used and the method is hermeneutic, a type of idea-analysis. The first step in the analysis consists of a categorized presentation of the material. The themes concern the form and content of the library as well as competence and hopes/fears.

This thesis is a case-study of an ongoing court case between the Swedish Competition Agency and Växjö Municipality about a set-up requirement to the long-distance heating system for newly built private houses on municipality owned land. This requirement was set up as part of the municipality?s long-term environmental goals; however the Competition Agency claims that the demand is damaging the free market in the municipality. The purpose of this thesis is to determine which normative assumptions the decision makers have based their actions and re-action on, and whether or not these assumptions are valid, thru theoretical ideal types. This is determined via method of textual analysis.

The aim of the present paper was to see why a recommended course of action is not always followed in the way it is supposed to. The paper deals with a new method (SFA-metoden) used by The Social Insurance Agency in working with sick-listed people. Aspects that are elaborated on are local effects of the method at its introduction, case managers work conditions, and control of the implementation of the method. Two different methods of investigation have been employed. On the one hand, previous reports on the method have been analysed, and, on the other hand, two focus groups interviews, one consisting of case managers´ working with the method, and one constituted by their supervisors have been carried out.The results have been analysed in accordance with, on the one hand, the theory of street level bureaucrats and, on the other hand, certain concepts applied in the new institutionalism.