The purpose of this study was to look into the work of care organizers for elderly care, in three municipalities in southern Sweden, and how they use the law and local guidelines to evaluate the need for home care. The intention was to determine if presence of relatives makes a difference in the needs assessment and if the care organizers practice harmonize with the guidelines. To do this, we did a qualitative study alongside with analyzing each of the local guidelines. By interviewing five care organizers, we were able to see their side of elderly care and how they combine the law and local guidelines in their daily work with elderly care. Our main themes are, in short, the law and local guidelines, the view of care organizing and needs and also closeness to relatives.

The purpose of this study was to examine how local producers in the food and confectionery segment in Västernorrland, Sweden, working to communicate that the product is locally produced through its packaging design. We have chosen to look at how they work with the right packaging design because it is such an important part of the product marketing. A further aim was to examine how consumers perceive the packaging design of the locally produced products and how they consider that the packaging design communicates the product as locally produced. We have also analyzed the graphical elements contained in the locally produced product packaging through a semiotic analysis.The theoretical framework is based on theories in brand communication and Visual Communication, specializing in packaging design?s visual elements.The method used in this study is a qualitative method.

The purpose of this study was to examine how local producers in the food and confectionery segment in Västernorrland, Sweden, working to communicate that the product is locally produced through its packaging design. We have chosen to look at how they work with the right packaging design because it is such an important part of the product marketing. A further aim was to examine how consumers perceive the packaging design of the locally produced products and how they consider that the packaging design communicates the product as locally produced. We have also analyzed the graphical elements contained in the locally produced product packaging through a semiotic analysis.The theoretical framework is based on theories in brand communication and Visual Communication, specializing in packaging design?s visual elements.The method used in this study is a qualitative method.

When discussing local development attention is often given to the problems involved. Factors like decreasing population and inadequate infrastructure are two examples. Local politics has, however, lately been argued to have possibilities to affect its own development and its chances to achieve growth. Some of the most important factors from this debate are to make a community attractive for people and companies, committed leadership, the local business world with entrepreneurialism and a good business climate. These factors serve as a starting point for this discussion where focus is on the possibilities to achieve growth on the local level and the politics that is used for this purpose.To illustrate the chances to affect local growth I apply the theoretical perspective of regime theory and thereby examine the governing coalitions "power to" govern and not "power over" as the earlier theoretical perspectives in the area.

The thesis has two purposes. First, to give a practical insight into the challenges that Swedish companies might face, and how these challenges are tackled, when implementing strategy in a local area. Second, to develop a general applicable model as a conceptual contribution to the field of international strategy implementation in local areas. This empirical-driven thesis is written in a qualitative and explorative approach, where abduction is adopted in order to find mysteries and contribute to the forming of new theories. The empirical foundation is twenty-two interviews and observations of three large Swedish companies.

Background: Media has for a long time been reporting about the audit industry, often focusing on so-called auditing scandals. Economic journalism has grown stronger, the corporations are given more and more power in society and the public interest is increasing. We intend to examine how mass media affects the expectations gap and how the auditing firms operate strengthening the society?s confidence in the industry after mass medial exploitation. We also want to investigate whether the relatively new phenomenon social media is affecting the auditing firms and industry?s external communication, as well as what consequences negative publicity may have for the individual auditor.Aim: The aim of the study is to create an understanding of the audit industry?s relation to the media as well as to describe and analyze how mass media?s coverage is affecting the audit industry, auditing firms as well as the individual auditor.

This study represents the different factors that may have an influence on the budgetproposal in the local government for the revision. The revision in the local government is an important part of councillors and public insight into the different activities. The budget for revision decides how much of the activities runned by the local government can be observed by the elected representative accountant. The aim of the study is to see how the following variable affect the dimension of the budget appointed for revision. We have used Institutional theory, theory that contains the role-play between guardians and advocates and Agent theory with help of accountability.The dissertation is written in Swedish..

During the last decades the Swedish local party systems have gone through some considerable changes. The number of parties present in local party systems have increased and in some cases even doubled. This makes coalition building between parties complex and parties will be forced to rethink their coalition strategies and adjust to the new circumstances. Theoretically, coalition building has often been considered and applied to national data and there have been just a few attempts to develop and theoretically explain coalitions on a local level. Thus the aim of this paper is to use different theoretical approaches to local data to test the significance of traditional coalition theories.

This study aims mainly to investigate what kind of role the public library plays in the regional and local development. The aim is also to investigate how the public library can strengthen the role as a factor of regional and local development. To explore the subject, the study is focused on the Swedish region of Västra Götaland. Three officials along with two policy documents, are included in the study as representatives of the region. Four public library managers are also interviewed but as representatives of the local perspective.

The concept of sustainable development is a challenge that demands cooperation from all levels of society for it to be successful. The focus for this thesis is how politicians within the local councils understand the concept of sustainable development and how they implement it in political decision-making.The basis for the study is a questionnaire that was distributed to 303 local politicians in three municipalities of varying size in Southern Sweden. The study concentrates on departments within the local councils that are directly connected to the Swedish environmental law and the Swedish planning and construction law. One of the primary goals with the aforementioned laws is the achievement of sustainable development within one generation.The outcome of the study was that over half of the local politicians could correctly define sustainable development according to the World Commission on Environment and Development?s (WCED) definition.

An often encountered problem when implementing a mass flow regulator in a rolling mill is the one with measurement of speed. The most widely used solution is to fit a pulse counter to a wheel that is in contact with the strip. Common problems with this design are for instance scratch marks on the strip and problems with the flatness measuring system.  One way of circumventing the aforementioned problems would be a non-contact measuring system. The market of today only offers systems based on the Doppler principle.This report evaluates three different systems for non-contact speed measurement. Important areas in the evaluation have been the ability to operate under normal rolling conditions, integration in existing control system and how well the sensor can be fitted to the rolling mill.

An often encountered problem when implementing a mass flow regulator in a rolling mill is the one with measurement of speed. The most widely used solution is to fit a pulse counter to a wheel that is in contact with the strip. Common problems with this design are for instance scratch marks on the strip and problems with the flatness measuring system.  One way of circumventing the aforementioned problems would be a non-contact measuring system. The market of today only offers systems based on the Doppler principle.This report evaluates three different systems for non-contact speed measurement. Important areas in the evaluation have been the ability to operate under normal rolling conditions, integration in existing control system and how well the sensor can be fitted to the rolling mill.

This master thesis was a continuation of a previous study in the diesel exhaust characterization, which is part of the academical work embedded in the EMIR-1 project. The main objective of this thesis work was to finish the installation and make the proper modifications of the particulate mass measuring system located in one of the engine test cells at KTH, in order to be able to measure the mass of the particles from the exhaust of diesel engines.This experiment requires a diluted flow sample from the exhaust that should be sent to the device that makes possible the measurement of particle mass, called TEOM. In the first stage of this project, the objective was to study and make the proper modifications in the existing KTH diluter because there were several problems to obtain a constant dilution ratio from it during tests.This modifications were made and it resulted in a great improvement in the maximum inlet and outlet flow that this diluter can handle. Therefore another modification is proposed for controlling the inlet exhaust flow so it will be possible to regulate the dilution ratio and make it constant along a wide range of engine loads and speeds.The second and most important stage was to make particulate mass measurements possible by analyzing the frequency signal from the TEOM device. The idea was to obtain the frequency of oscillation from the tapered element in the TEOM, and therefore with the proper correlations, be able to predict the particulate mass concentration in the exhaust flow from the engine.An electrical problem in the TEOM circuit was detected and corrected, so the signal that carries the frequency from the TEOM can be analyzed properly.

The means to political participation at the local level in Sweden are changing and this change is analyzed through a case study. The first aim is to explore the forms of public political participation in Swedish municipal Älvkarleby, namely public question time in local government, citizen motions and open meetings. A part of this is also to analyze he every day contact between citizens and representatives. The second aim concerns the reasons why politicians decide to support these means to participationThe empirical material consists mainly of semi structured interviews with local politicians, civil servants, participating citizens and local press. Official documents such as public minutes are also used in the process of creating an image of local participation.Local political participation is found to be limited but yet having the potential to strengthen democracy, provided that public decision-makers are open to a dialogue with the participants.Using Kjell Arne Røvik's theories of organisational change, the changes in local democracy can be explained as being partly rational, partly symbolic and partly identity shaping political decisions..

As trucks are getting more and more advanced, information about their weight has become a key factor for controlling them in a more fuel efficient and safe manner. Knowing the mass of a heavy duty vehicle in real time has been a difficult challenge for the truck manufacturers. With the processing power for electronic control units in trucks steadily increasing, more advanced algorithms for calculating the mass has been developed, but at the moment there still is a wish for better performance.Since there is a lack of good information regarding the external forces acting on the vehicle, forces that depends on the slope of the road, foundation of the road and the wind, the methods have to be able to disregard these. Such an approach, based on an indirect least square solution, has been evaluated in this thesis. The results have been promising and based on these a recommendation about further evaluation has been made..