On the 8th of May 2007 a local power-sharing goverment consisting of Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) was formed in Northern Ireland. The aim of this dissertation is to explore why the DUP, who in the past have opposed all forms of power-sharing decided to form a goverment and take active part in a power-sharing agreement. The study is based on a consociational theoretical framework developed by Arend Lijphart and further developed in a Northern Irish context by John McGarry and Brendan O'Leary. Using this theory the study seeks to understand the broad conditions surrounding the DUP's power-sharing. After a description of consociational theory and the road leading up to the Belfast Agreement,three possible explanations for power-sharing, based onconsociational theory are discussed.

Ever since its conceptual birth, the questioning of consequences due to the implementation of ideas from the reformation doctrine, called New Public Management, has been a common occurance among those who have dedicated themselves to research in superior methods of Public Administration. What this thesis aims to do is shed light upon what value-conflicts may occur within public administration organisations when they begin to idealize the rationalization of economic issues. The goal of this thesis will be fulfilled through the creation of two ideal types of public administration that exist in opposition to each other. These two ideal types will show two different views on how decision-making and organisation will be managed in their respective sectors. By doing this, there will be clarification as to what conflicting values arise with the implementation of ideas taken from New Public Management, as well as defining the fundamental difference between which ethical decision model is used..

The purpose of this master thesis is to examine some information aspects of decision-making in Swedish municipal committees. Which are the information needs and how do they emerge? How is the needed information sought and received and which are the sources? How do the members of the committees use information when making decisions? To answer these questions qualitative interviews were conducted with four politicians (two chairpersons representing the political majority and two vice-chairpersons representing the opposition) and three officials in a municipality with a population of about 50 000. The politicians were interviewed in capacity of decision-makers, whereas the officials from the local administration are of interest through their decision-supportive role, which includes providing of reports and other information. The examination indicates that even if the conditions to some extent differ between the committees, the administration is highly influential: Notions and proposals about action may come from inhabitants, organizations, politicians etc., but are handled by the administration, which often is the problem formulating actor, through which the informational needs nearly always are canalized.

The aim of this study was to describe and understand parents? perspectives in aid assessment for children according to The Swedish Act (1993:387) concerning Support and Service for Persons with Certain Functional Impairments (Lag 1993:387 om stöd och service till vissa funktionshindrade, LSS). The study took place in the county of Kronoberg, Sweden, and was based on a total of nine qualitative interviews. Four interviews were made with parents? of children who has interventions according to LSS (1993:387) and five interviews were made with LSS case workers. In our study we saw that parents? perspectives often is the largest amount of information that case workers take into account when assessing aid and as a case worker you listen to the parents perspectives to capture the child?s and the family?s needs. It also came clear that the parents? perspective is not only about the child?s needs, but also includes the parent?s own needs and their family?s needs. The parents in the study felt that they made the decision about the choice of aid and considered themselves as the one who decides the family?s requirements. It turned out that treatment and understanding from the case workers was important for gaining access to the best help and making parents feel listened to. Parental responsibility was of great importance for the assessment, and it often led to disagreement between parents and case workers. During the study, we saw that power existed in the relationship between case workers and parents, but that it could be moved and changed during the time of aid assessment..

To be able to secure a safe and reliable power supply is becoming increasingly important since society depends on services and functions that need continuous power supply. The delivery rate in Swedish power supply is 99.98 % which insists on a high availability. During the past decade several storms has passed Sweden which resulted in large amount of tree felling leading to extended power outages. During these storms many socially critical activities, such as electric utility company Fortum, experienced disruption in mobile communication which affected the crisis management. This paper has investigated Swedish mobile operators? crisis management at Hi3G, Tele2 and TeliaSonera with a case study of the storm Dagmar that hit Sweden during December in 2011.

This thesis analyses the 2005 UK presidency of the Council, and more particularly the negotiations on the future financing of the European Union. The purpose of the study is to discuss whether the holding of the presidency implies political influence for the member state. To analyse the power of the country holding the chair the thesis focuses on the presidency functions of brokering and leadership. The theory suggests that the influence of the presidency is derived from informational and procedural power resources, as well as some leadership resources, such as coercion and reward. A case study was used to analyse whether these power resources were used by the British presidency.

The aim of this study is to investigate a number of social worker views on long -term drug abuse and how they feel that this group of individuals should be treated. Our purpose is also to examine these social worker discretion in terms of decision-making under the Socialtjänstlagen (SoL) and Lag om missbrukare i vissa fall (LVM ).We conducted two focus group interviews and assumed a number of open questions. Our empirical data have been categorized by the study's purpose and issues and by recurring themes in our individual stories.Our results shows that all social workers believe that one should always look at the big picture in estimates related to drug users. They also believe that the process of long -term addicts occasionally feels hopeless. Social workers felt that their room for maneuver in terms of decision-making was fairly limited.

The great debate topic in media and among real estate agents in spring 2011 wasspecially reduced prices. Specially reduced prices means that a property is advertised at a considerably lower price than the evaluated current market value of the property. This is to attract more bidders in a potential bidding. It is in this case not completely established by law what is meant by considerably lower price, why this concept is difficult to interpret. Real estate agents got lot of criticism due to the output prices which were too low compared to the final prices.

SUMMARYLevel: This is a final thesis for a bachelor degree in Business Administration. The thesis is oriented in the field of marketing and written at the University of Gävle.Author: Niklas EnlundDate: January 2014Tutor: Lars -Johan Åge, Jonas Molin & Jens Eklinder - FrickTitle: Intermediaries pursuit to achieve customer satisfaction - A study in how the agent works with factors to achieve customer satisfaction against two opposite parties.Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the intermediary perspective how different factors affect the intermediaries working method to achieve customer satisfaction against two opposite parties.Research question: How do real estate agents work with the four factors; informant, routines, intentions and competences? That is how real estate agents can work; like a good informant, after good practice, bringing together the parties intentions and with their skills. How does the real estate agent work with the factors related to the theories connected to the four factors? Are any of the factors more commonly used by real estate agents?Method: The thesis is based on a scientific theory in the field of marketing and focused on the topic how the agent is committed to achieve customer satisfaction against two opposite parties.

A power system will inevitably be subjected to transient overvoltages, most often produced by switching operations and lightning strikes. These transient overvoltages may harm sensitive equipment without sufficient protection, but it is not an easy task to predict what transients may occur or how they affect the system. A fault occurred in a low voltage system at Forsmark 2012 and overvoltages from lightning were concluded as the probable cause. The three aims with this thesis are to develop and test a model of the power system at Forsmark 3, analyse the transient behaviour of the system when subjected to lightning surges and identify critical parameters, and lastly to provide a tool for investigating the protection of the system. The modelling and simulations were performed in the freely available simulation program LT Spice.

During the last few years, there has been a lot of debate regarding the price ofelectricity on the Swedish market. According to a recent survey from Sifo, anon-bias governmental institute for consumer research and testing, the priceof electricity is what worries Swedish households the most. An investigationof the eciency of the Nordic power grids inuence on the Swedish spotprice is therefore both relevant and valuable. Three quarters of all electricityproduced in the Nordic region is traded at the Nord Pool Spot power market.This survey examines how much of the variation of the swedish spot pricecan be descried by the variation of the nordic system price and how much iscaused because of ineciencies in the power grid. Primarily, linear regressionwith adjustments for endogeneity and heteroskedasticity has been used in orderto analyze data obtained mainly from Nord Pool Spot and Vattenfall AB.The results show that the variation of the system price can account for all butabout 40% of the variation in the Swedish spot price.

In Sweden the divorce rates has increased during the latter part of the 20th century. For many children it?s everyday life growing up with parents no longer living together. The Parental Code states that "The child's best interests must be central to any decision in custody, residence and access." But what does the child?s best interest really mean and how do we investigate it? We decided to investigate its meaning by interviewing social workers regarding their interpretations of the child's best interests from a family law perspective.

Over the last 25 year IT development has greatly influenced the waycompanies are managed, the tremendous growth in the information society has made a huge amount of information extremely accessible. This has resulted in the problem of information overload where the large amount of information can affect the quality of a decision basis collected by a controller.The purpose of the study is to examine how a controller is affected by information overload and how this influences the decision basis. We intend to highlight the important elements to represent a high quality of information.A survey was conducted through a case study within a global affiliated company in the packaging industry. An adductive approach has been applied with a qualitative research method. Collected empirical material from interviews has been put into relation with existing theories.The case study indicates that there is no relationship between the problem of information overload and flawed decision basis.

The aim is to develop a new decision-making model for credit-loans. The model will be specific for credit applicants of the OKQ8 bank, becauseit is based on data of earlier applicants of credit from the client (the bank). The final model is, in effect, functional enough to use informationabout a new applicant as input, and predict the outcome to either the good risk group or the bad risk group based on the applicant?s properties.The prediction may then lay the foundation for the decision to grant or deny credit loan.Because of the skewed distribution in the response variable, different sampling techniques are evaluated. These include oversampling with SMOTE, random undersampling and pure oversampling in the form of scalar weighting of the minority class.

Title: Inflation and Investments, with Focus on Inflation-linked Bonds.Investors face many types of risks when allocating assets in a portfolio, e.g. volatility and inflation risk. Inflation risk will mainly affect investments in the long perspective. This thesis will examine those risks that an investor is commonly exposed to when allocating assets in a portfolio and in particular inflation-linked risk and how to eliminate it. We examine the correlation between different assets and inflation to determine the assets? ability to hedge inflation risk.