As EU?s authority increased the number of lobbies in Brussels grew. Today there are approximately 15 000 lobbyists in Brussels. EU decisions and EU directives can have a huge impact on companies and organizations. They can however influence these decisions and directives through lobbying.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease can limit patients physical abilities and contribute to social isolation. The purpose of this literature study is to investigate men's and women's experiences of living with chronic obstructive pulmonary dis-ease, and the supporting and guiding role of the nurse to an increased quality of life. 13 critical reviewed articles were used to find the answers to our questions. Quality rating forms were used in order to guarantee a good scientific quality. The results show that, it is of great importance for the COPD-patients well-being to experience social support from those around them, and to have a close relation-ship with their families and friends, in order to experience quality of life.

Evaluating and choosing suppliers based on price alone, has traditionally been the dominant strategy for supplier selection within the purchasing function. With the origin of the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)-concept in the early 1990s, a new philosophy dawned that promoted the importance of knowing the effects of supplier performance on the buying firm?s internal costs. Since then, scholars have been arguing the case of TCO as a viable model for making purchasing decisions and conducting supplier evaluation. Still, after two decades little is known about its penetration and impact on the practices of buying corporations, leaving the questions of which costs are included in the purchasing organisations? decisions unanswered, and even more importantly why certain costs are considered and others not.

Abstract In the contemporary world of information technology you find a multitude of applications and systems covering a broad spectrum of areas of need in different companies. One effect of this multitude of programs is the difficulty to make them exchange information with each other or to collaborate, since they are developed by different programming languages for different platforms, with different standards and different data formats. Our aim with this work is to describe how it is possible to tie these programs together to make them actually communicate with each other in order to exchange information, share their native methods and also to become a part of the overall business processes. In this integration task you will, among other things, find different levels of application integration such as data level, method level, application interface level and user interface level integration. Application integration also involves hardware components, called middleware, that facilitate the physical connection between applications.

This thesis considers the problems associated with searches in insufficiently geographically tagged data. The thesis was carried out at Booli Search Technologies AB, a company developing a search engine for the Swedish real estate market.The aim of the thesis is to identify some areas of possible improvements of the company?s existing technical platform, perform a benchmarking among similar services, suggest possible solutions and lastly, build a prototype from one of the suggested solutions.The thesis starts out with defining the problems that the search engine faces: some areas are not possible to perform searches on, the users are not presented with the full search result that they expect, some results are placed incorrectly on the map associated with the search results and results are also not described with enough geographical information. These problems are due to the fact that the data retrieved at the indexing stage in the company?s information retrieval process are insufficient and incomplete.As a result of a benchmarking process and after discussing the results, severalinteresting solutions were identified.

The main aim of my research essay is to examine two congregations, one in Sweden and one in Democratic Republic of Congo, how theology and the life in the church shape the cultural context. The analysis uses semi-structured interviews of two pastors responsible for organizing the Easter celebration in their churches. The interviews serve the purpose to reveal how they apply theology in their context, how they interpret the Easter celebration liturgically in relation to the early church and how they perceive the cultural development in the congregations Easter celebration 2010-11. To give complementary insights to the interviews I use computer-aided interviews with members of the congregations. The methodological approach is based on a study of contextual theological theories, Easter traditions in the early church, Easter theologies and then applying these theories in the interviews.

This study examined the factors influencing dairy farmers´ decisions to invest in automated milking systems (AMS). The problem studied involves uncertainty, information and complexity for dairy farmers in specific decision contexts. The frame of reference in the thesis combines contingency theory and decision theory and is used in a qualitative analysis of a set interview with dairy farmers who have recently bought an AMS and salespersons from Delaval, one of the AMS suppliers.The aim of this study is to develop an understanding of the decision making processes of dairy farmers, and in particular to identify which types of factors influence the outcome of an investment decision in the technological development of a farm.The study uses Thompsons` (1967) theory about the structure that organizations develop to handle the input of information. Thus, interest is focused on how a farm business structure handles information in the AMS decision, investigating the differences in information with Delaval?s "feed first principle" system and Lely?s "free cow traffic" system.The results of the qualitative interviews with the dairy farmers who bought an AMS show that there are three important factors that influence the outcome: employees, suppliers and the owner.

The aim of this study was to highlight homelessness through the perspective of formerly homeless men and women. The research questions focused on the informants experiences of the process into and out of the homeless situation and how their experiences could contribute to the knowledge about the social problem of homelessness. Besides the theoretical perspective of narrative and life course research, Fuchs Ebaugh exit theory and Honneth confirmation theory were used as theoretical guidelines.The empirical material consists of five life stories obtained through indepth interviews. The results of the study indicate that alcohol and drug use was of importance for the process towards homelessness. External factors as the change in the organization of the housing market in the 1990´s may also had an impact on the lifes of the informants.

The conception of exhaustion was first used in the end of 1960 and was then used in a psychological context directed towards the working life. Eventually was the conception devided into two main categories: mental and somatic symtoms. Today research of exhaustion is mainly aiming towards recovering and returning to working life.This work sets out to analyse the importance and effects of social networks such as family, friends and professional relations in helping people who suffer from exhaustion to recover. The study is based on interviews with eith people who have suffered from exhaustion but today are recovered. To my aid I have used tree different questions: What part have the social network of family and friends ment to the recovery? What part has the professional relationships with doctors, therapists and curators ment to the recovery? How have you changed your life in order to maintain balance?The interviews pointed out the importance of the social relationships as support, feedback and understanding that the process takes time.

SKV and Tullverket have several important tools and methods available in each activity to ensure that taxes and fees are paid and charged rightfully. Among other things they use tax or customs surcharges, targeted and general third party injunctions or targeted and general third party audits. The targeted controls, ergo targeted injunctions and audits, are targeted towards specific persons or documents while during the general controls these are not specified. The methods have repeatedly been the subject of discussions and attempts to simplify the tax procedure and increase the Rule of Law for the individual.The government appointed a commission on March 8 of the year 2012 with the assignment to prepare proposals to increase the Rule of Law in the tax procedure. The assignment was therefore to analyze the areas of tax and customs injunctions, reimbursement because of expenses and agents and also third party controls.

Background: The Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority?s mortgage limitation, of mortgaging up to 85 percent of the market value of the real estate was introduced on the first of October 2010. The aim of the recommendation is to prevent a detrimental development of the market for mortgages while at the same time creating incentives for the consumers to limit the debt level. The mortgage limitation is a recently adopted recommendation and few studies have made a thorough analysis of its effects, hence it is an interesting topic to study.Aim: The aim of this study is to analyze the initial effects of the mortgage limitation for consumers, banks and estate agencies. Furthermore, the study aims to evaluate drivers of consumer debt levels and conclude whether the mortgage limitation will result in lower debt levels for consumers.Completion: The study is based on interviews with respondents from banks and with respondents from estate agencies to enlighten the initial and long term effects of the mortgage limitation.

På många håll i världen men inte i Afrika tar tillväxten fart. Det tycks inte som att de faktorer som hjälper andra kontinenter att nå tillväxt verkar tillväxtfrämjande i Afrika. En stor del av världens befolkning är i behov av en förbättrad välfärd och det är delvis upp till ekonomer att komma på en fungerande lösning.Med hjälp av en regressionsanalys, innehållande fyra modeller, undersöks hur och i vilken grad erkända tillväxtvariabler; ekonomisk frihet, real BNP per capita, utbildningsgrad och utländska direktinvesteringar, kan förklara variationen av tillväxten i Afrika. Vi vill även kontrollera för variablerna ?andel HIV- och AIDS positiva? och ?korruptionsgraden?, då vi tror att dessa verkar tillväxthämmande i Afrika.

In recent decades, demands has emerged that the companies shall take a greater social responsibility for the impact that they have on their environment and that this impact shall be reported, which is known as Sustainability Reporting. The Sustainability Report is based on a number of general principles that ensure the content and the quality of the Sustainability Report. One of these principles is the principle of completeness. In the research, this principle seems to have been interpreted in terms of number of reported aspects and indicators, which can be a limited view where only the existence of the aspects and indicators is observed. By including the degree of the reporting in terms of full, partial and no reporting as well as a comparison between the real and the alleged reporting, our intention is to extend the principle of completeness and to develop a tool that we also apply through an empirical survey in a particular area.

Explores the difference between the two versions of Virginia Woolfs short story about Nurse Lugton..

This thesis explores the decisions behind swedish principals to permit or prohibit political parties from visiting schools. Through a series of semistructured qualitative interviews with five respondents from different high schools, insights were gathered into their motivations regarding political party visits to schools. The results indicate that principals view political party visits as significant for fostering civic engagement, aligned with the school's democratic mission. However, some principals opt to prohibit such visits due to concerns about non democratic values and potential disruptions. Practical considerations like safety, logistical issues, and conflict risks are also crucial in their decision-making, highlighting awareness of potential challenges posed by political visits.