The overriding purpose of this graduate thesis is to evaluate if municipalities and county councils can deviate from the legislation of public procurement during procurement of customer choice agreements within the health and social care area. The intention of this Quasi-market is to provide the users with competition in terms of quality rather then the general principal rule of economic value.My conclusion results in a legal situation without rules of general procedure. So far the authorities make their own regulation in the field of customer choice agreements. The problem lies within the authorization of new contractors and their right to make an appeal against resolutions made by the authorities social care divisions.One solution is to legislate within the present law of public procurement. Another way to solve the problem is to create a lex specialis apart from the present public procurement regulation..

The aim of this study is to investigate ex-Jehovah's witnesses' experiences with accessibility in relation to sexual and reproductive health. The purpose is to build on the understanding of how closed Christian communities view the power over their own bodies in relation to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). The results are examined and analyzed through Foucault's ideas about power. The thesis is built upon an exploratory point of view, where the focus is to examine the experiences of former Jehovah's witnesses. The theoretical framework assumes that there are different types of power relations, specifically in the form of biopower, disciplinary power and governmentality. Through semi-structured interviews, six former members have been interviewed. The results indicate the complex relation between Jehovah's witnesses and several forms of power.

In January 2007 the Öresund committy changed its statutes to become a more politically oriented lobby organization. This change can be interpreted as one part of a continuously evolving process where the Öresund region is emancipating itself from the national states in a multi-level European environment. By focusing on this latest development the thesis puts forward the importance of political institutions, as well as politicians and civil servants as actors in them, as crucial factors in the process where the region is gaining political power. The thesis shows how the political cross-border cooperation in the Öresund region is being institutionalized which affects its power relations to other levels in the multi-level system, predominantly the national states. In other words, there is a connection between power and institutionalization.The Öresund committee has by gaining better access to policymaking agendas on the national levels proven that the organizational change has already started to bear fruit.

I samband med att de två senaste regionala utvecklingsplanerna upprättats har regionplaneringen i Stockholms län kommit att utvecklas till att fokusera mer på dialog och process via sociala nätverk. Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka varför denna utveckling kommit till stånd och hur den sett ut samt analysera hur regionplaneringen bedrivs genom dessa sociala nätverk. Det empiriska materialet har bestått av intervjuer med representanter från olika samverkansprocesser som bedrivs eller har bedrivits inom det fallstudieområde jag valt; Stockholmsregionens gröna kilar. Den teoretiska utgångspunkten har varit territorial governance samt kommunikativ och kollaborativ planering. Slutsatserna är att regionplaneringens frånvaro av lagstiftad genomförandemakt ger dem en annan makt över den regionala utvecklingen i form av tillgång till governancenätverk.

Syftet med denna undersökning är att finna en möjlig förklaring till hur det teoretiska området angående corporate social responsibility har utvecklats i ett tidsperspektiv. Uppsatsen undersöker hur definitionen av CSR växt fram och vad definition har påverkats utav. Det andra som studerades var hur ämnet CSR har växt fram. Ser CSR likadant ut idag som det gjorde för femtio år sedan eller hur har det utvecklats?För att göra denna studie, används följande metod.

This paper describes and develops a trade off model of optimal capital structure by Bradley et al. (1984). The model is then tested to examine how changes in corporate tax rates affect the optimal capital structure of firms. Based on theoretical implications of the model, four hypotheses are derived stating that firms? optimal debt-to-value ratio is (1) negatively related to financial distress costs, (2) negatively related to non-debt tax shields, (3) negatively related to firm volatility and (4) positively related to the corporate tax rate.

Today, there is no uniform definition of what an ethical fund is. Fund management companies choose themselves what they believe is ethical and not. The lack of the definition makes it difficult for consumers to understand why these funds are special compared to other funds. The purpose of this study is to examine three Swedish companies; KPA Pension, Swedbank Robur and Folksam, to obtain a clearer picture of the concept ethical funds and its definition. The study describes each company's view of Ethics and how they may affect other companies to work for a more sustainable world.

The environmental situation is becoming increasingly critical. The energy sector and other industries have a big impact on our climate and the public is raising their voice for companies to admit their responsibility towards the environment and society. Companies engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and happily disclose their responsible performance in annual reports. But what messages are they conveying in their CSR-reporting, and what attitudes towards CSR can be found underneath the explicit content? The aim of this study is to discover which discourses exist in CSR-reports from Swedish energy companies, and how these discourses operate.

This thesis provides a comparison of the old Planning and Building act (PBA) from 1987 with the new PBA, which entered into force in May 2011. The essay consists of a descriptive part that presents the regulation of both laws. The new PBA consists of several differences compared to previous regulation. This thesis will, however, primarily be centred around the regulation regarding building permit appeals and the possibility of building permit, to gain legal force.In the old PBL, there were no regulations that result in a building permit decision could be made effective. Instead, a building permit could, long after the decision had been made, be over-challenged.

The purpose of this paper was to examine the potential presence of a relationship between the quality of corporate financial disclosure and the volatility in stock price in the Swedish market. This was carried out by investigating the hypothesis that an accurate annual report with high information quality results in a decrease in volatility. Previous studies have been done with this approach and in some cases the above stated hypothesis was found to be true. Thus, in the absence of a perfect efficient market the level of information quality may to some extent explain the volatility in stock price. However, the result of our study gave no evidence in support of this hypothesis.

Since the end of the Cold War, foreign aid donors have been using political conditionality to promote human rights, democracy and good governance in recipient countries. This phenomenon has been analyzed and criticized, but mainly from a strictly empirical point of view. In this paper, the legitimacy of political conditionality is analyzed through a normative perspective based on the extrinsic value of efficiency. If the political conditions don?t result in a democratic development, including respect of human rights and good governance, they can not be justified.With at theoretical focus on the donors, based on the unequal relationship between donor and recipient, I am examining the donors? possibility and supposed will to use political conditions in development cooperation.

This bachelor thesis in business economics raises the topic about Corporate Responsibility (CR), this topic is currently being discussed in a variety of channels and today an increasing number of companies are involved in corporate responsibility. How do Skanska work with sustainability and why are they doing this? It is also important to see the results of the work with sustainability will lead to. We will go into more depth in one of Skanska's projects, project M25, to investigate the CR strategies they use and see how they actually work with sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze how and why Skanska is working to implement CR policies in their operations and more specifically from the M25 project in order to achieve sustainable business development.

Corporate social responsibility, CSR, är ett aktuellt koncept och dess efterfrågan ligger till grund för studien. Konceptet präglas av begreppsförvirring som bidrar till att framställningen av konceptet är intressant att studera. Studien syftar till att beskriva hur managementkonceptet CSR framställs i svensk populärmanagementpress utifrån ett utbudsperspektiv, där förespråkare för managementkoncept är identifierade som drivkraft för adoption. I studien utvecklas en modell för hur CSR-konceptet framställs i populärmanagementpress. Genom modellen kan detta beskrivas och analyseras.

Bakgrund: Vi tycker oss kunna skönja en utveckling i Sverige där potentialen för företagens sociala ansvarstagande ökat till följd av att den traditionella trygghetsgaranten, staten, alltmer dragit sig tillbaka. Samtidigt konstaterar vi att begreppen som behandlar detta område ofta saknar konkreta förslag på vilka aktiviteter som är lämpliga för företag att ägna sig åt. Syfte: Syftet med denna uppsats är att beskriva statens roll och den allmänna opinionen i det svenska samhället vad avser förutsättningarna för företagens sociala ansvarstagande. Genom att företrädelsevis använda teoribildningen inom Corporate Citizenship ämnar vi visa och förklara vilka konkreta möjligheter detta kan innebära för företag verkandes i Sverige. Genomförande: Empirisk data har företrädelsevis samlats in med en postenkät riktad till 3000 individer ur den svenska allmänheten.

Bolagsstyrningen har förändrats på grund av vissa negativa företagshändelser som inträffade under 2000-talet. Det har blivit ett större fokus på internkontroll och etik. Som ett led i detta har även betydelsen av internrevision ökat. För att öka effektiviteten och kvaliteten på revisionen måste en samverkan mellan interna och externa revisorer äga rum. Förhållandet mellan parterna är avgörande för att fastställa styrningen av företaget.