External forces have significant impact on organisations. This study analyzes the implications of one type of external forces in aid-focused NGOs through two qualitative case studies where it is investigated if Sida?s reporting requirements have the intended effects: learning and control using a theoretical framework where it is recognised that the requirements may also result in dysfunctional behaviour: decoupling and colonisation. The study shows that when the demands are the result of institutional pressure rather than an ambition to generate learning and control, the demands tend to be unrealistic and the NGOs therefore decouple the formal fulfilment of the demands from the actual activities. It is argued that a partnership, which incorporates trust and dialogue, is a prerequisite, not only for learning, but also control.

External forces have significant impact on organisations. This study analyzes the implications of one type of external forces in aid-focused NGOs through two qualitative case studies where it is investigated if Sida?s reporting requirements have the intended effects: learning and control using a theoretical framework where it is recognised that the requirements may also result in dysfunctional behaviour: decoupling and colonisation. The study shows that when the demands are the result of institutional pressure rather than an ambition to generate learning and control, the demands tend to be unrealistic and the NGOs therefore decouple the formal fulfilment of the demands from the actual activities. It is argued that a partnership, which incorporates trust and dialogue, is a prerequisite, not only for learning, but also control.

This is a comparative study examining one school with scheduled homework assistance andone school without homework help tuition. The study has investigated the use of the schoolbasedhomework assistance program at a grade school in a municipality outside of Stockholm.To what extent do the pupils use this resource, and what are their attitudes to it? Do theyregard it as a useful resource? What is the opinion of the teachers involved, do they findhomework tuition relevant and meaningful?The governing documents for the Swedish schools do not make the handing out of homeworkmandatory, and do not require that schools organize homework assistance. The emphasis inconnection with homework is that pupils should learn to take responsibility for their ownstudies. There is, however, a commersial market for homework assistance, at prices that arenot accessible for most parents, and some municipal schools have stared programs forhomework tuition.

SammanfattningSyftet med vår uppsats är att jämföra den traditionella personalavdelningens roll med den moderna Human Resource Management-funktionen. Vi söker en definition på begreppet HRM och hur utvecklingen gått från den traditionella funktionen Human Relations till Human Resource Management. Vi vill se på de likheter och olikheter som kan finnas mellan begreppen och hur de påverkat personalfrågor. Vi utgår från ett anglosaxiskt synsätt men tittar utifrån ett asiatiskt perspektiv, för att se hur kulturella infallsvinklar kan påverka HRM. För att få svar på våra frågor har vi använt oss av både empiriskt och vetenskapligt material för att få så korrekta svar som möjligt.

The aim of this study is to investigate the components of religion and spirituality in the specific context of "Fryshuset" ? a multicultural and glocal arena. Against the backdrop of contemporary researchers such as Heelas and Woodhead and their hypothesis about the "spiritual revolution" and a "new spirituality", as well as the postmodern discussion about "the return of God", this study discusses how religious change can be understood in the context of Fryshuset.The theoretical point of departure is taken in a hermeneutical method where Fleck´s theory about "thought-collective" and Gidden´s theory about the "duality of structure" are used in order to understand and describe the dialectical relationship between individual and social structure.The method used in this study is qualitative. The interviews are made of six individuals representing different social projects at Fryshuset.By analyzing the material from the field study through theories on religious change, three areas are identified:"The subjective turn"Religion and spiritualityA Cosmopolitan interpretation of life The result of this study is that the religiosity among the interviewed can be described through Taylor?s understanding of the "subjective turn".

This study examines how and why organizations evaluate training and development within the organizations. The study has a qualitative approach based on semi-structured interviews, with office and organization development managers. The purpose of the study is to contribute with knowledge about how three large Swedish organizations evaluates training and development programs for staff members. Another purpose is to describe why the organizations evaluate training and development programs and to research if there is a further need to develop the organization evaluation methods. Therefore the research questions are Why and how do organizations evaluate training programs? What further need is there to develop organizations evaluation methods?The conclusion of this study shows that evaluation of the training and development programs are not a high priority among the selected organizations.

The aim of this master thesis is to explore what role libraries play in the educational process for university students suffering from dyslexia. The question at issue is whether the library is able to meet the needs of students who have difficulty in using the libraries main resource, i.e. printed documents and information in written form. An often expressed view indicates that the modern library creates a lot of obstacles for dyslectic students. The method used is a literature study followed by an empirical study in which interviews were conducted with four students suffering from dyslexia and studying at two different universities and using different libraries.

An important task for Region Skåne is to allocate resources to the health care districts. From 1999 to 2002 Region Skåne used needs-based resource allocation as a model for allocating resources. In a needs-based resource allocation individuals with the same socioeconomic and demographic characteristics are assumed to have the same level of need and are therefore allocated the same amount of resources. During the period of needs-based resource allocation a matrix model was used as a method. In the matrix model individuals were divided into cells after each combination of the socioeconomic and demographic variables.

I carried out six interviews in a "resource-school". The pupils were between ten and fifteen years old and they were all boys with a conduct disorder. The purpose of my study was to find out how the pupils experience school and with that starting point I wanted to contribute to the understanding and the importance of the "resource-school" for the pupils' development. My main questions have been to investigate what the pupils recall from their earlier schools, what they consider to be the difference between their current school and earlier schools, why do they attend this school, do they see it like a punishment or a possibility and how do they see their future.One conclusion I got to in my study was the pupils' relation to the staff. Here they found reliable grown ups with whom they created a positive relation to, which gave them better possiblities to develop and grow stronger.

Our surrounding world is constantly changing and to be able to keep up with the fast pace of change organizations need to be prepared to transform as well. If there is a need for an organization to undergo a change process, the people constituting the organization also need to be prepared to change their behavior. In order for the change process to turn out successful, it is of the utmost importance that all employees are given the chance to take part in the process. The challenge for leaders during a change process is, therefore, to ensure that their employees actively get involved.The purpose of this study is to apply Human Resource (HR) theories on to an organization in order to critically review how leaders in practice, can involve their employees, on the basis of a change process.The study is a qualitative case study, the empirical material has been collected at Falkenbergs Sparbank with the help of one unstructured interview with an employee at the marketing department and four semi structured interviews with the office managers.Relationship oriented leadership is beneficial to use during change since it advocates an open relationship between co-workers and exchange of information and knowledge. Relationship oriented leadership is considered to be a good leadership style if organizations wants to turn Human Resource theories in to practice.

This report describes the development of a RESTful web service for mobile applications. The web service makes resources from an existing system called kompetensdatabasen ("the competence database") available. Kompetensdatabasen holds information about the capabilities of consultants and about assignments carried out at the IT consultant business Nethouse AB.The web service was developed according to the principles of REST and ROA (Resource Oriented Architecture) which puts focus on making resources available. The resources are made available through the HTTP protocol and the methods associated with it. This means it was designed to use the same technologies as the world wide web.

Purpose: We will understand and explain Dell?s value gap through an extended intellectual capital theory. This will be done by deriving the value to the different parts of the intellectual capital value scheme. We will also use value scheme to describe the ongoing strategy shift. Methodology: The qualitative method and an abductive reasoning have been employed during the progress.

In this report a system for Rapid Control Prototyping, RCP, is evaluated through animplementation of the motor control methods Field Oriented Control, FOC, and Space VectorPulse Width Modulation, SVPWM. The evaluation emphasizes on time-consumption andresource utilization on the used hardware and on usability for of software.A new mechatronic laboratory is under development at ABB Corporate Research in Västerås. Itwill be used for both mechanical and motion control design using existing and new hardware.The control structure in a traditional robot system will be interfaced to a rapid prototypingsystem which should allow easy changes to algorithms at different levels in the system.The system designated for this project comes from National Instruments and constitutesLabVIEW Real-time and FPGA module as the software tools. The hardware is a NI Single-Board RIO (Reconfigurable Input Output), sbRIO, development board including a Field-Programmable Gate Array, FPGA, from Xilinx and a microprocessor from FreescaleSemiconductor. Graphical programming is performed in the LabVIEW environment, andthrough Xilinx tools the LabVIEW FPGA code is compiled to VHDL code.A pre-study was carried out to clarify the concept of RCP and investigate different systems forRCP and their traits.

The purpose of this study is to identify and analyze how resource-based strategic choices can create can create sustainable competetive advantages. The study examines whether Daniel Wellington has competitive advantages and how those in that case have been achieved. The results of our study can hopefully help case company to get a deeper insight into the relationship between strategic resources and sustained competitive advantage..

Motivationsskapande åtgärder är avgörande för de anställdas nöjdhet inom organisationen. Vad som motiverar de anställda varierar från individ till individ. Vårt resultat visar att det existerar ett samband mellan de anställdas nöjdhet och hur väl organisationens strategi, struktur, utvärderingar och belöningar stämmer överens med olika karriärinriktningar och drivkrafter. Studien visar även att de anställdas nöjdhet påverkar kundernas nöjdhet med servicen..