The energy sector of modern time is currently faced with several challenges. These are both production oriented and environmental oriented in nature. The energy of the future is intended to support an increasing demand while at the same time reduce its environmental affection. This stresses a development towards production methods of renewable energy. Among the existing methods, biogas is presented as an attractive alternative.

Efficient energy use in the housing sector is crucial for achieving a sustainable society. The expansion of this sector only represents a fraction of the existing houses, hence it?s within the existing houses the potential for energy savings lie. This potential has been analyzed in order to determine if it?s possible to cut the current energy demand in half.

Information technology (IT) with its enormous capacity involves more and more in our daily activities and public sector is using IT to make their activities more efficient. The government goal with electronic government (e-government) among other things is increasing the availability and service to the public as well as improving the democratic process. Democracy can be strengthened by involving citizens in public decision making process but this goal has not been achieved yet and the development of e-government has mostly been focused on improving efficiency within administration and electronic services (e-services). Promoting the democratic process has been postponed in the development of e-government because of the lack of political commitment and decision. Digital divide is also preventing public sector to promote democracy with the support of IT.

The knowledge of early employment experiences has evolved over the last decade in countries such as Australia and Great Britain. In Sweden, this type of research is still unusual and the aim of this study was to break new ground by highlighting some areas that could be of extra interest in the Swedish early employment research to come. A focus in the study was to give an overview of what job sectors school students work in; and the amount of jobs aquired through school-organized work placement, private social networks or personal marketing of own merits. In addition to this, a multi variate analysis was carried out to find patterns in the picture of early employment experiences among students at upper secondary school. The findings of the study has relevance for ways of conducting career counselling and therefore the general aim of this study is to point out the importance of developing the practises of vocational psychology.A survey among 74 teenaged school students with economics as their main subject has been carried out in a mid-size Swedish city May 2012.

This thesis examines how to improve the exhibition of products within retail for clothes and gift articles. The purpose is to investigate and test how light sources and different directions of light affect how the products are perceived regarding their exhibition. Our question formulations are:To what degree does the level of light in combination with the background of the interior design of a shop affect whether a product is perceived more or less attractive?What can we recommend to make the exhibition of products more attractive? From our observations shops nowadays have relatively high levels of light when they expose products on vertical areas. We have looked on the recommendation from ?Energimyndigheten? in order to see what they think is important when designing retail lightening.

This study was commissioned by the Västerbotten sports federation, whocalled for an overview of the policies that the municipalities inVästerbotten work after in the field of sport. The study aimed to identifysports policy programs or documents that have been produced by themunicipalities, and how they work with them. Furthermore, the studyhighlights the municipality?s politicians reasoning aboutsport andrecreation-sector,and how their sport policy-work was practiced. The datacollection was based on seven interviews and document-collections fromthe 15 municipalities.

Thesis: The aim of our study is to identify how IKEA's externalestablishment at Norra Backa can affect Kupolen and the centre. This in order to provide suggestions on how these trade areas can be connected and create a whole to thereby gain the purchasing power.Method: In our study we used triangulation. That means we have used both a quantitative and a qualitative approach. The quantitative method based on a survey with 100 respondents. The qualitative method is based on interviews with the centre conductors of Borlänge, Laila G Prosén and Anna Timander.Theory: The theories we have used is STP, substitution effects and effects of overspill, important factors for an attractive market town, Town Centre Management, Urban Retail Product.Conclusion: We found how IKEA's establishment at Norra Backa may affect Kupolen and the center of Borlänge then we gave suggestions on how these trade areas can be connected..

This thesis studies whether private equity owned firms within the Swedish welfare sector distinguish themselves in terms of tax planning and short-termism from a control group consisting of other privately owned welfare firms. For the first time, the comparison is made on the entire welfare sector, between 14 matched pairs within education, health care and elderly care. We use financial metrics associated with tax planning and short-termism in sign tests to examine whether the private equity owned firms differ from our control group. The financial metrics tested are actual and paid tax rates, level of interest, book-tax gap, investments, personnel expenses per employee, and cash earnings. We find that the private equity owned firms in terms of tax planning only differ in the level of interest, while no notable differences are found in terms of short-termism..

Recently, retailers within the Swedish grocery Retail sector have launched lines of products under its own brand, quite often produced by manufactures within the same category of products. The common term of this phenomenon is called private labels. Therefore, private labels could be seen as competitors against branded goods, despite the fact that it is, in several cases, the same manufacturer who produces each of the products.The main purpose of this study is to provide understanding of how the manufacturers choose to position themselves, formulate their strategies and compete on the market among private labels, also to examine the motive behind the manufacturer's choice to produce private labels. The study intends to provide a broader view of how the interaction between manufacturers, retailers, private labels and branded goods appears on the Swedish market. We decided to use a qualitative research method and personal interviews to approach the study.

The purpose of this essay is to examine how four Swedish retail companies describe their information management in connection to ethical trade. My purpose is also to examine how this information management relates to organizational learning. My questions at issue are ? ?Which activities related to information management in connection to ethical trade is described by the companies?? and ?How can these activities and statements be related to organizational learning?? My method of investigation is to perform qualitative interviews with representatives from the retail companies and relate the results to theories on information management and organizational learning, mainly theories of double-loop- and single-loop learning. The information management literature address issues such as information needs, information sources and information seeking.

Uppsats för avläggande av filosofie kandidatexamen iKulturvård, Bygghantverk, 27 hp, 2013. På omslaget felaktigt 2012..

Tourism is often being viewed as one of the worlds largest sectors and a great contribution to growth and development. There is a large motivation amongst developing countries to promote themselves as a tourist destination, since they expect the tourism to generate economic growth. The government of Thailand has been promoting tourism since 1960, and the number of foreign visitors has increased from 100 000 back then to 13.5 million in 2006. The purpose of this paper was to investigate weather the increasing tourism industry in Thailand has pulled resources away from other sectors of the economy towards the tourism sector, and in that way harming Thailand?s international competitiveness and causing deindustrialization.

Despite Sweden's ranking as one of the least corrupt countries in the world, recent studies suggest that the prevalence of corruption in the private sector is growing, now approaching international levels. Over the past couple of years, Sweden has witnessed a growing number of scandals involving unethical behavior on the part of its corporate sector. Corruption has gained the attention of authorities, legislators and the public - putting the private sector under pressure to take action to prevent such corporate misconduct. As a result, companies increasingly prioritize strategies and policies aiming to prevent corruption. This study aims to contribute to the understanding of the role of leadership in such preventive work.

Managers operating within the dynamic society of today are said to rely on intuition when effective and quick decisions are to be made. This skill or phenomenon has aroused an interest within the academic world of management whom has explored intuition, its relation to decision making and its influencing factors, especially in the private sector. Intuitive decision making is however not isolated solely to this sector but also involved in decision making associated to the public sector. Therefore, the aim of the thesis is to investigate whether managers at the hospital Akademiska in Uppsala involve intuition in decision making and to what extent the factors time, amount of information, individual experience and decision complexity influence the intuition.The theoretical framework includes academic research regarding how intuition and rationality affect decisions, the concept of intuition and factors influencing the intuitiveness of decision making. Furthermore the theoretical discussion explores intuition connected to leadership, negative aspects of intuitive decisions and a comparison between different factors that separates public and private sector in terms of decision making.

Background: The Swedish retail trading company KappAhl has reorganized all the boutiques in Sweden. Before the reorganization many of the boutiques consisted of four levels: shop manager, assistant shop manager, department managers and regular personel. After the reorganization assistant shop managers and department managers have been replaced by a so called ?responsibility group? consisting of some of the employees. The change is presented as a decentralisation.