Trade was assigned as a Community responsibility at the founding of the European Community in 1957. It was then recognized that Europe would achieve a greater international influence if it were to negotiate trade deals with one voice. Since then, the basic rule has been that the European Commission negotiates agreements on behalf of the EC, and presents the agreements negotiated for approval in the European Council. Today, the 25-member European Union is the largest trading power in the world, and most member states have decades of experience of coordinating their national trade interests into a common position. However, partly as a result of the complex nature of the trade decision-making processes it is sometimes problematic to identify who or what really influences EU trade policy.

SummaryBackground: Management control is important for all kinds of activities, both in trade and industry and in the public sector since you must economize on scarce resources. There are nevertheless many different views on management control, which have changed with the times. With regard to the public sector in Sweden, the management control systems have changed radically the last half century, especially from the 1980s, due to depressions and increased focus on effectiveness. New approaches have been taken by many municipalities and county councils, both in Sweden and internationally, where the former management control systems have been abandoned in favour of result control, target costing, and activity-based-costing, for example. Another new approach has been the Balanced Scorecard, which was introduced by Kaplan & Norton in a pioneering article in 1992.The Balanced scorecard is a multidimensional tool, originally intended to be used in trade and industry, but with regard to its nature, it has been adopted even by many non-commercial organizations, especially in Sweden.

The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the combination of bibliographic coupling and three hierarchical cluster analytic techniques: average, complete and single linkage. Bibliographic coupling is applied as a measure of similarity between recently published articles and the cluster techniques are used for the partition of a set of articles into subsets of articles with similar research focus. The field of information science is applied as the test arena and the selection of data, i.e., the article population to be partitioned, is based on a number of central journals. Methods of evaluation include both quantitative approaches as well as a qualitative one. For comparing the resulting partitions, adjusted Rand index is utilized and for the establishment of cluster coherence and isolation, measures of average normalized coupling strength is applied.

The overall purpose of this essay is to study in which degree the democratic model that is called participant democracy works in the Swedish municipalities. To achieve what I set out to do I will focus on a central political area in which the Swedish municipalities has sovereignty versus the state, in other words in an area where they rule themselves. That political area will then represent how well the participant democracy works in the Swedish municipalities. The research questions then becomes:Does the participant democracy at Swedish Municipality level work in a satisfying way?Does the participant democracy in a large Swedish Municipality in a central political area work?Does the participant democracy in a small Swedish Municipality in a central political area work?Are there similarities and differences between the municipalities?If so, how can that be explained?To answer these questions I will study documents regarding the planning and building area.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyse and propose improvements to the cost accounting system in use at an airline operating on the Swedish market. The choice of study object is based on the airline?s desire to have its cost accounting system evaluated. During the analysis we have identified a number of points where the current cost accounting system does not correspond to its intended purpose. These points include significant groups of costs not being considered in the current system, potential over capacity is not visible and logic connections between distribution keys and the use of resources are sometimes lacking.

The Swedish governments goal for the public health is to operate for a society with good conditions to be healthy. Many people today are very conscious about their health, at the same time alcohol is a recurring element in many day-to-day situations. IOGT-NTO is an organization that is working towards making sobriety to be the rule rather than the exception. This work is linked together by the organizations communication, which is a vital part to be able to present a unified view outward. In order to do that, it is particularly important that there are common goals and strategies to work towards.

Success in treatment with platinum-based chemotherapy against different types of cancer tumors is limited by side-effects such as hearing loss which can have a large impact on the individual`s quality of life. It is of great importance to continue with studies that address this complex of problems.Objective: The aim of this literature review is to investigate the impact of platinum-based chemotherapy on hearing in children and adolescents treated for different types of cancer.Method: A descriptive review of literature was made based on sources from 15 different studies on the impact of platinum-based chemotherapy on hearing in the target group.Results: The survey of the studies shows that platinum-based chemotherapy causes incidence of hearing loss by differing degree in the target group. Dosage of a platinum-based substance appeared to be the most significant factor. Treatment with both cisplatin and carboplatin was more ototoxic than treatment with only one of these. Greater risk for hearing loss was to a higher degree observed in younger children.

The purpose of this study is to find out which attitudes, norms and values exists about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) families in preschools. Based on five qualitative interviews with teachers that work at a LGBT-certified preschool and one that is active in their work with norm critical pedagogy. To be able to fulfil my purpose of this study I concentrated on why these teachers believed that it was of importance to counter society?s heteronormativity, to prevent discrimination and mistreatments towards children and their LGBT parents in preschool. I wanted to find out what the teachers thoughts were on the concept of what a family is and how the diversity of families is shown in the preschools material and pedagogy.When I analysed the results of my qualitative interviews I used queer theories that include heteronormativity and norm critical pedagogy.

In this essay I evaluate the legality of Karl Popper?s criticism against psychoanalysis, regarding this theory of Freud?s being pseudoscientific. Popper?s criticism is based on his theory of demarcation in which he states that an empirical theory must be possible to test by observations in order to be, as most important is, hypothetically possible to falsify based on other empirical statements ? often in the form of new found facts that contradict the original statement/theory. In purpose of assessing Popper?s criticism I perform a modified idea analysis, based on a book by Evert Vedung (1977).

The global Positioning System (GPS) provides location and time information as long as there are unobstructed lines of sight to four or more GPS satellites. However, when this is not the case the signal may be inaccurate or sometimes even completely blocked. In these situations the Inertial Navigation System (INS) is an appropriate choice for positioning.  An INS has already been proposed in a previous thesis by Erik Andersson and the objective of this thesis is to fuse the GPS with the INS in a proper way. A part of this project is to decide the reliability of the GPS.Three methods for GPS reliability detection have been proposed. One method based on the statistical properties of each of the separate systems, and two methods based on the statistical properties of the residuals between the GPS and INS.

Information handling has been a key issue for different companies for a long time. Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is used to transfer different business documents from one company to another. This is done in such way that the information itself is separated from how this information is stored and handled in the companies internal systems. As different companies have different systems there is a need for a standardised format for this exchange. There is a big difference between EDI-systems based on what kind of EDI-standard is used.

The information technology development that has occurred over the past decade has broughtmajor changes into people?s lives. We have gotten used to being constantly connected to theInternet and always having access to information through mobile technology. This has led tochanges in education and more and more courses have become available through Internet. Theseweb-based educations are nowadays very common in schools and in the business world as theyprovide increased flexibility for the user.Habiliteringen Lundbystrand has seen the potential in this kind of education and believes this isan opportunity for them to rationalize their work by replacing parts of their education for parentswith a web-based education.

This paper deals primarily with the developmental potential and use of court -based mediation in Swedish law, and its relation to court-based conciliation and the judicial procedure as means to end a conflict.  In Chapter 42, Section 17 of the Swedish Code of Judicial Procedure, a judge, before the parties have their main hearing, can act as a mediator between the parties to settle the dispute. The judge should, according to the law, always try to make the parties come to an agreement before the main hearing. This obligation can be fulfilled either through the use of court-based conciliation, or court based mediation. Mediation as such is rarely used in Sweden, and one of the goals of this essay is to try to provide a tentative answer to why that might be the case.  The second goal is to try to find a consistent, yet flexible notion, of the concept of ?jurisdiction?, and to provide an explanation for the relation between mediation as an alternative method for dispute resolution and the judicial procedure.                                                                                                                                            .

The purpose of this essay is to examine the Swedish people?s level of knowledge about crowdfunding and their incentives and deterrents to crowdfunding investments. Early on crowdfunding was divided into two objectives: reward based and equity based crowdfunding. The division of objectives is logical due to the differencing conditions of the motivation for investors to invest. Supported by theories in crowdfunding incentives, commitment-trust, the prospect theory, and the diffusion of innovations, we aim to establish a comprehensive line of reasoning to support our model of motivation in the conclusive chapter.The results of this essay were achieved by a combined method.

TitleThe communicative office ? A study of the effects that Activity based offices has on internal communication.      Authors                             Carl Varli, Jonas Eklund and Petter Göransson Course                              Business administration III ? Organization ? Bachelor? thesis Tutor                                 Olle Duhlin           Examiner                          Mikael Lundgren Background                      The prime focus of activity based office designs are the though of choosing your workplace along with your work task, instead of the other way around. This means that you do not longer have a set workstation of your own, you move around according to where to your current work will be best performed.  Problem                           We want to explore how the communication within a company?s departments has been affected by the introduction of an activity-based office design.Purpose                             The purpose of this study was to get an understanding of how this office design could effect the communication within companies that uses it. Further more, we wanted to study the effects that this kind of office would have on the communication within a department.