Background: During the year 2002 approximately 27 000 people lost their jobs because of companies filing for bancruptcy. In 2002 the number of companies filing for bancruptcy in Sweden were 6740. This is approximately twice as many as in the year of 1974 when the first major study concerning bancruptcies in Sweden was carried out. The accumulated amount of unpaid bancruptcy claims for the period 1991 ? 1997 was 51 billion SEK.

With the increased significance of information technology (IT) in today?s society the term ?electronic democracy? (e-democracy) has gained much importance within the democracy theory. Naturally, there are several competing views on how the technology should be used for democratic purpose. One aspect of this is the somewhat revitalized claim for direct democracy in accordance with the hypothetical opportunity to finally realize it as a democratic system. The ideal of direct democracy combined with the almost total credence in the potential of technology constitute the idea of a ?push-button democracy?.

This master thesis examines online reading groups with swedish participants. The aim is, by way of introduction, to investigate what kind of online reading groups that exist and how they work. The overall question of the thesis is: how do a conversation about books on the Internet look like? The theory used is Grounded Theory and this is a methodology which has influenced the hole structure of the study. Grounded Theory apply that issues and hypothesis must be created from the collected material, and the author collected for this reason material in the form of survey answers, email-conversations, blogmaterial and articles to draw up exact issues based on this material.The material was sorted into four different categories; social reading, reading fellowship, virtual freedom and anonymity and the issues were formulated according to this categories.

In the area of short stories there is little doubt that Roald Dahl has been an influential writer. Dahl´s short stories have been presented to the general public through TVbraodcasts but in order to grasp the true spirit of Dahl´s writing the best method is, of course, reading his books. The fictional works of Roald Dahl can be divided into two major categories: stories for adults and stories for children. This essay is concerned with the second grouping and is an attempt to analyse three themes that are of particular importance to his work. After a brief biographical note on the author, the essay analyses the element of the macabre in Dahl?s writing.

Bakgrund och problem: Långtidssjukfrånvaron har länge varit ett uppmärksammat problem och flertalet åtgärder har satts in för att minska denna. På senare tid har korttidssjukfrånvaron dock lyfts fram som ett ytterligare problem och erhållit en större uppmärksamhet i takt med dess ökning. Korttidssjukfrånvaro syns inte i offentlig statistik förrän efter den åttonde dagen och är därmed svår att studera. Likaså kan kostnaden för korttidssjukfrånvaron vara svår att fastställa eftersom korttidssjukfrånvaro består av både direkta- och indirekta kostnader.Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att beskriva och förklara hur stora kostnaderna är för den korttidssjukfrånvarande socialsekreteraren på en enhet i Växjö kommun. Utifrån dessa kostnader ska sedan en metodik utformas för att kunna fastställa en standardkostnad för vad korttidssjukfrånvaro per timme kostar.Metod: Under studiens gång har en abduktiv forskningsansats, en kvalitativ forskningsstrategi och en fallstudie som undersökningsdesign nyttjats.

Norconsult AB has developed a solarhousing concept, a house designed for the warm climate in the Middle East andwith large quantities of solar panels installed. The cooling system for the house was designed in an earlier report, the purpose of this thesis is to investigate the possibility of short and long term storage of thermal energy via an underground energy storage volume.Two different designs of the storage and three different filling materials have been integrated into a model to simulate different cases. The first design consisted of pipes installed in the ground, without insulation. The second design consisted of an insulated concrete box installed to prevent thermal energy from the surrounding soil to flow towards the lower temperature regions within the storage. The three different filling materials were dry saudi sand, water saturated saudi sand and the filling material used by the client for energy storage in Sweden.The results from the simulations show that neither of the designs, regardless of the filling material, managed to extract enough thermal energy from the house to the ground to uphold the demands of indoor climate.

The term socken ? comparable to the English term parish ? refers to a historical geographical entity found in rural areas of Scandinavia. This entity presents a multi-layered understanding of the local rural area and is in this essay conceptualized as a place. The concept of place is central to geographic work but it is also a contested term ? discourses within the field of geography present different perspectives on place as a geographical concept and our understanding of it.The history of parishes goes centuries back.

The purpose of this study is to examine web-based recruitment to short term summer jobs at the SocialServices Department in Luleå municipality in Sweden. Recruitment goals, selection options on therecruitment homepage Offentliga Jobb and recruitment practices were analysed in order to reach a deeperunderstanding of the interactions between these three levels in the selection process. Pre-selection throughOffentliga Jobb was a special concern of the study. Different consciousness levels in the selection process areemphasised according to Anthony Giddens' structuration theory. Ten recruiters from different parts of thedepartment were interviewed.

In Sweden there is an integration policy and a policy for national minorities. The integration policy aims to integrate newly arrived immigrants (nyanlända invandrare), whereas the minority policy aims to maintain and strengthen the rights of the national minorities. The national minorities are though, at times, included into the integration policy, even though they hold a minority status in Sweden. This paper aims to, through discourse analysis, investigate the research question: ?how is the content of integration referred to, when it is related to immigrants, contra when it is related to national minorities?.

Honey is a product that may contain pesticide residues due to contamination from bees pollinating various plants as well as elimination of vermin inside the hive. Different methods are needed for analysis of pesticides, since the term includes a wide range of different substances. National Food Administration lacks a validated method for determination and quantification of pesticides in honey using liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry, LC-MS/MS. The technique is especially important in analysis of polar and non-volatile pesticides, where gas chromatography is not functioning optimally. After investigating what pesticides could be found in honey produced in Sweden, a number of four pesticides suitable for analysis with LC-MS/MS was compiled; boscalid, impidacloprid, tau-fluvalinate and thiacloprid.

By identifying effects that a buyout-firm has on management control systems in its portfolio companies, the aim of this thesis is to explain how such effects differs between the companies and finally to explain why the effects differs even though the companies are owned by the same buyout-firm. The study is conducted as a qualitative case study based on interviews with representatives from the studied buyout-firm and three of its portfolio companies.By analyzing the empirical findings with frameworks and theories within management control systems and value creation, we cannot only identify effects that are common for all portfolio companies but we can also observe differences between the portfolio companies.The identified effects that are common for all portfolio companies are: increased internal reporting burden, increased perceived risk of getting laid off among managers and co-workers and replacement of the board immediately after acquisition.The effects that are observed only for two portfolio companies are: increased focus on short-term planning, higher financial targets, replacement of company management upon acquisition and moving of decision authorities to higher organizational levels. Differences are observed although the portfolio companies are owned by the same buyout-firm due to: differences in management and co-workers equity stake in the portfolio companies, differences in business complexity and differences in planned exit-horizon..

This paper briefly summarizes Bergslagen as a bedrock province in order to give background to the genesis and presence of REE-bearing minerals (short for Rare Earth Elements) in the region. These mineralizations mainly occur along the REE-line, a line aproximately a hundred kilometers in length between Norberg in the north and Nora in the south with a width of a few kilometers. Situated in the southwest of Bergslagen it is currently one of only a few places in Sweden where REE-bearing iron oxide mineralizations are potentially economically viable for mining. Ore microscopy has been conducted in order to characterize an ore sample from Myrbacksfältet, one of few sulphide rich iron oxide mineralizations within the REE-line. Additionally, an electron microscope analysis of a sample from Stålklockan, a suspected REE-bearing mineralization also within the REE-line was confirmed by EDS (short for Energy Dispersive Spectrum) analysis.

New technologies and new consumer behaviors are having a large impact on mediacompanies. The biggest change is in the behavior of the younger demographic whereold platforms like television are abandoned for new online platforms. In this newworld, media companies and organizations need new tools and business models tostay competitive. One such tool is Design Thinking, a term used to describe a cognitivedesign-specific set of activities used during a design process. It has been popularizedin commercial areas and there the term is used to describe an applicable workflowused to promote the skills required to use Design Thinking.

The philosopher Heraclitus has been renowned for a great amount of time. Despite that fact the remaining fragments of his work have just recently been assembled to the composed form they have today. Among these fragments there are a couple of terms that stands out amongst others; one of them is the term logos. The main focus of this thesis is devoted to the mystery and usage of the term logos, which comes into a great display in fragment number 50.The ambition of the thesis is to evaluate and compare three interpreters? readings of Heraclitus while having a close focus on his usage of the word logos in fragment 50.

Studien handlar om elevers tankar och upplevelser kring elevinflytande på fritidshem. Syftet är att se hur elevers tankar och upplevelser kommer till uttryck i verksamheten. Metoderna som har används i undersökningen är samtalspromenader där elevers tankar och upplevelser ska lyftas fram.Därför har vi valt demokrati och elevinflytande som argumenterande forskning för vår studie. Vårt teoretiska perspektiv är barns perspektiv som används för att se elevernas erfarenheter, uppfattningar och förståelse av sin livsvärld.I studien framgår det att eleverna har inflytande när det gäller vissa saker på fritidshemmet. Eleverna har även en viss förståelse kring begreppet inflytande och fritidslärarna har goda möjligheter att bygga vidare på detta utifrån elevernas perspektiv..