The purpose of this study is to investigate the determinants of capital structure in Swedish small and medium sized firms. The study includes 24.859 Swedish firms which are further analyzed with regards to their financial characteristics. These characteristics consist of short term debt, long term debt and total leverage. The study compares the relationship between these characteristics and six independent variables.The result shows that profitability is the greatest determinant for capital structure in Swedish small and medium sized firms with regards to total leverage. When profitability increases the total leverage of the firm decreases.

In this thesis, it is investigated if it is possible to create a common factor of the work tasks done by an air traffic controller, which then can measure workload. This will lead to the development of a tool to measure workload at small airports. In the research project a questionnaire is created to measure the different tasks an air traffic controller has. The same questionnaire will also measure the number of environmental factors that exists around the air traffic controller. To measure the validity of the questionnaire, the authors are using NASA-TLX.

The aim of this project has been to raise the production efficiency of Daliff Precision Engineering through reduced transportation time and a more standardized manufacturing process. The problem has upraised because of a big and diversified product flora without any standard products and with just small batches ordered. The report also tries to show the work procedure with general analytical methods and be an example of how a similar problem can be resolved. The transportation time is being proposed to be reduced through a change in the layout of the factory. By moving a few manual machines, dispatch and burring to more efficient locations, the total transportation time will be reduced by 55 %.

This paper intends to examine the knowledge challenges in small IT companies which is going through rapid growth. The movement of information and knowledge is a social and very complex process. The challenge for technology is the social as information and knowledge requires. To believe blindly that technology will solve the problem is what many people think. In order to understand how technology can support information and knowledge management one needs to understand what information and knowledge is.

For a long time, economic activity has decreased and shows a downward trend in the food sector. To break this requires efforts to strengthen corporate position with the ability to meet market challenges. In the small producers is a great potential for them to be able to increase its profitability thanks to its ability to offer added value in the product. But to achieve this requires not only a willingness and creativity out of the ordinary but also factors that lead us into this report, current issues. The issues are related to marketing, brand building and the importance of developing a stable network. The study aims to investigate how small businesses operate in rural areas are experiencing the possibilities of support from various networks and organizations and that, from a business perspective, and also see which areas that they need more support in to achieve a growing business. The work has been followed by an inductive method, when we initially could not say anything about the empirical results.

While the strategy of lending a voice to the monstrous is a well known aspect of Howard Phillips Lovecraft's works, the female monster is a notable exception to this case. In this thesis, I excavate a theory of female monstrosity through a reading of some of Lovecraft's most read stories and the agency of female characters that appears within. Comparing these female registers of monstrosity to their masculine counterpart, I develop a concept of female monstrosity manifested through categories of class, race and gender with the help of Judith Halberstams theories of monstrosity.Rather than treating these women as active characters, I argue that Lovecraft's inability to handle these monsters forces him to literally put them away ? in attics, cellars, or boxes. These are the marginalized positions from which these women elaborate a monstrous form that transcends the boundaries of sex, gender, class and race.

The aim of this essay was to obtain an understanding about company owners thinking about the connection between having an own company, and the risks for an alcoholic abuse. The risk factor I was researching was stress, alcoholic culture, accessibility and rehabilitation.I have interviewed five owners of small companies, two women and three men, which represents four different kinds of branches. The theories I used in analysing the empirical findings where the theories of psychosocial work environment of Lazarus, Karaseks demand/control model, epidemiology- and culture perspective.I have found that the main stress factors for company owners where the economical stress and great load of work. The stress was also related to the fact that company owners of small companies often were alone with all the responsibility and problems.Women did not use alcohol very often as a tool to reduce stress. If individuals were using alcohol to reduce their stress, it also had to deal with their ability of coping and also what channels they had for coping..

This thesis aims to study brand change, which can be of interest since a brand during its lifetime can be expected to meet a lifecycle consisting of five phases; innovation, introduction, growth, maturity and recession. In order to avoid the recession phase and the sales decline that follows there is a need for a change of the brand.In order to study brand change, theoretical framework is compared to two real world cases that have gone through an active change.The conceptions of positioning, repositioning and revitalization are clarified. Positioning deals with how brands are located in customer?s minds as well as on the real market. Repositioning implies a change of the current position and is also often a move towards a new market segment.

Human Resource Management (HRM) consultants are becoming more common. Simultaneously there is a lack of HRM in small and medium enterprises (SME?s). SME?s states neither to afford, nor have the time to perform HRM in their business.This thesis is a Working Scholarly essay based on qualitative method, based on ten semi- structured interviews.

AbstractThe Northern Wheatear (Oenanthe oenanthe) is a small insectivorous passerine bird living in open landscapes. Both parents feed the brood of approximately five chicks, but little is known about how each sex allocates their feeding effort. In this study I investigate feeding nest visit differences between male and female Northern Wheatears relative to the age of the chicks, the number of chicks and the quality of the territory for 17 pairs from 2008-2010. Data were collected using automated data loggers to record nest visitation rates during chick feeding, and the sex was determined from nest video cameras. I also examine if the parents? rate of feeding visits changes over the nestling period.

As a small and land scarce country, effective waste management is ofoutmost importance in Singapore. In this study the production of biogasthrough anaerobic digestion from the organic fraction of municipal solidwaste (OFMSW) was compared to incineration of the waste. At the momentalmost all of the OFMSW in Singapore is incinerated. Three differentscenarios were compared to the reference scenario (incineration): one with alarge scale biogas plant that can treat half of all OFMSW in Singapore, onewith a medium scale biogas plant about 15 times smaller than the large oneand one with a small scale biogas plant that can treat waste from e.g. ashopping center or a food center.By using life cycle assessment (LCA) the different scenarios were comparedin terms of global warming potential (GWP), acidification, eutrophication,energy use and land use.

Alevism as such is both contested and difficult to define, despite the fact that nearly a quarter of the Turkish population can be said to identify with it (See egMarkussen, 2005; Sirin, 2013). Discussions regarding whether alevism should bedefined as a religious minority or not is going on both in the research communityas among the Alevis themselves. Also the meaning of Alevi religiosity as such isdebated and can be simply described as a discussion of whether alevism should beregarded as a part of Islam. The purpose of this discourse study is therefore to examine the construction of Alevi religious identity in two English-language Turkish newspaper, namely the Hürriyet Daily News and Today `s Zaman. With the overarching aim to achieve adeep understanding of the conditions that are given the Alevi group to form their own identity.

Problem: Small companies dominate the skin care industry, and they also face moredifficulties, constraints and resistance in strategy implementation and sustainabilitywork than other operators. Still, the trend of sustainability strategies increasesignificantly precisely in this industry.Purpose: The purpose of the study is to contribute knowledge to the field ofsustainability strategies and motives for the implementation of them in smallercompanies who engage with skin care, in Sweden.Framing of a question: Why do some smaller Swedish companies in the skin careindustry choose to implement sustainability strategies in their business?Literature: The literature functions as a framework for the study and is considered toidentify the possible reasons why small companies choose to implement sustainabilitystrategies or not. The literature is collected before the empirical data.Method: This paper is constructed by a qualitative method approach. The empiricaldata were collected through interviews, by telephone, personal meetings and email,which were then transcribed and the interpreted by a model, which the authors havecreated.Conclusion: Smaller companies are often met by larger resistance and an until up tothe present slowly emerging industry with vague rules and controls as well as ancomparative knowledge of what is good and what is not.

For centuries Islam and Muslims have been subject to islamophobic attitudes in the west. The purpose with this study was to see into the making of open and closed attitudes against Islam and Muslims from a conflict in southern Thailand, and also to so see if Muslims are portrayed as more violent than the Buddhist groups in the conflict. The aim of the study is also to see if Muslims fall into a violent stereotype. This was studied by looking at five Swedish newspapers coverage of the conflict, during a given time. To be able to look into this, two theories will be used, the first one is the Runnymede Trust theory, which is about open and closed attitudes against Islam and Muslims.

Karlskrona är unikt i Sverige genom sin geografiska placering i kustlandskapet med de begränsningar det ger för framtida utvidgningar. Centrala Trossö ligger i en ände av staden och under flera århundraden har staden bara kunnat växa in över land. När många städer pratar om stadsformer som ?rund stad? och ?bandstad? har Karlskrona en form av ?tårtbitsstad? med centrum i spetsen och resten av staden i nordöstlig riktning. Staden strävar efter att behålla Trossö som centrum, men har idag problem med att allt fler bor längre och längre från ön.