Historically, the horse has in many ways been important to human beings. Today, Equine Assisted Therapy is a form of treatment in which the horse is used as a tool from the treatment of the client. Supported Equine therapy has a therapeutic purpose and may vary depending on the patient's needs and the professionals work competence. Various studies show that animals have a positive impact on people. The aim of our study was to explore how Equine Assisted Therapy is used within the practical fields of social work in Sweden.

This research outlines studies about the relationship between social integration process of Japanese immigrants in Sweden and how social media assists in this process. The purpose of this research includes: To find out the reasons of migration to Sweden for six Japanese immigrants, any difficulties that they faced at the beginning of their immigration process and/or any positive qualities that they found in living in Sweden, whether they have accessed social media since they have moved in, if they do so, how the social media has been used and also, whether the social media has had a role to play in contributing to help their social integration process. In addition, it has been considered whether the participants have plans to return to Japan. In Sweden, there is relatively small Japanese migrant population. This social science research paper is the first in Sweden which explores the immigration process of Japanese migrants into Sweden.

This study is set out to examine if there is any kind of influence between the EU and Swedish gender policy. More specific the Swedish efforts within the gender policy area, especially in the area of social policy and employment, during the Swedish presidency in the Council of Ministers 2001. And also to examine the impact of Europeanization in Swedish gender policy. We have decided to delimit our study to care of elderly and children when it comes to the area of social policy. We are using a descriptive, examining qualitative method.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact that idealised body images found in media have on the body-image and wellbeing of young men and women. The study was carried out using questionnaires based on the BAQ and HAD scales to examine the participants' views of themselves as well as symptoms of anxiety and depression. Time spent by the participants using different kinds of media, as well as their degree of social support, was used with the purpose of examining relations and differences in body-image between men and women. The questionnaire contained advertising images to examine whether short time exposure had any impact on the participants. In order to determine this, one half of the questionnaires contained idealised body-images, whilst the other half contained images without human objects.

The term ?social competence? is widely used by organizations in job advertisements, despite the problems of making a unified definition of it. The purpose of this study is to investigate which features the organizations require, why organizations require them and how the assessment is implemented for recruitment. To answer the purpose of this study, eight qualitative interviews conducted with recruiters from four different staffing agencies. Further a literature study was performed to define the concept of ?social competence? and its meaning, in order to later connect this to the result.

This thesis compares the impact on disk performance in a GNU/Linux  environmentwith three encryption algorithms: AES,  Serpent and Twofish in three different implementations: DM-crypt, Loop-AES and Truecrypt. For all three algorithms a key length of 256 bits is used.The thesis shows that the least performance impact during data encryption, and thus file writing, is reached by using AES or Twofish encryption implemented in DM-crypt or TrueCrypt. The thesis shows that some data operations with a sufficiently low processor utilization barely affects disk performance at all if encrypted using the optimal implementation and algorithm.It is also discovered that the performance impact during data decryption, or file reading, can be minimized by using the most efficient implementation and algorithm. The best results are met with the AES or Twofish cipher, regardless of implementation.An important conclusion that  is  drawn is that it is hard to determine a superior encryption solution for all purposes. However, by reviewing and examining the collected data from all aspects of disk performance the AES implementation in TrueCrypt is, with small marginals, determined to be the most optimal..

A Social Enterprise is a business that features a mixture of characteristics that originates from the third and private sector. A general conception of Social Enterprises is that they aim to improve social welfare by the use of sustainable business models. The mixture of social and business features has created ambiguity about how to define Social Enterprises. The purpose of this study is to clarify Swedish Social Enterprises as a phenomenon and to examine antagonism that arises from mixing the two different sets of organisational characteristics. This is achieved by conducting a qualitative study of ten Swedish companies that the market considers to be Social Enterprises.

The purpose of the present quantitative study was to examine gender differences inperceived job satisfaction in two departments, with different work patterns, in a Swedishmanufacturing industry. The questionnaire contained 30 statements and five backgroundquestions. The questionnaire was designed in combination of Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS),Work demands, Social support, Control and Competence (ASK), Questionnaire forPsychological and Social factors at Work (QPS Nordic) and Minnesota SatisfactionQuestionnaire (MSQ). Job satisfaction was measured based on the categories influence atwork, leadership, employee influence, work requirements and the physical environment. Theresults of the present study showed an interaction of gender and department where the femaleindustrial workers, who worked with more monotonous and standardized work tasks, valuedall of the categories of job satisfaction the lowest, except for the category employee impact.The results are believed to depend on that the women in the department had greater demandsfor variety in the work..

The purpose of this study was to examine divergences in assessments of social assistance in one big and one small social welfare office in the municipalities of Malmö. To examine this we used a qualitative method. We held interviews with social workers and their superiors. At the end of the interviews with the social workers we presented two vignettes, describing different cases of first time applications of social assistance. The social workers was asked to assess whether the application should be granted or not, and motivate their decisions.

In this essay I have tried to come close to a probable answer to the following question: Is there a risk that the trust between the Swedish public and the Swedish medical services staff, including the doctors, will be severely damaged if euthanasia is legalized in Sweden.In order to try to answer that question, and some other relevant questions that has corresponding interest in the context that euthanasia marks, I have done like this: I have investigated experiences from the Netherlands and from Oregon. Since euthanasia is legalized - though partly in different forms - in both these sites. I have then tried to relate the most relevant parts of these experiences to a theoretical frame. This frame had been set up by three concepts: the sanctity of life, autonomy and trust.I have also tried to come close to understanding the impact that demands for autonomy has in this context. And I have tried to understand if the trust that the public has for a country´s medical services staff and the actual doctors is a form of trust that ought to be understood as a form of trust incorporated in social capital.I have come to the conclusion that there is no great risk that the trust between the Swedish public and the Swedish medical services staff, including the doctors, will be severely damaged if euthanasia is legalized in Sweden.

Background: When firms grow through acquisitions it is commonly debated whether the two entities ought to be better off as standalone companies rather than as a merged company. This thesis aims at discussing this issue of M&As advantages and disadvantages in terms of source of synergies from the perspective of resource allocation. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyze to what extent pre-M&A differences (against similarities) in resource allocation and corporate culture between the acquiring and target firm have an impact on the post-M&A performance. Theoretical framework: Efficient market hypothesis, resource based view, strategic fit. Methodology: A longitudinal study is conducted on the EU market during 1992 to 2002 based on balance sheet and income statement data.

The environmental debate is more intensive than ever before and the demands on companies increase. There are a number of methods to make it easier for the companies to fulfil the demands. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) end ecodesign are some of the methods that can be used. Syntronic AB has the possibility to reduce the products´ environmental impact in the design phase. Therefore it is important for the company to make it possible to visualize the negative environmental impacts a product can cause in an easy way. It is also important to visualize for there clients if any improvement is possible. The purpose of this thesis is to develop a simplified model.

The environmental issues have during the last decenniums gained an increased role in both the political arena and in the market economy. The society is therefore more knowledgeable about the environment and our impact on it. Through this enlightened state, stakeholders tend to put pressure on the organizations of today. They, more or less willingly, incorporate this responsibility to be a part of their business. Entrepreneurs in the environmental area have seen this rising market as an opportunity to gain market shares and other positive outcomes.

This paper examines, through questionnaire, how young students in upper secondary school in Malmo experience social integration. It also contain what they think should be done in order to improve the integration between youth that are ethnic Swedish and youth that have a foreign background. To understand the subject we started with a review over Swedish integration politic and its influence over Malmo and social integration in the country. We have used such theoretical starting points as identity and ethnicity in relations to the social surroundings, social affinity theory and flexible mindedness, making of groups among youth and factors to promote social integration. Our conclusion is that the experience of social integration between the two groups depends on how you experience yourself.

Social enterprises make up one of the groups of participants that provide welfare services financed by public funding. The object of this study is to describe and analyze from a theoretical point of view which conditions, in what fields, by which division of responsibility and finally through what decisions these social enterprises are allocated a place in the market for social welfare services. The company that has been the object of study offers services in the field of social welfare and in employment. In the study a triangulation of qualitative methods has been used: studies of literature on the subject, recurrent interviews and observations and also reviews of documents. The results have been analyzed from theories on the space available on the market for social services, on social economy and on social capital in the form of strong, weak and bridging bonds.