I denna studie har undersökts personlighet och Health Locus of Control hos 56 kvinnor och män i åldrarna 18 till 65 år, där 30 var svenskar och 26 var tyskar. Undersökningens frågeställning var: Är en eller fler personlighetsdimensioner i Fem-Faktor-modellen relaterade till i vilken utsträckning en individ har Internality, Powerful others eller Chance Health Locus of Control. En NEO-PI enkät och ett Multi dimensionella Health Locus of Control-skalan-formulär administrerades. Resultatet från undersökningen kunde påvisa en signifikant korrelation mellan Openess to Experience och Powerful Others Health Locus of Control samt Conscientiousness och Powerful Others Health Locus of Control. En signifikant skillnad mellan svenskar och tyskar beträffande Powerful Others kunde också påvisas.

Quality assurance means to systematically work for better understanding of the customers needs, demands and expectations. The goal for this study was to investigate how quality can be assured in the job follow up that is made by forestry contractors after soil scarification and planting. The study consisted of a description over the current follow up process at SCA forest AB Jämtlands forest administration, analysis of current follow up situation and an investigation of follow up process made by contractors in other line of business. The first step was a statistical comparison where the own follow up made by contractors were compared with follow up made by SCA them selves over 100 stands. Two soil scarification contractors and two planting contractors carried out the silvicultural measures. The results showed that significant differences between a number of quality factors measured, for example number of approved plants or approved scarification points, average score on stand and number of totally planted plants.

The task in this thesis is the steering of one of Saab Bofors Dynamics robots using Sliding Mode Control, a method they never used before. The robot constitutes a system which in addition to perturbations and uncertainties due to modeling imprecision, hold the difficulty of being highly time variant. In order to be able to keep required performance with uncertainties and modeling imprecision present, the use of robust control methods like Sliding Mode Control is necessary. SMC is based on the states of the system being forced to stay on or in the direct vicinity of a hyper plane in the state space which is chosen in a way that gives the system dynamics desired properties. Other advantages with sliding mode are reduced order dynamics on the switching surface and total insensitivity to some uncertainties and perturbations.

The use of temporary workers gives companies the opportunity to be flexible, by avoiding hiring and dismissing workers because of economic conditions and trends in demand. The management control in use at the company has the purpose of influencing employees? behaviour to act in the company?s best interest and towards its goals. The management control should also influence the behaviour of the temporary worker. The companies have to create motivation and commitment among the temporary workers although they are employed by a staffing agency.

The aim of this study is to investigate which management control mechanisms evolve in companies that receive funding from Venture Capital companies and why the management control systems evolve in the way that they do. A case study was performed on three Swedish high technology companies, that all received funding from Venture Capital companies for the first time in 2006. Merchant?s framework, defining all management control mechanisms as either, results control, action control or personnel control, was used to structure the study. Results show that the companies that received Venture Capital all increased the use of management control mechanisms within results control, action control and personnel control.

The purpose with this paper is that trough a description of the management control at Jitech AB find out if traditional management control have been abandoned for benefit for modern management control and in which extent the transition have happened. Further is the second purpose with this paper to find out which decisions that lies behind the design of the management control and how these are in opposition to with the theory..

The aim of this thesis is to examine the properties of the municipalities in Sweden that influence the choice of being a certified Fairtrade city. The independent variables which are used in the statistical analysis are municipal governance, local tax rate, whether there is an university and/or university college in the municipality, average income and higher education in the municipality. The variables are examined by logistic regression. Since there are no statistical data on ethical procurement, this exogenous variable isn?t included in the regression.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how a valuation model of a Private Equity firm is interpreted into a management control system within the company's different organizational levels. A case study was developed based on the infra-net company Eltel. The management control systems developed by Malmi and Brown (2008)(1) was used to characterize the control systems at each organizational level. The building blocks of this system are planning, cybernetic, reward/compensation, administrative and culture. Miller and O'Learys (2007)(2) theory of mediating instruments and technology roadmaps was applied to analyze the mediating process of the valuation model.

There are many aspects which must be taken into consideration when studying individuals? need of exercise. The study investigates if impulsivity and Health Locus of Control affect the continuity of physical practise. The main presumption was that individuals with high impulsivity, high Powerful Others and high Chance Health Locus of Control, would have a significantly harder time to maintain a continuous physical activity. The survey used two standardized tests to measure impulsivity and Health Locus of Control and in order to be able to measure the insensitivity and the periodicity of physical exercise, a test was developed by the authors.

Social control in different forms has existed in all known societies. This control has taken different shapes and expressions. In older smaller communities there was a collective control among the citizens. In modern societies the state is trying to control the lives of the citizens. These control mechanisms can be seen as both freedom-reducing and freedom inducing depending on which concept of freedom one upholds.

If Swedish companies are to compete with companies in low-cost countries they have to achieve a more efficient production. The purpose of Total Productivity Maintenance (TPM) is to increase the company's profitability by increasing the productivity. TPM is a method that involves all employees and aims to prevent failures in order to increase the availability of existing equipment.The aim of this paper is to evaluate the implementation process of TPM and give recommendations for the further implementation process. The conclusion and the analysis are based on a case study done at a production department at ABB Cewe-Controls facilities in Nyköping. The case study consists mainly of qualitative data from participation observations, surveys and interviews.Commitment of the management is a key factor in the implementation process of TPM.

The purpose of this paper is to create increased understanding of how pupils learn statistics. This includes gaining insight into pupils' use of their own experience and group experience to help to get a better understanding of statistical problem solving. The study's research questions are about how pupils learn to work with data in tables and diagram and how pupils learn to work with measures.The theoretical framework consists of two approaches to studying learning. One approach is based on pupils? cognitive conditions, called set-befores, and the pupils' previous experiences, called met-befores.

This thesis concerns the control of outsourced interorganizational buyer-supplier relationships in the low-price fashion industry. A qualitative case study has been performed on two supplier relationships of a low-price fashion company. By identifying specificities of the industry and relating them to control problems and their implications on control solutions, the thesis has established a relation between industry specific characteristics and the way companies in the industry control their supplier relationships. The analysis is based on a theoretical framework created by Dekker (2004). Amongst other factors, the difficulty to define, quantify and measure the design variables of a fashion good, the high heterogeneity between individual products and the difficulty to predict the trend based demand, create high coordination requirements as well as appropriation concerns solved through extensive formal control.

A lot of mine waste rock and tailings arise from all mining processes and have to be stored in an appropriate way. Tailings are deposited in impoundments retained by tailings dams. The objective of tailings dams is to retain the slurry from the mining process and in that way prevent spill into the surroundings that might be harmful for the environment. Tailings dams are often constructed as staged embankments so that construction costs and demand of materials are spread more evenly over the period of deposition.The objective of this thesis has been to compile information about and evaluate events at Swedish tailings dams and also to develop a collective database for all Swedish mining companies for all tailings dams and all events that occur at tailings dams.Information about 60 events at Swedish tailings dams has been gathered and evaluated. The evaluation has been performed by comparison between and analysis of individual parameters and also by use of a multivariate statistical method called PLS.

Speaking of budget and budgeting is almost as adding fuel to the fire. The subject evokes a lot of emotions, both positive and negative. Some might consider budgets as a bureaucratic process that won?t lead to any good. Others might find budgets as extremely helpful and necessary in a company?s planning process.