It is sixty years since Sweden's first star-shaped housing estate was built in Gröndal, a suburb of Stockholm. Olle Engkvist, the building contractor, was the driving force behind the residential area and it was designed by architects Sven Backström and Leif Reinius. The estate comprises detached star-shaped houses suited to a more hilly terrain and terraced star-shaped houses on the flat land. The eight gardens of the terraced houses form the shape of a hexagon. It is these gardens, designed by Sven Hermelin and Per Friberg, which are the main focus of this thesis. The buildings on the estate have recently been renovated and it is now time for the gardens to be restored.

Corporate governance intensified due to the corporate scandals in the USA which led to a new law the so called Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX).In 2005 the "Svensk kod för bolagsstyrning" (The Code) was introduced. The main purpose of The Code is to strengthen the confidence in Swedish companies quoted on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. The Code focuses on the working process of boards. The rules set by The Code places higher demands on the board.  Among many other duties the board has to establish long term operational goals and strategy.

PURPOSE: By analysing collected data using theory, we aim to interpret the design, implementation and the usage of BSC in NPO?s to be able to contribute to the research. METHODOLOGY: A case study design has been made through semi-structured interviews and backed up by a quantitative survey and internal documents. THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES: Based on the sources given from the creators of the scorecard together with some sceptics and some followers, we have outlined the bases of balanced scorecard. To map out the non-profit sector and its strategic needs, the theories have tried to settle the specific need for the strategic tool given.

The aim of this master's thesis is to describe the visibility of the university libraries in the strategic documents from the actual universities to which they belong. And also, the image of themselves they send out, are examined. By examining different kinds of descriptions we want to get a clearer picture of how and in what amount the libraries are mentioned in highest level strategies. By doing this we expect to find out the libraries' strategic role in higher education and research. The research questions are: What role and function are assigned to the university libraries in strategies created by the schools' highest administrative levels? How do the libraries present themselves in their own strategies? The approach is cross sectional and the time frame is year 2008.

In an effort to strengthen democracy in the union, the EU in 2005 took a new approach to communications policy to reach out to the citizens. The strategic document "Plan D for Democracy, Dialogue and Debate" was accompanied by two other documents, and the three of them were the core of this policy. Both democracy and communications work means at EU level a higher complexity than in the nation-state arena. Objective of this study is to examine how the implementation of Plan D has turned out in a democracy renewal perspective. To achieve that answers are sought to questions concerning the goals of Plan D, how they are still present today, what happened in practice regarding the efforts that are highlighted, and how the substance of the activities can be judged from a democratic theory perspective.

Motivationsskapande åtgärder är avgörande för de anställdas nöjdhet inom organisationen. Vad som motiverar de anställda varierar från individ till individ. Vårt resultat visar att det existerar ett samband mellan de anställdas nöjdhet och hur väl organisationens strategi, struktur, utvärderingar och belöningar stämmer överens med olika karriärinriktningar och drivkrafter. Studien visar även att de anställdas nöjdhet påverkar kundernas nöjdhet med servicen..

This Masters thesis is concerned with the complex planning process of setting up a citizen bureau in a public library. The aim is to find out how citizen bureaux are designed and to suggest a simplified model of strategic planning. The planning process is studied from a business perspective in the library context, and this perspective is also used to study citizen bureaux and their written plans elsewhere. A combination of qualitative methods are used: observations, focus group discussions and interviews. Observations in the public library showed a great need for an environmental analysis as well as structure to the planning process.

The aim of this essay is to analyze the political interests of the United States Government in Turkey, from 1997 to spring 2007, using a qualitative method. I will also analyze any strategic changes during this period, by using theories of realism, particularly Structure Realism and Rational Choice. Using the Rational Actor Model (RAM), I will analyze how nation states such as the United States act in the political arena in Turkey. How can the US Government legitimize the support to Turkey and at the same time criticize there democratic deficit and their view on human rights. Turkey has been an American Military Ally, via NATO since 1952 and its demographic situation has changed since the Cold War.

Corporate governance intensified due to the corporate scandals in the USA which led to a new law the so called Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX).In 2005 the "Svensk kod för bolagsstyrning" (The Code) was introduced. The main purpose of The Code is to strengthen the confidence in Swedish companies quoted on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. The Code focuses on the working process of boards. The rules set by The Code places higher demands on the board.  Among many other duties the board has to establish long term operational goals and strategy.

AbstractTitle: Accounting firms´ view on the (new law) in joint-stock companiesCourse: Business Administration, Financial Accounting in Corporations and Groups, Ad-vanced Course, 15 ECTSAuthors: Mikaela Uveby, Shadi Nourbehesht, Almira DizdarevicAdvisor: Kent TrosanderProblem: During the last few years, more importance and emphasis has been put on auditors and accounting in general due to a number of company and business scandals on both national and international levels. The United States as well as the EU consid-ered it a necessity to make regulations stricter when it comes to auditing and ac-counts in order to increase the public trust to accounting. At January 1st, 2007, Sweden also changed its law concerning accounting firm challenges. The new law states that as soon as someone of the auditor?s co-workers assists a client with some part of the basic bookkeeping, the main bookkeeping or the drawing-up of the an-nual account, the challenge situation becomes a fact.Purpose: The purpose of the essay is to examine and inquire into how the renewed law con-cerning accounting firm challenges, that was established and put to action at Janu-ary 1st, 2007, has affected accounting firms.Method: The writers have chosen to complete qualitative interviews in order to get a deeper insight to and an understanding of the topic.Conclusion: One year after the renewal of the law, the writers have reached the conclusion of that the new law has not had a great impact on the accounting firms.

This rapport examines six Swedish workplace unions, in manufacturing internationalised companies, degree of internationalised trade union work. The report is based on interviews with local shop stewards. All local workplace unions were in some form internationalised. They were placed in three different groups of strategies: Passive, Tactical and Strategic. The Passive union only tried to get information; the Tactical unions were reactive against initiative from company management and used the channels provided of Industrial Relation laws.

Propose/Aim: The aim of this thesis is to examine the professional role of the Community Manager working for gaming companies. The thesis will examine which background and previous experience a Community Manager should have and the tasks included in the assignment to see how this new role can contribute to the development of gaming companies.Material/Method: The method used in this study is of a qualitative character. The data has been gathered through e-mail interviews with five people working as Community Managers in the gaming business and in addition, through a textual analysis of five job advertisements. The results were analyzed on the basis of carefully selected theories in the field of strategic communication.Main results: The main result of this study is that the Community Manager's most important task is to act as a link between the players and the game developers by communicating with both sides. The Community Manager can receive important feedback from the players which can contribute to the game development. .

User participation in the planning process of renewing the yards of existing residential areas was introduced in Sweden in the 1970s. It arose as a solution to many of the problems which became common in the residential areas built within the Swedish million program. The aim with the million program was to build one million homes within ten years. The same year as the million program was completed, in 1975, government subsidies to improve the residential yards were introduced. One of the conditions to get the subsidies was that the residents had to be involved in the planning process.

This study addresses the issue of mergers between consulting firms. Previous research has shown that there are specific factors that determine the outcome of a merger and that success is more likely if companies are more similar. The purpose of the study is therefore to define relevant factors and understand when resemblance matter and under what conditions disparity may cause problems. Furthermore, the aim of the study is to find a pattern of which factors are more important in a successful merger. The problem of the study is addressed through a qualitative research approach and is conducted on six different mergers.

This essay conducts a descriptive analysis of the ideas expressed by NATO´s official security strategy "Strategic Concept" from 2010 and the European Union?s security strategy "A Secure Europe in a Better World" from 2003. The purpose of this analysis is to examine whether the ESDP and NATO are compatible with each other when it comes to the role of security policy actor. To do so, I´ve chosen to analyse the actors' security strategies based on three dimensions. These dimensions are: Their view of the international scene, their views on cooperation and their views on how to reach security.