It has become more and more common that companies in the service sector are beginning to understand their own effect on the environment and thus the need to contribute to a sustainable development through acting in a deliberate way. Serious environmental work can help a company to improve their image and in that way win competitive advantage that leads to improved profitability. In a short time perspective, adjustment to the environment is an opportunity to gain competitive advantage and an opportunity to develop a profile. In a long time perspective it is about survival. The environmental work has become a sequel to the work with quality.

Purpose: This paper aims to describe the socialization process that audit associates experience within an auditing firm that is included in the Big 4-sphere. Our purpose is also to describe which attributes that characterize the organizational identity, and how these attributes are reflected in the self-image of the associates. Furthermore, we seek to explain how the socialization process has influenced the organizational identification. This subject is of interest since the business of auditing is facing higher demands from regulators and politicians, due to the bankruptcy of HQ-bank among others during the financial crisis in the beginning of the 21st century. Earlier research claims that the socialization process of recruits, especially in the initial state of the employment, has a major impact on their future values and attitudes in their job performance.

This paper deals with the question: "Why does the U.S. aid project to cambat HIV/AIDS in Africa, called PEPFAR, use a strategy that has been shown to be couterproductive?" The author uses an anthropological approach, based on theory of "aid as a gift" inspired by work of Mauss and Stirrat& Henkel. The study demonstrates that the interests that lie behind PEPFAR have had a greater influence on the choice of strategy than the declared goals. It is concluded that evaluations of development assistance should focus as much on the background interests of the givers as the declared objectives..

With the globalization, companies in the West chose to shift production to developing countries to cut down costs. This had a major impact when child labor and very poor working conditions in these factories were discovered and led many companies to take responsibility for their suppliers and the employees by adopting voluntary so-called Codes of Conduct.There is a subtle balance to enforce improvement of working conditions for employees at suppliers´ factories and to keep costs down. On the one hand, companies would like to conduct extensive audits at their suppliers to ensure code of conduct compliance and thus protect their legitimacy. On the other hand, audits are expensive so companies would like to minimize audits to keep costs down. Companies thus have to strike a delicate balance in relation to how many and what suppliers they choose to audit.

The web has a broad affect on the global economy and can among other things be used for web based information systems (WIS). These systems have grown from being used as a market platform to support all activities in the work of an organisation of today. To survive in a turbulent competitive environment, companies must start to cooperate with their customers instead of just collaborate with them. Can an IT-consultant company use a WIS as a tool for keeping in contact with existing customers to attain this cooperation? A WIS could strengthen the relation between customer and supplier and through that have a possibility to increase the customer use since it can facilitate business processes and imply that services can be offered in a new way.

The aim of our study was to increase the awareness of the importance of implementation when a policy document is widely introduced. We wanted to examine how a political decision was implemented on different levels in a social care administration. We also wanted to examine the discretion related to the decision on different levels in the organisation, and if the work is followed up. The theoretical frame of reference in our study is Vedung?s implementation model and Lipsky?s theory about street-level bureaucrats.

AbstractBackgroundThe Swedish district heat market of today is a subject being discussed regarding the reasonableness of the heat district supplier?s price settings. The issue is currently on a government level where a new investigation is being executed at the time of writing. Many real estate owners are growing tired of the situation where the heat district suppliers are taking advantage of their monopoly position, thus feeling that the price of district heating has been increasing far too much for many years. The market can be described as a natural monopoly because the real estate owner has no possibility to choose another supplier if they are unsatisfied with the present.

Problem formulation? Are there any factors affecting the choice of marketing strategy?? What is it that determines the degree for the company to use a standardized or a adapt marketing strategy?? How profitable is Scania's marketing strategy in each country?Objective: The overall aim of this study is based on local adaptation and global standardization to compare the degree to which the company Scania chooses to adapt or standardize its marketing to the South American and Asian markets.We also aim to compare and describe any factors that affect the countries' differences in marketing strategies and to evaluate and measure the profitability of marketing strategies in each market.Methodology: The study is limited to Scania's marketing in the truck market in Argentina, Brazil, Malaysia and Singapore from 2006 to 2010. In order to answer the study's problem formulation and purpose we have chosen to combine a qualitative and quantitative approach. Four interviews were conducted with marketing executives from Argentina, Brazil, Malaysia / Singapore and Sweden. We have also chosen to examine Scania's annual report and include figures on the market shares of Scania in the respective countries and the number of sold Scania truck which is then compared against the number of registered vehicles by country.

An efficient market implies that the use of fundamental analysis should not result in excess return, and that any return exceeding the market average can be explained by compensation for risk, accord-ing to The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). The focus of this study is to test whether the suc-cessful investment strategy developed by Piotroski (2000) generates excess return on American data, after risk adjustment by using Fama & French?s (1993) 3-factor and Carhart?s (1997) 4-factor CAPM. Initially we form stock portfolios based on companies characterized by high book-to-market values, additionally, we divide them into different performance classes by ranking them with Piotroski?s (2000) measure of financial performance, F_SCORE.

In recent years, awareness of the climate change has increased around the world. Environmental issues have been taking into consideration, both by individuals and companies. Therefore the demands for new environmental friendly technology have increased, also known as cleantech. To further establish and develop cleantech it requires capital. Venture capitalists have as well seen the potential.To increase the number of Venture capital investments in cleantech, it is important the investments generate good returns.

In this thesis we compare how different strategies in choosing attribute values affects junk mail filtering. We used two different variants of a naïve Bayesian junk mail filter. The first variant classified an e-mail by comparing it to a feature vector containing all attribute values that were found in junk mails in the part of the e-mail collection we used for training the filter. The second variant compared an e-mail to a feature vector that consisted of the attributes that was found in ten or more junk mails in the part of the e-mail collection we used for training the filter. We used an e-mail collection that consisted of 300 e-mails, 210 of these were junk mails and 90 were legitimate e-mails.

In this Masters thesis we investigate query expansion using an electronic thesaurus. We formed 30 topics from the library and information science field. For each topic three searches were made in the bibliographic database LISA Library and Information Science Abstracts via CSA Cambridge Scientific Abstracts. LISA has an electronic thesaurus attached. We used this thesaurus to form baseline queries, baseline queries expanded with synonyms, and baseline queries expanded with both synonyms and related terms.

The purpose of my study is to find out which way the extended school staff has their knowledge about conflicts, what they think is the cause of a conflict and how they handle conflicts.To answer these questions, I have chosen to do interviews with an available group. I interviewed six persons of different gender, age, nationality and they have been working from three to twenty years at afterschool care.I have analyzed my empirical material using Szklarkis four causes of a conflict and Malténs strategies for conflict management.My conclusion is that the after-school staff's knowledge is mostly based on experience, partly through work with children group in afterschool care and as a youth leader in the voluntary sector. The strategy almost always used for the after-school staff were the collusion strategy.

With the globalization, companies in the West chose to shift production to developing countries to cut down costs. This had a major impact when child labor and very poor working conditions in these factories were discovered and led many companies to take responsibility for their suppliers and the employees by adopting voluntary so-called Codes of Conduct.There is a subtle balance to enforce improvement of working conditions for employees at suppliers´ factories and to keep costs down. On the one hand, companies would like to conduct extensive audits at their suppliers to ensure code of conduct compliance and thus protect their legitimacy. On the other hand, audits are expensive so companies would like to minimize audits to keep costs down. Companies thus have to strike a delicate balance in relation to how many and what suppliers they choose to audit.

The Swedish agricultural sector is currently undergoing a substantial structural change. The number of farm enterprises is continuously decreasing and the average farm size is increasing. In combination with increasing number of competitors in the insurance market, the competitive rivalry within this market has increased significantly. With this knowledge in mind, Länsförsäkringar Uppsala initiated this study, which aims to provide an understanding of customer?s view on customer value, related to agricultural insurance and financing.