We investigated a retirement home, where we looked at whether there are differences, disagreements or conflicts between teams who work day and night shifts. Our purpose was to examine the Heads of Unit and the employees perspectives on their perceived work situation, cooperation difficulties and why they emerged. We chose the general systems theory as our theoretical basis, which gave us the opportunity to highlight different parts that can affect the working climate and the cooperation of the working groups. The study also highlights the importance of structure, common goals, reporting and dialogue meetings. To understand the perceived work situation, we used methodological triangulation, using quantitative and qualitative methods (surveys, semi-structured interviews).

By exploring different forms of urban cultivation and looking into future gains of sustainability, I want to focus on unconventional and perhaps necessary ways of building, living and making a living. This will be made through study of literature on the topic.Urban cultivation could be anything from a pot of basil in the kitchen window to a city farm. The core of the concept is that the food is produced where it is eaten, in or in direct vicinity to the city and that it is produced ecologically. There will be many benefits, ecological, economical and social.The world is at a turning point right now where consumption patterns and the industry processed food are questioned and it is important that the things we consume are genuineand authentic. We want food that is locally and ecologically produced; food that we can trust.

The main focus of this study is to describe how, and for what reasons teachers use literature and fiction as a pedagogic tool. A qualitative study was made by interviewing four teachers about their language teaching. Working with fiction as a teaching-aid in school can in many ways be favorable to both teachers and pupils. In terms of children?s language development, research shows that using fiction as an educational tool can stimulate pupils? well-being as well as their linguistic improvement.

Recent years have been very turbulent for most private equity firms. Especially the financial meltdown in global economy has affected the industry, but also the public pressure has made private equity houses change their control strategies towards more conventional methods used in public companies. This thesis aims to put light on the control methods used in listed private equity houses which use a buyout strategy. The paper describes how the control methods change over the different phases the asset experience and how different value generating strategies use altered control methods. Using Merchant's (2003) framework for management control systems and Berg and Gottschalg's (2004) research on value generating strategies in buyouts the thesis shows that action controls as designing instructions for the board and a business plan, together with goal alignment is the commonly used control strategy directly after the acquisition.

Since January 2005 new rules have been introduced from the International Financial Reporting Standards for accounting of Business Combinations. Goodwill, which is the difference between the purchase price and the value of the net assets in an acquired firm, should no longer be amortized but should instead be treated as an object for yearly impairment tests. Nevertheless, there are many companies making the tests but not impairing goodwill. The theoretical frame of reference looks at goodwill from its two parts; true goodwill and false goodwill. False goodwill is defined as a measurement bias and constitutes a certain percentage of the operating net assets.

Miljöproblemen uppmärksammas idag i hela världen. Dagligen hör vi att hoten mot miljön måste åtgärdas och att alla måste hjälpas åt. Riksdag, regering, och flera stora världsorganisationer arbetar hårt med att få in ett miljöperspektiv i all undervisning. Det här gäller från förskolan ända upp till vuxenutbildning. Syftet är att undersöka vad barn vet och kan om vardagliga handlingar som påverkar miljön och en hållbar utveckling på ett positivt sätt i förhållande till vad rapporter och styrdokument föreskriver.

The purpose of this study is to examine the medial depiction of Muslims in the case of Pastor Terry Jones' intention to burn the Quran. Our study is based on theoretical framework regarding an alleged clash of civilizations, how that leads to global conflicts and controls the world politics. It?s also based on the western way of characterize Muslims as violent, irrational human beings, and how mass media have a tendency to depict Muslims as ?the others?. The questions we aim to seek answers to are: How were Muslims portrayed in CNN's and Al-Jazeera's reporting regarding Terry Jones plan to burn the Quran? Which discourses exist about Muslims in each news channel and what are the main differences between them? The qualitative method used is a critical discourse analysis on empirical data consistently of twelve articles.

This paper analyzes the auditor choices for a sample of 300 predominantly small Swedish firms, all located in Umeå. Our hypothesis was based on the complexity of a firm, the need of external financing, leverage, and the need of extra consultance from the auditfirm. Our definition of auditor quality is based on prior studies, and is frequently used by authors in this area. The assumption is based on that the auditor quality increases with the size of the auditfirm and the degree of the auditor. The auditor quality is therefor depending on the choice between an auditor from the group ?Big 5? or not, and the choice of an auditor with an higher degree.

This study is based on a qualitative study with 8 semi-structured interviews. The aim of thestudy was to describe how social workers in the individual- and family section in socialservices in two different municipalities in Sweden reason about reporting obligations and tounderstand what lex Sarah means in the decisions making to report incongruity or not. Weinterviewed social workers that work in the department of individual- and family section, amunicipality worker who works with state governance with all kinds people in the society.We asked the social workers altered questions about how they handle lex Sarah in their work.Three different topics were identified in our study and became the themes: Description,management and conflicting thoughts. Our analysis is based on two different theories, oneabout the choices a person make being in an organization, the other about how a professionalindividual have altered pressures to handle in their everyday work. By doing a semi-structuredstudy of the social workers opinions, we found out that the description of incongruity was notthe focus just in managing lex Sarah.

This master thesis is a study of how city cemeteries can be used and contributes to a socially sustainable urban development. Today sustainable development and sustainable urban development is something that more or less every organization is working with. Therefore it is also relevant to integrate our cemeteries in this work so that they can become a part of the sustainable urban development process.The thesis gives a basic understanding of sustainability as a concept and also defines socially sustainable (urban) development. The work then immerse itself in various types of park structures and how the relationship between the human individual and the public space work, to satisfy the needs that different people have.The literature study that has been made is also the base for the design of the walking interview that has been made for the two city cemeteries. The cemeteries that where studied where the Assistens cemetery in Copenhagen and the Eastern cemetery in Gothenburg.

The purpose of this essay is to find out what experiences three preschool teachers, two preschool directors and a social worker (BSc) from the social service have of reporting suspicion of child abuse done by preschools. What perceptions do these individuals have of each other, what experiences do they have regarding cooperation and how do they perceive their responsibilities regarding filing reports on suspicion of child abuse? This investigation is based on qualitative interviews with open ended questions on the basis of an interview guide. The theoretical approach of the essay lies in the phenomenology philosophy, which revolves around the individual?s experiences and perceptions of a phenomenon.

Background: The last few years a globalization of the capital market has occurred. This have led to that it is more important for the companies that their financial information can be compared with other companies in order to compete on same grounds. In order to fa-cilitate for the companies within EU to compete with other companies and in order to strive for an internal market EU decided that IFRS should be used by all listed companies within the union.Problem: In 2006 the first financial reports according to IFRS will be published, and then it will be interesting to investigate how the companies have chosen to communicate the transition to its stakeholders. According to IFRS some information is compulsive but the companies have chosen to disclose voluntary information to a different degree.Purpose: The purpose of this study is to describe to what extent the Swedish listed com-panies have reported the transition to IFRS in their consolidated financial statements.Method: In this essay a quantitative method have been chosen in order to find general re-lations. The data collection is done with help of an evaluation model that have been devel-oped for this study.

Since 2005 all companies listed on a regulated stock exchange within the European Union are required to present their financial reports in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and International Accounting Standards (IAS). The purposes of these standards are to accomplish international harmonization of accounting rules to make financial reports more comparable. However, recent research has shown that some firms tend to use goodwill strategically in a business combination by manipulating the acquired assets and consciously allocate the intangible assets to goodwill to reduce the depreciation in the income and decrease costs. This phenomenon may reduce the comparability between financial reports and thus has an opposite effect on the purpose of IFRS and IAS.The aim of this study is to show how the companies involved in this study allocate goodwill strategically. Furthermore, the introduction of the new standards has contributed to that goodwill now is a subject for impairment test, therefore we want to show whether this affected the comparability of the companies in this study.An empirical study was conducted, based on interviews with four Swedish managers.

This work is a study of subject teachers in social studies and science understand the concept of sustainable development. The work uses a qualitative and a quantitative approach. Teachers in various schools and stages have been answering questions about how they perceive sustainability, how they implement it in teaching and if they feel that school is important for the future of sustainable development at large.The theoretical background is based on environmental ethics as well as the different meanings and definitions of the concept of sustainable development. These theories and definitions are coupled with the empirical results.The study concludes that all teachers throughout the study perceive the concept of sustainable development as something ecological, something that has to do with nature. A few teachers also state economic and social dimensions.Questions about how the teachers in the study implement the concept in their teaching can be seen as three different approaches.

Företag har idag en stor press från olika intressenter i samhället på att vara både vinstdrivande och ta socialt och miljömässigt ansvar. Elbolag är speciellt påverkade då de opererar i en bransch där miljöfrågor har ett stort utrymme. Det är således intressant att undersöka huruvida ett av de ledande elbolagen på den europeiska marknaden, Vattenfall, har reagerat på de ökade påtryckningarna från intressenter över tid. På vilket sätt kan vi se en förändring i hur Vattenfall presenterar sitt CSR-arbete från och med det att de började hållbarhetsredovisa år 2001 fram till idag? För att besvara vår frågeställning har vi utfört en fallstudie där vi analyserat Vattenfalls samtliga hållbarhetsredovisningar samt utfört intervjuer med deras Senior Advisor på Sustainability Performance Monitoring och CSR-manager.