This thesis examines organisations as mediators and how different kinds of organisations have different prerequisites to act as mediators. Global, regional and subregional organisations are often asked to mediate in conflicts, but considering the circumstances, who should mediate?In a mediating process the mediator should be considered as important an actor as the disputing parties and should hence be scrutinized as one. Mediation is a complex subject to study and theoretically the opinions differ on what characterises a good mediator. I have taken many of the different views in consideration and constructed a model from which organisations and their prerequisites can be compared and evaluated.

Patentsystemet kan ge upphov till vad som kallas patentsnår, där en aktör som vill producera en produkt eller bedriva en process måste vända sig till de olika patentinnehavare vilka innehar rättigheterna till de nödvändiga teknikerna för att få göra detta. Det här är ett förfarande som är både kostsamt och tidskrävande och därigenom får en dämpande inverkan på innovationen. För att hantera detta kan patentinnehavare gå samman i en patentpool och genom denna gemensamt licensera ut de patent vilka krävs för att producera en produkt eller bedriva en process.Dessa poolsamarbeten som berör monopolrättigheter kan dock skapa konkurrensbegränsande effekter. Genom tiderna har domstolarna gått från en bedömning av patentpooler som en rättmätig utbyggnad av patenträtten, till en bedömning att varje avtal som ökar patenträttens omfattning är olaglig för att slutligen tillämpa regler som tar hänsyn till positiva och negativa effekter och därifrån göra en avvägning i fall till fall.Den tidiga utvecklingen tog plats i Förenta staterna men det nuvarande rättsläget är i stort det samma också i EU. De första reglerna som utfärdats om patentpooler är de riktlinjer som kommissionen gav ut 2004, dessa ger ledning om hur kommissionen kommer att bedöma ett poolsamarbete men de utgör inte bindande rätt.

This thesis intends to analyse conditions for a successful implementation of consociational democracy, as a democratic model in Afghanistan. The lack of critical reviews regarding the democratisation-process in Afghanistan initiated the purpose of this study.Lijpharts democracy model was used as the basis in the comparative study. Along with empirical evidence regarding how the complex process of democracy in Afghanistan is progressing, the study investigated whether the identified conditions occurred or not.The choice of which democracy model to use can be crucial for the democratic possibilities to even survive and become established in conflict-affected communities. The principle of consociational democracy is that it is an empirically based normative model that aims to organise the state in a way that works against the risks of majority domination and oppression against the minority.The empirical case study revealed that a majority of the conditions were not met, which then can counteract the possibilities for consociational democracy in Afghanistan. The study has critically examined the prospects for the success of consociational democracy in Afghanistan, and it can be assessed that there is a limited probability for a successful applying of this model..

Through analysis of the work of scheduling the doctors at the hospitals of Sundsvall,Gävle and Karolinska in Stockholm this thesis presents some conclusion about howand why a computer system would benefit these very tasks. The reason for doing thisis mainly to save money through more efficient scheduling, but also to minimizeerrors and maximize comfort for scheduler and doctor alike.Scheduling consists of collecting doctors? requests, assessing the need of staff,distribute the available doctors and make sure all tasks are covered throughout thescheduled period of time. The work is often very complex and involves manyvariables ranging from competence to personal whishes and economical constraints.Solving these problems takes a lot of time and energy which could be better spentcuring patients.The conclusion of this thesis is that there is reason to develop such a system to savetime and optimize resources. A description of the system is found in numerous lists ofroles, tasks and prototype sketches which combined shape the content andfunctionality.

AbstractIn 1998 the Swedish legislation was sharpened, and active educationalists were legally bound to report any suspicion of child maltreatment. Nevertheless, there are a number of unrecorded cases of maltreated children, and research reveals that less than half of these children are reported to social services (Olsson, 2001). The purpose of the present study was to illustrate the problems with the mandatory reports in schools, as well as to study how educationalists proceed when they suspect that a child is maltreated. The method consisted of semi-structured interviews with five educationalists. The results revealed complex problems regarding educationalists mandatory reports.

The number of locals in Stockholm who chooses the bike in front of public transport has increased significantly in recent years. The product purchaser of this project, Joakim Victorin at Sigma AB, has a keen interest in cycling, which resulted in a fairly obvious topic of this project; through a web application Sigma AB wanted to make it possible to handle results from professional as well as amateur competitions in cycling.The purpose of this web application is to simplify reporting and handling of competition for both small and bigger bicycle races. By providing the users of the system a platform independent client, any available device may be used.This thesis has followed the development principles which prevail on the ASP .NET MVC 3 concept. When developing the system the Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 development environment was used. The framework and the pattern of ASP .NET MVC 3 is a prominent part of today?s web development.

This thesis concerns partial discharges in stator windings and the possibility of analyzing data using statistical methods. Partial discharges, or PD, are a physical phenomenon in which discharges occur locally due to large electric fields. PD can occur in or adjacent to the insulation of stator windings and causes breakdown of the insulating materials. PD measurement can provide an idea of how widespread the PD activity is. A technique to measure and analyze PD that has become very popular over the last few decades is phase resolved PD patterns.

In these days of globalization, with a higher level of openness and interaction over geographical, cultural and economical borders, the importance of the company?s intangible asset, its brand, is gaining importance as a differentiating factor. Building a strong brand and the emphasis on strategic brand management is something that before was given less attention in firms but today we can see a general increase in awareness and relative emphasis in the strategic work of companies.Countries as brands: Is it possible to consider a nation or a country as a brand the same way you consider a product? Well, looking in to the subject it seems to be a rather complex matter and there are many questions to be asked and answer. Nations around the globe are indeed marketing and positioning themselves for several purposes.

The aim of the study was to understand limitations and possibilities to the discretion of managers in order to fulfill wishes of users. The study is based on six interviews, three with managers and three with staff in common homes for mentally disabled people. The study took place in a municipality in Sweden in the spring of 2010. We used an interview guide with specific themes and questions. The theoretical framework was based on organizational theories as well as theories about management and discretion.

The population of asylum seekers puts new challenges on the Swedish health care since their difficulties are complex; having both atraumatic background and a continuing worry about the asylum process.This study aims at investigating how health care professionals working with asylum seekers are affected emotionally using the theoretical concepts of empathy, compassion fatigue and compassion satisfaction. Nine qualitative interviews with health care professionals were conducted and the material was analyse dusing thematic analysis. Results were deductively found in thematerial, using the asylum process itself along with the concepts of empathy, compassion fatigue and compassion satisfaction as themes. Previous findings regarding empathy and its relations to compassion fatigue and compassion satisfaction were confirmed. This was furhter developed in this study through its focus on health care professionals working with asylum seekers..

The health care is an important part of the welfare services in Sweden. Therefore it is of large interest that it is well performing. A part of this is related to how the health care is organized. This essay examines how the Swedish health care has been organized between 1960 and 1990 and what organizational changes that have been made to the health care. It shows that the Swedish health care has un-dergone many organizational changes the last decades.

Outsourcing in IS/IT offers organizations the possibility to use external resources, maximize flexibility and focus on core business, this prompts many organizations today to be less keen on developing IS/IT-services in-house. Sourcing IS/IT is however a complex activity in itself thus requiring competencies in many areas of expertise and lots of organizations has experienced the challenge of managing the necessary competencies to ensure successful Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO). A literature review in the field of outsourcing revealed the lack of a comprehensive competency management framework with the ability to guide competency resource planning in ITO projects. In order to highlight the problem area, an extensive and thorough literature review and an empirical case study which investigated the skills and assets in ITO projects at ten major Swedish organizations was conducted. The study found that it is possible for organizations through structured analysis of their intellectual capital, using the competency framework developed within the study, to plan sourcing processes and prepare the necessary changes to ensure the ITO projects can be implemented with the desired effect..

I chose to do this work because I believe that today?s industrial designprofessionals lack in their task of creating aesthetic experiences and aestheticdiversity.With my work, I want to question why the majority of today?s technical, massproducedeveryday products have such a similar design expression, andwhy alternatives are so few. Most of all, I take a critical attitude to today?sstereotypical industrial design aesthetics that I would describe as technical,masculine, and unnecessarily complex.I have designed a number of products that show alternative aesthetics in thissegment and as such I have chosen the vacuum cleaner. The idea is that mydesign will serve as an eye opener and demonstrate that there are alternativesto today?s homogeneous market.The result is three vacuum cleaners claiming three alternatives to currentofferings.

A design methodology to mitigate timing problems due to long wire delays is proposed. The timing problems are taking care of at architecture level instead of layout level in this design method so that no change is needed when the whole design goes to backend design. Hence design iterations are avoided by using this design methodology. The proposed design method is based on STARI architecture, and a novel initialization mechanism is proposed in this paper. Low frequency global clock is used to synchronize the communication and PLLs are used to provide high frequency working clocks.

Information is one of the organization's essential resources, and as such it needs strategic management. The authors use the information audit, which was developed by Orna 1999 and Henczel 2000 as a tool to evaluate how well an organization's information activities connect to its mission, goals, and objectives, to evaluate the municipal politicians' information support in Härryda municipality. The decision situations met by politicians often are complex; they are ambiguous and unstructured, with a high level of uncertainty. Human information sources meet needs arising in this kind of decision situations best. Since most of the politicians work full-time besides being politicians, Härryda municipality has to substitute the human sources by textual ones composed of highly summarized information.