The Swedish public inquiries and most of the political science advocate reforms in the spirit of participatory democracy to strengthen the democracy. Although it is striking how limited and narrow the scientific documentation is in analysing the effects of participatory democratic reforms. Still, many of the local governments in Sweden are reshaping their organisations according to the participatory democracy model. Is it a trend and a symbolic action or a veritable action of good-will of the politicians?The paper argues that the idea of participatory democracy has become popular and widely spread.

In 2010, SAS received the "On time performance service" award by Flightstats. This award was an affirmation of long-term work, both in projects and as an ongoing process, which the company sought to systematically improve punctuality on its flights. The extent to which SAS followed the values and the underlying theories of the cornerstone model for total quality management was the main issue in this essay. Whether there are conditions for the company to get even further by working in other ways was also investigated. In addition, the importance of punctuality in relation to customer satisfaction was discussed.

A budget consists of figures showing how much a particular activity has access to during a given year. With a balanced scorecard, these figures and guidelines can be converted in to more easily understandable non-financial instructions for the employees. One of the most significant differences between the budget and the scorecard is that the budget focuses on short-term results while the scorecard focuses on long-term visions and goals. With a long-term thinking the leaders can  set more long-term goals and also make more well-planned investments which increases the possibility for the organization to evolve and become better in the long term. By combining the two instruments a good balance between short and long term perspectives can be achieved, which creates a more effective steeringIn the 1990s, many of the municipalities introduced needs budget, one of them was Gothenburgs municipality.

Purpose: To investigate if Altman´s Z´-score model, which calculates financial distress, can be applied on companies established in Sweden and if the financial crisis in 2008 made previously healthy companies go bankrupt.Methodology: Quantitative studies with a positivistic foundation. Empirical data will be collected in order to examine if there is generalizability among the studied objects. Conclusions will be made by comparing the empirical data with the theoretical foundation. Financial distress in firms will be measured.Theoretical perspectives: Altman´s Z´-score model, designed to predict financial distress in private firms.Empirical foundation: A selection of 93 private firms that have gone bankrupt in the years 2008, 2009 or 2010. The firms selected all have a turnover that exceeds 20 million SEK.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to examine what the data from recent Library- and Information Science studies tell us about the importance of school libraries in a student perspective. Our theoretical framework is built upon Elisabeth Tallaksen Rafste?s concept about the values of school libraries to students. Our aim is to investigate how students between the ages of 15 and 18 use and experience school library.

Kommunala förskolan förutsättningarna har förändrats i och med införandet av nya styrformer som brukar sammanfattas under namnet New Public Management. Kraven på de anställda har ökat liksom stress och arbetsrelaterad psykisk ohälsa. Arbetspsykologiska stressmodeller förklarar stress utifrån olika antaganden om obalanser mellan t.ex. krav och resurser eller krav och kontroll. Den här studien syftade till att undersöka konkreta upplevelser av arbetsstress hos förskollärare i den kommunala förskolan.

This bachelor thesis has the purpose to visualize and document the air movementsprovided by different ventilation principles in an operating theatre. The visualizationwill be made as simple as possible in a physical model. The model and thedocumentation should be able to use in educational purposes.The study is based on the two most common systems for airflow, currently used inoperating theatres. The first principle is displacement ventilation in which the air issupplied at low velocity along the floor. The second principle is vertical parallel laminarairflow in which the air is compressed like a piston from ceiling to the floor.A review of literature resulted in the choice of size, design, and scale factor for themodel, as well as choices of ventilation principles and airflows.

This bachelor thesis has the purpose to visualize and document the air movementsprovided by different ventilation principles in an operating theatre. The visualizationwill be made as simple as possible in a physical model. The model and thedocumentation should be able to use in educational purposes.The study is based on the two most common systems for airflow, currently used inoperating theatres. The first principle is displacement ventilation in which the air issupplied at low velocity along the floor. The second principle is vertical parallel laminarairflow in which the air is compressed like a piston from ceiling to the floor.A review of literature resulted in the choice of size, design, and scale factor for themodel, as well as choices of ventilation principles and airflows.

Cataloguing electronic documents makes new demands on libraries. This thesis discusses the metadata formats Dublin Core and MARC which are, individually or in combination, commonly used for object description in the digital library.The formats are studied with particular emphasis on characteristics such as underlying reasoning (ambitions during the development of the formats), flexibility (possibilities of expansion and adaption to new demands) and interoperability (cooperation between different metadata formats). The formats are dealt with in their context, i.e. we discuss what types of documents the formats are meant to describe, what environment they were originally created for, what functions they are meant to fill (to find, identify, select and acquire/obtain entities), and also how these factors are related. The Swedish projects SAFARI (which uses Dublin Core) and NetSök (which uses MARC) are presented briefly.

ABSTRACTBackground: The incidence of type 2 diabetes is increasing worldwide. Early intervention in form of medication, advice on self-management and lifestyle changes is necessary to avoid complications. Few Swedish studies are made on the diabetes nurse?s views on promotion of self- management.Purpose: To examine the diabetes specialist nurse?s experience of promoting self-management to patients with type 2 diabetes in primary care.  Method: A qualitative explorative study where eight diabetes nurses were interviewed. The interview guide consisted of semistructed questions concerning the promotion of self-management.Results: The diabetes nurse?s role in promoting patient self-management is significant, if resources are available in the form of adequate time for the patient and good team work.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate and increase the understanding of Swedish Public Library Websites and to determinate which activity they mediate. To analyse the Public Library Websites Andersson and Skot-Hansen?s model of roles for the Public Library has been used. This model in¬cludes four roles for the library: the library as a cultural centre, a knowledge centre, as an information centre and as a social centre.

Our surroundings are currently vulnerable. People can not know when or how to expect nor prepare for a disaster or an accident. The purpose of this essay was to perform a study of the organization and accessibility of psychological and social support in a crisis situation within the community of Lund.To be able to carry out this study we put up a couple of questions that we hoped would guide us, for example; how do the community prepare and set up the service for people in need of support in connection to a crisis situation? As a method we have used qualitative interviews and literature.The results of our study have shown a discrepancy between the ways the community organizes their service for people in a crisis situation caused either by a catastrophe or an untimely death. In case of an untimely death, ordinary resources are estimated to be sufficient while in case of a catastrophe, extraordinary resources are required.

This paper analyses how Swedish fine-art oil paintings sold at auctions has performed as a monetary investment during the period autumn 1985 until spring 2006. An average price technique as well as a hedonic regression technique, applied to a sample of 19 213 auction sales, is used to construct price indices. The indices show somewhat different results, which is explained by the inability of the average price model to adjust for relative differences in quality between periods. The hedonic regression model on the other hand captures this effect, why the hedonic index is applied in a financial return model. By adjusting for transaction cost, the financial return of an average investment in paintings is calculated.

The overall purpose of this master essay is to investigate whether there is an interest among people near retirement to contribute with their knowledge and experience after they reach the defined retirement age. Furthermore, I would like to investigate if they want to continue with their old jobs, full time/part time or to do something else, which is beneficial to the society. I also want to find out how the older people view themselves to continuing to work. Also which types of social and structural barriers that might exist for them and why. The aim is also to investigate what types of knowledge and experience they believe could be used in the future community.

This Master Thesis treats the non monetarian aspect about the Internet Portal from a consumer and company perspective. The purpose of this thesis i st o give or create a picture and a tool, a model for how the Internetportal could be evaluated an valued. By creating a so called Dynamic Scorecard the authors of this Thesis have created a model throug which the purpose of this thesis is served. Through this model the authors have come to the conclusion that the Internet Portal can be evaluated through both economic, social, service and technical factors as well as through what relationship the companies or consumers value concerning the Internet provider. The product of conclusions of this Thesis is that there are three main factors upon wich the Internet Portal is valued.