AbstractTitle: An industry with a lacking trust ? PR-consultants about their own responsibility and how they can contribute to an increased trust for their profession (En bransch med bristande förtroende ? PR-konsulter om sitt eget ansvar och hur de själva kan bidra till ökat branschförtroende)Number of pages: 68 (79 including enclosures)Author: Ebba GöranzonTutor: Göran SvenssonCourse: Media and Communication Studies DPeriod: Spring 2008University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala UniversityAim: The aim of this essay is to study the Swedish PR-industry and the distrust that is directed towards it. The starting point is different PR-consultants opinion about their profession and industry. What do they think needs to be done to increase the trust for the industry and what kind of responsibility do they think they have?Method/Material: Together with literature studies, a qualitative method has been used and five in-depth interviews with PR-consultants have been conducted.

Within the interconnected global markets of today; people, products, and information travel at a pace never met before. In light of the global retail markets recent integration, consumers are opened up to new products and are beginning to develop a vetted interest in the heritage of those products. Within literature this process has been coined "Country of Origin" COO, and its impacts on consumer attitudes, product value- assessment, and overall behaviors has been one of the most emphasized areas of "international business" studies, during the last three decades. Numerous studies have shown a correlation between positive or advantageous associations to a country of origin, and the actual products representing and coming out of that country. It is by this synergetic process that so-called positive COO-effects are brought forth.The goal of this thesis stems directly from the still unexplored potential for Swedish firms to differentiate their products and brands on new international markets, through a strategic and coherent communication of relevant Swedish COO-effects.

Title: Establishing in China?s ?good-enough? market - A benchmarking study on Scandinavian engineering industries? further establishment in China. Problem discussion: The Chinese market is gaining importance for Scandinavian engineering industries and is by many considered a crucial market to be successful in. These companies have a tradition of producing premium products for premium customers. However, in China many are currently experiencing the threat from local competitors producing products of somewhat less quality aimed at the vast Chinese middle market - the good-enough market.

This paper aims to explore the reception in Sweden of the work and ideas of neuroscientist Antonio R Damasio, expressed in his four published books. The material used is mainly articled and reviews published in Sweden between 1995 and 2011 regarding Damasio?s books. To analyze the reception, paradigm theories by Kuhn, and Bourdieu?s ideas regarding field, habitus and capital has been used.

Hedge funds have the past few years become an increasingly popular investment alternative and in the last decade hedge fund assets managed have quadrupled to USD 2000 billion, a growth rate of around 25-30% per year. One explanation for this substantial increase is that hedge funds' minimum limits on capital invested has declined, which have made ??them available to retail investors. The recent turmoil in financial markets has also contributed to investors finding their way to hedge funds, whose goal is to generate stable returns regardless of how the market develops.Using Sharpe?s, Treynor?s and Jensen's performance measures, I have investigated whether hedge funds manage to generate higher risk-adjusted returns than traditional managed funds.

During my practical training I have seen what after-school offers children. Large groups of children and little staff, often results in that the children had to play freely until they go home. Few activities are offered to the children and the staff is busy looking after the children and ensures that they are not fighting.The purpose of this study is to find out how children feel about their leisure activities and if they think they are being offered a meaningful leisure. The main research questions were:How do children experience their leisure-time?Do after-school offers children a meaningful leisure and is it the children's interests and needs that govern the activities and the environment?How do the number of children in the leisure group affect the leisure time?The methods to collect data in the study are observations and interviews.

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 thesis explores the Uncovered Interest rate Parity (UIP) and the possibility of cross-currency arbitrage between England, Germany and Sweden. The data is gathered between May 1999 and December 2005 on a monthly basis and is compared using simple regression analysis. The aim is to find out whether UIP holds and, if it does not, a risk premium exists that makes it possible to make arbitrage gains on moving capital between England, Germany and Sweden. It is discovered that UIP does not hold and that cross-currency arbitrage possibilities exist. In the end a an attempt is made to practically show how the arbitrage possibility could be used for a real investor to make risk free gains from the Foreign Exchange market..

This essay contains a comparative analysis of Erik Olin Wrights Marxist class analysis and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negris post-Marxist class analysis as presented in their books ?Empire? and ?Multitude: War and democracy in the age of Empire?. I discuss the shift in analytical focus from state level to global level that Hardt and Negri's analysis represent and the ensuing relevance of this for contemporary class analysis. The essay also address the challenge and implications posed to class analysis by the ever increasing economic globalization, from a material production to an ever growing immaterial service economy and the decrease in state power in controlling capital and labor movement. I propose that analytical understanding of class conflict help us to a better understanding of the mechanisms and dynamics that generate social and economical inequalities and that an updated Marxist class analysis still have much to contribute to our understanding to how these issues not only shape our society but also our capacity to counteract them..

In this thesis an explorative study was undertaken with the aim to study how a number of private care providers, as well as politicians and officials from councils in and around the Stockholm and Uppsala counties, think about the future of the Swedish elderly care from a property perspective, i.e. homes for the elderly. The analysis shows that there is a demand for capacity in 6 out of 16 municipalities, and that the property is an important part of this capacity, and the fulfillment of it. This was mainly due to the cost of capital, but also because of several other factors such as lack of land, a wish to guide the design, ideology, and in many cases a wish to use the property as an instrument of domination to control private health care providers.Also, the property was show to be connected to economic competition, to freedom of choice, and to quality. The problems related to the property in the market for elderly care still remains to be solved.

1998 års företagsskatteutredning föreslår i SOU 2001:11 att beskattningen av kapitalvinster på företagsägda näringsandelar (BKN) avskaffas. Denna uppsats behandlar frågan om hur ett sådant avskaffande skulle påverka de s.k. fåmansföretagsreglerna i IL 57 kap. I uppsatsen visar jag att de nuvarande reglerna i IL 57 kap. inte skulle förmå uppfylla deras syfte vid ett eventuellt avskaffande av BKN.

This thesis investigates if a system for small scale electricity production located in anurban environment can be profitable. The work has been divided up into two parts,one extensive literature study and one case study. The purpose of the literature studywas to investigate the area, resulting in a choice of which technology to be studied indepth in a case study.In the case study a system containing small scale wind turbines and photovoltaicsmounted on Gränby Centrums roof was examined. From data containing wind power,wind direction and total irradiation, possible production from a system weresimulated. Three products of each technology were examined in the simulations.From the simulated production an economic analysis was carried out, this toinvestigate if a system is profitable.

The study is based on a new approach on how Swedish healthcare is supposed to be controlled and organized. There is a renowned administration problem within Swedish healthcare, which seems to be an obstacle to exploit the resources to the fullest. The latest venture within the healthcare system is patient involvement, where the patients become co-producers of their own care, which aims to both improve and make healthcare more efficient. A few wards in Sweden have implemented this new approach whereupon the study intends to discuss the effectiveness and efficiency in some of these.The study is restricted to three wards, whereof two of these are inpatient wards and the other one is an outpatient ward, within the medical clinic in Jönköping County Council, which has implemented the patient involvement approach in their daily work. The methodology for this study is qualitative in its nature where a time study of personnel time allocation and supplementary interviews with managing nurses on the wards have been conducted.

Computers and business systems are used more frequently in a world where IT gradually is taking over. This is also true when it comes to the real estate valuation process where actors on the Swedish real estate market are using automatic valuation systems for real estate appraisal. But the real estate agents have not yet seen the charm in using these automatic valuation systems for real estate appraisal. Can the real estate agents also use the automatic valuation systems? We developed our three main subjects: the valuation process, an automatic valuation system and the real estate market with assistance from scientific articles.

The environment has become an important part in people´s lives, and in today´s society stakeholders demands have increased upon companies when it comes to sustainability reports. How these sustainability reports are designed depends on whom it?s for, laws and regulations, and the companies own norms and values. The purpose of sustainability reports is to measure, monitor and compare a company´s enviromental impact. It?s not only about integrating economics, but also enviromental and social standards together to get both financial and competitive advantages.Sustainable Value method is a new model and is the first real method that can be used to evaluate a company´s resources, both financial, social and enviromental to a sustainable value.This model is used to compare the resource efficiency between companies.In this thesis, a documentary study with an experimental approach has been made.Sustainability reports from six selected companies (in the engineering and forestry sector) have been investigated with respect to their accounting for carbon dioxide, and an experiment using the method ?Sustainable Value Approach? was subsequently performed.