In this paper we investigate 67 Swedish buyouts in the manufacturing and retailing sector between the years 2004-2012. The purpose is to measure changes in a set of financial key ratios to see if private equity firms are able to improve performance in their portfolio companies compared to a peer group consisting of other firms within the same industries. Furthermore, we examine if there is a difference in the change of the financial key ratios between private equity-owned firms in the two sectors. The key results are that the private equity owned firms have not outperformed their peers with respect to the chosen key ratios. We also conclude that there is no significant difference in the change of the financial key ratios between private equity-owned firms in the two sectors..

Active work to increase the efficiency of energy use is taking place in Sweden and throughout all of Europe. Electricity is an important part in our society?s energy system which means that the electrical grid operators and associated therewith has a central role in this work. Monitoring and controlling the electrical grids are managed from the distribution system operator?s DC, dispatch center.The aim of this report is to examine how the operations in a typical DC on the Swedish electricity distribution network will look like in five to ten years.

Regarding school-teaching most people have had the traditional idea that the teacher is the owner of all knowledge and the student is the receiver of that knowledge. Tradition tells us that the way the student receives the knowledge has been by listening, repeating, reading and memorizing what the teacher has taught. Research about teaching from the last decades show that there are other strategies, ways, and qualitys for helping students in learning. One of those ways is by integration of different school subjects.According to research every human being creates her own knowledge based on personal experiences. Johan Krantz and Pelle Persson (2001) wrote that learning is a process with experiences, ideas and opinions.

During the past years Building Information Modelling (BIM), which is a digital way to work, has begun to spread amongst the parts of the construction process. At the construction phase the larger companies has started using the new way to work. This expansion has not been developed amongst smaller companies leading to the purpose of this report, to investigate in which ways the smaller companies can implement BIM by changing their way to work. The thesis is delimited to work preperations with the objective to define how the work preperations should be structured to enable the implementation of BIM. To achieve the objective of the report, information about the subject has been collected by interviews and literature studies.

The aim of this study was to reach a better understanding of voluntary work and its possible influence on the work role. Based on a phenomenological approach, five voluntary workers from the leisure field were interviewed. The interpretation of the empirical data was based on the Humanistic psychology and its theories about personality, self-realization, motivation and emotion. The results show that the motive behind the voluntary engagement varied amongst the participants and all of them stated more than one motive. However, social motives, wanting to learn more and develop their skills and also wanting to help others, were the most frequent motives among the participants. In the light of the theoretical background for this study, these motives can be understood as being due to the need of self-realization and appreciation from others, and also a wish to reach an ideal self.

If P&C Insurance Company faces a challenge when their treasury system needs a new interface to a software as a service application. They need a suggestion for configuration for how the system and the application can work together. The work presented in this report is a suggestion for how you can make business configuration of an IT-based Treasury System in general. The exact configuration for the case received from If is presented as a separate report, found in Appendix A and is called the If-report. The If-report presents the suggested technical set-up of the configuration.

The purpose of our work has been to investigate how gender is viewed by pre-school teachers, as well as taken into account in their everyday work. We have also looked into how gender plays a part in the planning and shaping of the pedagogical environment.Our work is based upon qualitative research method, as we have conducted several qualitative interviews at different pre-schools along the way. The reason we chose genus as our main focus is that the pre-school curriculum states that all staff is obliged to meet the goals concerning gender..

This qualitative study treats the construction and maintenance of balance between work and private life and how flexibility in the workplace is perceived. The study was conducted using semi-structured interviews and these have been conducted in five large companies around Gothenburg. The analysis and results are based on the phenomenographic method approach and the final results were four themes: Balance, Flexibility, Combining family and work and lifelong learning with related subcategories. The result shows that the construction and maintenance of balance between work and personal life is something that is tied to the indi-viduals and the current situation in life. Two of the most common strategies to maintain a dis-tinction proved to be planning as well as other activities, in order to move the focus away from the work.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the tendencies among pupils concerning their attitudes towards History and some of the stated goals in the present and in the proposed course plan of History, since there is, probably, a change coming in 2011. The study is built on questionnaires answered by one hundred pupils at a Swedish upper-secondary-school. The results point to the fact that most of these pupils like history, but still they do not wish to make it an obligatory subject, which is a government proposal at the moment. Furthermore, the answers about sources, democracy, the use of History and the consciousness about History, have a clear tendency; there have been too little education about these areas during the pupils former nine years in school, still the pupils think that these are important areas to work with. Moreover, this study shows a disheartening picture when it comes to pupils knowledge of their cultural heritage. Only half of the pupils know which century Gustav Vasa lived in and just a third know what year universal suffrage was introduced in Sweden, two facts that ought to be set in most Swedes? mind..

Motives and reasons behind a decision to change the asylum process in Sweden are the central concern for this thesis. A symbolic political perspective will be applied in order to elucidate the symbolic factors that have influenced the decision process.The Aliens Appeal Board in Sweden will close down at the end of March 2006 and all pending and future cases will henceforth be decided by three administrative courts. This will be done in order to enhance the principles of legal certainty by making the process more transparent and oral. It is an extensive reform, but since very few amendments are made to the applicable substantive law it raises questions about the actual motives behind the change.One reason that seems to have had a major impact on the decision to close down the Aliens Appeal Board is the fact that the board is perceived as a symbol for an inhuman asylum policy. Transferring the process to the courts might ease the attempt to increase the legitimacy of the asylum process.

The construction industries are relatively conservative type of business that takes a longtime to adjust for new methods and embrace new ideas. It dose not matter if the newmethod seems to be an improved method as long as it is new and untried. Constructioncompanies are reluctant to change form a longtime working method to a relativelyunknown method.The purpose with our report is to perform an evaluation of BeWi construction method.Our goal are to present the generally opinion about BeWi from the contractors that hasbeen in contact/worked with the method. We also want to know from the contractor?spoint of view if BeWi and the method measure up to the standards that are presented byBeWi and if they believe that improvements need to be done.Our progress up to the final report has consisted of three parts[1]Field studies[2]Interviews[3]Literary studiesWe started out with field studies where we took notes and observed all the includedworking phases on the construction site when using the BeWi method.

The study explored how a model for conversation partner trainingworked for family members of people with Parkinson's disease. Participants inthe study were three dyads consisting of persons with PD and their carers. Thepurpose of the study consisted in finding out whether the participantsexperienced a change in communication after the intervention, and in findingout if this potential change could be observed in the conversation. The resultsshowed that 4/6 participants experienced an improvement in communicationafter the intervention. This improvement was however not observed in theconversation.

AimThe aim of this study is to through managers in eldercares deskriptions of the systematic qualityleadingsystem examine the implementation process of this system in the eldercare in the municipality of Halmstad.  BackgroundIn this paper the background explains elderly care and social work context, leadership in change and implementation processes. The theoretical frame illustrates Vedungs implementation theory and Webers model of bureaucracy MethodTo collect empirical data for this study, a qualitative research design was used in which eleven managers within Halmstads municipality home care management stood as respondents. ResultThe respondents highlighted a variety in the use of the systematic quality management system tool. The result describes that several obstacles were experienced in the use of the systematic quality system. ConclusionBased on the descriptions the respondents gives of the implementation process of the systematic quality management of Halmstad municipality home care management, the conclusion can be drawn that the implementation process has not resulted in the employees making use of systematic quality management in practice. The systematic quality management system that will ensure the quality of the care work is thus used to a limited extent..

This thesis has been done in collaboration with Peab Stockholm Building 3, which is a region within the Peab Sverige AB. The report is based on a survey and studies of Peab business management systems and production literature. For general information gathering has literature from well-known sources collected in libraries and through the Internet. It shows through the work that Peab has routines for experience feedback in the construction process, but that these procedures work in a small scale and the practical work experience feedback does not work at all. This is also something the construction industry in general also perceived as problematic. The questions in the report are of a wide scale and concerns construction errors cost, how the employees perceive that the company takes advantage of the skills and the mental stress in production line. The goal is to find how Peab Stockholm Building 3 will work on the experience feedback to allow for better productivity. In conclusion, the report author tries to demonstrate what can lead to increased productivity and improved work experience..

 The 1st of July 2006 Sweden made a change of authorities in the system concerning the reception of separated asylum seeking children. Prior to the change, the Swedish Board of Migration was held completely responsible for the reception of these children, who arrives in Sweden without their parents or any other relatives to care for them. Since the alteration of the law (1994:137) the responsibility for the housing of these children now lies within the Swedish municipalities, while the Board of Migration still handles their legal commissions. The change was intended to fundamentally improve the conditions under which these children were taken care of. However the implementation took a severe wrong turn when the municipalities weren't prepared for their new responsibilities and the immediate result was alarming. This qualitative study is based upon interviews with the people responsible for the reception of the separated asylum seeking children in the municipalities of Kronobergs County, as well as one of the two people in charge of the new system at the Swedish Board of Migration.