The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the design and function of an engine production management?s control system and its intended function, and to contrast it with the present management control systems in use on an operational level. Interviews conducted with employees from all levels of the engine production are the main source of this study?s empirical foundation. Information has also been gathered from relevant written material such as annual reports, internal documents etc.

The aim of this study is to investigate which management control mechanisms evolve in companies that receive funding from Venture Capital companies and why the management control systems evolve in the way that they do. A case study was performed on three Swedish high technology companies, that all received funding from Venture Capital companies for the first time in 2006. Merchant?s framework, defining all management control mechanisms as either, results control, Action control or personnel control, was used to structure the study. Results show that the companies that received Venture Capital all increased the use of management control mechanisms within results control, Action control and personnel control.

This thesis has been conducted at Saab Bofors Dynamics AB. The purpose was to investigate if a non-linear missile model could be stabilized when the optimal control signal is computed considering constraints on the control input. This is particularly interesting because the missile is controlled with rudders that have physical bounds. This strategy is called Model Predictive Control. Simulations are conducted to compare this strategy with others; firstly simulations with step responses and secondly simulations when the missile is supposed to hit a moving target.

The purpose of this thesis is to find means of control that secure cost efficiency regarding the accommodation for the employees on missions abroad of the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Today the ministry?s cost for the employees? rented housing is 100 million SEK and there is a need of improvement in the control of these costs. A work method for organizational development will be used in order to reach the findings presented in the thesis. First we study the strengths and weaknesses in today?s control system.

As organizations are generating more business intelligence in their systems, more employees need access those systems. As a result some sort of permission management needs to be implemented to ensure the information remain safe. Access Control Matrix (ACM) is one way of managing permissions and is widely used among organizations. The issues that comes with ACM is that the matrix itself gets difficult to manage and overview as its complexity increases with the number of permissions. The study utilizes Action Design Research to develop a tool for visualizing permissions.

This thesis studies private equity firms' implementation of management control systems in their portfolio companies and whether the systems are affected by cross-national differences. A comparative case study examines five different private equity firms to derive if there are any differences between the private equity firms' management control systems in the United States, Europe and China. The empirical observations are categorized according to the framework developed by Merchant (1985) and further developed by Merchant and Van der Stede (2003). Theory on the effect of multinationality on management control systems, also developed by Merchant and Van der Stede (2003), are used to explain possible findings. The applied theory includes the cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede (1984) and Hofstede and Bond (1988).

The use of temporary workers gives companies the opportunity to be flexible, by avoiding hiring and dismissing workers because of economic conditions and trends in demand. The management control in use at the company has the purpose of influencing employees? behaviour to act in the company?s best interest and towards its goals. The management control should also influence the behaviour of the temporary worker. The companies have to create motivation and commitment among the temporary workers although they are employed by a staffing agency.

This essay describes social workers view on the action contact person. The study was qualitative and six social workers were interviewed on the topic. The effort contact person were chosen as the object for this study since it is the most common action given to young people, despite the lack of research about this subject. The result was analyzed out of conduct action theory and the theory of street level bureaucrats as well as scientific research in this area. The result of this study shows that most of the social workers consider the action as positive.

By the year of 2007, 97 % of all listed companies in Europe had a CSR strategy described on their website. As the concept of CSR during the last decades has increased rapidly in popularity, a need to understand how such a strategy can be implemented has followed. While working with CSR in an integrated manner shows similarities to other popular management ideas, such as Lean and TQM, companies applying to a CSR strategy has been shown to be under higher scrutiny from media and NGO:s. Through a case study this thesis examines how these special circumstances of a CSR strategy makes The Body Shop use organizational control to avoid being subject to scandals due to not fulfilling the promises made to its customers. The results show that The Body Shop's commitment to CSR creates a need for a stringent bureaucratic control system that highly restricts the freedom of action for its employees.

Abstract This paper focuses on whether individual development plans as well as action programmes are needed.Pupils in need of particular support get to be involved in an action programme ? the school needs to provide any particular support a pupil needs. However, the individual development plan does not substitute the action programme. Thus an action programme as well as an individual development plan will be provided to students in need of particular support.The individual development plan follows the pupil throughout the entire education, regardless of whether its content changes, whilst the action programme pertains to a limited period of time. Pupils that are not in need of particular support are not likely to need to set goals for themselves in addition to those already set outside of school.

The aim of the present paper was to see why a recommended course of action is not always followed in the way it is supposed to. The paper deals with a new method (SFA-metoden) used by The Social Insurance Agency in working with sick-listed people. Aspects that are elaborated on are local effects of the method at its introduction, case managers work conditions, and control of the implementation of the method. Two different methods of investigation have been employed. On the one hand, previous reports on the method have been analysed, and, on the other hand, two focus groups interviews, one consisting of case managers´ working with the method, and one constituted by their supervisors have been carried out.The results have been analysed in accordance with, on the one hand, the theory of street level bureaucrats and, on the other hand, certain concepts applied in the new institutionalism.

This thesis studies the negative impact that control signal saturation may have on a controlled system. Different methods that are used to compensate for this problem are also studied and evaluated. Both sensitivity to disturbances and the effect the method has on the systems'ability to follow a reference signal will be examined. Stability will be discussed, but no conclusions whether the systems are stabilized or not can be drawn. Control signal saturation will lead to a slower behavior in general.

Positive action is measures that usually constitute discrimination but which are justified when achieving the purpose of an effective equality between people of the society. Positive action regarding gender is regulated in primary law, secondary law and case law of the EU whereas positive action regarding other discrimination groups is regulated in secondary law and negligible regulated in case law.There is a boundary between positive action and discrimination. Primary law gives little guidance on determine that boundary. Secondary law provides more advanced guidelines of how to determining were the boundary is.When determining were the boundaries lays between positive action and discrimination the guidelines given by the European court of justice in case law can be used. The majority of these guidelines are focused on positive action regarding gender.

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.

In industrial control systems PID-control remains the prevalent strategy, also for processes that would benefit from model based control. The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate whether model based control can be readily implemented in an industrial control system. To this end a simulated surge tank with a simulated industrial control system is studied. For evaluation two scenarios with specified objectives are selected.Following a review of LQR and versions of MPC, Predictive Functional Control (PFC) is considered the most suitable for implementation. PFC is a form of MPC developed with industrial applications in mind and therefore has several advantages for implementation in an industrial control system.