Nowadays, there is a mobile application for almost every need, for instance, training, games, and news applications. Almost all the companies have also their own mobile applications that facilitate the daily communication between their employees and supervisors. In this thesis, the development process of an Android application for the company Askås is created, where the employees can for example send a Flex application or sick leave application, see their registered personal information and edit them. The final result of the project is almost what Askås asked for, An Android application that facilitates their employees’ daily needs. The development process, the results, and the encountered problems are also represented in a more detailed manner in the thesis. 

A Mobile ad hoc network is a collection of wireless nodes that dynamically organize themselves to form a network without the need for any fixed infrastructure or centralized administration. The network topology dynamically changes frequently in an unpredictable manner since nodes are free to move. Support for multicasting is essential in such environment as it is considered to be an efficient way to deliver information from source nodes to many client nodes. A problem with multicast routing algorithms is their efficiency as their forwarding structure determines the overall network resource consumption makes them significantly less efficient than unicast routing algorithms. In this research, we improve the performance of the popular ODMRP multicast routing protocol by restricting the domain of join query packets, which have been lost. This is achieved by augmenting the join query packets with minimum extra information (one field), which denotes the number of the visited node from previous forwarding group. Simulation results show, that our mechanisms significantly reduce the control traffic and thus the overall latency and power consumption in the network.

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze TPL companies, and their collaboration with their customers from a TPL perspective. The paper intends to get a bigger understanding of their collaboration, advantages/disadvantages and how the collaboration can be improved. The foundation for the paper is obtained through questions that have been created from the chosen theories about supply chain, third part logistic (TPL) and lean production. We have had open interviews with five different conveyers where we have had our questions prepared and during the interviews asked new questions to get more distinct answers. When we subsequently analyzed the empirical material and by chosen theories we have been able to confirm that the collaboration between the TPL companies and their customers is more of a partnership character. A good relationship between the companies is an important starting point for both parties. But even more important for the logistic directed companies, where a god relationship with the biggest costumers is extremely important because it is with the bigger and recurrent costumers you get the money.

The prices are not the most important aspect when you have a god relationship. The thing that confirms that the relationships are of an partnership character is among other things that they in some areas work with a common development work, which in the end promotes both parties and that the relationship between them is founded on a mutual give and take. Through our interviews we also have discovered that beside simple transports and warehouse services the collaborations consists of long term logistic solutions like for an example development of logistics and information technology. These are the criteria’s for the collaboration to be third part logistic

Keywords: TPL (third part logistic), relationship, collaboration, partnership

Microfinance institutions (MFIs) are an important tool of poverty reduction which has gained grounds over the years and grown rapidly given the services they provide. The rapid growth of the MFIs has had huge challenges on their regulatory framework which in turn has resulted in the prevalence of fraudulent cases. With the devasting effects of fraud on MFIs and the importance of MFIs in many economies this thesis aims to examine how the design and use of internal control impact fraud detection and prevention in MFIs. To achieve this aim, a qualitative study was conducted with a case study on eight MFIs in Cameroon. Primary data will be obtained from fourteen semi-structured interviews. Data will be analysed manually using thematic analysis. The findings revealed that internal control has a positive impact on fraud detection and prevention in MFIs by reducing fraud incentive, opportunity, rationalization, and capability. Further, findings revealed that the greatest causes of fraud in MFIs are poor remuneration, weak monitoring, and a poor internal control system. Therefore, for the purpose of future fraud prevention, MFIs should ensure to improve their remuneration schemes, improve1 their monitoring system and ensure regular internal control system updates in term of software and design. The study also, suggests further research on this topic in MFIs with a case study in other countries of the world. It will also be interesting for other researchers to explore how the aspect of capability as a key determinant of fraud can be reduced. This thesis contributes to academic literature as there is lack of studies on the impact of internal control on fraud detection and prevention in MFIs.

Aims and objectives. To describe patients' perceptions of quality of care and to explore combinations of person-related and external objective care conditions as potential predictors of these perceptions. Background. Several studies have examined various single factors of person-related and external objective care conditions in relation to quality of care. None of these has included the effect of over-occupancy on patients' perception of quality of care. Furthermore, little is known about how combinations of different factors are related to each other and to the perception of quality of care using multivariate analysis. Design. A cross-sectional design. Method. A total of 528 patients (83·7%) from 12 medical, surgical or medical-surgical wards in five hospitals in Norway participated. Perceptions of quality of care and person-related conditions were measured with the 'Quality from Patient's Perspective' instrument. Data on external objective care conditions was collected from ward statistics provided by head nurses. Multivariate general linear modelling was used ( p < 0·05). Results. The combination of person-related and external objective care conditions revealed five factors that predict patients' perception of quality of care. Three of these are person-related conditions: sex, age and self-reported psychological well-being and two of them are external objective care conditions: RNs (headcount) on the wards and frequency of over-occupancy. These five factors explained 55% of the model. Patients rated the quality of care high. Conclusions. Sex, age, psychological well-being, frequency of over-occupancy and the number of RNs are important factors that must be emphasised if patients are to perceive the quality of care as high. Relevance to clinical practice. Head nurses and healthcare authorities must continually prepare the wards for over-occupancy and they must consider the number of RNs working on the wards.

Denna studies syfte är att undersöka de faktorer som motiverar ideella arbetare i evenemangsprojekt samt hur projektledare resonerar och reflekterar kring att motivera ideella arbetare. Studien ämnar att ta reda på hur projektledare från fyra olika evenemangsprojekt gör för att motivera ideella arbetare. Resultatet kan bidra till att framtida projektledare får tips kring vilka verktyg de kan använda för att skapa motivation hos sina ideella arbetare.

Studiens huvudfrågor med tillhörande underfrågor är:

• Hur agerar projektledare för att skapa motivation hos de som arbetar ideellt i evenemangsprojekt?

- Vilka delar i projektledarens agerande är de mest framgångsrika gällande att skapa motivation?

• Hur tänker projektledare kring motivation hos ideella arbetare?

- Vad motiverar ideella arbetare i evenemangsprojekt?

Resultaten i studien kommer från den kvalitativa metoden informant- och respondentintervju. Intervjuerna hålls med fyra olika projektledare, en från varje organisation samt två ideella arbetare från varje organisation. Dessa resultat analyseras sedan med hjälp av teorier kring motivation och ledarskap från bland andra Maslow, Herzberg och Deci och Ryan. I slutet på uppsatsen sammanställs resultat och analys till en lista på nio konkreta råd för hur framtida projektledare kan agera för att skapa och behålla motivation hos ideella arbetare.

Studien visar bland annat att ideella arbetare främst motiveras utav inre motivation när de söker sig till ett ideellt arbete. Men att de under projektet kan variera mellan både yttre och inre motivation och att motivationen är påverkbar från ledarens sida. Ledaren kan bland annat motivera de ideella arbetarna genom att vara närvarande i arbetsuppgifterna och genom att skapa en personlig relation till sina ideella arbetare. Andra sätt att motivera sina ideella arbetare kan vara att skapa en sammanhållning i projektgruppen, genom att situationsanpassa sitt ledarskap och genom att vara tydlig när det gäller information och projektets mål.

AbstractPresentation of the problem: The goal with this graduation project is to produce a new visual concept for the student newspaper Campus, this will be expressed in the form of page templates. The page templates will have a visual concept that appears through graphical elements. The client's wishes were that the student newspaper should be audience appropriate, attractive, inviting, reliable, modern and functional to work with.Theory: In order to implement the wishes and in a good way produce a consistent visual concept, we took a starting point in theory of graphic design. This theory has taken many of its principles from aesthetic theory, and therefore have we also used aesthetics to provide a deeper theoretical aspect. The principles we used in graphic design is; how to create a unity in the layout by using basic elements such as text, images, and white space. We have also looked at alignment-, form-, color-, contrast-, typography- and placement principles. The principles we have applied from aesthetics are color repetition, color contrasts, balance, visual harmony and depth.Method: The empirical studies consisted of a qualitative content analysis of student newspapers, followed by a focus-group study with respondents from the Campus newspaper target group. The purpose of the two studies was to, via a content analysis, get a general picture of the design language that is used on the market today. This, combined with theory, helped us to create a visual expression that stands outside the general form. It was done in four different dummies, these dummies were discussed by the focus-group.Results: Our first empirical study showed how student newspapers are designed today. With support of theory, the functioning principles was sorted out and used in the four dummies. During the focus-group analysis, opinions about the dummies were presented. We could therefore see what the respondents wanted in the page templates. Together with the client's wishes and analysis from the empirical studies, a new concept developed. It will be perceived as clean and structured together with attitude.

We call for a fundamental restruc turing of research paradigms in geography and media/communication studies to form a bridge between core concerns of the 2 disciplines. This endeavor responds to contemporary historical changes: mediated/mediatized mobility, technological convergence, interactivity, new communication interfaces, and the automation of surveillance. Long-standing concern with a set of issues we call representations, textures, structures, and connections provides a foundation for this interdisciplinary bridge. Integrating these concerns would produce a semi autonomous field, manifested through collaborations between geographers and media theorists.

I dagens konkurrenssamhälle är det viktigt att företagen bygger en identitet och att de kan särskilja sig gentemot konkurrenter. Det är där varumärken får sin betydelse och roll. Det är även viktigt för konsumenterna att kunna skapa sig en egen identitet genom att välja företagens olika produkter. Varumärken kostar mycket pengar och tar lång tid att bygga upp, så det är viktigt att företagen förvaltar det på rätt sätt. Vad kännetecknar då ett starkt varumärke och hur bygger man upp ett sådant?

Syftet med denna uppsats är att utreda och analysera vilka komponenter som krävs för att bygga ett starkt varumärke. Vi valde att använda en kvalitativ metod och sju olika företag intervjuades. De modeller vi framför allt använde var Aakers och Melins modeller om hur man bygger starka varumärken.

Resultatet visar att de komponenter som exempelvis Melin och Aaker framhåller om hur man bygger starka varumärken, även används av företagen. Exempelvis framhävs kontinuitet och konsekvens mycket i teorierna, och detta stämmer överrens med vad som framkom i intervjuerna. Det är också viktigt att man har en historia, en berättelse om hur företaget skapades, hur länge det har funnits och vad som har åstadkommits. Det är delvis sammankopplat med att det tar lång tid att bygga ett varumärke. Det tar tid att slå sig in på en marknad och etablera sig i konsumenternas medvetande, det vill säga öka sin varumärkeskännedom. Ytterligare en sak är att man måste ha en kvalité på sina produkter. Om produkten man säljer inte har tillräckligt god kvalité är det mycket svårt att bygga ett varumärke

Undersökningens syfte är att se vilka anledningar individen har till att välja friår och hur det kopplas samman med livsformerna de lever. Syftet har också varit att se individens upplevelse av friåret och vad de använt friåret till. Undersökningen bygger på kvalitativa intervjuer med sex friårslediga. Intervjuerna har handlat om individens upplevelse av friåret och tiden före det.

Friår är en arbetsmarknadspolitisk åtgärd med målsättning att ge arbetstagare en längre ledighet från sitt arbete. Arbetslösa får samtidigt en chans att komma in på arbetsmarknaden. Friåret innebär att vara ledig från sitt arbete i tre till tolv månader för att kunna göra något annat utanför arbetsplatsen. För att kunna undersöka av vilka anledningar individen har friår och hur det kopplas med de olika sociala strukturer som villkorar människors vardag. Vi har studerat om livsformsanalysen kan användas till att beskriva, förklara och förstå skillnaderna i människors vardag. Livsformerna är sociala strukturer som villkorar människors vardag. De olika livsformsbegreppen som vi har använt oss av är arbetarlivsformen – husmorslivsformen, karriärenslivsform – representationshustrunslivsform och självständighetens livsform – medhjälperskans livsform. Det är dock vanligt att leva en blandning mellan två eller flera livsformer, det kallas en blandform.

Vi har kommit fram till att livsformerna till viss del kan kopplas samman med hur intervjupersonerna lever under sitt friår och av vilken anledning de har friår. Det visar sig i att de som använder friåret till att starta ett företag lever till stor del självständighetens livsform. Att använda friåret till utbildning kan kopplas samman med karriärens livsformer. Vidare kan vi se att karriärenslivsform kan kopplas samman med att pressen på arbetet är stor och då är rekreation under friåret vanligt. Många kvinnor lever blandformer och det gör att de har svårt att kombinera de olika arbets- och kärleksformerna. De använder friåret till att ta hand om sin familj och sig själva.

A business activity generates both negative and positive externality simultaneously for both the environment and the society. The basic idea is to minimize the negative externality and generate more positive externality.Expectations of the society towards businesses have grown tremendously during the past few decades, the stress is upon a socially, environmentally and legally responsible businesses. Organizations have responded to this expectation by indulging in a set of activities which are termed as Corporate Social Responsibility, but that has not been enough, businesses cannot resolve social and environmental problems of the society unless they know where to focus and what is the strategy to become better businesses and yet not be criticized. The need is to utilize a firm‘s resources in the most effective manner. Thus, strategic CSR comes in as a solution for better performance.Strategic CSR began the evolution of more responsible and favorable businesses in terms of societal pressures and expectations. In our research, we have tried to develop a framework which when incorporated with the CSR concept helps make more strategic sense to the firm, so that it benefits not only the society but also the firm itself. The research builds a strategic framework and analyses in light of it the CSR activities of three major retail companies namely, IKEA, Starbucks and H&M.The EFQM model which is a self assessment tool for organizations has been incorporated with CSR to make it a strategic assessment framework. This has been a new concept, and has proven quite effective in assessing the strategies and outcomes regarding CSR of the three companies being used as examples.

Multipath TCP (MPTCP) is a proposed extension to TCP that enables a number of performance advantages that have not been offered before. While the protocol specification is close to being finalized, there still remain some unaddressed challenges regarding the deployment and security implications of the protocol. This work attempts to tackle some of these concerns by proposing and implementing MPTCP aware security services and deploying them inside a proof of concept MPTCP proxy. The aim is to enable hosts, even those without native MPTCP support, to securely benefit from the MPTCP performance advantages. Our evaluations show that the security services that are implemented enable proper intrusion detection and prevention to thwart potential attacks as well as threshold rules to prevent denial of service (DoS) attacks.

Multipath TCP (MPTCP) is an extension to traditionalTCP that enables a number of performance advantages,which were not offered before. While the protocol specificationis close to being finalized, there still remain some concernsregarding deployability and security. This paper describes theon going work to develop a solution that will facilitate thedeployment of MPTCP. The solution will not only allow non-MPTCP capable end-hosts to benefit from MPTCP performancegains, but also help ease the network security concerns that manymiddleboxes face due to the possibility of data stream beingfragmented across multiple subflows.

With the advance of fifth generation (5G) networks, network density needs to grow significantly in order to meet the required capacity demands. A massive deployment of small cells may lead to a high cost for providing. ber connectivity to each node. Consequently, many small cells are expected to be connected through wireless links to the umbrella eNodeB, leading to a mesh backhaul topology. This backhaul solution will most probably be composed of high capacity point-to-point links, typically operating in the millimeter wave (mmWave) frequency band due to its massive bandwidth availability. In this paper, we propose a mathematical model that jointly solves the user association and backhaul routing problem in the aforementioned context, aiming at the energy efficiency maximization of the network. Our study considers the energy consumption of both the access and backhaul links, while taking into account the capacity constraints of all the nodes as well as the fulfillment of the service-level agreements (SLAs). Due to the high complexity of the optimal solution, we also propose an energy efficient heuristic algorithm (Joint), which solves the discussed joint problem, while inducing low complexity in the system. We numerically evaluate the algorithm performance by comparing it not only with the optimal solution but also with reference approaches under different traffic load scenarios and backhaul parameters. Our results demonstrate that Joint outperforms the state-of-the-art, while being able to find good solutions, close to optimal, in short time.

The Baltic sea has always been an important transit hub for neighboring countries and the sea have made ​​it possible for the countries to trade with each other and thus create an international trade among themselves to each other. During 1700-1800's, the production took off and because of the mercantilism international trade developed. To establish their exchange rate, many countries have followed different standards, such as the gold standard where the currency's value was determined from the value of the corresponding quantity of gold which implies that the exchange rates were fixed. Based on the gold standard different theories was developed, such as the law of one price and purchasing power parity with the principles that a single currency will have the same purchasing power in other countries, which implies that a commodity should be bought for the same amount of currency, whether it is domestic or foreign. These theories have been studied several times, both for the short and long term, with the few countries to a greater number.

In order to test this, two econometric tests of the variables were made​​, stationarity test and cointegration test. The stationarity test showed that all variables except the time series that was used to test relative PPP suffered from non-stationarity and therefore needed to be differentiated to be used to test the PPP. The cointegration test showed that no one of the time series suffered of cointegration and therefore further correction models was not needed to be done.

The results from the econometric estimates showed that absolute and relative PPP could not be confirmed, nor denied, since no significant coefficients were identified. In the testing of real exchange rate for relative PPP significant time series were given but not in accordance with the nullhypothesis and therefore the null hypothesis is rejected that the relative PPP holds. From the results it is concluded that the PPP cannot be confirmed without that further studies must be done.

Polisyrket har alltid varit ett mansdominerat yrke men fler och fler insatser görs för att mängden kvinnor ska öka inom kåren eftersom att de fortfarande är underrepresenterade. Syftet med den här uppsatsen är att ta reda på hur kvinnliga poliser i anseende med att de är just kvinnor, upplever att de bemöts av allmänheten, manliga kollegor och organisationen. För att ta reda på detta har vi genomfört sex kvalitativa intervjuer med kvinnliga poliser i Sverige. Vi har utgått från litteratur om genus, kvinnliga poliser och andra könsrelaterade teorier. I studien har det framkommit att de kvinnliga poliserna inte upplever kombinationen av deras kvinnlighet och yrket polis som något problemskapande. De känner sig heller inte mindre respekterade varken av manliga kollegor eller organisationen, när det kommer till allmänheten uppvisar den ibland tvivel mot en kvinnlig polis. Många är av den uppfattningen att kvinnor inte hör hemma hos polisen då de inte har samma fysiska styrka som män. Den här studien visar på att så är inte fallet utan även kvinnor kan ha styrkan som krävs och kan också med sin kvinnlighet komplettera kåren. Myten om att polisyrket endast är för män lever fortfarande kvar i viss mån då vissa individer som är i kontakt med polisen föredrar en manlig polis framför en kvinnlig.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether or not American and British newspapers coverage of the famine at the horn of Africa 2011 developed and changed from a month before to a month after the UN declared famine on July 20th the same year. It also studies if and how the focus has changed in contrast to prior coverage of African famines, since the coverage of events is key for the world-wide response.

Questions asked in this paper is; To what extent did the frequency in coverage change after July 20th in correlation to theories of crisis reporting? How does both countries score on the positive/negative content scale in comparison with previous images of Africa and compassion fatigue? In what ways does the coverage differ prior to and after July20th in relation to crisis reporting? How is the reporting country framed in the articles, that is; what kind of attention does the country in question get for its actions?

This paper is based on theoretical approaches of news framing, news coverage on crisis and catastrophes, compassion fatigue (the gradual lessening of compassion experienced by an audience that has gotten used to a certain way of reporting). This study is a combination of quantitative and qualitative content analysis where the data has been collected through quantitative methods in order to create categories for frames as well as making it possible to compare data between both countries in a concrete way. Thereafter the results has been analyzed qualitatively.

The frequency in reporting amongst the 67 articles reviewed in this study increased after July 20th and that showed that a catastrophe will increase the coverage just as theories about crisis reporting predicted. The publishing in this study falls on the negative side of reporting, which is correct accordingly to theories on crisis reporting, but also to compassion fatigue and framing. The content barely changed, but for the American papers it became slightly more positive after July 20th. The British papers on the other hand increased their negative content. The outspoken primary focus on the countries ownportrayal were minimal, which is inconsistent with theories of African media portrayal.

Sweden became a member of the European Union in 1995. When Sweden entered the Union the government also agreed on implementing every law, regulation and directive the Union have and will have in force. One directive the Union wants every country to implement is the Directive (93/104/EG) concerning certain aspects of the organization of working time. This directive includes regulations concerning the relationship between employer and employees. The regulations in the directive must be in force before January 1 2007.

One of the main points in the directive is the possibility for the parties on the labour market to reach agreements through collective agreements that deviate from the legislation concerning work hours. When the directive is a part of the Swedish law system the possibility for employer and employees to deviate from legislation concerning work hours in collective agreements will be limited through an EG-barrier. The EG-barrier sets a limit for the parties on the labour market to reach collective agreements if the agreement means worse conditions for the employees.

The possibility for the parties on the labour market to abscond the legislation concerning work hours is regulated in the third paragraph in the legislation concerning work hours. This article describes what other articles the parties on the labour market can abscond from. If the collective agreement contains regulations which means worse conditions for the employees the agreement declared invalid and the employer will be liable for damages.

The purpose of the essay is to examine in what extent the parties on the labour market can reach collective agreements after January 1, 2007.

During year 2007 ClaraHälsan Ltd bought the company health service Solstahälsan in Karlstad. The wide merger of the two health services the problems arose around the employees’ employment agreements when certain parts of the agreement differ. At a transition of a company, in this case a health service, the rights and obligations for the employees will pass on to the new employer according to directive 2001/23/EG who came in force in the swedish legal system in year 1995. The former employer is only responsible vis-à-vis the employees ”for economic obligations related to the time before the transition, the code of protection of employment 6 b §. The new employer are committed to the old employment agreement vis-à-vis the employees during at least one year.

At a transition the employment will automatically pass on to the new employer who will take over the rights and obligations in connections to the transition. It is not the collective agreement in whole that will pass on to the new employer, only the employment conditions in the collective agreement.

The purpose of this essay is to examine what will happen to the employment conditions when two companies become one through a transition, especially pension benefits.

Genom att vi lever i ett samhälle som präglas av en bred mångfald blir begreppet mångfald allt mer aktuellt, både för arbetsgivare och för medarbetare. Mångfald som begrepp är svårdefinierat och komplext med flera olika betydelser. Enligt Ds 2000:69 varierar begreppet beroende på organisation. Ökad mångfald kan skapa fördelar för organisationer, bland annat genom fler perspektiv på eventuella problem vilket i sin tur kan leda till bättre lösningar (Kearney et al. 2009). Handikappförvaltningen i Västra Götalandsregionen (VGR) har uppmärksammat begreppet mångfald och har arbetat fram en mångfaldsplan som ska genomsyra hela verksamheten och det vardagliga arbetet.

Syftet med denna uppsats har varit att försöka reda ut skillnader och likheter mellan hur begreppet mångfald uppfattas i det dagliga arbetslivet och hur begreppet beskrivs i dokument vid Handikappförvaltningen i VGR.

För att uppnå syftet har författarna genomfört en kvalitativ studie vid Handikappförvaltningen i VGR och haft öppna intervjuer med åtta personer vid förvaltningen. Även vid intervjuerna framgick det att begreppet mångfald är ett vitt begrepp som är svårt att definiera. Författarna har även valt att fokusera på begreppet mångfald i samband med rekryteringar, då rekryteringar ger arbetsgivaren en viss möjlighet att påverka verksamheten. Trots att flera av respondenterna påpekade vikten av en arbetsplats som är präglad av det svenska samhället betonade de att oavsett vilket land de sökande är ifrån, deras kön eller sexuella läggning så är det kompetensen som är det viktiga för att få en verksamhet som fungerar och är framgångsrik.

Fashion is one of the most profitable industry in the world, Sweden has been seen as a fashionable nation, thanks to the big fashion brands that consumed by most of the Swedish of all segment. Scandinavian fashionbrands which is analyzed on this thesis is H&M, Kappahl, Ginatricot, Dressman, and JackJones. All of these fashionbrands are analyzed based on their marketing strategy, then compared to the result from the quitionaires about these brands. From the questionaires, it can be found which kind of marketing strategy profitable for their segment. The result of this research show that most of the company know much about their customers, they do the right thing especially with the product design. Sometime the companies do the unuseful marketing that's wasting money because the customers don't react on the desirable behaviour

Last decade, a lot of research has been done in wireless communication technologies. Mobile

nodes such personal digital assistants (PDAs), notebooks and cell phones are nowadays used

in human’s daily life.

MANETs are networks consisting of two or more mobile nodes equipped with wireless

communication and networking capabilities, but they don’t have any network centrilized

infrastructure.

In last few years, MANETs have been emerged to be an important researched subject in the

field of wireless networking.

MANETs are autonomous; however they can communicate with other external networks such

the internet. They are linked to such external networks by mobile nodes acting as gateways.

This kind of networks is known as hybrid MANETs.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), is a technology that allows you to make voice calls using

a Internet connection instead of a regular (or analog) phone line.

The goal of this thesis is evaluate the performance of VoIP strategies for hybrid MANETs.

Two different aspects are evaluated, the session establishment performance and the voice

quality.

Network Simulator 2 is used to run several simulations, two different applications are used to

run voice simulations (Session Initiation Protocol and Exponential traffic generator). We

evaluate two different cases for voice traffics, voice calls between two MANET nodes and

voice calls between MANET nodes and external nodes.

After running the simulations, there are some performance parameters which will reveal the

results. The key findings of the simulations are: adding gateways, number of voice traffic

flows and the number of hops between source and destinations. There are some interesting

results which reveal for example, that adding gateways is not always beneficial.

This deliverable provides a description of the framework identified for the collaborative activities between different partners in the context of NEWCOM department 7 on QoS provision in heterogeneous wireless networks. The considered models, assumptions and expected results are pointed out for each activity. The deliverable also includes a report on the means to achieve the integration between the different partners

This deliverable constitutes the final report of all the activities that carried out in the framework of the NEWCOM department 7. It contains a description of the main technical achievements for each one of the activities in which the department has been organised togehter with the list of indicators reflecting the degree of integration that has been achieved among the different partners

In today's society, consumers get in touch with hundreds of advertising messages a day from companies. It is up to the consumer to choose the messages they want to listen to and ignore the ones they want. Today, there is an advertising saturation and this has implications for both producers and consumer. Companies must be innovative and come with fresh ideas to get us consumers to pay attention to their particular message.  It is through the marketing that companies have an opportunity to spread their message. The challenge is to make themselves visible to consumers and make them aware of their message. This challenge means that companies need to know everything and then some of his audience. A market survey is a good tool to meet this challenge. The purpose of this paper is to investigate what factors influence consumer choice of conference facilities. The company that is the focus of this investigation is Visit Karlstad, who is a company that’s providing conference services for businesses and organizations. The conference industry is a part of the experience industry and conference facilities have in pace with todays increased focus on experiences. Companies need to invest more in particular on activities to attract consumers. The advertising is now more focused on the experiences and events, and many researchers argue that there are experiences that attract consumers to consume today. Today's tough advertising climate means that firms are facing greater challenges to reach out with their message.

 A quantitative study in the form of a survey was the basis for this thesis. Respondents to the survey have been conferences buyers from all over Sweden. The results from the survey show that the determining factors in the choice of the conference are: the location, good communications, price, standard of the facility, the environment and the range of activities available. These are factors that are critical to the overall impression of the conference center and conference stay.

There has long been a need for a well-balanced, comprehensive and up-dated self-report measure of dyadic relationship quality. The aim was to test the new Quality of Dyadic Relationship, QDR, on 90 men and women living in long-term relationships and on 94 men and women constituting 47 couples visiting family counselling. In the first group A, the experienced entire quality of the relationship, QDR index, was found to be 22, with a possible range between 5 and 30, which means rather a good quality in the relationship. The dimension Dyadic Consensus showed the highest marks together with Dyadic Satisfaction, indicating that these men and women did not just stay together by force of habit. In group B, the QDR-index was 20 before and 22 after counselling. Dyadic Sexuality was found to be lowest in both group A and B. QDR seems to be an instrument with good validity and reliability also in these study groups, according to the factor structure and Cronbach’s alpha. The entire QDR36 is hereby introduced and presented ready for use in different kinds of relationships.

Information-centric networking (ICN) has been introduced as a potential future networking architecture. ICN promises an architecture that makes information independent from lo- cation, application, storage, and transportation. Still, it is not without challenges. Notably, there are several outstanding issues regarding congestion control: Since ICN is more or less oblivious to the location of information, it opens up for a single application flow to have several sources, something which blurs the notion of transport flows, and makes it very difficult to employ traditional end-to-end congestion control schemes in these networks. Instead, ICN networks often make use of hop-by-hop congestion control schemes. How- ever, these schemes are also tainted with problems, e.g., several of the proposed ICN congestion controls assume fixed link capacities that are known beforehand. Since this seldom is the case, this paper evaluates the consequences in terms of latency, throughput, and link usage, variable link capacities have on a hop-by-hop congestion control scheme, such as the one employed by the Multipath-aware ICN Rate-based Congestion Control (MIRCC). The evaluation was carried out in the OMNeT++ simulator, and demonstrates how seemingly small variations in link capacity significantly deterio- rate both latency and throughput, and often result in inefficient network link usage. 

Information-centric networking (ICN) with its design around named-based forwarding and in-network caching holds great promises to become a key architecture for the future Internet. Still, despite its attractiveness, there are many open questions that need to be answered before wireless ICN becomes a reality, not least about its congestion control: Many of the proposed hop-by-hop congestion control schemes assume a fixed and known link capacity, something that rarely – if ever – holds true for wireless links. As a first step, this paper demonstrates that although these congestion control schemes are able to fairly well utilise the available wireless link capacity, they greatly fail to keep the link delay down. In fact, they essentially offer the same link delay as in the case with no hop-by-hop, only end- to-end, congestion control. Secondly, the paper shows that by complementing these congestion control schemes with an easy- to-implement, packet-train link estimator, we reduce the link delay to a level significantly lower than what is obtained with only end-to-end congestion control, while still being able to keep the link utilisation at a high level. 

Efter att Industrivärden-domarna meddelats i slutet av 2007 stod det klart att det var godtagbart för koncerner att skatteplanera med hjälp av rätten till avdrag för lånekostnader som föreskrivs i inkomstskattelagens (1999:1229, IL) 16 kap. 1 §. Eftersom lagrummet inte ställer några krav på att den uttagna räntan beskattas kunde koncerner, via lån mellan koncernbolagen, framkalla en lägre beskattning genom att strategiskt välja att inte beskatta uttagen ränta men erhålla avdrag för räntekostnader. Detta resulterade i att ett förslag till lagstiftning i form av ett avdragsförbud hastades fram under sommaren 2008 och började tillämpas redan den 1 januari 2009. När bestämmelserna omsattes i praktiken klargjordes att lagrummens flertaliga subjektiva rekvisit vållade en stor osäkerhet. Bestämmelserna reviderades under 2013, men man lyckades inte avhjälpa tillämpningssvårigheterna. Efter en lång granskning av EU-kommissionen inleddes under 2015 därutöver ett formellt överträdelseförfarande mot Sverige eftersom reglerna befanns avskräcka företag från etablering. Parallellt med detta så har företagsskattekommittén efter tre års utredningar presenterat ett förslag på ett nytt regelverk för ränteavdrag. Eftersom detta ansågs vara unikt och internationellt frånvändande ombads emellertid kommittén att arbeta om förslaget med fokus på en resultatbaserad modell. Samtidigt har Sverige varit med och tagit fram en ny modell för ränteavdrag inom ramen för BEPS-projektet, och under 2015 antagit denna inom ramen för BEPS åtgärdsplan 4. Idag befinner sig Sverige således i en situation där det finns begränsningsregler för ränteavdrag som är hårt kritiserade och nu också anmälda som fördragsstridiga av EU-kommissionen. Samtidigt håller regelverket på att omarbetas av FSK som ombettsatt föreslå internationellt vedertagna regler till 2017. Samtidigt kan det antas att Sverige kommer införa en variant av OECD:s modell som föreslås i BEPS åtgärdsplan 4eftersom det inte gjorts några reservationer vid antagandet under 2015. Mot bakgrund av detta behöver såvitt författaren kan bedöma de nuvarande ränteavdragsbegränsningsreglerna ersättas av de lagstiftningsåtgärder som man tillsammans med OECD arbetat fram i BEPS-projektets åtgärdsplan 4. Särskilt med beaktande av att EU nu också officielltställt sig bakom en implementering av åtgärdsplanen genom förslag till direktiv mot skatteundandraganden som skickades på remiss till medlemsstaterna under januari 2016.Syftet med den här framställningen är därför att utreda olika möjliga utformningar av BEPS åtgärdsplan 4 4, för att utifrån dessa utvärdera en lämplig svensk variant.Därmed ska arbetet utreda regelmodellen i åtgärdsplan 4 genom en beskrivning av BEPS slutliga åtgärdsrapport 4 och en analys av vilka delar som måste införas i Sverige. För att kunna utvärdera hur de delar av åtgärdsrapport 4 som måste införas i Sverige lämpligast ska utformas behövs därefter en beskrivning av artikel 4 i EU-kommissionens förslag till direktiv mot skatteundandraganden, det alternativa förslaget i företagsskattekommitténs slutbetänkande från 2014, och de tyska och finska begränsningsreglerna för ränteavdrag samt slutligen en jämförelse av olika fördelar och nackdelar i dessa utformningsvarianter. Vid en granskning av detta material har författaren funnit att en svensk OECD-modell lämpligast bör innehålla följande komponenter 1) avdrag upp till ett belopp motsvarande ränteinkomster 2) avdrag för de därutöver räntebetalningarnatill ett belopp motsvarande 30 procent av företagets resultat beräknat enligt EBITDA eller ett maximalt avdragsbelopp, beroende på vilket som är högst 3) Kvittningsrätt av negativa och positiva avdragsutrymmen på koncernnivå 4) rullning av negativa räntenetton, dock längst till och med det 6 året efter att nettoräntebetalningen uppstod.

I enlighet med inkomstskattelagens (1999:1229)16 kap. 1 § får företag alltid fullt skatteavdrag för räntekostnader som löper på lån, oberoende av hur den motsvarande ränteinkomsten beskattas. Under år 2008 uppmärksammade Skatteverket att företag lagenligt kunde missbruka denna avdragsrätt genom att utfärda lån till närstående företag och därigenom erhålla en lägre beskattning. Till följd av detta så infördes begränsningar i den generella avdragsrätten för räntekostnader under 2009.

Allt sedan begränsningsreglernas införande har dess överenstämmelse med EU-rättens etableringsfrihet varit ett omdiskuterat ämne. Medan regeringen och högsta förvaltningsdomstolen anser att reglerna ligger i linje med EU-rätten och reglerna om etableringsfrihet är remissinstanserna och många framträdande personer inom det juridiska samfundet av en annan åsikt. Även EU-kommissionen har utrett reglerna, och drar slutsatsen att de utgör ett hinder av den fria etableringsrätten. EU-kommissionen anser att bestämmelserna särskilt missgynnar gränsöverskridande verksamheter och att de går utöver vad som är nödvändigt, trots att reglerna förvisso skulle kunna motiveras. Regeringen anser att om reglerna mot all förmodan skulle anses utgöra ett hinder så kan de i vart fall motiveras och är proportionerliga.

Syftet med den här uppsatsen är att utreda om utformningen av inkomstskattelagens ränteavdragsbegränsningar i 24 kap. 10 a-b och d-e §§ är förenliga med EU-rättens regler om etableringsfrihet i art. 49 i funktionsfördraget. Det vill säga utreda huruvida reglerna utgör ett hinder mot etableringsfriheten, och om ett sådant hinder i så fall kan accepteras. Normalt förbjuds alla former av hinder mot etableringsfriheten. I särskilda fall får emellertid avsteg göras. Detta förutsätter att de inskränkande reglerna kan motiveras mot bakgrund av art. 52 FEUF eller ett trängande allmänintresse, att de har till syfte att uppnå de anförda målen samt inte gå utöver vad som är nödvändigt för att uppnå dessa mål.

Vid en granskning av inkomstskattelagens bestämmelser om ränteavdragsbegränsningar finner författaren att reglerna innebär ett hinder för etableringsfrihetens utövande, men att detta hinder kan motiveras med att reglerna syftar till att förhindra skatteflykt och bevara den väl avvägda beskattningsrätten mellan medlemsstaterna. Författaren finner dock att inkomstskattelagens regler om ränteavdrag går utöver vad som är nödvändigt för att uppnå de angivna syftena. Reglerna uppfyller inte EU-rättens krav på rättssäkerhet och det finns mindre inskränkande åtgärder för att uppnå dessa syften än de ränteavdragsbegränsningarna erbjuder. Författaren finner därför att det svenska regelverket är oförenligt med etableringsfriheten.

I denna studie har en jämförande studie mellan privat och offentlig sektor genomförts gällande arbetstagarens inställning till sin arbetsgivare. Studien bygger på en hypotetiskt deduktiv metod i vilken vi försöker verifiera vår hypotes. Hypotesen är att arbetstagare inom privat sektor känner större tillit och lojalitet till sin arbetsgivare. Vidare avser vi att studera hur arbetstagarnas inställning till sin arbetsgivare påverkas av de grundläggande tillits- och lojalitetsfaktorerna. De faktorer som ingår i undersökningen är ledningens hänsyn, kompetens, ärlighet och öppenhet, belöningssystem samt ledningens förmåga att inte svika sina arbetstagare. Hypotesen prövas sedan mot de analyser som görs utifrån empiriska data. I undersökningen ingick 168 respondenter från ett flertal olika arbetsplatser. Av dessa var 76 stycken anställda inom privat sektor och 92 stycken inom offentlig sektor.

Resultatet visar att arbetstagare inom den privata sektorn har en mer positiv inställning till att ställa upp för sin arbetsgivare. Att de offentligt anställda har en mer negativ inställning är en tendens som samtliga redovisade påståenden verifierar. Gällande delen av analysen som specifikt behandlar de tillits- och lojalitetsgrundande faktorerna visar resultatet att arbetstagare inom privat sektor i större utsträckning anser att deras arbetsgivare hanterar faktorerna på ett bra sätt. Ett resultat av detta är arbetstagarnas beteende, vilket skiljer sig åt i de två sektorerna. De privat anställda ställer i större grad upp för sin arbetsgivare exempelvis när det gäller övertidsarbete samt att de ger en mer positiv bild av sin arbetsgivare till personer utanför organisationen. Sammanfattningsvis konstaterar vi att vår hypotes verifieras, det vill säga arbetstagarna inom den privata sektor har en mer lojal inställning till sin arbetsgivare än vad arbetstagarna inom den offentliga sektorn har.

In today's society an increased use of social networking sites can be seen, which can present difficulties in deciding what is private and what is public. The questions and issues being discussed in this essay are made to determining how students at Karlstad University relate to the information published on Facebook. Through an explorative research design and methodological triangulation in the form of a questionnaire survey and focus group interviews, the authors seek to answer and discuss the students' different approaches to the use of Facebook.The paper shows that students at Karlstad University sometimes have a low awareness of the information displayed to others and inadequate use of the privacy settings available on the page. At the end of the study the authors discern three different categories of Facebook users with different levels of consciousness.

To be able to protect themselves from credit risk, the banks must constantly check the performance of  the companies they have lent money to. There are many mathematical models for predicting financial distress. These models use accounting-based ratios, which often are historical and not representative for the present situation. This study describes how the banks do in practice to find signals of insolvency in time and the variables they are observing for doing that.

In addition to financial reports which the company sends in to the bank at least once a year, also the relationship between them and information from different information  agencies are of great importance to track  signals of insolvency. Poor profitability is the primary cause of insolvency. It is caused mainly because of bad business and leadership.  Eventually will  poor profitability lead  to consuming of equity capital and place the company in an illiquid situation. Then it may be difficult for the company to pay their bills and signals of insolvency become obvious and  the  banks start then to sharpen  their attention on the companies and intensify the follow-up works.

Another find-out  of the  study  is  that local factors which  are  contributing to failure are  the  large companies that are active  in the area. When they are in a bad situation, it affects the suppliers. The big difference between service and manufacturing companies  regarding insolvency  is  that service companies are more flexible regarding cutting down costs when bad times come.

Christopher Papakaliatis, a prominent figure in Greek television, propelled Greece into the global streaming arena with his series Maestro in Blue. Supported by the National Centre of Audiovisual Media and Communication (EKOME) and initially aired on MEGA TV, the show made history on 19 December 2022 as the first Greek drama to debut on Netflix. This study explores the significance of such turning points for small television nations, analysing textual choices, production strategies, and broader significance for the visibility of Greek television on the global stage. As such, the study contributes to understanding the evolving landscape of transnational television and its implications for small television cultures and industries.

Popular geopolitics has recognized in popular culture a platform where geopolitical imaginations are created and discursive constructions of ‘self’ and ‘other’ take place. However, limited work has been done on the employment of specific methodological tools of Critical Discourse Analysis on popular culture texts. This article attempts a hands-on analysis on an episode of a popular product of Greek television fiction (Oi Aparadektoi), and constitutes a combination of theoretical discussion, on one hand, and data presentation and analysis, on the other. Building on a growing body of literature arguing in favor of popular culture’s value for study of politics, the main argument is that television fiction can, and should be, included in investigations of the (geo)politics of the contemporary world and the politics of (national) identity, while special focus is placed on how a discourse-oriented approach can be adopted for the study of products of television fiction.

The goal of this thesis is to determine if hiring managers are sensitive to racial background ofapplicants during hiring process. The author determined hiring discrimination using twoperspectives, first what did the hiring managers know about hiring discrimination? Second,correspondence testing was conducted to quantitatively determine if employers discriminateagainst certain names during resume screening. A cross country study was done betweenSweden and Canada. The results revealed that hiring managers in both countries are wellaware of negative impact of hiring discrimination on a firm or an organisation and all therespondents condemned it. However, correspondence testing showed that hiringdiscriminations occur in both countries. 1009 jobs were applied in Sweden while 1326 jobswere applied in Canada. The aggregate results for Sweden shows that applicants with foreignnames receive a call back rate of 66.3% while applicants with Swedish names receive a callback rate of 77.2%. The results for Canada show that applicants with foreign names receiveda call back rate of 73.5% while applicants with English names receive a call back rate of74.6%. Probit estimation was used to estimate the probability of applicants being invited forinterview. The results indicate that hiring discrimination against foreign names is morepronounced in Sweden compared to Canada.

Title: Which bank do you choose? – A ratio analysis of the four major banks in Sweden 

Background and problem: In 2008 the world was hit by an economic crisis. The crisis 

has affected the major Swedish banks, mainly through increased credit losses. The 

increase in credit losses incurred due to various factors but mainly due to banks' 

exposures in the Baltic’s. The study should be considered whether any bank fared better 

than the others, but even if some deterioration due to the economic crisis. This should be 

investigated by using various financial ratios selected for this study. 

Purpose: The aim of this study is to compare the four main banks in Sweden, 

Handelsbanken, Nordea, SEB and Swedbank, based on some selected indicators. We also 

want to study how they influenced by the current economic crisis by studying a five-year 

period between 2004 and 2008. 

Methodology: For the collection of information, we mainly rely on banks' annual 

reports, literature in finance and business valuation, and external information.  

By studying the ratios for the years concerned, we shall compare the banks with each 

other and study the extent of the crisis. 

Results and conclusions: The results of the study's indicators show deterioration in 

values for all of the banks in 2008 and the first quarter of 2009. The reason for these 

declines is based in the current economic crisis. The most obvious change that is visible is 

the increased credit losses that affect net income, which in turn affect many of the 

selected ratios. The key figure shows the most visible changes is the credit loss rate, return 

on equity and earnings per share. Furthermore, the economies of the banks are expected 

to decrease further in 2009. 

Proposal for further study: Our proposal for a further study is to follow the banks of 

the current crisis and to study further about the indicators to get a deeper understanding 

of what influenced the banks. A further proposal is to study how the banks are recovering 

after the crisis during 2008. 

An important task for project managers in multi-project environments is to effectively choose the right people to the project team. For organizations, it means being able to prioritize and plan human resources among the various projects running in parallel. The purpose of this paper is to describe how a project manager in multi-project environments looks at the allocation of people in their projects. We did our research through literature reviews and interviews with seven project managers.

The research shows that the studied organizations highlight both the expertise and the personal factors in an election. They do not use any specific personality test to identify their staff. The most important thing for them is instead the area of competence, although personality is seen as something important to complete the project. Why then don´t the different personality models have any impact in the selection? The organizations believe that they are already satisfied and think that the choice of simple manageable methods work well. One obstacle may be that they perceive the instep too high in the form of courses, training, purchasing models, etc., and the investment is perceived as being more costly than the estimated profit.

A follow-up question to our main research question was how the project managers perceived the need for IT support system for resource management to help the business improve and streamline their processes of allocation of resources. We have, through our literature studies looked at the importance of using a more advanced IT support system for resource management in large organizations, but in the businesses we studied, they are not used. For example, it may be that IT support can mean large economic costs, large rearrangements and extensive training for staff.

It turned out that those simpler IT support systems as MS Excel in combination with active internal communication is perceived as a sufficiently effective method of resource management particularly for the smaller businesses. Especially in these businesses, it is easier to get background information about potential project members' skills and personal qualities.

Test Automation is becoming a more vital part of the software development cycle, as it aims to lower the cost of testing and allow for higher test frequency. However, automating manual tests can be difficult as they tend to require complex human interaction. In this thesis, we aim to solve this by using Imitation Learning as a tool for automating manual software tests. The software under test consists of a virtual simulation, connected to a physical input device in the form of a sight. The sight can rotate on two axes, yaw and pitch, which require human motion control. Based on this, we use a Behavioral Cloning approach with a k-NN regressor trained on human demonstrations. Evaluation of model resemblance to the human is done by comparing the state path taken by the model and human. The model task performance is measured with a score based on the time taken to stabilize the sight pointing at a given object in the virtual world. The results show that a simple k-NN regression model using high-level states and actions, and with limited data, can imitate the human motion well. The model tends to be slightly faster than the human on the task while keeping realistic motion. It also shows signs of human errors, such as overshooting the object at higher angular velocities. Based on the results, we conclude that using Imitation Learning for Test Automation can be practical for specific tasks, where capturing human factors are of importance. However, further exploration is needed to identify the full potential of Imitation Learning in Test Automation.

Abstract

HTML is not powerful enough to handle the increasing demands on Internet applications of today, which is one of the reasons to why a new markup language called XML has been introduced. In this report we describe the basics as well as more advanced parts of XML like DTD, XML Schema and XSLT.

XML combines the simplicity of HTML and the possibilties of SGML. One of the premier strengths of XML is that it may be used to store any type of data without any considerations to how it will be presented later. The content and the presentation are separated completely. Another important property is that XML documents are stored as

ordinary text files, which means that XML is system and platform independent.

In this report our aim consists of two goals. One goal is to create a suitable format for storing configuration data using XML. The configuration data is to be used by a network emulator. In order to emulate the conditions present in a real network the emulator is

capable of emulating things as bit errors, packet losses, bandwidth limitation and delay, all of which are examples of configuration data. The other goal is to describe the basics as well as more advanced parts of XML in general. As we describe XML, we continuously show how we apply this knowledge to our application. In this way, the reader achieves a good insight into how XML works.

The trademarks are territorially limited. The trademarks legal protection applies only within the territory of the state. The consequence of the principle of territoriality is that there may be multiple trademarks owner for the same brand but in different countries. In the analog world, the coexistence of the same brands in different countries hasn’t caused any significant problems. Internet's increasing use as a commercial marketplace has resulted that a brand has becomes more widely on the Internet than in the analog world. It has become increasingly difficult to control the spread of their brands on the Internet, and the explanation is that the Internet lacks the natural geographic boundaries as in the analog world. For that reason the probability that a Swedish brand may come into collision with a similar mark in another country will increase. Therefore, cross-border disputes concerning trademark infringement has grown more and more.

A trademark violation could only have happened if the brand use can be linked to the territory in which the trademarks rights exist. The location of where an infringement has taken place is difficult to establish on the Internet. The same problem arises in the international private and procedural law. In order for a court to have jurisdiction over a claim, there must be a connection to the forum. Therefore it’s necessary that action can be linked to the territory in which the trademark right is registered. The aim of this paper was to analyze the rules of the jurisdiction of the Brussels I Regulation, and how these rules shall apply to trademark infringement on the Internet.

In my paper, I have concluded that the rules of jurisdiction must be given a stricter application, due to the risk that the jurisdiction rules can be abused. In the essay, I have suggested that a requirement on commercial effect must be demanded if the court should have jurisdiction to hear a proceedings for trademark violation. By requiring commercial effect it be can determined if there is an enough connection with the forum state. The positive aspect of a stricter requirement is that the defendant shouldn’t have to face proceedings in foreign countries. A stricter application is in line with the requirement of legal certainty and that there must be a close link between the court and the proceedings.

This paper examines the oil price-macro economy relationship by means of analyzing the impact ofoil price on Industrial production, real effective exchange rate, long term interest rate and inflation rate for a sample of ten OECD countries using quarterly data for the period 1970q1-2011q1.The impact of oil price shock on industrial production is negative and occurs with a lag of one year. However, the impact has weakened considerably compared to the 1970s. The impact on real effective exchange rate is negative/positive for a net importer/exporter, and the magnitude of the shock depends on the county´s share of net import/export of total world demand/supply. Interest rates are affected negatively, through increase in inflation rates following the oil price shock. The effect tends to die out after 5-8 quarters following the shock for most of the variables and countries. This paper also applies alternative methods to test for unit root and cointegration, which takes into account for structural breaks in the data. The weakness of Phillips-Peron test is clearly demonstrated in the case of inflation rates and interest rates, where the test falsely considered the series to be non-stationary when they in fact are stationary around a structural break. There is also strong evidence of cointegration between oil price and inflation rates and between oil price and interest rates, especially when taking account for structural breaks.

Abstract

Temporary employment is not a new occurrence. The problems with this type of employment became a topic of interest when the government decided to regulate temporary employments. The first set of regulations, which came into effect in 1974, were very strict but have since been revised to better suite the needs of the market. The present regulations are from 1982 but some smaller changes have been made to them since. The difficulty with today’s regulations is still how to get a balance between the interests of both the employers and employees regarding protection and flexibility. Finding a solution to the problem is paramount because of the increasing number of temporary employments.

Typical characteristics of a temporary employment are that the employer and the employee agree upon when the engagement will end. When this time passes the employer and employee are free to part without any further obligations.

The regulations that govern temporary employment are found in 5, 5a and 6§§ LAS. These contain a number of possible solutions to temporary employment. The employee is protected from misuse by 4§ LAS.

Praxis about temporary engagement and statements by the Labour Court have become guiding principles for the application of the law. The law and praxis can also be combined with collective agreements. Hence the regulations of temporary employment can be adjusted to specific circumstances in different areas. Some of the collective agreements have been studied. A comparison between the public and private sector have not shown any striking differences.

A drop in numbers of temporary employments does not automatically bring an increased number of employments with conditional tenure. This development is mainly caused by the increasing number of organizations which temporary rent out labour to businesses.

The largest problem with the regulations of today seems to be the different circumstances and time frames which are declared in the law. These problems seems to be centered to 5§ LAS. As a group of regulations even 5a and 6§§ LAS are part of the problems among the temporary employments, because of the circumstances for each paragraph. The problems have been acknowledged and changes are meant to take place on July 1, 2007. The new government is planning for further changes but have yet to reveal their plans to the public. The present regulations are consequently a problem and therefore we have provided a suggestion for a solution in the last chapter, which is similar to the new rules.