In the last four decades, one of the fastest-growing fields of research in economics has been the contractual theory of the firm developed in Coase’s (1937) footsteps. Yet despite what otherwise seems to be a genuine success story the question of the nature of the firm remains an empirical and theoretical challenge, painfully illustrated by the lack of consensus regarding the definition and boundaries of the firm. The argument of this thesis is that many thorny questions that plague the literature, including issues related to ownership, boundaries, and intra-firm authority, are due to the fact that contractual theorists of the firm have generally overlooked a key legal feature of the economic system, without which theories of the firm are like Hamlet without the Prince. An elementary institutional fact about firms and markets is that in order to become a fully operational firm in a modern market economy, an entrepreneur or an association of resource owners need to go through a registration or incorporation procedure by which the legal system creates a separate legal person or legal entity in which ownership rights over assets used in production are vested, in whose name contracts are made, and thanks to which the firm has standing in court. With this assignment of legal personality, the legal system creates the efficiency-enhancing nexus for contracts that literally carries the organizational framework of the firm, and secures its continuity by locking-in the founders’ committed capital, thereby allowing them to pledge assets, raise finance and do business in the firm’s own name. Given the basic principle that only legal persons may own property and have the capacity to contract, and the implication that legally enforceable contracts can only exist between legal persons, it is something of a paradox that the notion of legal personality is absent from the prevailing narrative in the contractual theory of the firm. The thesis examines the reasons behind this state of affairs, and identifies alongside the widespread view among economists that firms can be defined with little or no reference to law, particularly statutory law, the lasting influence of Jensen and Meckling’s (1976) ambiguous dismissal of legal personality as a legal fiction that unavoidably leads to misleading reification. In order to disentangle the issues involved, the thesis puts this argument into historical perspective, and suggests that much can be learned from the corporate personality controversy that in the past has addressed the same questions. As the overview of the history of this debate reveals, the category mistakes that Jensen and Meckling presented as inevitable can be easily avoided once the meaning and functions of legal personality are properly understood. The thesis dispels enduring misunderstandings surrounding the notion of personhood, and proposes a legally-grounded view of the nature and boundaries of the firm that recognizes in law’s provision of legal entity status a fundamental institutional support for the firm while fitting the overall Coasean narrative.

Systems Thinking, (ST), has lately received increased attention, once again, as a result of accelerate change conditions and as organisations seem to operate in a more complex and uncertain context, which demands a new way of thinking. ST is an answer to these challenges as it is a way of thinking and acting that adopt a broader perspective. However, the perspective is not new itself and despite its positive aspects, it is still received inferior attention in the academia as well as practice. The purpose of this research was to contribute to an understanding of the employees perception of the change process towards this perspective, in order to gain an understanding of what is difficult and what factors that have helped these individuals to gain the perspective. A theoretical framework was developed and by conducting an exploratory study of the individual change, data were collected from in-depth interviews. The research findings come up with a model of nine key factors that are considered helpful to the employees in the change process, and three of those especially useful when implementing the ST perspective. The model can be seen as practical guidelines for implementation of ST reforms.

Sammandrag Alla tiders historia? är en studie av vad läroplanen i historia 1a1 (Gymnasieskola 2011) de facto innebär för ämnet vad gäller innehåll och historiesyn. Uppsatsen inleds med en kort presentation av ämnet för att sedan redogöra för olika lingvistiska och semantiska tolkningsmodeller hämtade hos filosofer som Saussure, Russell och Wittgenstein vilka kommer att användas i själva analysen av läroplanerna och Skolverkets kommentarer till dessa. I syfte att visa på hur historiesyn hör ihop med kunskapssyn ges även en presentation av olika epistemologiska skolor.  Själva textanalysen visar att det råder en stor begreppsförvirring i läroplanen då många begrepp inte definieras, eller ges olika innehåll vid olika tillfällen.  Analysen visar även att läroplanen förordar en dialektisk historiesyn med inslag av historicism utan att visa på alternativa perspektiv på historien. / Abstract The history of all time? is a study of what the curriculum in history 1a1 (Gymnasieskola 2011) de facto means for the subject in terms of content and historical views. The essay begins with a brief presentation of the topic and then explains various linguistic and semantic interpretation models retrieved by philosophers like Saussure, Russell and Wittgenstein which will be used in the actual analysis of the curricula and the National Agency for Education comments on them. In order to show how historical views is associated with the concept of knowledge is also given a display of various epistemological schools. The actual text analysis shows that there is great confusion in the curriculum since many concepts are not defined, or given different content at different times. The analysis also shows that the curriculum advocates a dialectical view of history with elements of historicism but fails to show alternative perspectives on history. Keywords: history, curriculum, view of history, semantics, text analysis, historicism, chronology

Background: In a world that is becoming more knowledge-based and where it gets harder to find value-adding employees, employer branding could be used as a way to attract and retain employees, which later can create competitive advantage. Research Question: In order to experience competitive advantage, how do SMEs use the strategies and tools of employer branding as a way to attract and retain value-adding employees? Purpose: The purpose with this study was to explore how employer branding is used by SMEs as a way to experience competitive advantage. Method: A qualitative research method with six case studies of SMEs located in different industries was adopted. Primary data was based on semi-structured interviews with respondents at the different SMEs. Theoretical framework: With the basis of the RBV, theories about this and the human capital as a resource as well as a competitive advantage, is presented. This continues with theories about the employer brand, attractive attributes about employers, employer branding strategies, and what the outcomes of employer branding is.  Findings and Conclusions: SMEs do not use the strategies and tools of employer branding in the generic way. Instead, much communication is carried out first when the recruitment process starts, with the aim to find employees who could deliver competitive advantage through their fit with the organization. Once onboard, different benefits are provided in order to retain them. Involvement and engagement are the most prominent ones, due to SMEs ability to offer cross-functional management.

Magistro darbe „Darbo konceptas lietuvių ir rusų patarlėse ir priežodžiuose“ bandoma plačiau panagrinėti koncepto darbas specifiką ir raišką lietuvių ir rusų kalbų pasaulėvaizdžiuose, atrasti panašumų ir skirtumų, rekonstruoti kalbai būdingą pasaulėvaizdį, tautų mąstymo strategijas. Atlikus lyginamąją ir konceptualiąją analizę, išanalizavus surinktą medžiagą, nustatyta, kad darbo konceptas lyginamose kalbose yra suvokiamas panašiai (darbas (darbštumas) – kaip gerovės šaltinis, darbas – kaip tinginystės priešprieša, tinginystė –kaip darbo parodija, darbas – jungtis tarp žmogaus ir gamtos, darbas – kaip vargas, darbas –kaip žmogaus savybių matmuo, darbas – kaip mokymo įrankis, darbas – šeimyninės sanklodos rodiklis, darbas – gyvenimiškos tiesos saugykla). Dažniausi darbo denotatai lietuvių ir analogiškai rusų kalboje yra darbas (darbštumas) – kaip gerovės šaltinis, darbas – kaip tinginystės priešprieša, tinginystė – kaip darbo parodija, darbas – kaip vargas, darbas – kaip žmogaus savybių matmuo. Darbas (darbštumas) – kaip gerovės šaltinis dažniausiai realizuojamas lietuvių kalboje. Rusų kalboje dažniausiai realizuojamas darbas – kaip tinginystės priešprieša, tinginystė – kaip darbo parodija. Lietuvių ir rusų kalbų patarlės ir priežodžiai pasižymi raiškos įvairove: aktyviai vartojami posakiai su neigiamu modalumu, elipsė, dauguma atvejų yra metaforiški, vaizdingi, lakoniški, neretai hiperbolizuoti, vyrauja ironija, komiškumas, garsinis aspektas, kategoriškumas, pamokymai ir... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / The aim of this master work, „The concept of work in Lithuanian and Russian proverbs and bywords“, is to take a wider glance at the concept of work in Lithuanians and Russians world-view, to find similarities and differences, to recreate the type of world-view which would be common to the language and also to recreate the strategies of thinking. After a comparative and conceptual analysis and after the analysis of collected examples, we made a conclusion that the concept of work is perceived similarly: work (diligence) as the source of wellness, work as the confrontation with laziness, laziness as the parody of diligence, work as the connection between human and nature, work as misery, work as the measurement of humanity, work as the proper way to educate, work as the measurement of family values and work as the storage of all the values. The most frequent and common for both Lithuanian and Russian languages meanings of the concept work are these: work as the source of wellness, work as the confrontation with laziness, laziness as the parody of diligence, work as misery and work as the measurement of humanity. The most common meaning to Lithuania language is work as the source of wellness and the most common meaning of work to Russian language is work as the confrontation with laziness and laziness as the parody of diligence. Lithuanian and Russian proverbs and bywords can be expressed in various ways: there are a lot of examples which have negative meaning. People use many... [to full text]

Contemporary architectural discourse commonly invokes the term framing. ??Derivative phrases contrived in education and practise are seemingly inexhaustible: framing the view, framing space, framing an idea, frame of reference, framework, window frame, body frame, space frame. ??The polymorphic nature of the term is perplexing, and despite its frequent and casual mention, the rich potential of framing in the architectural design process is often overlooked.?? ?? Framing is a primal phenomenon. It shapes an essential spatial experience with the power to divide, connect, fuse, reveal and conceal entities literally or notionally.??In the simple but profound act of recognizing, entering and exiting the boundary between, for example, an interior and an exterior, framing emerges in all its architectural and emotional significance. The experience of the frame is both intimate and metaphysical, hinting at shared but intangible dimensions of architecture. Through essays, drawings, installations, lists, poems, collages, and other architectural media, this thesis presents a body of twelve investigations that seek to elicit the broader notion behind the complex and transformative nature of framing in today???s parlance of architecture. To clarify, organize and interconnect the experiences of framing, the thesis constructs a theoretical framework on which to base further reflection, study, design and construction.

Syfte: K3-regelverket kom att bli tvingande för företag att tillämpa från januari i år. En nyhet med regelverket var komponentavskrivning, en avskrivningsmetod som innebär att företagens tillgångar ska delas in i olika komponenter som är av betydelse och som har en nyttjandeperiod som väsentligt skiljer sig från hela tillgången i sig. SABO var redan innan införandet kritisk till metoden och uttalade sig om att byggnader är komplexa tillgångar och menar att metoden innebär att kostnaden kommer att överstiga nyttan, speciellt för fastighetsbolagen. Med det som utgångspunkt kommer studiens syfte att behandla hur ledande befattningshavare i allmännyttiga bostadsföretag tillämpar och upplever det strikta kravet på komponentavskrivning. Vidare undersöks vilka faktorer som kan tänkas påverka det föregående. Metod: Studien utgår från en tolkande forskningstradition som ämnar att skapa en bättre förståelse kring hur ledande befattningshavare i allmännyttiga bostadsföretag upplever komponentavskrivning och hur tillämpningen av metoden kommer att ske. För att kunna genomföra studien ansågs en kvalitativ forskningsdesign och en deduktiv forskningsansats vara bäst lämpad för studiens syfte. Som tillvägagångssätt har semistrukturerade intervjuer tillämpats. En beskrivande analys har använts och grundar sig i studiens två delsyften. Resultat och slutsats: Utifrån studien har det konstaterats att företag tillämpar och upplever metoden olika. Det har även framkommit ett antal faktorer som påverkar hur metoden upplevs och tillämpas bland allmännyttiga bostadsföretag. Faktorer som anses påverka hur metoden upplevs är att det råder såväl osäkerhet som informationsasymmetri på marknaden. Innebörden av att regelverket är principbaserat har också betydelse för företagens upplevelse. Andra faktorer som kan påvisas ha påverkan för metodens tillämpning är företagens storlek. Förslag till vidare forskning: Studien är av kvalitativ art vilket gör att den ej kan ses som generaliserbar då den inte är tillräckligt omfattande. När undersökningen kring syftet påbörjades fanns tron om att de representerade företagen hade kommit längre i arbetet med implementeringen av komponentavskrivning. Förslag till vidare forskning är därför att om ett antal år studera ämnesområdet igen då det skulle vara intressant att se hur metoden har utvecklats, gällande hanteringen samt om det skett någon åtstramning i regelverket.

This thesis is devoted to 2D and 3D modeling of urban environments using structured representations and grammars. Our approach introduces a semantic representation for buildings that encodes expected architectural constraints and is able to derive complex instances using fairly simple grammars. Furthermore, we propose two novel inference algorithms to parse images using such grammars. To this end, a steepest ascent hill climbing concept is considered to derive the grammar and the corresponding parameters from a single facade view. It combines the grammar constraints with the expected visual properties of the different architectural elements. Towards addressing more complex scenarios and incorporating 3D information, a second inference strategy based on evolutionary computational algorithms is adopted to optimize a two-component objective function introducing depth cues. The proposed framework was evaluated qualitatively and quantitatively on a benchmark of annotated facades, demonstrating robustness to challenging situations. Substantial improvement due to the strong grammatical context was shown in comparison to the performance of the same appearance models coupled with local priors. Therefore, our approach provides powerful techniques in response to increasing demand on large scale 3D modeling of real environments through compact, structured and semantic representations, while opening new perspectives for image understanding

Russell’s claim that only structural knowledge of the world is possible was influentially criticized by Newman as rendering scientific discoveries trivial. I show that a version of this criticism also applies to the “structural realism” more recently advocated by Worrall, which requires continuity of formal structure between predecessor and successor scientific theories. The problem is that structure, in its common set-theoretical construal, is radically underdetermined by the entities and relations over which it is defined, rendering intertheoretic continuity intolerably cheap. I show that this problem may be overcome by supplementing the purely formal relation of intertheoretic isomorphism with the semiformal “Ontological Reductive Links” developed by Moulines and others of the German “structuralist” approach to the philosophy of science.

Organizations are becoming increasingly dependent on information technology for different purposes, such as project and resource-management systems, cooperative work systems and organizational memory systems. There is a need to make a dynamic roadmap for IT capability usage to facilitate organizational performance. The aim of this research is to gain a deeper understanding of the role of IS Strategy in utilizing IT capabilities for operationalizing and integrating business process information for the purpose of organizational performance from the lens of the resource-based view (RBV). This research makes use of single case study analysis of a construction organization in the oil and gas industry in Iran. This case study is expected to fill a gap in the literature in the specific context of a strategic situation and the critical environment in Iran.