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El trabajo se divide en dos grandes apartados. En el primero, realiza una descripción del sector en el que se ha realizado el estudio (hortofrutícola): a continuación revisa algunos de los factores contextuales y organizativos en el marco de lo que se denomina factores de riesgo psicosocial, su clasificación y su situación en España: y finalmente una descripción del mobbing y sus características más relevantes. En el segundo, se presentan los objetivos, metodología, resultados y discusión y conclusiones. La muestra esta compuesta por 396 trabajadores pertenecientes a una empresa del sector hortofruticola, Las principales conclusiones son: Una alta tasa de incidencia (28%) del mobbing, y se señalan como predictores de este fenómeno, en concreto con tres de sus formas de expresión (acoso personal, acoso al rendimiento en el trabajo y otras formas de acoso), cuatro predictores (carga mental, definición de rol, interés por el trabajo y supervisión/participación). / The work is divided into two sections. In the first, gave a description of the sector where the study was conducted (agro fruit): then reviewed some of the organisational factors issues in the context of what is called psycho-social risk factors, classification and their status in Spain: and finally a description of mobbing and their characteristics. In the second, we presented the objectives, the methodology, the results and the discussion. The sample of 396 workers belonging to a company in the agro fruit sector, The main results are: a high incidence rate (28%) of mobbing, and identifies as predictors of this phenomenon, especially with three of his forms of expression (personal harassment, harassment to job performance and other forms of harassment), four predictors (mental load, conflict and ambiguity of roles, interest in the work and supervision and participation).

Titel: En studie av enskild firma, handelsbolag och aktiebolag - Vilka fördelar och nackdelar finns inom respektive företagsform? Nivå: C-uppsats i företagsekonomi Författare: Camilla Köhler och Petra Alperud Wennemyr Handledare: Markku Penttinen Datum: 2013-februari   Syfte: Syftet är att utreda skillnaderna mellan enskild näringsverksamhet, handelsbolag och aktiebolag och dess fördelar och nackdelar. Genom den empiriska forskningen presenteras för- och nackdelar med respektive företagsform, sett ur företagarens perspektiv utifrån beskattning, finansiering, risker, bransch och storlek.      Metod: I denna uppsats har en deduktiv ansats använts. En kombination av kvalitativ och kvantitativ metod har utnyttjats. Teori har insamlats via litteratur, elektroniska dokument och vetenskapliga artiklar. Intervjuerna har genomförts via besöksintervju och telefonintervju, där två organisationer intervjuades. Enkäter har skickats via mail efter telefonkontakt eller personlig kontakt med de olika företagen. Tio företag av varje företagsform fick besvara enkäterna. Empirin har sedan jämförts med teorin i en analys.   Resultat & slutsats: Det är svårt att fastställa för- och nackdelar inom respektive företagsform då en fördel för en person kan vara en nackdel för någon annan. Resultatet av enkätundersökningen visar på att de som idag har aktiebolag är nöjdast med företagsformen, främst på grund av den begränsade ägarrisken. Den främsta fördelen i enskild firma är enkelheten i företagsformen och att det inte krävs något startkapital. Fördelen med handelsbolag anses vara att det inte krävs startkapital samt att det är enklare och kräver mindre administration jämfört med ett aktiebolag. Nackdelarna som framkommer inom enskild firma och handelsbolag är bland annat att förmåner inte kan utnyttjas, vinsten inte kan sparas i bolaget och utdelning inte kan ske. De största nackdelarna med aktiebolag är att det är krångligt att starta och lägga ned. Inom mindre verksamheter ses enskild firma som en fördel medan det i större företag med anställda och stor omsättning är mer fördelaktigt med ett aktiebolag.   Förslag till fortsatt forskning: En intressant fråga är varför så många företag går i konkurs inom fem år och hur de ska göra för att överleva. Ett andra förslag är varför så få företag söker bidrag och vad detta beror på.   Uppsatsens bidrag: Uppsatsen presenterar vilka fördelar och nackdelar som finns inom de tre vanligaste företagsformerna. Uppsatsen skrevs för att vara behjälplig för en person som vill starta företag. Studien ger kunskap om vad som krävs vid uppstart av de olika företagsformerna och hur företagaren ska tänka när företagsform ska väljas.   Nyckelord: Enskild firma, handelsbolag, aktiebolag, beskattning, finansiering, risker. / Title: A study of sole proprietorships, partnerships and limited companies  -What advantages and disadvantages are there in each type of enterprise ?  Level: Final assignment for Bachelor Degree in Business Administration Author: Camilla Köhler and Petra Alperud Wennemyr Supervisor: Markku Penttinen Date: 2013 – February   Aim: The aim is to investigate the differences between sole proprietorship, partnership and limited companies and its advantages and disadvantages. The empirical research presents the advantage and disadvantage with the respective enterprise form, from a perspective of an entrepreneur basis of taxation, finance, risk, industry and size.   Method: This study is built on a deductive approach. A combination of qualitative and quantitative method has been used. Theory has been collected through literature, electronic documents and scientific articles. The interviews were conducted through visit and telephone interview, where two organizations were interviewed. Questionnaires have been sent after telephone contact or personal contact with the different enterprises. Ten of each group of enterprises were asked to answer questionnaires. The empirical data where then compared with the theory in an analysis.   Result & Conclusions: It is hard to determine advantage and disadvantage of each enterprise form when an advantage for one person can be a disadvantage for someone else. The results of the questionnaire survey shows that those who currently have limited companies are most satisfied with the enterprise form, primarily because of the limited ownership risk. The main advantage of the sole proprietorship is the simplicity of the corporate form and that it does not require any initial capital. The advantage of a partnership is considered that there is no initial capital needed and that it is simpler and requires less administration compared with a limited company. The disadvantages that emerge within the sole proprietorship and partnership are that benefits cannot be used, the gain cannot be saved in the company and the dividend cannot be done. The main disadvantages of limited companies is that it is complicated to start up and close down. In smaller businesses private firm is seen as an advantage while in larger companies with employees and high turnover it is more beneficial with a limited company.   Suggestions for future research: An interesting question is why so many businesses go bankrupt within five years, and how they should act to survive. A second suggestion is why so few companies are seeking grants and what causes this.   Contribution of the thesis: The thesis presents which advantages and disadvantages of the three most common forms of enterprise . The thesis has been written to be an instrument for a person who would like to start up an enterprise. The study gives understanding about the upstart in several type of enterprises and how the entrepreneur should think when the enterprise form should be selected .   Key words: Sole proprietorships, partnerships, limited companies, taxation, financing, financial risks.

Agriculture is undergoing extreme change. The introduction of new generation agricultural products has generated an increased need for efficient and accurate product segregation across a number of Canadian agricultural sectors. In particular, monitoring, controlling and preventing commingling of various wheat grades is critical to continued agri-food safety and quality assurance in the Canadian grain handling system. The Canadian grain handling industry is a vast regional supply chain with many participants. Grading of grain for blending had historically been accomplished by the method of Kernel Visual Distinguishability (KVD). KVD allowed a trained grain grader to distinguish the class of a registered variety of wheat solely by visual inspection. While KVD enabled rapid, dependable, and low-cost segregation of wheat into functionally different classes or quality types, it also put constraints on the development of novel traits in wheat. To facilitate the introduction of new classes of wheat to enable additional export sales in new markets, the federal government announced that KVD was to be eliminated from all primary classes of wheat as of August 1, 2008. As an alternative, the Canadian Grain Commission has implemented a system called Variety Eligibility Declaration (VED) to replace KVD. As a system based on self-declaration, the VED system may create moral hazard for misrepresentation. This system is problematic in that incentives exist for farmers to misrepresent their grain. Similarly, primary elevators have an incentive to commingle wheat classes in a profitable manner. Clearly, the VED system will only work as desired for the grain industry when supported by a credible monitoring system. That is, to ensure the security of the wheat supply chain, sampling and testing at some specific critical points along the supply chain is needed. While the current technology allows the identification of visually indistinguishable grain varieties with enough precision for most modern segregation requirements, this technology is relatively slow and expensive. With the potential costs of monitoring VED through the current wheat supply chain, there is a fundamental tradeoff confronting grain handlers, and effective handling strategies will be needed to maintain historical wheat uniformity and consistency while keeping monitoring costs down. There are important operational issues to efficiently testing grain within the supply chain, including the choice of the optimal location to test and how intensively to test. The testing protocols for grain deliveries as well as maintaining effective responsiveness to information feedback among farmers will certainly become a strategic emphasis for wheat handlers in the future. In light of this, my research attempts to identify the risks, incentives and costs associated with a functional declaration system. This research tests a series of incentives designed to generate truthful behavior within the new policy environment. In this manner, I examine potential and easy to implement testing strategies designed to maintain integrity and efficiency in this agricultural supply chain. This study is developed in the first instance by using an analytic model to explore the economic incentives for motivating farmer’s risk control efforts and handlers’ optimal handling strategies with respect to testing cost, penalty level, contamination risks and risk control efforts. We solve for optimal behavior in the supply chain assuming cost minimization among the participants, under several simplifying assumptions. In reality, the Canadian grain supply chain is composed of heterogeneous, boundedly rational and dynamically interacting individuals, and none of these characteristics fit the standard optimization framework used to solve these problems. Given this complex agent behavior, the grain supply chain is characterized by a set of non-linear relationships between individual participants, coupled with out of equilibrium dynamics, meaning that analytic solutions will not always identify or validate the set of optimized strategies that would evolve in the real world. To account for this inherent complexity, I develop an agent-based (farmers and elevators) model to simulate behaviour in a more realistic but virtual grain supply chain. After characterizing the basic analytics of the problem, the grain supply chain participants are represented as autonomous economic agents with a certain level of programmed behavioral heterogeneity. The agents interact via a set of heuristics governing their actions and decisions. The operation of a major portion of the Canadian grain handling system is simulated in this manner, moving from the individual farm up through to the country elevator level. My simulation results suggest testing strategies to alleviate misrepresentation (moral hazard) in this supply chain are more efficient for society when they are flexible and can be easily adjusted to react to situational change within the supply chain. While the idea of using software agents for modeling and understanding the dynamics of the supply chain under consideration is somewhat novel, I consider this exercise a first step to a broader modeling representation of modern agricultural supply chains. The agent-based simulation methodology developed in my dissertation can be extended to other economic systems or chains in order to examine risk management and control costs. These include food safety and quality assurance network systems as well as natural-resource management systems. Furthermore, to my knowledge there are no existing studies that develop and compare both analytic and agent-based simulation approaches for this type of complex economic situation. In the dissertation, I conduct explicit comparisons between the analytic and agent-based simulation solutions where applicable. While the two approaches generated somewhat different solutions, in many respects they led to similar overall conclusions regarding this particular agricultural policy issue.

Wegener´s granulomatosis (WG) is an unusual, serious, systemic vasculitis with specific clinical findings. The studies in this thesis aim at broadening our understanding of the aetiology and outcome of WG. Patients with WG were identified in the In-patient Register 1975-2001. During this time the incidence increased three-fold, and neither ANCA-related increased awareness, nor diagnostic drift, seem to fully explain this trend, but it is still unclear if a true rise in incidence exists. Anti- neutrophil cytoplasmic antibodies (ANCA) have been presented as highly specific for vasculitis. In a series of consecutive cANCA/PR3-ANCA positive patients, we investigated the positive predictive value for ANCA, and the outcome of patients with a positive cANCA/PR3-ANCA but not vasculitis. These patients have a low future risk of developing vasculitis, possibly indicating that ANCA, in this setting, reflects neutrophil activating properties not specific to vasculitis. By linkage of the WG-cohort, and randomly selected population controls, to the Multi-generation register, we identified all first-degree relatives and spouses of patients and controls, totally encompassing some 2,000 patients and 70,000 relatives. Familial aggregation of WG was the exception, with absolute risks of < 1 per 1000.However, relative risks in first-grade relatives amounted to 1.56 (95% CI 0.35-6.90) such that a moderate familial aggregation cannot be excluded. In the WG-cohort, cancer occurrence and risk was compared to that of the general population. Patients with WG have an overall doubled risk of cancer, with particularly increased risks of bladder-cancer, haematopoietic cancers including lymphomas and squamous skin-cancer. In a case-control study nested within the WG-cohort, treatment with cyclophosphamide was compared among bladder-cancer patients and matched cancer-free controls. Absolute risk of bladder cancer as high as 10% some years after diagnosis were found, and this risk can partly be attributed to cyclophosphamide-treatment, with a dose-response relationship.

Mega projects are in most cases considered as the necessary evil of development. Before their benefits can be reaped, a lot of sacrifices and tough choices have to be made. The fear and uncertainties surrounding such projects range from the impacts on the local people, on the environment, the costs of investment, and to, if the project will deliver the promised benefits. Because of these fears and uncertainties, it is not unusual that most if not all such projects meet a lot of critics and resistance before their success or failures are witnessed. Today, it is more of a requirement than a belief (although without a guarantee) that stakeholders’ involvement and their active participation in all decision-making process concerning a project is the surest way of minimizing conflicts and ensuring justice. The Bujagali hydropower project being an example of such projects and without immunity to the problems faced by other mega project around the world has been a case study for this thesis. This study has therefore focused on institutional arrangements that governed the management and utilization of water resources in connection to hydropower development along the Nile River in Uganda, the procedures and stages of the negotiations for hydropower infrastructure development in Uganda, identified the major stakeholders that take part in such negotiations and looked in detail for what their issues and interests are. It has also examined the attitudes and opinions of stakeholders on the potential and benefits of hydropower against (solar, bio-fuel and geothermal) energy sources in the context of Uganda, taking into consideration the need for socio-economic development, preservation of culture and environmental protection. Finally, it has analyzed the conflicts/controversies that have arisen in the Bujagali hydropower project.

Identifying the detrimental effect of environmental factors and subsystem interactions are one of themost challenging aspects of early hazard assessment in the design of complex safety critical systems.Therefore, a complete understanding of potential failure effects before the catastrophe happens is a verydifficult task. The thesis proposes a model-based hazard analysis procedure for early identification ofpotential safety issues caused by unexpected environmental factors and subsystem interactions within acomplex safety critical system. The proposed methodology maps hazard and vulnerability modes tospecific components in the system and analyzes the hazard propagation paths for risk control andprotection strategies. The main advantage of the proposed method is the ability to provide the designerswith means to use low-fidelity, high level models to identify hazardous interactions. Using thistechnique, designers can examine the collective impacts of environmental and subsystem risks onoverall system during early stages of design and develop a hazard mitigation strategy.

The purpose of this Thesis was to create a framework of 11 risk factors, investigate which of them are the most critical for the company and to find relationships between them Research questions  What continuing risks will the company experience after ERP implementation? What relationships and measures can be constructed to better understand and manage risk factors of post-implementation? Some years ago ERP was a novelty in doing business, but nowadays companies have advanced from the implementation to the exploitation phase.  Discussions about ERP post-implementation have just started to appear and many researchers see it as a second wave of ERP research. Undesirable risks in post-implementation stage of ERP can affect not just ERP area, they can lead to a total business failure. ERP post-implementation is a very important topic that requires attention, because understanding potential risk factors and their dependence on each other can facilitate managing process and help to avoid negative consequences. Knowledge of the risks can help to bring forth better practices that are consistent with a company’s internal context.

Sammanfattning Titel:                           Utökad möjlighet till skuldsanering för enskilda näringsidkare – Effekterna av lagändringen i skuldsaneringslagen (2006:548) Datum:                        2011-06-09 Lärosäte:                     Mälardalens Högskola, Västerås Institution:                  Akademin för hållbar samhälls- och teknikutveckling Nivå:                           Magisteruppsats i företagsekonomi, 15 hp Författare:                   Sandra Kohlin och Lina Lindberg Handledare:                Leif Carlsson Examinator:                Cecilia Lindh Problemformulering:   Kommer lagändringen i skuldsaneringslagen att uppfylla sitt syfte? Vilka effekter kommer förändringen i skuldsaneringslagen att medföra för enskilda näringsidkare? Syfte:                          Syftet med magisteruppsatsen är att beskriva den kommande lagändringen i skuldsaneringslagen (2006:548) rörande näringsidkare. Syftet är vidare att undersöka om lagändringen kommer att uppfylla sitt syfte samt att belysa och undersöka de troliga effekterna av dessa förändringar. Metod:                        En kvalitativ metod valdes till uppsatsen för att få en mer djupgående förståelse av ämnesområdet. Personliga intervjuer har genomförts för att samla in det empiriska materialet. För att komma fram till uppsatsens slutsats har referensramen och empirin jämförts med varandra. Slutsats:                      Syftet med lagändringen är att utöka möjligheten för näringsidkare att antingen starta upp igen efter ett misslyckande eller att fortsätta bedriva verksamhet. Den första delen av lagändringens syfte kommer att uppfyllas i och med att det kommer bli lättare för en näringsidkare att starta om efter ett misslyckat företagande. Den andra delen av syftet kommer inte att uppfyllas helt då endast ett fåtal aktiva näringsidkare kommer bli beviljade skuldsanering. Effekter som lagändringen kan medföra är att ansökningar om skuldsanering ökar, aktiva näringsidkare kan beviljas skuldsanering, fler överklagar skuldsaneringsbeslut, kostnaden för olika instanser ökar, trycket på kommunernas budget- och skuldrådgivare kan öka, fordringsägare kan erhålla mer betalt vid en skuldsanering än vid en konkurs och osunda företag kan lämna marknaden fortare. Nyckelord:                  Insolvenslagstiftning, risker och företagande, skuldsaneringslag, enskilda näringsidkare.

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to explore and analyze perceptions and attitudes of Facebook users as consumers and merchants; investigate which perceived risks, if any, function as adoption barriers of f-commerce. Methodology: The study adopts a mixed method approach. It uses the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation technique (ZMET method) and focus groups to explore consumers’ perceptions and their mental maps. In-depth interviews with SMEs were also part of the qualitative design. A survey was conducted among consumers based on the qualitative findings to construct a perceptual map of f-commerce, which denotes the perceived-risks that were transferred from Facebook and e-commerce.  Theoretical perspective: The study builds on prior literature of perceived risks as adoption barriers in e-commerce and social networks, brand extension and product sequence attributes transfer. Further, theories on perception and attitudes, categorization, values and mental maps were used in order to apply the ZMET method and the perceptual map.  Empirical data: Data was collected for four weeks via sixteen ZMET interviews, two focus groups and a survey with two-hundred and sixty four respondents from a sample of three-hundred and eighty existent and potential consumers. Further to this, ten in-depth interviews and one ZMET interview were conducted with existing and potential merchants. Conclusion: Perceived risks such as performance, social, privacy, physical, psychological, security, time and financial were identified in consumers as adoption barriers of f-commerce, and transferred from Facebook as a parent brand.  Overall lack of trust towards apps, brand pages and f-commerce is a latent aspect for consumers, where privacy and safe processing of credit cards are crucial factors. Category-product risks were concerns in general but not substantial. When it comes to merchants, they share the same perceived risks than consumers except for privacy, which was not an important factor to them. Besides, the dependence of internal and external changes of Facebook was perceived as a network externality risk, in terms of investment threat.