The purpose of this study was to understand how the concept of quality as an idea was spread to and translated in municipal elderly care. A central question was: How does literature, policy documents and key people describe the function and meaning of the concept of quality? The method of analysis was a qualitative case study with a critical discourse. The theoretical framework of the study is mainly what is known as institutional theory and a line of thought describing how ideas are transferred and spread. The theoretical focus is on how original ideas are interpreted and why they gain a foothold in new contexts.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine the library discourses concerning the phenomenon and concept of digital libraries in Swedish library press 1980-2002. What changes can be identified? The questions are: what is said about the conditions for the phenomenon; how is the concept of digital libraries used; who makes these statements; what are the relations between these discussions and the library context in which they are made? Five Swedish library journals, BBL/Biblioteksbladet, DIK-forum, Human IT, Svensk biblioteksforskning and Tidskrift för dokumentation, were examined. The method used was discourse analysis. The theoretical starting-point was Foucaults discourse theory.

This essay shows how the concept of virtue can deepen our understanding considering processes of empowerment. A virtue is understood as a trait of character, manifested in habitual action, that it is good for person a to have. Virtues are interpreted as socially constructed. Empowerment is presented as a process toward self-confidence and self-determination where recourses and freedom propels the development toward power for the individual, the household and the community. Why does the concept of virtue deepen our understanding? It is argued that our theoretical perceptive of empowerment needs to better encompass values, norms and practise.

This work represents a first attempt to articulate my practice as a composer. Through a phenomenological perspective and with the support of the philosophical concept 'Weak Thought', I approach the idea of music as meaning in itself, beyond language. My exploration of these ideas is developed through three perspectives: partly through analysis of my own work, partly through a brief presentation of the concept of 'Weak Thought', and lastly through a series of subject-specific reflections..

Keywords: ID-method, internet, security, digitzing, bank Background: The digitizing of our society continues to grow and more parts of our lives is spent on the internet. The banks are one of the institutions that is at the forefront of this development since they established themselves on a early basis. The banks meeting points have since this establishment moved from the regular bank office out on the internet. A problem that has occurred during this transfer is the possibility to positive ID a customer in a virtual world. It is essential to offer the customer methods to identify themselves that are both safe and easy to use.

This study is about state officials who handle applications for sickness benefits and about municipal officials who handle applications for financial assistance. The purpose of this study is to explore the differences between the two professional roles regarding their conception about their exercise of authority, in terms of flexibility, individual adjustment, empathy and legal security.The study has a qualitative approach and is based on structured interviews with two state officials and two municipal officials. The questions that this study aims to answer are:- Is there a difference between state officials and municipal officials regarding their experience and use of flexibility? - Is there a difference between state officials and municipal officials regarding their perceptions of legal security, individual adjustment and empathy in their exercise of authority? - What kind of bureaucracy can you find in the two organizations?The results show that the state officials in this study have very limited flexibility due to legislation which makes their exercise of authority neither empathic nor individual. The municipal officials in this study state in their turn that the law entails broad flexibility and the opportunity for them to be empathic and to make individual decisions.

In this thesis I will discuss how US respectively EU general international security policies are formed with the scientific theories Rational Choice and Cognitive theory in mind. I?ll discuss how come US tends to go towards a more sanction orientated strategy while European Union seems to prefer a dialog and diplomatic problem solving strategy. I?ll exemplify respective security strategy through the qualitative cases study of Iran and analyse why they have taken different cores of action while trying to solve the problem with Iran's alleged nuclear weapon.

This essay is about security and safety in the city. More precisely it is concerned about the role of the institutions that aims to raise the perceived security and safety and their understanding of these concepts. I study two of the municipality's project in this field in the city of Malmö. Documents concerning these projects are analysed with a discourse analysis inspired by Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau as well as Michel Foucault. The two projects consist of one discourse each; the surveillance discourse and the discourse about meetings.

This paper aims to describe and discuss psychotherapy in rhetorical terms; in particular how psychotherapists can use their ethos, or person, as a means for convincing the patient, and subsequently discuss how these insights in turn can be useful for other rhetors.Classical rhetoric is commonly associated with one speaker exercising influence on an audience of many, but modern rhetoric is broader, and includes all situations where someone is attempting, by speech or in writing, to affect anyone, including the rhetor himself. With this broader definition, psychotherapy may also be considered a form of rhetoric. Psychotherapy does, however, highlight the aspect of power distribution, in that it is clear that it is up to the patient to determine whether the rhetoric will achieve its purpose or not, that is, if he will be influenced by it. In psychotherapy, it is also important to differentiate between persuading and convincing: for a permanent change to occur in the patient?s thoughts and actions, the deeper, "internal" form of conviction is necessary for change to take place.When attempting to convince an audience, it is important for the speaker to establish a credible ethos, that is, present a trustworthy persona.

The purpose of our study was to give girls who are victims of honor related violence a chance to express their needs experienced after the breakup from their families. Furthermore, the study aimed to examine in what extent the girls' needs have been met, how and by whom? The focus was the girls' own experiences thru the breakup from their families and beyond. The issues we wanted to answer were: What needs of help and support does these girls feel that they have? What are the needs immediately after the breakup and how do they look in the longer term? To what extent do the girls have their needs met, how and by whom? What needs experience the girls have not been satisfied? In order to answer our questions, we used semi-structured life-world interviews.

Previous research about contextual effects on advertising has mainly focused on the editorial context, while advertisements' broader context has been overlooked. This paper aims to take a broader perspective on advertisement context. Its purpose is to get an understanding on how physical exercise influence the effectiveness of print advertisements, and furthermore to look at the effects of thematic incongruence between ad and the physical environment. We hypothesize that physical exercise increase ad effectiveness through affective priming and that thematic incongruence is beneficial for ads' effectiveness, especially after training when awareness about the environment is higher. A 2×2 experiment was conducted in a gym, where each respondent was exposed to either an incongruent or less incongruent ad, before or after physical exercise.

The subject singing in elementary school changed its name to music in 1955 and with the name change followed a change in the content of the topic. In my study, I examine the perspective of how song as a subjekt has changed in the basic school curriculum texts. As a complement to text analysis, I used interviews in which two music teachers with long service in primary school were interviewed. My survey shows that there has been a clear change of the contents of concept song from being a pure skill where the aim was the vocal line benefits in different contexts and is today a vocal expression that can be embodied in many different ways. Curriculum texts have not been crucial to the changing content of the concept song.

This is a thesis on D-level. In a previous course, at our program Computer Science, we came up with an idea of how to improve/complement training for new employees who are situated in a stressful workplace at companies who are in a constant need of rehiring. We developed this concept and came up with an idea for a simulator that could train staff as well as relieve stress and tension for new employees. The idea matured and became a Serious Game simulator based on a dual-wield Wii-controlled PC-based simulator with Bluetooth support.The purpose of this paper is to produce a design concept for a simulator as well as conducting research on the topics: mental and physical learning abilities, psychomotor abilities, visual perception, hand-eye coordination, confidence, simulators and Serious Games. The conducted research will be the foundation for the design concept which will be implemented in our co-workers', Henrik Djerf & Daniel Gomez-Ortega, prototype.

This theory consuming thesis is concerned with why Iran's uranium enrichment has become a security issue, and will focus on the five most important and involved actors: China, Russia, Iran, the US and the UN. I will do this by using instruments of analysis such as securitization and strategic analysis. With these instruments I will examine different factors, such as deterrence, the action-reaction model and armament. Since, according to my opinion, security matters include more sectors than military I will also examine the political, societal and economic sectors. China and Russia have acted differently compared to the US in this matter and this thesis will highlight the factors that can explain the different actions made by these countries.

There are many views in the concept of corporate reputation and the massive research in the area tends to result in many new definitions. Research has shown that a good corporate reputation has a positive relation to Sustainable Competitive Advantage, financial performance and attraction to competent employees. The many views in the concept make it especially interesting to examine the view on corporate reputation in a perspective of big Swedish corporations. Another interesting area to examine is whether the companies manage their reputation or not. The empirical findings of this essay are based on qualitative interviews to get a deeper understanding in the area of reputation.