Purpose:  The purpose of this thesis is to examine how the major car companies have been affected by the global financial crisis. We would also want to look at how revenues and profits have been affected, and what the consequences have been both within the company and the market in general. It?s also interesting to see how profitability and financial stability has been affected. We had chosen to do a ?before-after? comparison, and we chose to compare the years 2007 and 2009.Boundaries: We have chosen to concentrate on a corporation in the Asian market, more specifically Toyota.

Technological advancements in information and communication technologies (ICT) have resulted ina need to use ICT in schools. Sweden has actively promoted ICT in schools since the early 1980's.In Japan, 1994 saw the government's first step towards active promotion of ICT in education. In thisstudy, we have compared the strategies used to promote the use of ICT in elementary and secondaryschools in Sweden and Japan. Our findings suggest that a similar 3-step approach was used in bothcountries: 1, infrastructure; 2, effective use of ICT; 3, implementation of ICT. A significantdifference was found in the way the two countries planned their strategies.

Servicescape is a research area within service management which processes the effect that the environment has on the service experience. The purpose of this essay is to find out how servicescape, with focus on the ?background music?, affects customer behavior in a clothing retail store. Through manipulation of the background music?s tempo the essay aim to explore to what extent this part of the servicescape a) affect the customers approach and avoidance behavior, b) is affected by customers with a hedonic or utilitarian shopping behavior, c) affects pleasure, arousal and dominance perceptions for the customer, and d) how the servicescape is perceived.Key words: Servicescape, approach-avoidance behaviour, pleasure, arousal, dominance, hedonic-utilitarian behaviour..

In the Western world the interest in science in schools is steadily declining. Focusing on interest is important to encourage students to lifelong learning which is a written purpose of the Swedish curriculum. This literature study examines if biology education outside in nature could be a part of the solution for this problem and the question of issue is how can education outdoor enhance students? interest for biology and what other aspects does this effect simultaneously? The method of block search was selected for addressing this question, utilizing the ERIC and ERC databases. The results show that situational interest increased with outside education due to aspects such as: novelty, hands-on, knowledge acquisition and social interaction.

Increasing immigration to Sweden has transformed a culturally homogeneous society into a more heterogeneous one. As a consequence intercultural communication and interaction have been increasing. Child health care agencies have encountered these increases. The aim of this study was to examine what the health care professionals experienced and communicated in these intercultural environments. Eight interviews with child health care nurses were carried through at four child health care centers in the south of Sweden.

The aim of this essay is to investigate which of the goals in the syllabus, and with that what knowledge of Swedish, four students taking the SFI (Swedish for Immigrants) level 3 course believed themselves to have attained and to compare their self-assessments with their results on the National Test of Swedish for adult immigrants.The method used for the investigation is the individual interview. In addition to taking the National Test, the participants in the investigation were asked to mark the goals they believe themselves to have attained.The results show that the informants who best demonstrated awareness of their own knowledge are able to talk freely about their knowledge and difficulties, and when they mark the goals they believe they have attained, these correspond, on the whole, to how they responded in the interviews.One of the informants finds it more difficult than the others to assess her knowledge. A comparison between her experiences and the National Test results revealed several inconsistencies. For example, she claims that she can communicate in Swedish, but still she didn?t pass the test..

The Swedish school reflects the society that we have today, a society with many different ethnical and cultural backgrounds. The purpose of this investigation is to study how the school is working with children that recently immigrated to Sweden. What kind of methods are they using at school, to get the best development as possible? Do the teachers manage to be concerned of the students in the school? What kind of reception do these children get in the school? What methods are the teachers using? And are these methods really the best to use to enhance the language and cognitive development of these students?The methods I have been using to examine these questions have been qualitative. I have interviewed three teachers about their everyday work in a multiethnic school south of Stockholm.

This paper is a study of Vadstena monastery's book acquisitions and book collection 1374-1595. Studying catalogue descriptions of manuscripts and incunabula in Uppsala University library, the author has aimed to examine the development over a period of time, concentrating on way and place of acquisition, and desired types of texts.A short description and history of the monastery and its library is given. The study opens with the author stating there must have existed a plan for the book acquisitions and collection. A survey investigation shows, that the usable material is too small and somewhat nonrepresenta­tive of the monastery library to form a basis for a fair analysis. Further investigations give material to form a basis for some careful statements, saying that book production and also acquisitions concentrated on sermons literature, and that this type dominated the library collection throughout the time of development, followed by the philosophical-theological university literature..

The aim of this thesis was to examine the ways in which librarianswork to stimulate the joy of reading in boys. Four children- andschool librarians were chosen for interviews in which they wereasked questions about boys' reading and the approaches they usedto help boys. The librarians were asked if they perceived boys'reading as problematic, what methods they used to stimulate thejoy of reading and if they thought it would be helpful to work withboys and girls in different ways. They were asked what theythought was the biggest challenges in changing the boys? attitudestowards reading and what they would do if they could choosefreely without any constraints in time or money.Aidan Chambers' "The circle of reading" was used to compare atheory about reading to the ways in wich the librarians worked andtheir thoughts about how to initiate reading.

The aim of this study is to increase knowledge and understanding of free play or free fun time importance for children of age around five years in preschool, in order to promote children?s development and learning. The focus was on exploring and better understanding of teacher?s and educators? approach to the free fun play time as a tool in their educational work, and also about their own role in this context as well as analyzing of forms, rules and structures spontaneously created by groups of children having free play fun time. Another important moment of this study was to give more light on approaches to this issue in education theories by Piaget, Vygotsky and Freud among others.As to the practical experimental part of the study it has been performed at a preschool and kindergarten in a suburb at the outskirts of Stockholm, with four employed educators there and with groups of children of age around five.

In this thesis we present the procedures and outcomes of adopting two roles in a study: the role of a researcher and the role of a designer. The subject is crossmedia design. Crossmedia is a growing and changing trend for media producers of today its design is of great importance. The purpose is to create a concept from scratch that stands out from the crowd and engage people with the use of cross media as the approach. We also aim to investigate if a cross media designer can rely on previous research made within this subject or if the scene has changed.In order to test and to fully understand the process of the subject, we designed a crossmedia concept, based upon previous and related research.

Our curiosity was awakened when we became aware that many social workers use "mindfulness" methods in their profession. In this study, we used qualitative methodology in our desire to examine and understand why the mindfulness approach, with its roots in eastern philosophy, is becoming established in society at large and, simultaneously, being used in the social work field. We were interested in when and why social workers choose to use mindfulness with their clients. Our prior research has revolved around development and use of methods in social work, and on the human reaction to stress.We conducted seven semi-structured interviews, which incorporated four comprehensive questions:1. Why has the mindfulness method become established in the social work field and in the culture in general?2.

Petro-electric IFVs (Infantry fighting vehicles) or hybrid-IFV?s are not a new phenomenon. During the 1900?s Germany as well as the U.S both tested vehicles constructed with hybrid technology. In spite of several identified advantages, no serving hybrid-IFV exists today.

The aim of this study is to gain a deeper understanding of how social services utilizing Chapter 5. Section 11 of the Swedish social service act when it comes to identify the needs of women experiencing domestic violence. Furthermore the study aims to investigate how the social services look at the need of women experiencing domestic violence seeking protective shelter together with their pets. The study's purpose and research question was answered with a qualitative approach where semi-structured interviews were conducted. Eight social workers from seven municipalities where participating in the interviews.

Since year 2005 the accounting has changed for public companies because of the new international standards, IFRS. IFRS 3 provides a single international accounting treatment for acquisitions and has broadened the definition of intangible assets. By IFRS 3 goodwill is defined as the excess of the cost of acquisition and is separated from intangible assets. Now goodwill must be annually tested by an impairment test. There are many valuation issues to considerate when it comes to deciding the value of goodwill.