The objective of this thesis is to analyse how masculinity in close relationships is represented through imagery and writing in Världens viktigaste bok and Pojkkön, which are instructive books about sexuality and relationships written for primary school teachers and students. This thesis is based upon theories regarding masculinity and family, and the theorists used are Connell (1996), Prusank (2007), Greif (2009) and Bergnéhr (2008). The methods used are framing and picture analysis to investigate how masculinity in close relationships is represented implicitly and explicitly. The results of this study show that masculinity in close relationships is represented by a man who provides, has an active lifestyle, is outgoing and displays a limited emotional capacity..

High technology companies in Sweden spend a huge amount of money on research and product development in proportion to what they get back in earnings from their inventions. Product development has traditionally been regarded as much more important than business development. This thesis aims to point out the critical factors behind successful business development processes for high technology companies. We have chosen to make a case study of Hexagon, a highly successful and innovative company within the measurement technology business. Internal and external actors that are important for business development have been identified and interviewed in order to understand how ideas are developed and executed.

Social games have become a digital phenomenon over the last few years, affecting a lot of peoples everyday life. This paper focuses on how social games can affect workplace relationships. Through qualitative interviews I investigate how people who play with their colleagues experience the social games and their influence on the social interaction in the workplace. 10 interviews were carried out with people from four different organizations. The findings from these interviews were then put in relation to previous research and existing theories concerning workplace relationships and social games.

This study aims to investigate how value is constructed in horse business, in order to increase knowledge and contribute to development of theory in this field. This is important since the horse plays a significant role in the rural development in Sweden. The study assumes that value is something created through relationships in the social network. Therefore theories of sensemaking are combined with a discourse analytic method. By interviewing customers to two companies, one with orientation on trotting horses and one with orientation on showjumping horses, it was found that value is constructed through retrospective stories.

The Department of Forest Products and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences has received means from Vinnova for a preliminary study of the organisation of logging work of today and how a better logging organisation should be brought about. This thesis reports results from qualitative interviews with nine forest machine contractors regarding the situation of their companies. The interviews have been analysed with respect to the genesis of the companies, which tasks they perform or that they could consider perform-ing, Business relationships of the companies, relationships between the different partners of the companies, and the state of competition experienced by the contractors. The companies have developed either from the contractor previously being machine operator employee or from that the contractor in making has owned a machine and needed work. Their primary business is mechanised logging.

The customer behavior is constantly changing along with the developement of new technical improvements. Together with knowledge and higher demands the physical store has received a viral competitor. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the phenomenon e-commerce and how it has developed in recent years. The study will focus on identifying different success factors relevant for this field of interest. Furthermore the purpose is to analyze how relationships, service and value in the e-commerce sector and how they are connected to each other.

There is limited research done in the area of management control in the relationship between companies. This study investigates management control in outsourcing relationships and the decision to change sourcing strategy and to insource functions. The empirical research was conducted at an international company, which in this study has been anonymized. The research is mainly based on interviews. To extend and verify the conclusions drawn, another company, AB Ph.

As collaboration between companies move beyond the single transaction into more long-term relationships the consequences of a company's control system become more complex. The aim of this paper is to provide an understanding of how intra- and inter-organizational control and work practices interact through examining how a company's intra-organizational control influences its customer relationships. The empirical research is performed through a qualitative case study where interviews have been conducted with management and sales staff within the case company as well as with one of the customers. The empirical findings have been analyzed using frameworks and theories regarding management control and customer relationships. The study reveals that the intra-organizational control of the case company affects its relationships with customers in a number of ways.

Background: Companies and organizations of today spend large amounts of money on IT-based business solutions. Such business solutions normally include business- consulting and software-creation (IT-related services). Due to the rapid development of the technology within this field of business the IT-customers find it difficult to select among potential suppliers on objective grounds.Purpose: To increase the understanding for the professionl approach of the people involved in the sales- and purchase process of IT-related services in a business-to-business context. The study is taking the buyers'as well as the sellers'perspective into account when analyzing the process. Method: The empirical findings were collected from eight companies in Linköping and Stockholm.

Foreseeing future changes in economic activity is of up most importance to a wide array of actors. The time lag in the presentation of official GDP statistics means that to somewhat accurately capture a tendency of where the business cycle is heading one need turn to qualitative sentiment indicators such as Purchasing Managers? Index (PMI) and official sentiment indicators for valuable clues. This thesis uses in-sample and out-of-sample methods to evaluate how well PMI and official Business Tendency Surveys (BTS) in Sweden and Denmark fair against the year-on-year growth rate of industrial production. Moreover, various Swedish regional sentiment indicators get examined and a case study of the indicator for the Öresund region is performed.

The aim of this study was to examine if biological early maturing girls and girls that percieved that boys treated them as older than they actually where drank more alcohol, were more delinquent, had more romantic relationships and sexual intercourse. Our data was collected from seven schools in Sweden. Significant relationships where found between early maturation and all four dependent variables. Significant relationships could also bee seen between how girls perceived that boys treated them and alcohol use, romantic relationships and sexual intercourse. For two of our dependent measures we found week interaction effects, for girls biological maturation and there perception of how boys treated them according to there age.

Internet and digital technology has changed the way we live our lives. As individuals we've found new ways to communicate, educate and experience. But what's the effect on B2B marketing? Previous research presents transactional benefits such as lower costs and easier access to information, but there is limited research done on more complex and long term relationships as well as on modern digital tools. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate whether a deeper long term B2B relationship can be created and nurtured using digital tools for communication, and if so, how these tools and processes can be described and understood.

In Swedish shops today there are a lot of magazines aimed at teenagers, which fight for young girls? attention. These teenage-magazines are one of the most important sources for young girls to get information about sex and love-relationships; therefor it?s important how these magazines portray it. We have examined how the magazine Frida has portrayed sex and love-relationships from 1991 until today. The way sex and love-relationships are portrayed in Frida?s articles affect the young readers in their process of building an identity. Using a combined rhetoric- and discourse analysis we found that the main focus in Frida is for the reader to have a love-relationship with a guy, instead of a physical sex-relationship.

The essay examines women's experiences of gender equality and how it is defined and done in heterosexual relationships, putting equality in a private, intimate and personal context. The essay was done through semi-structured qualitative interviews, where women told stories of their own experiences in romantic heterosexual relationships. The analysis is based on the women?s stories and partially through a discourse analysis and is, among others, theorized by patriarchy, defined by Sylvia Walby, as well as emotion work through Arlie Russell Hochschild. All the women did to some extent share having had a much larger role of work and responsibility in most discussed aspects of their relationships.

The purpose of this study was to investigate and to bring attention to the phenomenon of violence in young relationships and to highlight the differences between adolescent and adult partner violence. Through semi-structured interviews with three school counsellors and three professionals who work with either adolescents or partner violence, gotten an insight into how they work with partner violence in adolescent relationships. The focus in the interviews was to get their perspective and experience on questions about the differences between adult and adolescent partner violence and the hardships that come with that. I concluded that youth exercise a lot of control and jealousy over each other, and that this has become normalized because of social media and different norms that are developing in the younger generations. It was also found that there are a lot of difficulties in the work with adolescent partner violence since it is hard to identify the expressions of violence in young relationships..