With background in the acknowledgement of the current period of major change in the characteristics of traditional Swedish foreign policy, considering the membership in the European Union, as well as the new contextual scenarios that Sweden has been situated in after the end of the cold war, this thesis aims at scrutinizing the Swedish Foreign Policy from 1991 to 2010. The purpose of the thesis is further to localize continuity and change in the ideas which Sweden has explicitly stated in its foreign policy. Based on the theory of institutionalism, the thesis also aims to bring forward plausible explanations built on the main empirical findings. This has been done by identifying different types of goals and means within realism and liberalism as well as categorizing each theory within three ideal types.The chosen research method has been a qualitative text analysis with focus on an ideational analysis. The material on which the descriptive analysis is based upon is constituted by the annual statements of government policy in parliamentary debates on foreign affairs.The results of the thesis show that the ideas that are related to solidarity, consensus and active foreign policy are constant through the period of examination.

This study describes how verbal abuse is used in schools and how it affects students. As a  result of the study is a questionnaire which was distributed to 153 students at two schools in a small town in southern Sweden. Students who participated in the study were in grades 3-6 and were between 9 and 13 years old. I asked students 13 questions, which dealt with verbal abuse, some of them were check questions and some were issues that required a longer response.The results of the survey show that 108 students of 153 have ever felt verbally abused at school, slightly more girls than boys. Usually they say they have been verbally abused by their own sex and then with words like boys are more frequently offended by words of a sexual nature, whereas girls more often are offended by words that violate their appearance.The students who feel aggrieved are shown to be those students who violate others.

It is now increasingly common for organisations to work actively with HR issues. Furthermore, it is a constant top priority for organisations to remain profitable. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether so called soft HR values, as manager?s communication skills, has an actual impact on hard values in terms of costs for the organisation. Leadership is largely characterised by emotional communication, which together with personnel costs were the main focus of the research.

 Prostitution has been intensely debated in Sweden for nearly four decades. Two major investigations have so far been initiated by the government and numerous propositions have been put forward in the Swedish parliament resulting in the sexköpslag from 1999 that criminalizes purchase of sexual services. The law aims at punishing the buyer and protecting the women in prostitution, thus making it possible for women to be helped by various social interventions rather than punished. Swedish society has undergone major changes in these decades. Globalization, the internet and the membership in the EU have changed the Swedish society and influenced the discourse on prostitution.This paper has a twofold aim, on the one hand investigating if and how these changes have had an impact on the prostitution discourse in texts produced by the government and analyze how female and male sexuality in connection to prostitution is constructed.

This research addresses the issues of identity and culture in Latvia in the context of the upcoming European Union enlargement in 2004. Political self- determination of Latvia was historically indebted to culture. The phenomenon of cultural identity, so important 12 years ago when Latvian independence was regained, is largely ignored by politicians in the upcoming enlargement process. This is especially worth attention since the 8-th parliamentary elections took place in October 2002. The obvious lack of interest in cultural issues on the part of politicians is compensated by the apprehensions in the society (reflected in mass media) to loose Latvian specific culture and identity when joining the big European family.

In this essay I have studied how the kid?s school start are described in picture books. The studied questions are: How the school is described in these selected picture books; what feeling does the main character have into the school start; how the teachers are described in this selected picture books and how are the power relationship described in these selected picture books?The method I have chosen for this essay is a discourse analysis of seven selected picture books with the meaning of starting school. All books studied are written during the 1990 and forward.

Research shows that there is a lack of knowledge of adult students with ADHD. Most of all research focuses on children with ADHD in school. The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of how adult learners with ADHD experience academic studies related to cognitive difficulties, emotion, motivation, and their experience of SOC. The questions tried to determine how any cognitive difficulties and emotions are perceived, how students' motivation to study impacted and their experience of SOC based on studies in higher education. To answer the purpose and questions used qualitative interviews based on three students with ADHD using a hermeneutic method.

The purpose of this study is to generate a greater understanding of the different ways in which music can be used to build an identity and create image within movies, and also to explain the different impacts this can have on the parties involved. Through the history of movies music has been used as a tool for enhancement and for expression of emotions. Through music the audience relates to personal memories or emotional states and the experience is given a deeper impact, helping to create memorable movie scenes. Certain directors have created a unique identity through the use of music in their movies, and also artists have been brought forward by starring in a soundtrack. What we find interesting, and what is also the discussion in this study, is in what ways this collaboration/artistic expression can be done and what impact it has on the parties involved.

The project was carried out in cooperation with the department of product development IOS at IKEA. The work included improvements of a new existing product that Ikea soon will release on the market, Observatör, a wall bracket for flat screens. The product is supposed to fulfil the needs within this market for IKEA. However, since Ikea was not satisfied with it, our work was to carry out the improvements that were specified in the beginning of the project. Another task in the project was to develop a side-product that is supposed to be used together with Obeservatör for storage of DVD/decoders.The project included labour as problem definition to final technical drawings and a prototype.

Consumers are facing a wide selection of brands trying to get their attention. An increasing amount of corporations are incorporating non-traditional media in their marketing strategies as an attempt to build relationships with their customers. However, along with the new opportunities to enhance consumer emotions about the brand, social media has brought along new risks for corporations to face. This paper investigates the consequences of different ways of handling such electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) crisis on Twitter. Furthermore, we investigate potential differences depending on the credibility of the source that sent the message.

This Master Thesis has been carried out in cooperation with Ursus Medical AB (URSUS) which markets, assembles and sells the Rotex Screw Needle Biopsy Instrument ®. The instrument is delivered with an instrument holder. Customers had expressed dissatisfaction over that they needed to use two hands during a biopsy procedure, which resulted in a project to develop a new instrument holder.The project aim was to create concepts for how the new instrument holder should be designed, with focus on the mechanics. The new instrument holder would build on the existing basic principle that the screw needle and the cannula were screwed into the tissue. The thesis work would result in a technical solution and a functional prototype of the chosen concept.To achieve this, a generic product development processes were used and began with a comprehensive literature review.

Edsbyverken Office Furniture has over the past 100 years been producing delicate carpentry products, chairs and skiis, but more recently the focus has shifted to furniture for the modern office environment. With a wide selection of products and its characteristic neutral design, Edsbyverken has an extensive group of clients both in Sweden and internationally. The aim of my C level thesis project was to examine the materials Edsbyverken is currently using in order to develop new designs or product functions. Simultanesously, I also wanted to verify whether the method I developed for this project - to initially undertake a comprehensive study of the chosen materials and thereafter specialise on a certain product and target audience ? was effective and successful.

In 2011, the new upper secondary school curriculum Lgy 11 set out to distinguish the characteristics of the two subjects Swedish and Swedish as a second language. This thesis analyzes the consequences, or rather the underlying premises for such a characterization with the contradictory ideologies of the multicultural society as a point of departure. Using theories of cultural and linguistic hegemony, the thesis applies an ideological critique to the comparative text analysis of the two curriculums. The aim is to reveal the underlying assumptions of the two student bases as representatives of the majority society and the minorities. The results show that the characterizations of the two subjects are dominantly made along the line of the multicultural experience versus linguistic and cultural heritage.

Sustainability and the role of companies in terms of emissions and environmental impact has become increasingly more relevant. In 2014, the EU decided to introduce the NFRD, a directive that makes it mandatory for companies that meet the requirements to report on sustainability. This thesis aims to examine how four large Swedish industrial companies report about sustainability in connection with the introduction of NFRD, looking at the years 2015 (2014), 2017 and 2022 from an environmental viewpoint. Furthermore, the study also intends to investigate how the companies write about their sustainability work, as actual achievements or what they have ambitions to do in the future. In order to carry out the study, a content analysis with elements of both qualitative and quantitative features has been used called the CONI method.

This report is the result of a project in the course Independent Projekt in Molecular Biotechnology at Uppsala University during the spring of 2014. The foremost purpose of the course is to give students the opportunity to carry through exstensive work in a project environment. This project was formed based on a comission from the biotechnology company SweTree Technologies, and the goal has been to compose a summary of the different techniques and methods that exist in the field of mass propagation of trees through the method of somatic embryogenesis.The project group has obtained information about the area mainly throgh reading patents, trying to find key components and bottlenecks in other companies? somatic embryogenesis technologies. This paper is divided into different sections, containing the patents of the automation of different steps in the process.