During the last decade working with competence has emerged as a more strategically important area. Today the human resources in a company are considered a competitive advance and the HR-units play a significant role when it comes to HR-management. Different motives for investing in strategies that promote competence development and learning also exist. The purpose of this paper was to examine how the process of competence development was managed at a large global company. The empirical material consisted of four persons who were interviewed and the analysis of the material was inspired by grounded theory.From the analysis four major themes or core factors emerged as central to the interviewed persons' understanding of the competence development process; solid preparatory work in relation to competence development, communication, awareness of responsibilities and finally the taking action and evaluation of the action.

Abstract Title: Enabling Smart Research and Development through Knowledge Conversation Seminar date: 2005-06-08 Course: Master thesis in business administration, 10 Swedish credits (15 ECTS) Authors: Andreas Johnsson, Johan Rosendahl Advisors: Lars Bengtsson Key words: Knowledge management, Knowledge conversation, Research and development, Ba, Trelleborg Purpose: The purpose of the thesis is to create a model that shows how knowledge management aimed at research and development processes can be used and how the theoretical fields can be connected. Methodology: The thesis is based on abductive perspective where empirical and theoretical material has been mixed to create a foundation for the analysis. Theoretical perspectives: Theories concerning knowledge management and research and development have primarily been used. These have been complemented with material about team structures and incentive systems. Empirical foundation: The empirical material is based on semi structured, mostly qualitative interviews and strictly quantitative inquiries performed at Industrial Hose within the Trelleborg group.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to study how librarians experience reference work. We wanted to get a better understanding about librarians assignments through the study. We chose to limit the study to public libraries, and to the south of Sweden. The questions used in our study are: How do librarians interpret the conception of reference work? What values do librarians have concerning reference work? How do librarians experience reference work? How do librarians look at different roles in reference work? We chose to use a fenomenographically inspired method.

The aim of this master thesis is to investigate how the OPACs Online Public Access Catalogue used by public libraries have adapted the features and possibilities offered by online catalogues, for the purpose of searching for fiction. This is done by comparing five OPACs to Amazon.com, an online bookstore. The questions investigated are: Have the OPACs developed from the principles of the card catalogue and adapted to the features and possibilities offered by online catalogues, when searching for fiction? Can the library catalogue provide the same features as Amazon.com, when searching for fiction? How do the OPACs use the resources that online catalogues provide when searching for fiction, compared with Amazon.com? The thesis is based on two qualitative studies. The first study presents five OPACs from different library systems and examines which features they have in common with Amazon.com.

Children?s use of mobile devices is constantly increasing and has become very popular withchildren as young as toddlers. Schools in Sweden have made large investments to expand theuse of information technology (IT), and the use of mobile devices in preschools is already acommon support tool for learning. Children?s use of IT is a relatively new phenomenon,which means that is it also a relatively new area of research.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the productivity effects of multiple tree handling in thinnings. Other important elements have been to investigate in which extent multi-tree handling is used in stands with different stem volumes and the impact of collecting partially delimbed fuelwood assortments has on harvesting performance. The study is based on data from thinnings in Sydved and contractors' operating activities. Collection and compilation of operating schedules, number of stems and surveyed volumes from several contractors and a large number of executed orders underlying the results. Multiple tree handling is used to a much greater extent at lower average stem volumes. Prediction models for productivity of the multiple-tree handling harvesters in the study differ from the productivity models for single-tree handling. In the model developed in this study productivity is not as dependent of stem volume as reference models.

This thesis is an investigation of Iranian immigrants and their use of libraries in Sweden. It isbased on a combination of a qualitative and a·quantitative method.Using a qualitative method, I give an outline of the history of lran from ancient times up to the present, as well as the different ethnological groups in Iran and their cultures. The main objective of this part is to clarify the contrasts between Iranian and Swedish cultural, social, linguistic and family structures, and also the characteristics of the crisis that most immigrants go through on their arrival in the new country. The qualitative method also involves structured telephone interviews with eight highly educated Iranians.This method was supplemented by a quantitative study through questionnaires of the attitudes· of lranian immigrants to libraries and reading. Iranians in Sweden turned out to be frequent Iibrary users.

The aim of this bachelor?s thesis is to investigate how the activities of the public library are portrayed by the Swedish press. It poses the following questions: What kinds of public library activities are portrayed in the Swedish press? What image does this depiction purvey to the general public about the societal role of public libraries?A model of four library spaces developed by Skot-Hansen, Hvenegaard Rasmussen, and Jochumsen is used as the theoretical framework for this study. Qualitative content analysis is applied to 173 Swedish newspaper articles that describe public library activities.The analysis reveals that articles about many kinds of public library activities get published in the Swedish press, but that some activities occur more frequently than others.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine the accessibility in public libraries for persons with dyslexia and visually impaired persons. In order to do this, library services, information and attitudes have been studied. Data have been collected through interviews and studies of documents, in particular guidelines for library service to disabled persons. The theoretical starting point of the analysis is Professor Michael Bucklands different aspects of access to information. He discusses six types of barriers that must be overcome if access is to be achieved.

The purpose of this Master Thesis is to analyze what suitable hardware platforms there are on the market in order to build a low price control and information system for mobile applications, called small display module. The thesis will be underlying material for making a decision for further development. The result of the thesis consists mainly of a Windows CE kernel and a schematic for a CPU card, on which it would be suitable to build the display module. Another major part of the report is the introduction of different techniques that could be of interest when designing a processor based system. The processor architecture that was chosen is the x86.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to investigate issues concerning librarians? view on three genres, (a) popular literature for women, (b) popular literature for men and (c) erotic literature, when choosing what to buy for their libraries. A qualitative method has been used and the empery consists of seven qualitative interviews with altogether eight librarians involved in choosing and buying literature. The theoretical framework is built on theories regarding concepts of hegemony and cultural hegemony; the male sex as norm; taste culture and quality. The results show that three of the libraries in the study have a written purchase policy and that the policies that exist are very general.

AbstractAnna Celander: Nicolaus Adam Strungks  två sonator ur Dübensamlingen ? Biografi ? analys ? edition. Uppsala Universitet: Institutionen för Musikvetenskap, uppsats för 60p. 2007The aim of this essay is to contribute to the knowledge of the instrumental music of the Düben Collection in Uppsala, by presenting two sonatas by a rather unknown composer, Nicolaus Adam Strungk. A great deal of the music in the Düben collection comes from Nothern Germany so one purpose has also been to investigate if even Strungk's sonatas have stylistic influenses from that region.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine public library and information technology IT discourses to see which relationships are established between them in four library journals. This is done in two steps, where first discourses are defined followed by an analysis of the relationships established between the public library and IT in each discourse. The questions from which the analysis emanates are as follows: What discourses exist around the public library and IT in the library journals? What conceptions of the tasks of the public library are constructed in the discourses? What conceptions of the tasks of IT are constructed in the discourses? What conceptions of the relationships between the public library and IT are constructed in the discourses? The theoretical and methodological starting-points are found in Ernesto Laclaus and Chantal Mouffes discourse theory. 37 articles from four library journals Biblioteksbladet, Bibliotek i Samhälle, DIK-forum and Ikoner - are analysed through a model in five phases.

This master thesis is a study of how city cemeteries can be used and contributes to a socially sustainable urban development. Today sustainable development and sustainable urban development is something that more or less every organization is working with. Therefore it is also relevant to integrate our cemeteries in this work so that they can become a part of the sustainable urban development process.The thesis gives a basic understanding of sustainability as a concept and also defines socially sustainable (urban) development. The work then immerse itself in various types of park structures and how the relationship between the human individual and the public space work, to satisfy the needs that different people have.The literature study that has been made is also the base for the design of the walking interview that has been made for the two city cemeteries. The cemeteries that where studied where the Assistens cemetery in Copenhagen and the Eastern cemetery in Gothenburg.

Process standardization is a topic that has generated a lot of research and literature. At first, the focus was on production; today processes are used in all different kind of business areas.The aim of this study has been to analyze how processes can be applied on development businesses and how IT systems affect the result of the process. To accomplish this, we have asked questions such as what standardization is in a development process? Why are the processes standardized? What difficulties can appear with standardization? And how the IT-systems affect the result of the process?To answer these questions, we have preformed a case study on Saab. Saab is a well know Swedish company who are working with a project called the GMS-project, where they develop processes to cover the whole company´s business areas.The literature gives the reader an understanding of processes and standardization.