Evaluating and choosing suppliers based on price alone, has traditionally been the dominant strategy for supplier selection within the purchasing function. With the origin of the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)-concept in the early 1990s, a new philosophy dawned that promoted the importance of knowing the effects of supplier performance on the buying firm?s internal costs. Since then, scholars have been arguing the case of TCO as a viable model for making purchasing decisions and conducting supplier evaluation. Still, after two decades little is known about its penetration and impact on the practices of buying corporations, leaving the questions of which costs are included in the purchasing organisations? decisions unanswered, and even more importantly why certain costs are considered and others not.

Sustainable development has become the ideology of the twentieth first century. As an important concept and as a framework of political action, sustainable development can at this point be considered as the very symbol of a paradigm in the international debate over environmental issues and the threats of climate change. But what does the concept of sustainability actually suggest? This thesis uses discourse analysis in order to examine the Swedish learning for sustainable development as to three different discourses on the national arena: the government and the municipals of Piteå and Växjö respectively. When the study foremost concerns official policy documents that contain associations with the study area, the methodology used takes into consideration both language, signs, metaphors and so called story lines.

Sustainable development has become the ideology of the twentieth first century. As an important concept and as a framework of political action, sustainable development can at this point be considered as the very symbol of a paradigm in the international debate over environmental issues and the threats of climate change. But what does the concept of sustainability actually suggest? This thesis uses discourse analysis in order to examine the Swedish learning for sustainable development as to three different discourses on the national arena: the government and the municipals of Piteå and Växjö respectively. When the study foremost concerns official policy documents that contain associations with the study area, the methodology used takes into consideration both language, signs, metaphors and so called story lines.

Syftet med denna studie är att få ökad insikt om hur förskolelärare uppfattar sitt eget arbete med att främja barns begreppsutveckling inom området volym. Syftet med studien är även att få ökad kunskap om vilka aspekter som påverkar den dagliga verksamheten inom området volym i förskoleklassen. Denna undersökning är baserad på intervjuer med sex förskolelärare, materialet har bearbetats och kategoriserats under fem stycken huvudrubriker som belyser olika aspekter av hur förskolelärarna uppfattar att de arbetar med området volym i förskoleklassen. Vi har valt att belysa denna undersökning ur ett sociokulturellt perspektiv. I vår analys har vi kommit fram till att det finns många olika aspekter som påverkar utformandet av verksamheten i förskoleklassen.

This Batchelor?s Thesis concerns 20 points at the MDA-program (People, Computers and Work) at Blekinge Institute of Technology in Ronneby, Sweden. 10 points concerns Computer Science and 10 points Human Work Science. The thesis is about the process of starting a new department of Blekingesjukhuset [Blekinge Hospital] in Karlshamn, Blekinge called Sjukvårdsrådgivningen [Health Care Advice Bureau]. The thesis starts with a description of the ethnographical methods used, followed by the process of establishing the department.

Namibia, southern Africa, suffers from an energy shortage and is therefore facing severalchallenging problems. The use of firewood as fuel for cooking is common in the whole countryand has negative consequences for health and the environment. This work have focused ondeveloping a solar baking oven, calledSunbaker, adapted for Namibian families needs forbaking. The development was based on classic solar cooking limitations, specific needs forNamibia and to have a feasible manufacturability.The project started with a theoretical study in Sweden where different solar cookers, informationregarding Namibia, technical aspects and end user aspects were studied. To assess the need for asolar baking oven aMinor Field Study took place in Namibia during eight weeks in July toSeptember 2009 and resulted in a product design specification.

This exam report has been developed in association with Strangbetong AB, Sweden.The natural gravel that is being used as fine aggregate for concrete production today is an ending natural recourse and the Swedish government has decided to strongly reduce the extraction from the year of 2020. The only reasonable replacement is aggregates from crushed rocks but this material has other properties than natural aggregates. The concrete manufacturers now have to learn how to use these new fine aggregates in a cost effective way in order to ensure the quality of their concrete production.In this project, crushed aggregates and combination of crushed and natural aggregates have been tested with existing formulas for fresh concrete. The two parameters yield stress and plastic viscosity have been measured which gives a good description of the workability of the fresh concrete. Different methods to make measurements on the dry fine aggregates, has also been tested, to find out if there is any correlations between these parameters and the parameters from the measurement on the fresh concrete..

This paper examines how organizations work with their recruitment. The organizations in thispaper are mined in the trade of recruiting and staffing. The paper will further influence howorganizations work or will work with recruiting through social medias. It describes therecruiting process in the traditional way and what costs it brings. The next part is a descriptionof network and the importance of networking in a general way.Our results demonstrate that social medias probably will stay as a complement to other moretraditional methods and will not be an own recruiting method.

In 1972 a national higher education for librarians was started. Up until then different categories of librarians got their education separately. The aim of this Master's thesis is to explore the attitude towards this new education for librarians. The study will concentrate on the attitude of the representatives from the research libraries. Researchlibraries had, until 1972, recruted their librarians amongst Ph.D-level scholars.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how power is distributed in the mathematics classroom and how students achieve agency when ICT (Information and communication technology) is used as a teaching tool. Three learning situations, structured by mathematics, are analysed: in the first situation mathematics is taught in a traditional way, in the second mathematics is taught in interdisciplinary projects, and in the third mathematics is taught using ICT as a pedagogical tool. The theoretical concepts of power and agency are used as analytical tools within a socio-political framework. The concept of power is used to assess the students? ability to influence their learning and degree of inclusion in the three learning situations.

The aim of the study has been to examine how young men from Stockholm construct "Masculinity". This has been done by examining what men think is an ?ideal man?, what "makes a man a man", which expectations they meet as men and how the life of a man differs from the life of a woman. This has been examined through three semi-structured group interviews with the total of ten men. The results have been analysed with Raewyn Connells Theory of Masculinities, the idea of ?Doing Gender? by Candace West and Don.

Galna Glassen is a company that has a unique way of selling ice cream in Sweden. The idea is for the costumer to be able to compose their own favorite ice cream, partly by choosing the flavor of ice cream but also by picking the ingredients. The ingredients that can be chosen from are around twenty and can be everything from cookies to candy to berries. When the costumer has chosen their ice cream and ingredients they are mixed together on a cooled granite board.The company was very successful when it was founded in the summer of 2011 and decided to expand to other cities in Sweden. They also wanted to explore the profitability of a mobile sales unit that is intended for festivals and events.The thesis is meant to develop Galna Glassen?s mobile sales unit.

Using the example of 55 former towns in Greater Poland, the author investigates the belief thattowns formerly deprived of town privileges are the most likely to be qualified as future formalurban entities. This paper approaches the subject of urban deprivation and restitution with amultiaspectual study of the concept of urbanity. Since a preponderance of Polish degraded townspossess a prominent urban physical structure, the study focuses mainly on urban morphology as acontributing factor to urbanity. Other approaches include the central place theory, demographicconditions and the role of urban perception. Taking into account Poland?s shifting geopoliticalhistory the study also seeks to identify and explain spatial patterns of varying degrees of urbanityamong the studied towns.

My essay deals with a problem in our society which, in my opinion, has been neglected. Even today in 2011, the quality of schools and preschools is extremely varied. This has been a problem for a long time and not nearly enough attention has been paid to it.In my essay I have tried to understand what it is that causes these differences in quality between preschools. With help from literature and research studies I have examined what quality in preschool really means.My starting point is an account of my own experience at the preschool where I currently work and a description of a study visit I made to another preschool which operates in a very different way to the one where I work. I wanted to investigate what the consequences are for children who grow up attending preschools of different quality.

Writing has been the most important tool in knowledge organization KO. In our modern society we can use our speech as a technical tool to seek information. Can we apply speech as a tool to organize information? The aim of this masters thesis is to problemize speech aspects in the field of knowledge organization KO. The investigation has two main parts and I use a hermeneutic approach.