This paper aims to outline leaders' experiences of managing consultants from their company's performance management system. The study was conducted by qualitative interviews with senior managers and HR professionals within a management consulting firm. The aim was to describe the company's performance management system, their consultants and the challenges of leading in this context. The theoretical framework consists of previous research in leadership, performance management and management consulting. Within these research areas the authors identify a knowledge gap in leaders' perspectives on managing top-talents with performance management systems in the management consulting industry.

The aim of this study was to gain a greater understanding of what social workers perceive to be mentally demanding and emotionally challenging work, and which strategies they use to handle it. I chose to interview six social workers, three of them had long experience of social work, and three of them had worked for less than a year. The justification for this choice wasthat I wanted to interview people with different experience of social work over time, to be able to see possible differences in what was perceived as mentally demanding and emotionally challenging work, and how it was handled. The social workers were interviewed with a semi structured interview manual.The results showed that the organization of the social service is not fitted to the work that social workers execute. This means that what is perceived as mentally demanding and emotionally challenging work largely depends on this.

Uppsatsens syfte är att utifrån ett New Public Management-perspektiv undersöka i vilken utsträckning visionsstyrningsmodellen i Halmstads kommun följer New Public Management och utifrån det undersöka vad det resulterat i. Uppsatsen grundar sig i en intervjumetod där ledande politiker och tjänstemän från kommunen intervjuats. Den teoretiska ansatsen utgörs av en New Public Management?teori grundad på olika dimensioner av New Public Management. Uppsatsens huvudsakliga empiriska material kommer från de intervjuer som genomförts.

Title: How do you get a pupil from Year 7-9 in secondary school to communicate in German?  Five high school teachers views on how to develop pupils oral communicative skill within the German language The aim of this essay is to explore Swedish secondary school teachers, from Year 7-9 in the German language, opinions regarding which work models and verbal strategies that are used and taught in order to foster the pupils oral communicative skill in the classroom. To achieve this aim, semi-structured interviews with five teachers are used.The results show that the teachers find that they encourage the pupils to speak German through creating possibilities for them to practise their oral language skills. The teachers also emphasize that they believe that alternating assignments in groups or pairs, where the students get the chance to be creative, activates the pupils to speak German the most. They also express an awareness for the fact that open or information questions encourage the pupils to use their creativity and speak more German.

Protracted social conflicts, as those in Cyprus and Northern Ireland, are based on deep rooted perceptions of identity and definitions of "the other". According to the theory of discursive conflict transformation, war is primarily a social phenomenon, which is legitimated by a discourse of identity defined in terms of exclusionist boundaries and structural ideas of the social relations in society. In order to develop positive peace, the discourse of violence has to be challenged and the discursive structures that enable war have to transform into a counterdiscourse of inclusion and individuality. For the purpose of making a critical peace analysis, I have, with the assistance of established conflict theories, analysed the basic ideas behind the the Annan Plan and the Belfast Agreement and thus been able to interpret to what extent they may foster positive peace. I argue, that in order to provide basic needs on a group basis, power sharing arrangement, based on ethnicity or religion, exacerbates division rather than ameliorating it.

The profit a company makes is dependant of its employees which means that their competence is important for the company to perform well. The middle manager has a central position in the organization and is expected to take on different roles. This probably puts a lot of demands on the middle managers and their competence. We want to contribute with a comprehension of how learning, competence and needs for competence can look at a middle management level. Furthermore we also want to find out what kind of strategy for competence development the middle managers want the company to use so their competence development can be facilitated.

Detta examensarbete underso?ker hur en multinationell organisation arbetar med Human Resources Management-fenomenet Talent Management. Vi har valt att titta pa? fenomenet fra?n tva? olika perspektiv, det individualistiska och kollektivistiska, fo?r att skapa en fo?rsta?else om hur Talent Management-arbetet fungerar och kan se ut. Den insamlade empirin a?r baserad pa? sju intervjuer med individer som alla har en relevant roll i fo?rha?llandet till det studerade fenomenet.

The purpose of this study was to identify exerciser athlete?s motivational orientation, coping strategies used and stressors that primarily is perceived in gym training. The study also studied gender differences in relation to motivation orientation, coping strategies and stressors. A survey was conducted with a quantitative design. The study included 118 participants (43 women and 75 men) aged 18 - 42.

Swedish agriculture faces future challenges regarding food production and land use. Increased competition for agricultural land creates complex situations, where conflicts may arise when productive crop land is in demand not only for food production but also energy- and fodder production. On top of that there is an obvious conflict of goals between agricultural production and non-agricultural exploitation of agricultural land. In several emerging economic regions it is noticeable how agricultural land is being expropriated for development of urban settlement and infrastructure, carrying potentially significant long-term effects. During the last decade the exploitation of agricultural land in activities other than food production has increased in Sweden and is expected to continue in the same manor. Approximately 700 hectare of land in Sweden is diverted from food production, annually, and in 2013, the Uppsala Municipality showed the greatest change in land use of all municipalities (SCB, 2013).

The attacks of September 11, 2001 have done more to focus attention on the conjunction of religion and conflict than any other event in recent history. Although much international research has focused since then on the role of Islam, religiously inspired violence is also found in countries as diverse as Thailand, Burma, or Sri Lanka, where Buddhism plays a central role. This paper addresses how these realities are reflected in two Swedish high school textbooks on religion. The thesis calls into question the manner in which Buddhism is presented in schoolbooks as the most probable candidate to be a conflict-free religion.Using Fairclough?s discourse analysis theoretical framework and Hellspong?s structural analysis, the thesis critically examines the relationship between text, the discourse practice in which text is produced and the wider social practices.

The purpose of this thesis is to understand the reasons to why management consultants choose to leave their positions at large and established management consultant companies. The empirical data are made up of eleven interviews with men and women, both management consultants that have left their previous positions as well as a consultant who has chosen to stay with her first company and a representative from one of the large companies active within the management consultant industry. We have used the Job Embeddedness Theory combined with theories about identity, legitimacy, institutional norms and gender in order to understand the thoughts and reasoning behind the management consultants´ resignation. We have found that issues with the work itself and characteristics of the industry prevent the management consultants from being embedded within the management consultant company. Rather, some of the characteristics of the industry such as ?up or out? and the need to constantly perform work as a ?pushing-out mechanism?.

The purpose of this study is to contribute with new knowledge of  how Talent Management can be seen as a an opportunity or threat for organizational development, concerning competence, on the basis of HR. The research questions asked are: Out of wich aspects can Talent Management be seen as an opportunity or threat on the basis of HR-employees? How can it affect the work of HR? To answer these questions qualitative interviews with five employees within HR from four different companies has been executed. The essay has been investigated on the basis of an explorative aim and with a qualitative method. The empirical results has indicated common themes such as director support, HRs view of Talent Management, HRs development and shifts of generations.

The aim of this study is to investigate the problematisation of the swedish railwaysector during the early 1990?s from a New public management-perspective. The method of approach is a ?What is the problem represented to be?-analysis as advocated by Carol Bacchi. By applying this method to the official investigation aimed at providing suggestions for increasing competition in the railway sector it has been shown that the process of deregulation has strong connections to the ideas and models suggested by the New public management-ideology of organisational theory. .

In this study, we have examined how Swedish tour operators are using social media as part of their marketing plan. Our purpose was to find out which strategies they use in the area of social marketing. The companies that were examined were Ving, Fritidsresor and Jambo tours, and the social network site that the research focused on was Facebook. The examination was conducted with a content analysis of the companies' Facebook pages and qualitative, structured interviews with the companies. The aim was to compare the various tour operators Facebook pages in order to get a broader overview of the companies marketing strategies.

It is of increasing importance to in the most effective possible way, manage and control all the transactions of raw materials, products and information that are exchanged between an organization and all its operators. These flows and the need for strategy and managing the processes of planning, implementing and control of the supply chain, has given name to the concept supply chain management. Supply chain management involves all movement and storage of raw material, and all the processes that is needed to manufacture a product from origin to consumption. Globalization, technology and increasing time and quality-based competition are all driving forces behind the concept and reasons for an increasing interest in supply chain management.The purpose of this essay is to by using a qualitative case study examine which decisive success factors that can be identified for effective supply chain management. We have compiled different theories on the subject to use for analyzing a case study Li & Fung, who is a successful supply chain management company.