Addressing increasing global environmental problems requires greater resource efficiency, and one way of working towards this is through industrial symbiosis. Industrial symbiosis means that companies collaborate through sharing of resources for collective benefits. The documented benefits of working with industrial symbiosis indicate that there is potential for companies to operate commercially with facilitation of industrial symbiosis. An interesting company to study within this context is Econova. Econova operates within the recycling and gardening industry and has been identified as a possible catalyst for industrial symbiosis.

Researchers and practitioners have recognized the need for ?transforming? every policy of the company into a competitive advantage tool. Thus, both the pricing approach and the supply chain practices of the firm have emerged as an important determinant of success. In this study, however, we are not only interested in these two aspects, but also in a third one-namely cultural conflicts as an obstacle and challenge. The interaction of the tree factors is extensively presented against the backdrop of Skanska and four of their closest Polish suppliers.

Human capital is professional service firms' most valuable resource and its quality is closely linked to the quality of its services. The purpose of this study is to investigate how professional service firms appraise their employees. A comparative study between an architecture firm and a management consulting firm is conducted with the aim to identify and explain similarities and differences in performance appraisal. Two qualitative case studies are performed and interviews as well as documents are used to explore the area. The thesis builds on a critical perspective and it has an explorative approach.

This essay examines the European Union?s (EU) ability to play a leading role as a global actor on the world stage in international relations. Specifically, this essay studies the EU?s role of negotiator in the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009.  This essay also analyzes explanations for this role. Research is based on case studies, with conclusions drawn using an inductive approach.

The purpose of this thesis is to identify the factors that drive efficiency and effectiveness in technical development projects performed at A?F?s department of product development. In addition to identifying and analyzing these factors, the thesis also analyzes what needs to be taken in to account in order to implement a measurement system that is able to both monitor and control the identified factors.The thesis has been performed in a qualitative manner. It is based on interviews with people from several different technological companies, within different lines of business, all of which are customers to A?F?s department of product development.The results show that there are seven critical factors for project efficiency and effectiveness.

This thesis aims to examine and critically revise the language in two of Sweden ?s major newspapers Dagens Nyheter (DN) and Svenska Dagbladet (SvD), regarding the reporting of the police department of Skånes registration of the Swedish Romani minority. The research method used is qualitative text analysis based on Teun Van Dijks model for critical discourse analysis of news discourse. The material examined contains of four articles published the last week of September 2013. This thesis has a critical perspective based on the notion that the media influence the public?s opinion about certain themes, and strives to contribute to the field of research about how the Romani minority is being portrayed in the Swedish press.Previous research of the representation of ethnic minorities in the media has shown that ethnic minorities usually are represented in contexts of criminality or social problems.

User education is an important aspect of university libraries' service to its users. This Masters' Thesis is about online user education. The aim of this study is to analyse five Swedish online user courses in relation to information literacy and learning theory. The web-sites were explored through textual analyses to find how concepts of information literacy and learning theory are expressed. The theoretical framework is based on Carol C Kuhlthau's three levels of user education, Paul Ramsden's three theories of teaching in higher education and Christine Bruce's different aspects of information literacy.

This is a study about how Swedish travel magazines write about tropical islands with a history of colonization. The study investigates how the islands of Mauritius, the Seychelles, Haiti, the Maldives, the Dominican Republic, Aruba, Zanzibar and Guadeloupe are being portrayed in four Swedish travel magazines.Travel articles published in the travel magazines Vagabond, Allt om Resor, Res and Escape 360° during the period January 2004 to December 2009 have been analyzed through critical discourse analysis.The study concludes that the travel magazines tend to idealize and aestheticize the tropical islands. The islands are being presented as paradises on earth. They are described as fairy tales, magical, dreams and as playgrounds for Westerners. The inhabitants of the tropical islands are being judged by how well they attend to the tourists? needs and wishes.

The economic growth in Ireland, during the 1990s, lead to changing migration patterns. Ireland became a destination country for immigrants instead of an emigration country. Before 2004 people who were born on the island of Ireland had a constitutional right to Irish citizenship. This right was removed after a referendum in 2004.National identity is a sense of community constructed through common history and defines who belongs to the nation. The purpose of this thesis is to do a critical discourse analysis of the debate in media before the referendum.The analysis was done on texts from The Irish Times, one of the major newspapers in Ireland.

In recent years, the characterization of the Third World and its inhabitants in West-originated children?s books has been subject to debate. Media attention around a selection of books has generated discussions on how this relates and aligns with Sweden?s national teaching curriculum. The objective of this study is to explore how a selection of authors, born in Western countries, have characterized and presented the Third World and its inhabitants in its literature.

This study analyzes how civil society contributes to the democratic development in a Nicaragua governed by the sandinist party FSLN. The empirical focus lays at the relationship between state and the civil society. By using a conceptual framework outlined by Caroline Boussard, the civil society is being analyzed as an actor with a democracy-building potential that is supported or constrained by a political context.The civil society is divided between traditional social movement and more newly borned NGOs. Social movements tend to approach the government comparatively to NGOs, which adopt a highly critical attitude. In contrast to NGOs, the traditional social movements are improving their democratic functions as a counterpart while NGOs confine its democratic potential to an agenda setter drawing attention to democratic deficits.

This essay examines the differences and similarities, weaknesses and strengths of the two Cognitive Semantic theories Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Principled Polysemy Approach to Meaning Analysis. To illustrate the two theories, the Swedish verb-particle construction "gå upp" is examined and analyzed accordingly. The results showed differences in the number of polysemous meaning found. The methodological evaluation showed that the differences in the underlying ideas concerning meaning-construction behind these two theories make them incompatible..

Media has the power to influences society. Some call them the third power of a state. Through amongst others, the agenda setting theory and the framing theory, this report seeks to understand how media describes the swine influenza and how it uses its power to influence people to vaccinate. As this report will show, there is no doubt that media has had an impact on the Swedish population of which 60 per cent followed through with the vaccination. Media used an information discourse and attempted to present its articles in an impartial manner and used governmental authorities and experts to support its arguments.

    Abstract The aim of this paper is to highlight experiences gained by psychotherapists in their work with young adults.  Aspects looked at include: recurring themes, the process of diagnosing young adults, the therapeutic alliance, and the therapeutic techniques.  Six experienced psychodynamic therapists were interviewed, and a semi-structured interview method was used. The results show a high level of agreement between the therapists as to their experiences and conclusions of psychotherapy with young adults.Results presented in this paper suggest that there is a difference between psychodynamic therapy used with young adults, and the more traditional psychodynamic therapy.  The most important difference turned out to be the approach of the therapist toward the patient, where a more active and distinct approach by the therapist to the here-and-now situation was to be preferred. All six therapists came out strongly against the use of the DSM manual when diagnosing young adults. The importance of understanding young adults and their difficulties from a psychological development point of view was stressed, as well as the importance of taking the approach that the years of young adulthood bring their own issues and concerns. It is clear from these interviews that there is a strong need for the establishment of institutions or centres specifically tailored to meet the needs of young adults for psychotherapeutic treatment at an early stage and in an adequate way, in order to avoid unnecessary ?pathologising? of their specific problems.  .

Studies have shown that mergers and acquisitions often fail and that a reason to this might be that investment banks do not take any responsibility for the post merger integration. Despite this there have been no studies of the potential benefits of an investment bank taking a holistic approach to the M&A-process and including post merger integration in its service. This study identifies a couple of investment banks that does this and calls them holistic investment banks. In M&A-theory a successful process is often described according to so called success factors that need to be fulfilled in order to achieve a successful result of the merger or acquisition. The business model and work approach of one holistic investment bank is analyzed in this case study on the base of seven success factors from established theories.