It is important for all companies to be seen on a competitive market. It?s all about positioning yourself so that you?re seen and that you?re are attractive for both customers and employees. A crucial factor to achieve this are how the brand are handle directly by the company it self and by the market. Establishing a brand on the market is not easy and it takes time to establish what the company stands for.

The aim of this thesis is to examine collaborative tagging as a potential asset to libraries by a review of 10 social bookmarking sites and their features, and a discussion of these features? possible use when the environment changes from the web to a library. Previous research on collaborative tagging is presented, as well as overviews of social bookmarking, folksonomies and the concept of Web 2.0 and Library 2.0. The study itself is presented as a walkthrough of common features and how they work, followed by a schematic overview of which sites have which features. Finally each site is presented in a more detailed manner.

The main purpose of this study is to examine if variations in voter turnout for the European Parliament elections in each member state is affected by the rate of national party polarization on the EU-dimension of party politics. The theoretical background assumes that a high level of polarization generates higher voter turnout since more alternatives are presented to the electorate. This makes it easier for the electorate to find a party that represents their preferences. This will, in turn, increase the likelihood that they will participate in the election.This study uses a research design based on a quantitative analysis with data from each member state, except those with compulsory voting, in the European Parliament elections of 2004 and 2009. The results of the analysis indicate a relationship between high levels of party polarization and lower turnout in the European Parliament election.

The purpose of this Bachelor thesis is to examine how children describe their experiences of their own reading, with focus on different aspects of reading: Choice of reading, reading environment, response to reading and book talk. Our aim is also to examine which approaches to reading their stories illustrate. The research is founded on semi-structured interviews with six children aged 10, in connection with book talks. For analysis we used Åse Hedemark?s study Barn berättar : En studie av 10-årningars syn på läsning och bibliotek as well as Aidan Chambers? theories concerning reading and reading environment.

Norske Skog Jämtland AB is like many other companies in a situation where it has to increase its purchases to provide its industries with raw material. To increase the available amount of raw materials, many companies employ purchasers to cover larger areas. This study aims to find out how to handle the increasing competition for timber suppliers. An important input for defining such a strategy is to examine how the suppliers view their relation to the company today. For a company it is extremely important to have a good relation with the suppliers to secure long term supplies.

In order to be a good teacher according to preferences from outside the school area, there are many different voices to listen to. The different roles that are assigned for teachers are colliding with the latest research from the pedagogical institutions and therefore the role as a teacher of today is in a complex state of mind. Somewhere, between the traditional role of teaching and the moderating ideal image, reality is revealed in the ambivalent role of the teacher of today. In this pedagogical essay on advanced level we are focusing on obstacles that are hindering the moderating teacher?s role, to be fully developed in the classroom.

Value stream mapping is a tool that is frequently used by many different companies. It is a great tool used to achieve the work that follows the theories of lean production. The tool is used, however, only frequent on the factory floor and the method is also designed based on this type of use.An interest of applying the method on administrative parts of the company has occurred lately. Administrative parts of the company refers to the part that does all the planning such as purchasing, receiving orders, customer contact, contact with factory floor and other work that is made around the actual manufacturing. But the knowledge about applying value stream mapping on the planning part of the company is lacking because the method is relatively new.In this work, a comparison is made between the introduction of value stream analysis on production and planning.

This essay explores to what extent the Swedish language version of Google Images meets the usability requirements of average everyday users. Previously published studies on user behaviour and users? interface and search option preferences define the usability requirements, which are matched against Google Images? actual interface and search options. The retrieval method of Google Images is also briefly discussed, and users? opinions about Google Images too, as they come across in the previously published user studies.The findings are that Google Images lack some of the things that users ask for, but it still seems to be the most used image search engine among average internet users and more appreciated than other search engines.

The purpose of this study is, on one hand, to obtain an understanding of how children in municipal music- and culture schools choose instruments and what forms of recruitment methods they are subjected to, and on the other hand, how you can make them continue to play once they have begun.To acquire this information, I have interviewed five music teachers and two principals at municipal music- and culture schools in Värmland. The questions treated, among other things, what affects children?s instrument preferences, recruitment methods and what you can do to keep interest for the chosen instrument alive.The result of the study shows some apparent tendencies. Even though some of the instruments have trouble recruiting students and other instruments have trouble keeping them, the old methods, which obviously do not work in a satisfactory manner, are still being used. Instead, increased commitment at the occasion of recruitment, more group teaching which strengthens the social bonds through role models and a will to have the courage to change the organization when it does not work, is required..

This thesis explores some issues regarding estimations of the cost of capital on the Stockholm Stock Exchange through reverse engineering of the Residual Income Valuation model and through usage of the Capital Asset Pricing Model. Previous studies are in conflict of whether the risk premium changes considerably over time or not. Furthermore, the risk premium estimated by CAPM tends to be fairly stable. In this study, reverse engineering of the cost of capital implied by analysts? forecasts shows a significant difference in the risk premium over time.

Value stream mapping is a tool that is frequently used by many different companies. It is a great tool used to achieve the work that follows the theories of lean production. The tool is used, however, only frequent on the factory floor and the method is also designed based on this type of use.An interest of applying the method on administrative parts of the company has occurred lately. Administrative parts of the company refers to the part that does all the planning such as purchasing, receiving orders, customer contact, contact with factory floor and other work that is made around the actual manufacturing. But the knowledge about applying value stream mapping on the planning part of the company is lacking because the method is relatively new.In this work, a comparison is made between the introduction of value stream analysis on production and planning.

The most vital for a business is to understand how to please and satisfy its customers in order to make them loyal to the company. Companies weapon for competition in the retail business is defined through the retail mix. The retailer however often have limited resources whereas they have to prioritize between the factors included in the retail mix. The main purpose for this paper is to investigate what kind of internal connections that may occur between the factors in the retail mix, with focus on the job satisfaction as a catalyst on driving the values of the parameters included in the retail mix, where the factor service is the starting shot for the others included..

This dissertation is performed at the request of Lagafors AB who develops and manufactures stationery and mobile hygiene solutions for companies in the food- processing industry. The objective of this dissertation is to develop and construct a new, cost efficient cleaning station based on an innovative technology.The technique is based on serially connected dosing pumps which allow the customer to work with concentrated detergents. This leads to serious reduction in the clients use expenses. Two units have been developed with this technique, one that is stationary and one that is mobile.The dissertation has led to good results which resulted in the sale of the first stationary unit of the Lagafors CPU before the end of this dissertation. .

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to investigate the reading habits of six men who do not read fiction. The reason for my interest is the fact that men statistically read less fiction than women, and that there are few existing studies of this subject. The study investigates why these men do not read fiction, their attitudes towards literature, their reading habits, their leisure-time interests and if they experience fiction from other activities. Furthermore the study includes a discussion of whether or not there might be a connection between the men?s reading habits and their identity as men, as well as a discussion of all of the above in relation to their social background.

Previous research has suggested that there is a strong and positive relationship between being an entrepreneur and possessing a high degree of subjective well-being as well as job satisfaction. The big five personality traits have also been argued to be significantly related to both subjective well-being and job satisfaction. Little is however known if personality affects entrepreneurs and regular employees differently. In this paper the impact of personality traits on the cognitive part of subjective well-being as well as job satisfaction are investigated separately among entrepreneurs and regular employees. This is done through OLS-regressions using a Swedish nationally representative survey Employment, Material Resources, and Political Preferences (EMRAPP), where entrepreneurs were oversampled in order to be able to compare entrepreneurs (N = 2483) and regular employees (N = 2642).