Since the 1980s, the management philosophy New Public Management has resulted in major changes in the public administration system in several countries, especially in the West. A market oriented approach and an increased focus on performance measurement are ideals that are salient in these changes. The aim of this bachelor thesis is to examine the management philosophy?s influence on international relations through a critical analysis of some of its ideals in the management of international development cooperation, where effectiveness, quality, and results have been new dominant concepts. Through a qualitative content analysis of a Swedish Communication from 2014 ? the Aid Policy Framework ? and a debate in the Swedish parliament where this Communication was discussed, different themes that reflect the strategy of so called results based management in Sweden are identified.

The purpose of this master's thesis is to describe and analyse the origin and development of the libraries in the town of Värnamo, between the years 1908 and 1960, when a new modern public library was inaugurated. The method I have used is, to a great extent, examining and analysing source material from the archive of the municipality in Värnamo and the popular movement in Jönköping. As a background to my study I describe the development of the Swedish society, from the end of the nineteenth-, until the middle of the twentieth century. I also describe the local development of Värnamo, during the same period. Furthermore I also give a general description of the progress of the libraries in Sweden during the same time.

AbstractIn the fall of 2003 a project was started in the Swedish building sector that is called BASTA (the building sectors’ termination of especially harmful substances). The project is operated by the building companies NCC, Skanska, PEAB and JM, the Swedish Building Industry and the Swedish Environmental Institute IVL. The purpose of the project is to create a common environmental assessment system for the entire building industry and with the help of this system phase out the use of especially harmful properties from building products.In a large sense BASTA works like this; On the BASTA web site there is a database, to which a supplier can register the company and the company’s products. Only those products with a substance content that fulfil the demands of the BASTA system, is to be registered. As it is the supplier himself that carries out the registration of the company and the company’s products to the system, the BASTA-organisation annually controls that the companies that are registered in the database, fulfils BASTA’s demands.Since NCC is one of the companies that operates BASTA, BASTA is probably going to be the environmental assessment system that is recommended for the company in the future.

The storm Gudrun in 2005 led to massive windthow damage in forests in southern Sweden. Since then there has been a growing interest in factors influencing wind damage in above all Norway spruce (Picea Abies) stands. Although many other interesting areas still need to be examined. In 2005 there where a lot of stands that suffered different degrees of damage, a lot of these stands weren?t cut, but instead left to grow. The future development of these stands is uncertain and the guidelines are unclear.

Global Software Development (GSD) is based on a geographical distance where teams are spread throughout the world. The related research have for a long time addressed the challenges presented by geographical distances. GSD is basically a necessity for many businesses to use in order to reduce development costs, reduce production time and to maintain high quality. The study aims to investigate the relationship between the reality of a specific maintenance project. Thus, our research question: How do distributed maintenance teams experience temporal, geographical and socio-cultural distances? To achieve the purpose of the study, we chose to perform a case study of a global consulting company which recently started a new system maintenance project.

The purpose of this study is to examine how educationalists work with bilingual children's language by looking at how and what approaches are used to encourage language development. I have chosen to compare two educational philosophies: Montessori and Outdoor Education, to see how big the differences / similarities are in working methods. The background to this study is that preschools uses various approaches and have different methods to stimulate the children. This means that the conditions for children's language development might look different depending on the preschool they go to. The information used has been gathered through interviews, where I have taken note of educationalists thoughts on their working methods, and through professional literature dealing with this topic.

The purpose of this study is to examine how teachers and pupils experience the use of fictional literature as a tool for language development in the teaching of English as a foreign language. Through surveys and interviews and with Vygotsky?s theory on development in a social environment as a theoretical base, I examine which methods are used to promote language development and also which functions pupils and teachers consider fictional literature to have in the teaching of English. Results show that teachers consider fiction to be among the top methods to get pupils to learn English. Teachers and pupils both favour the use of fun and stimulating reading activities as well as group activities where learning is social to go along with the reading of fiction.

Visby is a city that at first glance is of medieval origins. The popular image of scientists today is that the city was formed in the Middle Ages. According to some of the researchers Visby was formed during the Viking Age, it is based on the basis that the area has been used for a long period. Urban development in the Nordic countries is complex and there are different opinions as to why the Nordic cities emerge. It is important to shed light on the underlying process on why cities are emerging to provide clarity as to why Visby city is emerging.

The major environmental problems that we have today are frequently mentioned in the media today. One example is the ongoing debate regarding global warming and its causes and consequences. There are also several other problems in our society such as segregation and social tensions. Most agree that we must do something to solve these problems and that we must try to achieve a sustainable development for the entire planet. But how should it actually be done and what trade-offs, compromises, sacrifices and changes must be made?The purpose of this paper is to examine how these issues are being dealt with in Swedish city planning.

The use of mobile devices has during the last years expanded and on the market you can see a huge amount of applications. The development of mobile applications differs from traditional systems development since mobility infers that mobile applications can be used in different technological and social contexts. Although previous research has recognized that mobility can present mobile application developers with certain challenges, empirical studies of how problems arise and how they can be handled has thus far been limited. In this study we focused on the requirements engineering process from a development view with the purpose of finding challenges emerging in the development process. The study is based on a qualitative case study that employed semi-structured interviews with both project managers and system developers active in the requirements process.

AbstractIn the fall of 2003 a project was started in the Swedish building sector that is called BASTA (the building sectors’ termination of especially harmful substances). The project is operated by the building companies NCC, Skanska, PEAB and JM, the Swedish Building Industry and the Swedish Environmental Institute IVL. The purpose of the project is to create a common environmental assessment system for the entire building industry and with the help of this system phase out the use of especially harmful properties from building products.In a large sense BASTA works like this; On the BASTA web site there is a database, to which a supplier can register the company and the company’s products. Only those products with a substance content that fulfil the demands of the BASTA system, is to be registered. As it is the supplier himself that carries out the registration of the company and the company’s products to the system, the BASTA-organisation annually controls that the companies that are registered in the database, fulfils BASTA’s demands.Since NCC is one of the companies that operates BASTA, BASTA is probably going to be the environmental assessment system that is recommended for the company in the future.

The present study deals with the importance of play for children's learning in preschool. The purpose is to investigate the importance of play for children's learning in preschool from a pedagogue?s perspective. The study is based on two issues: How does the pedagogue´s who were interviewed reason about the impact the play has on children's development? How does the pedagogue´s approach to make play a learning situation? The empirical data is based on semi-structured interviews with four preschool pedagogue´s.

Female genital mutilation is an ancient custom, practiced mainly in African countries. For several years, Africans has immigrated to Sweden and many of the women are genitally mutilated or circumcised. The aim of this study was to bring some clarity to the attitudes and experiences regarding female genital mutilation among those who are affected. Articles for this literature review were searched for in international databases, and in the university library database. The outcome of this study shows that health care staff is in need of greater knowledge about this custom, in order to be able to handle the situation appropriately.

Currently many organizations are transitioning from the traditional approach to the agile approach regarding systems development methods. It is evident that research has mainly focused on smaller organizations transitioning, whilst less focus has been given t0 larger organizations. We find this interesting and the purpose of this study is to gain a deeper and broader knowledge concerning the following research question: How is system development work affected by a change from traditional system development methods to Scrum in large global organizations. We also investigate how Scrum can be adapted to complex projects with an internal client. The study is based on a case study, which takes a qualitative approach with semi-structured interviews for information gathering and was conducted on a major Swedish telecom company.

The purpose of this study is to gain additional knowledge and a greater understanding of pupils experiences of joining a special teaching group.  The study focuses on pupils with special needs and the ambition has been to get a student perspective of how they perceive their education with special support. In addition, the study is concerned with how pupils perceive their special support and whether this has any relevance to their learning, development and future goals.This study is based on Urie Bronfenbrenners theory The ecology of human development. The theoretical perspective highlights the interaction between the pupils and the school environment, which is important for development and learning. The study is based on a qualitative research method in the form of interviews.