All since Thomas Kuhn?s strongly influential The Structure of Scientific Revolutions the Philosophy of Science and ?even more so ?the Social Sciences have contained a greater amount of theories that could be described as more or less relativistic, meaning that the standards of justification or truth thereafter more often were said to be relative to language, culture, or biological makeup. One of the more elaborate ways of developing Thomas Kuhn?s theories in a more relativistic direction ismade by the philosopher Richard Rorty. Rorty, mainly a supporter of Thomas Kuhn, is also a philosopher who has been seen as a main exponent of a so called Postmodern philosophy.My intention in this thesis is to evaluate whether Kuhn's and Rorty's theories of science and knowledge could be regarded as relativism, in respects of their view of incommensurability, rational argumentation, and of their position vis-á-vis the more conventional picture of scientific knowledge and truth.

The purpose of this work is to find out how present manager contracts are set up in Landstinget Västmanland (the county council of Västmanland), explore managers? perception of these contracts and why managers have chosen leadership. The work has also reviewed the question if managers need to have a relationship or expertise to the activities they lead and which qualifications are needed in such case. The survey was conducted in two divisions in which nine interviews were held with managers at all levels. In addition to this a questionnaire including the 87 managers in the divisions were held.

The neo-classical conception of the market place does not provide a framework to account for ethical or moral action. As a result, the neo-classical model is unable to explain the impact of ethical and moral issues on business sustainability present in the modern economy. To address this limitation, this thesis investigates whether theories of ethics can help explain the motivations and actions of stakeholders within the field of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). In addition, the thesis explores whether theories of ethics are presented differently within aspects of the stakeholder model. Semi - structured interviews were conducted with various stakeholders within the CSR sector, including a NGO, a commercial firm and a CSR consultancy firm.

This Master?s thesis presents a descriptive study of the intellectual process to describe images in such a way that they can be incorporated into written information systems. The purpose of the thesis is to concentrate on the scientific development for the last two decades, in the area concerning the description of images so that they can be organized and incorporated into information systems and possible to retrieve when searched for. Library and information science (LIS) has a strong tradition of turning to the iconographical theories of Erwin Panofsky and to semiotics according to Roland Barthes, for models and theories for the interpretation of images. The question for this thesis is whether LIS in this scientific field, has deviated from these models and theories, or are Panofsky and Barthes and their scientific work still providing for intellectual and practical guidance for LIS within this area..

Based on Theodor W. Adorno's theories about the relation between society and lyrics, and critical theories about postmodernism, it can be seen in Bob Hansson's lyrics how he tries on the one hand to write in a modernistic tradition but, on the other, is very influenced by postmodernism which results in a conspicuous self-distance and self-contempt..

The reason for this study is to settle the balance between technology and preponderance in war. Each theory claims its own superiority to be decisive when it comes to achieving military victories, but this study will show what actually happens when the two theories are analyzed together in the same conflict. To prove the conclusions, a case-study on Operation Gazelle is used. The study will describe the theories, what a military victory is and which party in the conflict came out victorious after this specific operation. Both sides? forces will be shown and compared.

Bolivia is a multiethnic country where the indigenous people constitute the majority of the population. Despite two decades of attempts to take the democracy further is its foundation more volatile than ever. The aim of this bachelor thesis is to examine if exclusion is taken place in Bolivia from year 1982 until today and if so in which way political exclusion constitute problems of democracy in Bolivia. The answer depends on the understanding of democracy used in the analysis. In this thesis I use theories of process-, participation- and deliberative democracy.

This essay constitutes a qualitative case study about democratization theory and the middle class in Russia. This is a very important case to study, especially because of the geographic position of the country as well as the economic importance Russia has as a part of the G8. In the essay the author seeks to answer the question whether the lack of a significant middle class in Russia can be a part of the explanation to the absence of a well functioning democracy in the country. Several democratization theories are presented. The most important being Ruth Berins Collier's theories about ins and outs plus the elite- or working class as the initiator of democratization processes.

In agricultural educations you learn to use different economic planning tools, as basis for decision. The purpose and goal of this work has been to find out if economic planning tools are used by the farmers in Sweden. We choose to do an investigation through personal interviews, and used an inquiry to get as equivalent answers as possible from the farmers. This work contains a literature study with relevant facts about the questions that is brought up in the inquiry. This study of literature explains shortly some different calculation methods and bases for decision. It also contains useable information that is important to know before an investment. The questions that are asked to the farmers have focused on the use of calculation methods and economical planning tools.

Today many industrial companies invest a lot of resources on research and development to resist the tough competition on the global market. This leads to a high risk game when the companies start many development projects, with uncertain outcome where some of the projects have to be terminated prematurely. The main purpose with this study is to identify factors, both internal and external, that influence the decision to terminate projects prematurely in Swedish development projects. Factors mentioned in the literature will be compared with case studies on three Swedish industrial companies to demonstrate the most important ones when taking such decisions. First a literature study was made to identify basic terms, a general project model and factors affecting the decision.

Since the 9/11-attacks several nations have been confronted with a new international threat, its nature traces back to the political- and religious- radical movements of the 20th century Cold War. Ever since, various states have been under threat by terrorist organizations around the world due to mainly participating in worldwide counter-terrorist interventions created by western alliances. In Sweden, amongst other countries, the state took security-precautions that would imply total control of information throughout the territorial borders. The assigned proposition was accepted by the Swedish parliament in June 18th 2008, after this date wild spread criticism was still in effect ever since the Swedish government first publicly announced the proposition in May 8th 2007. This study emphasizes on understanding why the Swedish government chose to present this proposition to parliament, in order to complete this task the study will present the motives and the alleged threats that were the core of the proposition and its value-maximizing goal of creating a new surface for Swedish homeland security.

Most of the clothes sold in Europe today are produced in developing countries where the production costs are lower. The exploitation of the developing countries has led to that the inferior working conditions in these countries have attracted attention from media and NGOs. Globalisation makes company activities more transparent and the absence of transnational laws calls for alternative regulations. Many companies in Europe has since mid 1990s developed codes of conduct to satisfy the demands of external and internal stakeholders. EU also brought Corporate Social Responsibility to it?s agenda in the beginning of the 2000s and subsequently signals of approaching laws were given.

What every theory of democracy has in common is a reference to ?a people? who are, in one way or another, collectively self-governing. Given that, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the so called boundary problem of democratic theory, or, in other words, the question of who should be included in the democratic community. Lately, the historically given boundaries have been questioned in favour of a cosmopolitan democracy. Still, little has been said about the boundary problem in general, especially from a theoretical point of view.

The purpose of the following thesis has been to study librarians' attitudes towards comics for grown up people. I have compared the attitudes among the staff in two public libraries in Sweden, Malmö public library and Lund public library. I have conducted five interviews with librarians and observed how the comics are handled in each library. I have also carried out a literary study of the history and theories of comics. Initially a definition of comics is presented, and then an overview of the development of comics and of some theories regarding them is offered.

The buying decision process describes how the consumer makes a purchase decision through a rational process (Markin, 1979) and an understanding for how consumers make a purchase decision can according to Sands et al. (2010) be obtained by increased knowledge for the information search process (the second part of the buying decision process) before a purchase. Today?s society offers great opportunity to obtain information (Rahim & Clemens, 2012; Bawden & Robinson, 2009) and by that there are in other words good opportunities for a rational acting by the consumers. However, there are factors working against that consumers act rationally and seek information prior to their purchases primarily in the form of the concept of information overload (Bawden & Robinson, 2009) which claims that consumers are limited in their information search because there is too much information but also other factors such as lack of time (Wood & Neal, 2009) and ability to find information (Slegers et al.