Background: outsourcing is one of the most obvious and continuous trends that has been able to study during the past ten years and also has had a strong development in the industry. What consequences will follow from an extended outsourcing? Purpose: the study?s overall purpose is to investigate what possibilities and risks that can be connected to an outsourcing decision and how the order of the service will handle the risks. The study will also investigate what management philosophy that will be used and regulate the outsourcing relation and how the company?s strategy will affect the decision and how the process of outsourcing will look like.

The purpose of this thesis is to try to understand, with the help of existing theories and empirical findings, the parameters which are of importance in the development of the pricing capability. We have used a qualitative and abductive methodology approach. The empirical findings have been collected via semi-structured interviews which we have conducted via personal and telephone interviews. Seeing pricing as a capability within the company our theoretical framework mainly consists of the resource-based view and an article explaining and given proof how pricing can be seen as a capability. We also describe the most used pricing strategy today within business-to-business companies, the cost plus strategy.

Denna studies övergripande syfte var att förstå de drivkrafter som leder till att vissa sjuksköterskor söker sig till akademisk kompetensutveckling medan andra ser det som helt otänkbart. Studiens mer preciserade syfte var att undersöka hur sjuksköterskor med kompletterande studier i vårdvetenskap ser på akademisk kompetensutveckling. Följande frågeställningar fokuserades för att få en mer nyanserad bild av detta fenomen: Vad har kompetensutvecklingen inneburit för sjuksköterskorna? Vad är det för kunskap de vill utveckla och varför? Vilka drivkrafter har motiverat sjuksköterskorna till kompetensutveckling? Vilka faktorer uppfattar sjuksköterskorna har möjliggjort/försvårat deras kompetensutveckling? Den teoretiska anknytningen gjordes till följande begrepp: kompetens, kunskap och motivation. Definitioner och teorier inom respektive begrepp användes för att försöka förstå, förklara eller värdera undersökningens resultat.

In this thesis I will examine Willy Brandt's new Ostpolitik with the help of Robert Putnam's analytical framework of two-level games perspective and the theory of social constructivism. Firstly, I will briefly set out the development of Germany's history before it was divided into the Federal Republic of Germany and German Democratic Republic in 1949. After that I present West Germany's foreign policy from 1949 to 1969 in order to show how Willy Brandt continued and broke with different foreign policy doctrines. Finally, I want to illustrate his new Ostpolitik and the international and domestic factors, which contributed to its realisation. The main question of this essay is: How significant were the changes of the West German society for the realisation of the new Ostpolitik from 1969 to 1973? One of the most important findings in this essay is that on the one hand that many West Germans had accepted that their country was divided and on the other hand that many groups in the society such as the significant newspaper Die Zeit and intellectuals supported the new Ostpolitik.

In this study, six teachers have been interviewed about their vision and teaching of reading comprehension, both for pupils who has cleared the reading code and those who have not. The aim is to illustrate if teachers in middle school spend time to exercise reading comprehension, or if this is left to the Swedish teachers. Thus only according to the subject Swedish, the students are entitled to be given the opportunity to develop reading strategies.The interviews are semi-structured based on qualitative research. The informants are three teachers of Swedish and three teachers of other subjects. Two different interview guides were used containing three questions.

Utvärderandet av instrument och metoder är väsentligt för att avgöra validiteten och reliabiliteten av studiers resultat. I den här studien utvärderades delskalan Emotional Regulation. Delskalan ingår i Social Competence Scale (Corrigan, 2003) och användes som underlag för observationer av barn i åldern 4-5 år inom implementeringsförsöket av preventionsprogrammet PsPATHS i Sverige. Totalt deltog 132 barn vid två separata observationstillfällen. Två explorativa faktoranalyser med olika estimationsmetoder (ML och GLS) resulterade i en enfaktorslösning.

AbstractOil rich states all over the world share a common feature. They are less likely than other states, depending on other resources, to be ruled democratically. In this essay Saudi Arabia has been studied with the purpose of trying to find which mechanisms that lie behind why oil rich states do not have institutions or institutional change that promotes democracy.Saudi Arabia has the world's largest known reservoir of oil. The oil brings huge revenue each year to the Saudi Arabian government. Why have Saudi Arabia not developed democratically when their economic growth suggests that to be a natural step? Under the framework of historical institutionalism and path dependency theory, I have used process tracing trying to track the mechanisms behind Saudi Arabia's authoritarian rule down.

This study examines the closure of public libraries, and the nonprofit organizations takeover of them as a phenomenon. The aim is to understand why the nonprofit takeover is common and what the takeover symbolizes and if the discourse in media invokes the views on libraries and the profession.Interviews were made with librarians, politicians and representatives of a nonprofit organization to study different sides of the phenomenon. Other empirical data were found in local and national newspapers and media-channels. I discovered that public libraries are highly valued by both politicians and the community. The study also showed that a library in a community makes people feel valued.

During the emergence of social work, women have been considered to hold greater competence in social relations. Approximately 80% of social workers in Sweden are women, which leaves men in a minority. Men are considered to have advantages in female-dominated professions because of their unique and desirable abilities. This paper aims to adress men's underpresentation in the female-dominated social work profession. The purpose is to explore the attitudes and experiences of men working in a minority group.

Today, nine out of ten municipalities are active on social media and it has become increasingly popular among municipalities that make use of placemarketing to promote their particular region. A problem that is raised in this study is that the population of the municipalities in northern Sweden often is in decline. The purpose of this study is to investigate how a democratic-controlled organization such as Luleå Municipality uses the social media Facebook in its placemarketing, to highlight a place of scale and to attract new residents and stakeholders to move to or visit the city. In order to answer the purpose I have with the help of a critical discourse analysis examined how Luleå Municipality using social media Facebook in their marketing of Luleå as a place. The results were then analyzed using theories of placemarketing, Norrland and the market-oriented municipality.

The aim of this Masters thesis is, with an exploratory stand, to examine the thoughts regarding gender perspective at childrens library service that are expressed from childrens librarians as well as the staff in administrative management. The purpose of the study is to generate ideas for further research and discussion regarding a gender perspective on the childrens library service. A total of eight interviews have been carried out. Three persons at the administrative level and five childrens librarians were interviewed. We also have examined if a gender perspective is expressed in the control documents, from international level to a local level, which the libraries could use when developing and planning their work.

This essay is an investigation that aims to increase the understanding regarding the opinions of what skills a teacher who works with pupils that are in need of special support ought to have. I have also tried to answer the question: How to be a good teacher?The investigation is carried out as a qualitative interview survey, where three women from three different municipalities have explained, how they want pedagogues to work with pupils that are in need of special support.The investigation shows that an accurate personality within the pedagogue plays an important part when accomplishing a positive development. Knowledge of various subjects combined with a specialized pedagogical education is very important, as well as an ability of understanding when it comes to different kinds of functional disorders.Other positive qualities a teacher should have could be the following: to be structured, calm, be able to stand stress, have patience, be a good listener, be emphatic and have a good sense of humour.The investigation also shows that teachers who are confident with themselves have a lot to gain in their profession. The final quality worth mentioning is, when you as a professional dare to be without prestige.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how six students at a Secondary School describes interaction patterns among teachers when students express in a way that the teacher perceives as racist and/or xenophobic, by presenting a qualitative interview study. The interviews were analyzed by two opposing models of value education: the traditional and the constructive model.The results show that students divide teachers in different categories based on five qualities: 1) they listening, 2) they accept students' opinions, 3) they allow discussion, 4) they are knowledgeable and 5) they can express their own opinions.These qualities are included in the value pedagogical model for deliberative conversations, whose strategies for interaction aim to create an understanding of different rules and values, thereby creating skills of rules by using a democratic approach. In contrast to this model, the rule-based moral education, in which the teacher uses his authority and refers to rules without giving an explanation for why they occurred, as strategies. .

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.

The Swedish academic libraries have gone trough radical changes during the last decades. The development of information technology, the educational expansion and new pedagogical ways of learning within the higher educational system have changed the conditions, not only for the academic libraries, but also in many ways for the librarians. The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine how Swedish librarians experience their pedagogic role and task in the context of an academic library. The following four questions in this investigation were asked: How do the librarians experience the formal task that they have? How do the librarians experience the physical library environment? How do the librarians experience the co-operation with others involved in their work? How do the librarians experience their own pedagogic knowledge and competence in their daily practice? The study showed that these librarians believed the physical environment to be very important and is seen as a pedagogical tool in their daily work.