Background: Competence development has become more important since the pressure on effectiveness is increasing and organisations are expected to constantly improvement. The design of the competence development activities is governed by the strategy which in turn will affect the outcome of the same. A knowledge intense business in which changes recently have taken place is healthcare, a business in which competition also has increased as a result from globalization. Due to this, it is highly important to take care of and improve the competence of individuals. According to this, we have found that healthcare is an interesting business to study with regard to competence development.

This essay presents and discusses a study that was performed in a multicultural school, where the teachers, since August 2004, have obtained internal training in how to work with language development. The objective with this essay is to investigate how the connection between language development and the development of knowledge can be understood and apprehended by teachers working in this school, and furthermore, to show how a language developing way of work can be accomplished in the teachers daily work.Moreover, I have studied which objectives and strategies, the three language developers in charge of the training of the teachers, have concerning this work, furthermore I have looked into if these objectives and strategies differ from what the teachers understand and practically perform.Pauline Gibbons book, Stärk språket, stärk lärandet (2006), has become a base for this school?s work when it comes to language development. Gibbons presents theories and practical exercises which have their origin from Vygotskij, Halliday and Cummins. Their theories have also become my theoretical base in this study.I have made qualitative interviews with four teachers working in this school, and with one of the language developers.

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to examine how the Swedish policy of neutrality has changed between the years 1990-2008. The research method used for this essay has been comparative case study, which strives to answer four research questions. Two of these questions are: Which specific occurrences have been fundamental in changing the Swedish policy of neutrality? How have the Swedish policy of neutrality and the policy of non-alignment changed between the years 1990-2008? The theoretical frame work of this study consists of Europeanization as a comprehensive theoretical perspective. In order to explain the Swedish act regarding the policy of neutrality, Logic of Consequences and Logic of appropriateness are used.

So- called ?Network Based Defense? (NBD) was introduced in Sweden in connection with the transformation of the Swedish Armed Forces in 1999. NBD is based on the U.S. variant Network Centric Warfare (NCW), which in turn is derived from research on the concept of Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). In Sweden the concept was introduced and included not only the Armed Forces but was intended to also support the Swedish civilian agencies in order to create networks and hence share the available information and thus more effective crisis management and to provide more "bang for the buck." In developing the concept of NBD the Swedish Armed Forces used both economic and human resources, in the form of research, new technologies, new organization and new methods.Between year 2004 and 2006 the Armed Forces once again entered the process of reorganization.

The outset of this study is to contribute to the literature concerning China?s increasing economic interest to engage in the African context, its economies and resource abundandce. The overarching research problem is that the approaches held by the respective African state entities may facilitate increasing development gains for the recipient state of this economic interest in principle. To adress this research problem the study is undertaken by conducting a comparative case study where three cases/states, with presumably diverging economic and political status, are likely to effect their overall state approaches differently.Research questions, which are addressed by the creation of an idealtype analytic matrix, concern whether the states of South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe take on a more ?permissive? or ?restrictive? approach towards China?s economic interst and whether the approaches can be looked upon on both aggratege and case/area-specific levels.The main findings are that a clear tendency of the ?permissive approach? may be noted on a aggregate level for all cases.

The veterans in Sweden is a group that is steadily growing, one of the reasons is the new employment agreement that requires the soldiers and officers to commit to Foreign Service. The Swedish Armed Forces have received critique from the government in their investigations concerning the Swedish veteran politics. Since then the Swedish government has introduced a new law that gives the Swedish Armed Forces an utmost responsibility concerning the veteran?s physical and mental health. The purpose of this study is to qualitatively investigate ?The Peace berets?, a non-government organization which have had, and is still having a cooperation with the Swedish Armed Forces as a result of the investigation conducted by the Swedish government.

The purpose of this study is to contribute with new knowledge of  how Talent Management can be seen as a an opportunity or threat for organizational development, concerning competence, on the basis of HR. The research questions asked are: Out of wich aspects can Talent Management be seen as an opportunity or threat on the basis of HR-employees? How can it affect the work of HR? To answer these questions qualitative interviews with five employees within HR from four different companies has been executed. The essay has been investigated on the basis of an explorative aim and with a qualitative method. The empirical results has indicated common themes such as director support, HRs view of Talent Management, HRs development and shifts of generations.

The design of buildings is today considered to be crucial for obtaining sustainable development. Research concerning sustainable building is considered to be a Swedish area of strength and development projects as Hammarby Sjöstad and Bo01 are often pointed out as Swedish prime examples of sustainable building. Some still argue though, that that these projects should not be presented as sustainable, due to its incompetence to meet their objectives. This contradiction has attracted my curiosity. By doing this study I hope to gain understanding about the difficulties Bo01 and Hammarby Sjöstad are surrounded with and its significance for sustainable development.

In this Bachelor Thesis (20 p.), we present the history and development of "Intelligent Houses", and most important- explore some of the future possibilities in this area. The project has been carried out through an interdisciplinary cooperation between three different educations at the Blekinge Institute of Technology. By conducting a dialogue with various actors with different professions, we have been trying to identify needs within the concept of "Intelligent Houses", were the end user is not only the tenant or homeowner. Through Participatory Design methods, such as a Future Workshop, we have brought the users together to discuss their own and each others needs and hindrances in their respective work practice, and how intelligent house technology could improve their work conditions. We have also been testing a highly sophisticated CO/CO2/Moisture/Temperature/Enthalpy multi-sensor & controller, originally developed for regulating indoor climate systems. Based on the needs we have found in our fieldwork, we have been looking at possibilities to make multi user solutions with the sensor..

We were commissioned by Bulten Stainless AB to identify and analyze their customer order flow. Because the company had problems with delays in the production and deliveries to the customer, the task also included investigation of how the company work with prevention and management of delays. The purpose of the project also included to identify critical factors for effective order flow in smaller workshop companies.The information about the flow and how the work takes place within the company were collected through observations on the company and interviews with the staff. This information was used to draw maps over the customer order flow and to write a description of the current situation within the company. Both strengths and weaknesses of the companies work could be identified through analysis of the present situation.

The purpose of the study, "Living in Two Worlds" is to try to find out how the professionals in social work reasoning and thinking about children 0-3 years living alternate residence and how children 0-3 years are affected by form of housing . Questions are how they professional reasons and think about the type of housing, what advantages and disadvantages they consider are and the conditions under the professional must be satisfied that the child will not get hurt. Study is a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews. The theory that the study is based on the attachment theory explaining the relational processes that occurs between the child and its care person.      The results of this study show that if the parents are in great conflict with each other is important for the child cope with the alternating form of housing well or not.

Background: Knowledge of customer needs is a key factor in companies? struggle to develop successful products. Several studies illustrate that the main reason for failure in product development is lack of customer understanding. Lately considerable changes have occurred. Large-scale mass production is continuously being replaced by customer orientation, especially in the high technological market.

This essay deals with the principle of surprise warfare and its development as well as the adaptation of military action that had to be made to surprise the opponent in the modern era.The concept of surprise is divided into its components in order to clarify what is required to implement a surprising maneuver, to understand the complex concept and form a theoretical framework for gathering facts in the case study.Development and adaption are demonstrated by a comparative case study where Pearl Harbor illustrates an example of historical surprise and Operation Desert Storm illustrates a modern surprise. The product will then be analyzed in order to detect the development and how military conduct is forced to adapt in order to carry out a surprising maneuver. The results shows that the military action of performing a surprise attack has had a major development and is now carried out in a different stage of the attack..

This thesis focuses on the testing activities at the stages of development and change regardingintegration brokers. The study aimed to examine the overall challenges that exist regarding thetesting activities within this context, and the thoughts towards the development method testdrivendevelopment (TDD). TDD emphasizes high level of test coverage and where the testprocess is well integrated with the development process. To seek answers to our question weapplied qualitative interviews with companies and respondents to try to understand the globalchallenges that are related to this work and processes. The main conclusions presented in thisstudy is that the overall challenges are involving and educating project participants in the testingprocess activities and the contributory effect test have on the end product.

ABSTRACT System development has become more and more concentrated on development for the Web and this has resulted in larger target groups. It will most surely continue to be so considering that the Web will be the infrastructure of business and services in the future. A big target group involves that the owner of a system can earn a lot of money from the paying users, but that assumes that the system can meet user needs. If a system on the Web does not satisfy the user?s demands then they will use the competitor?s system instead because it is only a mouse-click away.