Background: Increasingly, companies choose to finance their business with corporate bonds which has resulted in an increased demand on credit ratings. As such the rating agencies have a very important role in the financial markets. Examining the value of a credit-rating can be very interesting for both issuer and investor. Purpose: The purpose of the study is to identify and define the value of rating. Execution: The study is built upon nine interviews with rated and non-rated firms and investors.

The purpose of this essay was to find an understanding of what factors whichaffect refugee reception in two municipalities in the southern part of Sweden, themunicipality of Vellinge and the municipality of Landskrona. Three interviewswere made with three local politicians and these interviews were then analysedusing postcolonial theory. With the help of Matthew J. Gibney we identified sevenfactors which aided us in the analysis these were: Integration history, Ethnicaffinity, Determining who is a refugee, The wealth of the municipality, Thehousing market, The labour market and The action of other municipalities.We found that these factors were all useful in creating an understanding ofrefugee reception in the two municipalities. However they affected themunicipalities differently.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the offer from the ministry of education and cultural affairs to Swedish public libraries concerning a computerised connection to SUNET (the Swedish University Network). The study is based on analyses of the main texts from the campaign and interviews in order to identify arguments that caused the libraries to accept or decline the offer. My conclusions are that the marketing of the SUNET-offer was to a large extent filled with technicalities, and that the campaign failed to identify and focus on the true recipients the decision-makers. The wordings used in the written material were too negative and discouraging. In order to succeed with future concentrations concerning public libraries, it is vitally important to overcome the boundaries between the decision-makers in the local government, the people responsible for information technology and the library staff..

Posters had their breakthrough in 1830-1840?s all thanks to the lithographic printing technique. The poster was used as an advertising tool.In this essay, we have looked at which semiotic and rhetorical elements that are found in today?s Swedish movie posters. What kind of image and text elements does the poster use and with what function? With what and how do they persuade the audience that the movies are interesting and worth seeing?We have taken the most popular Swedish movies between 2001 and 2010, one for each year, going by the statistic found at the website of the Swedish Film Institute.

This study is a thesis project for the program Civilingenjör och Lärare at KTH. The study was conducted in spring 2014 in collaboration with Komplementskolan AB which has developed the educational material Studi.se, the focal point of this study.The overall aim of the study is to increase the knowledge of the participant teachers? conception and use of the educational material Studi.se. The second purpose is to increase knowledge about the forms of use some of these teachers apply or claim to apply when using Studi.se. Theoretical framework used is constructivism and the notions of Piaget: adaptation, assimilation and accommodation.

Syftet med föreliggande studie är att undersöka hur olika typer av känslomässigpriming påverkar bedömningen av neutrala ansikten. I studien undersöks också hurpersonlighetsegenskapen neuroticism påverkar denna bedömning, både enskilt och ikombination med känslomässig priming. 82 försökspersoner deltog i undersökningen.Primingen sker i form av emotionella ord som är positiva, negativ eller neutrala.Tidigare studier har visat att neuroticism favoriserar negativa affekter, och hypoteseni studien var att den negativa primingen ska ha större effekt på individer som liggerhögt på skalan som mäter neuroticism än på de som ligger lågt på skalan. Resultatenav denna studie visade inga signifikanta huvudeffekter av vare sig priming ellerneuroticism, även signifikanta interaktionseffekt mellan dessa faktorer uteblev. Enförklaring till uteblivna resultat kan vara att neuroticism grupperna inte skilde sigmarkant från varandra på just denna variabel och därför inte heller uppvisade någraskillnader i bedömningen av ansikten.

This study aims to show how teachers talk about their teaching with regards to gender in relation to literature.We have interviewed four teachers of Swedish for upper secondary school to discover how they feel about, and understand, the fact that gender is a factor in the teaching of literature and that they should present to the students literature written by both male and female authors. To analyze the interviews we use Sannersted's (1991) theory about teachers as street-level-bureaucrats ("närbyråkrater"). He states that teachers are persons who have to follow what politicians have decided but they are fairly free to choose how they do it, but to be able to follow a decision as closely as possible three qualifications have to be met. The teachers have to understand the decision, be able to follow it and want to follow it. We find that the teachers that we have interviewed are aware that they discuss gender issues with their students and they all claim that they present a variation of authors to their students.

This paper aims to shine a light on the challenges connected to the implementation of a process focused way of thinking in a public service organization. To this we have conducted a series of qualitative interviews, primarily from participants of a university driven project. The project aims to teach decision making employees of public service organizations how to use process modeling techniques to increase their efficiency. We have also interviewed the teachers who have taught the courses included in the project. As a final point of view we have also interviewed a researcher and IT consultants to compare novice users with experienced users of process modeling techniques.

The decisions for investment are forward-looking and the base of a long-term strategy. The research within investment have focused on diverse formulas which are used in financial assessment, which also should be complemented with qualitative evaluation. Consequently, the focus should not only be on the execution of the formulas. Less time have been spent on research concerning what actually initiates the investment proposals and affects the decision-making. This will be highlighted in this essay.

Aim The aim of the thesis is to explain the factors that affect the auditor's recommendation concerning audit services to customers who are not subject to mandatory auditing.Background and problem In 2010 mandatory auditing for small companies was abolished. It is common for the auditor to provide recommendations re-garding whether or not a customer should chose to retain the audit. The question is which factors can explain the auditor's recommendation.Method and empirics This thesis uses a deductive approach with inductive elements and a combination of qualitative and quantitative data is used. The qualitative data consists of a pilot study and the quantitative data consists of a questionnaire survey. The analysis of the empirical data was performed using regression analysis.Theory This thesis applies an eclectic approach where the starting point is legitimacy, institutional theory, professional theory and decision making theory to develop a model.Results and conclusions The notion of the recommendation as well as the extent of the recommendations can be explained by factors related to the auditor's agency affiliation and the auditor's personal qualities..

The purpose of this study is to investigate the way George W. Bush used the language as a means to exercise power in an attempt to justify Operation Iraqi Freedom. The theories used to answer the purpose are discourse analysis and three different moral metaphors that are applied on the data.The collected material for the metaphors is constituted of cognitive linguistic books from prominent linguists, such as George Lakoff, Alan Cruse and William Croft, and the material for the discourse analysis is also collected from prominent discourse analysts such as Michél Foucault and Norman Fairclough. The official White House website provides the material for my data. The scientific method used in this study has been qualitative text analysis where the hermeneutic approach has been an essential part of it.The main question: In what way did George W.

Information is one of the organization's essential resources, and as such it needs strategic management. The authors use the information audit, which was developed by Orna 1999 and Henczel 2000 as a tool to evaluate how well an organization's information activities connect to its mission, goals, and objectives, to evaluate the municipal politicians' information support in Härryda municipality. The decision situations met by politicians often are complex; they are ambiguous and unstructured, with a high level of uncertainty. Human information sources meet needs arising in this kind of decision situations best. Since most of the politicians work full-time besides being politicians, Härryda municipality has to substitute the human sources by textual ones composed of highly summarized information.

The aim of this study is to create an increased understanding of shared leadership and how it takes shape in the relationship between first-line managers in human service organizations. Shared leadership is seen as a complement to the traditional one-man leadership and briefly means that two managers share the role that usually is held by a single leader. The study has a qualitative approach based on semi-structured interviews with managers in human service organizations. The interviews mention the mangers thoughts and experiences about shared leadership and gain approval in the hermeneutic science field. The study is analyzed based on symbolic interactionism where perspectives from the theoreticians Mead and Goffman are used.

The digital printing market is changing faster now than before and the ability to adjust to newsituations has become more importat to a printing company. An efficient internal communicationis essential. At Elanders Digitaltryck a decision was made in august 2002 to look over the shiftworking system for the printer operators. In this paper, an investigation of the possibilities tochange the existing system to a better one was made.The project resultet in four different timetabels. The construction was based on theoretical studiesand an analysis of the current situation at the workplace.

AbstractThe purpose of this essay was to investigate what thoughts children in preschool and preschool class have about friendship. We also want to investigate what characteristics and which strategies they look for in friendship relationships.  To perform this study we used the following questions as a starting point. Which characteristics do children see as attractive in their cultures?How are friendship relationships affected in different contexts?Can one see a difference in the most important characteristics and strategies between the children in preschool and the children in preschool class? To answer our questions and to reach our purpose we have held group interviews with children in preschool and in preschool class.  We have, in our study, used published scientific literature to get an understanding of what has been presented in relation to this topic in the past.The result shows that the children in preschool and preschool class do differ in certain aspects but also have some similarities on ideas about friendship. Both preschool children and the children in the preschool class are highly competent and skilled at integrating with other children. What divides them is their ways to plan their friendship.