The aim of this thesis is to assess the strategic importance of Central Asia as a whole and interests of great powers in the region in particular within the theoretical framework chosen. The work shows Central Asia as an area of the New Great Game, analogue of the original Great Game which was played out between the British Empire and Tsarist Russia in XIX century. The parallels between the original Great Game and the New Great Game are drawn in order to understand the scope and the true intentions of the players of the latter one. Also, the security issues in the contemporary Central Asia are explored and analyzed to provide with the background for future predictions. Furthermore, the indirect purpose of the thesis is to examine whether the international system has changed from that of two centuries ago by comparing the structure of the international systems at the time of two Games.

The purpose of this study is to identify and analyze how resource-based strategic choices can create can create sustainable competetive advantages. The study examines whether Daniel Wellington has competitive advantages and how those in that case have been achieved. The results of our study can hopefully help case company to get a deeper insight into the relationship between strategic resources and sustained competitive advantage..

The purpose of this thesis work is to create a prototype for an augmented reality application that isaimed to support service technician when performing service and maintenance of machines andengines. The prototype will be used for investigating what technical limitations there is and toestablish basic usability for the user interface. The method that is used is user studies and analysis toevaluate use cases and user stories. An iterative work process is then applied for design and theprototype is continuously user tested.The resulting prototype uses a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 running on Android operating system. Theframework used for augmented reality is NyARToolkit which handles marker recognition andconnections to Android.

This C-level thesis deals with Russian tourism in Sweden and explains what measures are being used in Sweden in order to attract Russian tourists. Since a high number of companies and organizations are actively involved in developing Russian tourism to Sweden, we have decided to focus primarily on the most active Swedish and Russian companies within the industry. Therefore several big and well-established companies, often located in the largest cities of Russia and Sweden i.e. Stockholm, Moscow and St Petersburg, have been the subject of our analysis.Chapter ?Bakgrund? presents numerous facts and information about the nature and scale of the Russian tourist market today and in the nearest future.

Thule Sweden AB utvecklar, tillverkar och marknadsför kompletta och funktionella lasthållarsystem för bilar. De erbjuder en mycket stor bredd av olika lasthållare till över 1500 bilmodeller. De tillverkar lasthållare som cykelhållare, boxar, skidhållare, hållare för vattensport och andra tillbehör. För att en bil skall kunna bära en takbox måste det tillverkas en lasthållare som placeras mellan biltaket och takboxen. En del i denna lasthållare kallas för takbleck och dess form tas fram med en speciell takskanner vilken analyserar biltakets form vid kanterna.Till detta har en mjukvara tagits fram som Thule kan använda för att söka/lägga till/redigera takbleck, istället för att manuellt söka i en pärm bland 700 olika ritningar.

The purpose of this empirical study was to investigate if stress exists among nurses, and if it exists how do they experience it and how do they cope whit it. The nurses also got to define the word stress. Karasek and Theorells demandcontrollmodell were used as a theoretical framework. The result of the study answers our research questions and gives us a good insight how the nurses experience stress and how they cope with it. The result shows that 56 of 60 nurses indicated that they experience medium to high level of stress a couple of days a week or more often and that it affects their work.

This thesis contains a wider discussion on the analytical framework of classstudies in political science. The purpose is to put class into the light of a usefulmethodological and theoretical tool when it comes to studies on inequality and political,as well as scientific approaches and explanations to why people have awide range of differences in how they pursue their lives. It is my ambition to discusshow class relations can be theorized and explained within a given context, aswell as in society as a whole. I see the complexity of this field as a resource to enhancethe epistemological as well as the empirical discussions within the politicalscience scholars..

Drawing on earlier research, and using observations as the method, this study presents a design of a nature playscape for children. Applying outdoor pedagogy to the fundamental structure of a specific location, the study proposes a design of a playscape, over a more obvious design, for instance one based around a quiz walk.The theoretical framework is Gibson?s theory of affordance, and the goal has been to create a "play flow". The study concludes that spatial rhetorics can be an important tool when teaching children about nature..

Through participant observation in a local promoter group of hardcore punk shows inGothenburg and qualitative interviews with its members I have investigated links between taste in music, values and social structures in the hardcore punk scene. The theoretical framework of this essay is built upon the concept of subcultural capital, which is adapted from Pierre Bourdieu and developed by Sarah Thornton and Keith Kahn-Harris. The result shows how members among the hardcore punk scene create and preserve distinction towards others, while the distinction becomes important benchmarks for including and excluding practices in the scene..

This essay is a comparative empirical study of ethnic integration mainly of the Russian-speaking minorities in the three Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) in a post-communism setting. As Lithuania has a Polish minority that is as large as the Russian-speaking, they too shall be included in the study but not as thoroughly as the Russian-speaking minority. Thus the problem is: to what degree are the ethnic minorities integrated with the titular nations in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania? In order to study ethnic integration I have set up a theoretical framework largely based on Weiner?s theory of integration. The theoretical framework focuses on three dimensions: Citizenship, Identity and Segregation.

China is one of the fastest growing markets of today and attracts billions of dollars in foreign direct investments. Swedish companies have not been late to follow and operate on the Chinese market driven by opportunities in sales, production, and sourcing. However, there has been limited research made on how and why Swedish companies extend their sourcing efforts in China. By combining research within the internationalization of export activities, concepts from global sourcing, and gathered empirical data from leading Swedish companies operating in China, the thesis develops a framework for analyzing the internationalization process of sourcing in China..

In recent years the elderly care in Sweden has gone through several structural changes with the main purpose of delivering a more efficient service. The aim of this study is to compare the management control system in a privately and a publicly managed elderly home. A qualitative study was conducted which included interviews, observations of meetings and reviews of relevant documents. To be able to identify possible differences the framework of Hood consisting of seven dimensions was used. An analysis of the selected dimensions showed that the differences in management control were minimal and Brunsson's theory of politicization and 'company-ization' were used to explain why..

Immersion is a construct that measures how deeply engrossed a user is with any mediated situation. In the field of game design, immersion is a significant aspect of what makes a game enticing, and as such it is of pivotal importance to create and maintain it to keep the player's mind off the real world while inside the confines of a game framework. According to the GameFlow theory, it is one of seven key tenets of evaluating and implementing a successful game design. Yet, certain multiplayer online games are designed in a fashion that in some cases seem to break immersion, where the player is frequently put out of action, sometimes for minutes on end. In this study, using online questionnaires, we discover that players, despite claims otherwise, seem to be in several ways affected negatively by this breaking of immersion.

Immersion is a construct that measures how deeply engrossed a user is with any mediated situation. In the field of game design, immersion is a significant aspect of what makes a game enticing, and as such it is of pivotal importance to create and maintain it to keep the player's mind off the real world while inside the confines of a game framework. According to the GameFlow theory, it is one of seven key tenets of evaluating and implementing a successful game design. Yet, certain multiplayer online games are designed in a fashion that in some cases seem to break immersion, where the player is frequently put out of action, sometimes for minutes on end. In this study, using online questionnaires, we discover that players, despite claims otherwise, seem to be in several ways affected negatively by this breaking of immersion.

The purpose of this master's thesis is to study how librarians at public libraries make the literature with state supported distribution available through marketing. By qualitative interviews with nine heads of libraries the thesis examines how the library staff in each library market the state supported distribution by the Swedish Art Council. My theoretical framework is based on Philip Kotler's thesis on marketing. My conclusion is that the library staff rather market the library as whole, than focus on just one specific type of books. The attitudes toward the state supported distribution are a mixed one, but the library staff is glad for what is given..