Many companies are currently working to optimize and streamline their processes and production lines to achieve higher profitability. In increasingly competitive markets, companies are working to find solutions to increase the value of their production with such a small use of resources as possible. A tool used to accomplish this is the Lean management system. Lean comes from the production system that Toyota has been developing since the early 1900's, The Toyota Production System (TPS). The Lean philosophy helps companies, by working towards continuous improvement in its operations, to achieve higher customer satisfaction, more efficient production and ultimately higher profitability. Many companies are working to implement Lean in their organization. But there are many who fail to implement a complete change towards Lean.

The purpose of this Masters Thesis is to explore the process of selection that librarians face when selecting and acquiring cultural magazines to public libraries. The methods used are qualitative interviews and literary studies. A brief review is given of acquisition policies at public libraries and of cultural magazines and the important role they play in public libraries. Five interviews have been made at five public libraries to find out what factors affect the process of selection when it comes to cultural magazines. Two theories are used as a basis for the analysis of the result of the interviews and literary studies.

The student union of Karlstad University is always working for the better for the students, so they can feel safe and that their time at the university is trouble free. To get the students to sign up for a membership, the organization have to inform the students about their work and the benefits that a membership brings. The problem is that the target audience is broadbecause there are all students at Karlstad University that are of different sexes, ages and nationalities, this can cause problems when the information must be adapted to each individual in order to make it interesting. The organizations various work areas have not reached the entire audience and therefore requires an information film in which all the areas can be presented in an attractive way that makes it easy for the audience to absorb the information. A strong trend in the world of information films are the so called infographics.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to investigate the library needs of distance students. This user study has a student perspective and concentrates on the main question of which way library needs might be expressed by distance students. Associated topics addressed by this study include; the problem of learning centres lacking their own library support, how distance students look upon library support as a concept and whether distance students prefer public libraries or university libraries, and why they make this choice. These questions may give the answer to how distance students deal with information literacy. Theories chosen by the study are in the fields of pedagogical and library science, the social cultural theory by Roger Säljö and in Tom Wilson's theories on user studies and information needs.

Människan är en social varelse och socialisering är ett el­e­mentärt och komplex mellan­mäns­k­ligt sam­spel, som först och främst formas i den fa­mil­jära sfären. Då syftet med denna studie har varit att vidga förståelsen kring det sociala fenomenet ondska ? började vi vår resa med att distan­sera oss från fenomenet för att istället fokusera på vad som händer i socialiseringens vagga. Det pro­blema­tiskt funna är att människor numera är mer asocialt responslösa än socialt respon­si­va vilket innebär att män­nisk­or mer än någonsin finns för att fungera i härskande sam­­hälle­liga sys­tem än att finnas till för varandra. Och följden, den nutida människan socialiserar och socialiseras in i emotio­nellt lidande och skapar en förträngd medvetenhet som förs vidare från generation till generation, något som i bäs­ta fall leder till ytterligheter.

The world today is not an equal place. We see children starve, people being discriminated and women?s rights being neglected. The media coverage of women?s sports is no exception.

The aim of the study is to investigate reasoning about variation in learning, made by Waldorf, Freinet- and Bifrost pedagogues. The focal points are how the pedagogues reason about variation in learning and why they want to use variation. It is a qualitative study, and it is done through interviews with one Waldorf pedagogue, one Freinet pedagogue and one Bifrost pedagogue. The conversation with each pedagogue is complemented by literature that describes and discusses each pedagogue?s specific teaching method. The results of the study are linked to different theories and reasoning by scientists and professors.

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to study the adaptation of recently recruited young professionals to a top consulting firm through their identity construction efforts. We analyze the influence of a major organization-related discourse on young professionals in order to account for the effects of emotional labor on their adaptation to work. Methodology: We have studied our empirical material in the light of a reflexive pragmatic approach. Thus throughout the analysis of interview material, we try to interpret carefully the material from various perspectives. As authors, we also reflect critically upon our own interpretations.

Music not only fun but also necessary. This paper investigates how young people describe their relationship to music. The young people - students - in this study are coming from two different districts of Malmö: One with a population with mainly ethnical Swedish background and the other with a multicultural population. The research question is how we can describe young people's relationship to music on the one hand from the social theories which are presented and on the other hand from own experience as a music teacher. Group interviews are used to get the young people's own descriptions.

Students at Jönköping School of Engineering were given an assignment from Jönköping municipality, to evaluate their decision support system, QlikView. The students have also developed proposals for improvement with focus on usability.The Jönköpings municipality has currently got 11000 employees and consists of nine different administrations. The target group for QlikView is approximately 600 first-line managers.The intention of QlikView is that the users can get an overall picture of their business by having all information in just one system.The purpose of the thesis is to obtain a picture of what the users think about the system today and present relevant suggestions for improvement, which the Jönköping municipality can use when the introduction of the new version of QlikView takes place. The research questions that the study aims to answer are:? Has QlikView got a user friendly interface?? How can the interface be improved to become more user friendly?Theories that this work is based on is Jacob Nielsens ten usability principles and Ben Schneidermans eight golden rules.

Relationship Marketing - will banks be able to handle higher consumer mobility in the private market?The purpose of this paper is to gain an understanding of the factors that affect customer loyalty to the bank. Consumer mobility will probably increase as a result of political changes and pressures on the private banking market to become more competitive. This study was carried out using semi-structured interviews and were transcribed and analyzed with the help of models and theories centered on relationship marketing. The theories describe loyalty, the customer lifecycle and relationships between customers and organizations.

This paper deals with institutional and structural factors' influence on democratic transition in limited multiparty regimes in Sub-Saharan Africa. Comparing the cases Kenya and Tanzania, of which the former has made a transition to democracy and the latter has not, this paper reaches the conclusion that political traditions, the coalescing of the opposition, and the elites ability to learn from the electoral process is essential for a transition to democracy. In the specific cases, the harshness of the Moi regime and the Tanzanian vision of national unity may possibly carry some explanatory power, alongside the pressure from international actors.These results have been reached through the application of a comparative case study, where democratic transition constitutes the dependent variable. It should be noted that a harsh definition of the term transition has been applied, according to which the incumbents actual loss of an election is a necessary indicator for transition. However, the Freedom House and Polity scores have been brought up as complement of this definition.

Purpose: The purpose of this essay is to describe the social media usage of five European official national tourism organizations (NTO). The essay proceeds to discuss and evaluate the findings, whilst reflecting on the advantages of social media usage from the point of view of an official national tourism organization.Method: The authors used three different methods of research: one structured observation to study the national tourism organizations? everyday work in social media, one field stimulation to study if and how different NTO respond if a prospective visitor makes them a direct question via social media and finally an email interview to gain insight into NTO?s underlying strategies and policies about social media usage.Theoretical framework: The theories that have been used in this paper include the Uses and gratifications model, theories of one-way and multi-way communication, theories of social media and relationship marketing.Conclusion: By making use of social media the company releases some of its control to the customers as the latter can express their opinions freely in this type of media. One of the advantages of social media is that the platform favors dialogue and feedback. Social media can be used for traditional one-way communication, but works best as a supplement to the regular marketing activities, allowing the activities on social media platforms to focus on branding and building long-term customer relationships.

What happens when one moves about in the city? In this essay I will explore how we through our movements create our own temporal cities. I base my investigation on Michel de Certeau's theories from his book The Practice of Everyday Life vol 1. De Certeau believes that by just walking in the city ? a mostly unconscious and for many trivial activity ? you write it, creating different types of spaces that can be understood using linguistic terms.In my essay, I develop de Certeau's theories about ordinary activities by applying them to two less ordinary ? and between themselves quite different ? spatial practices:  fare evasion on public transportation (plankning) and the urban activity of parkour.

The workplace is for many associated with joy and commitment, for others it is associated with fatigue, inadequacy and cynicism that is explained as the three dimensions of burnout. A general view of burnout is that it is an individual problem that many companies ignore, because a preventive task does not generate immediate profits. This has been a growing problem for years. Burnout costs not only money but also time and knowledge. Unfortunately, the popular belief is that "If it ain?t broke, don?t fix it." Organizations that think this way are sacrificing future benefits for short-term gains.