This is a qualitative study aiming to study stepparents? view of the relationships within the stepfamily and their thoughts about what makes it work. It is based upon three stepmothers? life stories focusing on their relationships with their stepchildren. The study is based on a symbolic interactionistic theory and explores the experiences and unique perceptions of these women in their life as stepparents.

With inspiration from Bitzers situational analysis a phenomenografic method has been used, influenced by Brown & Levinsons´s theory of politeness, to find perceptions concerning constraints (in Bitzer´s sense in his model of the rhetorical situation) in Internet-based communication. Based on three qualitative interviews, this essay has found that the perceptions are closely linked to views of what constitutes formal and informal contexts, varying due to the gender or age of the informant. Netspeak is not considered appropriate, with some exceptions, in any formal situation. However, the perceptions regarding decorum in informal situations differ in nature, based mainly on what kinds of associations and connotations are produced by elements found in netspeak. Since perceptions regarding informal situations vary, there is a large risk of misunderstanding, which this essay aims to survey..

This paper replicates a test performed by Burgstahler and Dichev (1997), which identifies a kink in the frequency distribution of earnings for companies listed on American stock exchanges. Their claim, that the kink is evidence of earnings management, has however been dismissed as a methodical consequence. To address this concern, this paper not only replicates the test in general, but also performs tests on a split sample, where founding family-owned companies are separated from the others, since earlier research has shown that founding family ownership is correlated with less earnings management. The results are in line with the findings of Burgstahler and Dichev, with a significant kink in the frequency distribution in the general test. The findings also show that the significance of the kink increases in the non-family-owned sample, while it disappears in the family-owned sample.

The main purpose of this study was to examine the knowledge in biology by immigrant pupils. My investigation is based on the pupil and I have focused on positive and negative factors that affect their performance in biology.The study is based on marks in year 2006/2007, a survey and interviews made with four immigrant pupils at a compulsory school in Västra Götaland.The study indicates that the result in biology of immigrant pupils is lower compared to Swedish.Difficulties in language, the commitments by their parents and their surroundings are the main factors that affect their results negative..

This essay was written at Södertörn University during the spring semester of 2010, in the field of Business Administration, and more precisely within management and organization. The essay is based on a case study of the management of the staff working at the commuter train stations in Stockholm. The study consists of a number of interviews with the management staff and with the personnel working at the stations, where the aim of the study is to describe how management works within ISS Trafficare AB and what the personnel working at the stations think of it. ISS Trafficare AB is the entrepreneur who runs the commuter train stations in Stockholm by an agreement met with Stockholmståg KB.The study is based on information from the interviews with the personnel and other material from ISS Trafficare AB. Research on the area of management have been used to put data into perspective and to further deepen our analysis and conclusions from the case.The essay shows that the management has tried to implement several changes on the organization in order to provide more service to the travelers.

Purpose: To contribute to the understanding of the relationship between private labels and the retailer brand in grocery retailing. Methodology: We use structured interviews as a cross-sectional method for quantitative data collection. The existence of the relationship is tested through correlation analysis and regression analysis. Theoretical perspective: Perceived quality of private labels and of retailers are the main theoretical concepts for this thesis. Additionally, we introduce the concept of loyalty to show the benefits of a positive consumer image.

This is a study of democracy on the local level. It?s a comparison between the municipalities of Mo?rbyla?nga and Mo?nstera?s in the region of Kalmar in Sweden based on most similar design. The question is if the structure of the political organisation affects the quality of democracy, with focus on the reorganisaton in Mo?rbyla?nga and the quality of the political process.

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..

Some researchers claim that we are witnessing the advancement of becoming a network society, and in spite of the different problems associated with the network form of organization, many cities still choose to engage in different types of networks. On account of that the aim of the study is to examine which expectations Swedish member cities of the network Eurotowns might have, and if their actions in the initial period of engagement in Eurotowns mainly could be explained by ?Logic of Consequentiality? or ?Logic of Appropriateness?.A qualitative research method was used and a major part of the empirical material consists of the information given by the interviewees.Regarding the expectations Swedish member cities have on Eurotowns, the result showed that five main areas could be identified mutual resource exchange, activities, breadth, security and meeting place. The results also showed that the actions of Swedish member cities may vary between ?Logic of Consequentiality?, ?Logic of Appropriateness? or a combination of the both logics.Furthermore the study also provides empirical evidence supporting the previously theoretical criticism expressed regarding the central assumption that the strategic actions of an actor can be regarded as a direct consequence of the mutual resource dependency..

The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate and compare the retrieval effectiveness of two search engines on the Internet: Svensk Medicin and Google Scholar. Svensk Medicin is a medicine-specific search engine and Google Scholar specialises in indexing scholarly material. A set of 20 questions in four categories were used to conduct the searches with the search engines. Genuine medical information needs were selected from a question collection provided by the television program Fråga doktorn. The relevance of the first 10 retrieved documents was judged by using a binary scale and the measure used was precision.

An energy calculation model for Swedish houses   that is fast, flexible and user-friendly has been developed within the   framework of this thesis.  The model   also provides a set of actions which may be investigated in the model based   on savings and payback period. Energy use in a house depends on the technical   conditions, such as building envelope and heating systems, which outdoor   climate the house is exposed to and who lives in the house. Energy use for a   house can be divided into heating, hot water and household electricity. There   are several methods to calculate the energy use of a house. This report   summarizes the methods that may be suitable for a fast and user-friendly   calculation model.

This essay was written at Södertörn University during the spring semester of 2010, in the field of Business Administration, and more precisely within management and organization. The essay is based on a case study of the management of the staff working at the commuter train stations in Stockholm. The study consists of a number of interviews with the management staff and with the personnel working at the stations, where the aim of the study is to describe how management works within ISS Trafficare AB and what the personnel working at the stations think of it. ISS Trafficare AB is the entrepreneur who runs the commuter train stations in Stockholm by an agreement met with Stockholmståg KB.The study is based on information from the interviews with the personnel and other material from ISS Trafficare AB. Research on the area of management have been used to put data into perspective and to further deepen our analysis and conclusions from the case.The essay shows that the management has tried to implement several changes on the organization in order to provide more service to the travelers.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine public library and information technology IT discourses to see which relationships are established between them in four library journals. This is done in two steps, where first discourses are defined followed by an analysis of the relationships established between the public library and IT in each discourse. The questions from which the analysis emanates are as follows: What discourses exist around the public library and IT in the library journals? What conceptions of the tasks of the public library are constructed in the discourses? What conceptions of the tasks of IT are constructed in the discourses? What conceptions of the relationships between the public library and IT are constructed in the discourses? The theoretical and methodological starting-points are found in Ernesto Laclaus and Chantal Mouffes discourse theory. 37 articles from four library journals Biblioteksbladet, Bibliotek i Samhälle, DIK-forum and Ikoner - are analysed through a model in five phases.

Today, maintenance is a big part of the daily life on board ships. It is also one of the bigger expenses a shipping company has and without any loss of quality tries to run as economically advantageous as possible. In the hunt for economical savings the shore-based industry has subsequently applied the use of condition based maintenance, CBM, were a component is maintained according to its actual state. This leads to a reduction of maintenance costs since no parts are unnecessarily replaced. However, within the maritime sector a periodical maintenance is still the most commonly used maintenance system.The purpose of this paper is to chart the factors that are the reason for the low implementation of CBM on board the Swedish merchant fleet's ships.

Several diseases increase the risk of thrombosis in dogs and cats, often with a fatal outcome. Currently there are no definite treatment guidelines for the use of thrombolytic and thromboprofylactic agents in veterinary medicine. None of these drugs are approved for dogs and cats in Sweden. Medicines aimed for humans have been used tentatively. This literature study is an investigation of what is currently known about the effects and safety of these pharmacological agents when used for dogs and cats.