The purpose for this study is to look at the Pink Caravans, which is a Swedish travel company that started in the beginning of the seventies. The company today has a unique profile within the travel industry which made us curious about how they have managed to keep their distinctiveness over such a long period of time. We have chosen to focus on how they work with the market in this ever changing world, including aspects regarding for example the customer being more demanding today than before. We have also looked at a potential future for the company considering new trends popping up like the environmental issues. The study is based on a qualitative approach and a case study research regarding the Pink Caravans.

This thesis consists of three parts: one normative, one empirical and one constructive, with the intention to explore the enforcement of accountability in megaprojects.The thesis aims to evaluate the level of accountability in the policy process of the European Spallation Source, ESS between 1990 and 2008. In order to make a comparison possible, a norm is created concerning how a policy process should be designed, with primary focus on openness and participation, to make enforcement of accountability possible. The policy process of the ESS is compared with this norm with the purpose of discovering whether the process contains elements that assure enforcement of accountability. After the comparison is done, it is possible to formulate constructive proposals about how the enforcement of accountability can be improved.The thesis also explores how networks, consisting of actors with particular resources, surrounding the ESS-project affects the form of the policy process, e.g. in shaping the social construction of the aim and purpose of the project.

Female musicians and actors are being disadvanteged in the music industry, because of standards that prevents women from participating on equal terms. Unequal distribution of resources and status depends on power structures which creates an hierarchy. This study is about how an organization, Femtastic, works for equality and diversity in the field of music, how they experience their positions and their possibilities. Also how they relate to the cultural policy objectives. Femtastic is trying to create a structural change in the male-dominated music industry.

This thesis is a comparative analysis of language policy in the Post-Soviet states Ukraine and Kazakhstan, wherein the states are seen as rational actors using language as an instrument in the nation-building process. With a take-off point in an underframe of theories on the nation, national identity, instrumentalism, power and the particular role of language in the nation-building process, this thesis shows that language is a key instrument used by the two states.The Ukrainian and Kazakhian language policies create and put across a certain image of the nation, by emphasising the titular languages as symbols of the new states. The line of argument in the language policy is a balance act between large-scale promotion of titular languages and a careful and inclusive attitude towards the Russian language. The biggest differences are that Ukraine, compared to Kazakhstan, has a more comprehensive and consequent language policy with a deeply rooted historic rhetoric. The most obvious instruments of the states in language policy is censuses, corpus-planning and the state choosing one official language..

Real-time systems are required to answer to external stimuli within a specified time-period. For this to be possible, the systems behaviour must be predictable. The use of active databases in real-time systems introduces unpredictability in the system, e.g. due to their use of active rules. The behaviour in active databases is usually specified in ECA-rules.

This essay conducts a descriptive analysis of the ideas expressed by NATO´s official security strategy "Strategic Concept" from 2010 and the European Union?s security strategy "A Secure Europe in a Better World" from 2003. The purpose of this analysis is to examine whether the ESDP and NATO are compatible with each other when it comes to the role of security policy actor. To do so, I´ve chosen to analyse the actors' security strategies based on three dimensions. These dimensions are: Their view of the international scene, their views on cooperation and their views on how to reach security.

The purpose of the essay is to investigate whether the principles formulated by Peter Ackerman and Christopher Kruegler, concerning strategic non-violent conflicts, can serve a purpose when analyzing improvised non-violent conflicts. The principles are derived from factors that have been prominent in earlier successful improvised non-violent conflicts.The essay is based on two research questions; if the factors included in the principles formulated by Ackerman and Kruegler, exist in the two cases that this study investigates, and if those principles offer a satisfactory explanation for the outcome of an improvised non-violent conflict.To answer the questions the study uses a comparative method, where the improvised non-violent conflict of 2004 in Ukraine is compared to the improvised non-violent conflict of 1988 in Burma.The answer to the first question shows that the factors contained in the principles previously mentioned, exists in both cases. The answer to the second question is more uncertain, as there seems to be doubts on whether the case of Ukraine really was completely improvised. Another reason for caution is that the factors contained in the principles, only consider actions made by non-violent actors, and not by opponents or third parties. Thus the risks of missing vital explanatory factors are substantial..

I vår produktion har vi tagit fram ett system för order- och lagerhantering, med vikt på realtidsuppdateringar, åt en extern mottagare där infrastrukturen inte hängt med i företagets utveckling. Vi valde detta projekt i syfte att bredda våra kunskaper inom både programmering och projekthantering. Denna slutreflektion tar upp den förundersökning vi gjorde för att kunna besluta om vilka verktyg vi använde i utvecklingen, den tar även upp vårt sätt att hantera och planera projektet. Under projektet har vi arbetat med en egenutformad arbetsprocess vilken även beskrivs här. --- Our production has been to design a system for ordering and supply management with emphasis on realtime updates to an external recipient, where the infrastructure has not kept pace with the development of the company.

The creation of value is considered the core purpose and central process of economic exchange. Value creation is now conceptualized as shared by both producers and customers, and value is seen as fundamentally derived and determined in use, the integration and application of resources in a specific context, rather than in exchange, embedded in products and manifested as price. The field of research is abundant with publications but these do not fully further the understanding of value creation and co-creation in a way that is meaningful for theoretical development and decision making in business and marketing practise. Without a thorough understanding of the factors characterising value co-creation, the nature as well as content and locus of co-creation cannot be identified. In that case value co-creation easily becomes a concept without substance. Until now, individual publications on co-creation have focused on few or different aspects, have emphasized the process from either the customer?s or from  the firm?s vantage point, have different theoretical approaches and have ignored the complexity in interactions between actors.The purpose of this essay is to analyse how five fundamental aspects of co-creation of customer value are perceived in contemporary marketing literature. Discussing the different views on co-creation, this essay concludes that thoughthere are evident points of agreement, finding one generally valid doctrine of predestination or value co-creation is improbable.

Arbetsplatsmobbning har omfattande konsekvenser för individer i arbetslivet och samhället. Observatören har en viktig roll i arbetet mot mobbning, då dennes ingripande kan influera andra att göra detsamma. Denna studie undersökte om observatörens kön, locus of control och erfarenhet av observerad mobbning har en påverkan på intentionen att ingripa vid en mobbningssituation. Detta prövades utifrån sex hypoteser och frågeställningen hur relationen ser ut mellan ovangivna variabler i förhållandet till intentionen att ingripa vid mobbning. 165 individer i arbetslivet, varav 114 kvinnor, besvarade en enkät vilken innehöll Rotters The internal-external scale, en justerad Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised och ett instrument inspirerat av Hektner och Swensons påstående om intentionen att ingripa.

The purpose of this work, has been to examine how different actors in the Swedish eco movement and the Swedish forest industry looks at Sweden?s forest policy statement, which claims that environmental goals and production goals should be equal in Swedish forestry. By assembling focusgroups with participants from the Swedish eco movement and the Swedish forest industry, we look at if these participants consider the Swedish forest policy goals equal or not. Conflicts do occur between the two forest policy goals, but also between those and others of Sweden?s environmental goals.

In January 2007 the Öresund committy changed its statutes to become a more politically oriented lobby organization. This change can be interpreted as one part of a continuously evolving process where the Öresund region is emancipating itself from the national states in a multi-level European environment. By focusing on this latest development the thesis puts forward the importance of political institutions, as well as politicians and civil servants as actors in them, as crucial factors in the process where the region is gaining political power. The thesis shows how the political cross-border cooperation in the Öresund region is being institutionalized which affects its power relations to other levels in the multi-level system, predominantly the national states. In other words, there is a connection between power and institutionalization.The Öresund committee has by gaining better access to policymaking agendas on the national levels proven that the organizational change has already started to bear fruit.

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.

IKEA is probably one of the most well known Swedish companies in the world. During thepast decades millions of people all across the globe have decorated their homes according tothe style of IKEA. But just exactly how big and influential are they? Many, if not to say all,municipalities in Sweden wants IKEA to establish and build their famous stores in one oftheir towns. But at what cost? When deciding on a municipality to establish in, IKEAnormally tends to have an advantage when it comes to controlling the conditions and terms ofthe establishment.To undertake this dissertation I use a theory based upon the inter-organizational theoriescalled resource dependency theory.

High quality within a Lean production system begins with standardised work, which creates stable processes able to generate predictable output. If nonconformity from the standard procedures occurs, routines are needed to analyse, correct and prevent the nonconformity from occurring again. In that way, the nonconformity can be a trigger for continuous improvements toward more stable processes. In takted production lines, where the operator follows a standard sequence with tasks set to be completed within the takt time, a nonconformity leads to downtime in the operator?s sequence, and no value is added.