Human capital is professional service firms' most valuable resource and its quality is closely linked to the quality of its services. The purpose of this study is to investigate how professional service firms appraise their employees. A comparative study between an architecture firm and a management consulting firm is conducted with the aim to identify and explain similarities and differences in performance appraisal. Two qualitative case studies are performed and interviews as well as documents are used to explore the area. The thesis builds on a critical perspective and it has an explorative approach.

Title: A study about conditions for leadership in knowledge-intensive firms.Authors: Cecilia Ekström and Niklas SandbergKeywords: Leadership, knowledge-intensive firm, hierarchies, followers.Background: Leadership is becoming one of our greatest social myths and is considered a total solution for many problems that occur in an organization. The view of leadership is usually from a top-down perspective, which contributes to an often underestimated view of the follower. Just as it is important to understand the leader's view of leadership, it is important to understand how employees view the structure from which the leader derives its legitimacy. The existing conditions in knowledge-intensive firms, such as autonomy, place special demands on the formal leadership.Purpose: The purpose of this study takes an employee perspective, to understand what the conditions are for formal leadership in knowledge-intensive firms.Method: A qualitative research method was used and empirical material was collected through interviews with employees in knowledge-intensive firms. The empirical material was analyzed by the respondents? mental images which were set against the theoretical framework of the thesis.Conclusions: The conditions for formal leadership in knowledge-intensive firms make it advantageous to have a leader with a withdrawn role.

Physical inactivity is the fourth leading risk factor for global mortality. To prevent and change this the society need to develop good approaches and interventions to promote physical activity. The purpose of this thesis was to investigate which experience existing users have of smartphone training applications. Also to study if this can be a possible resource for health promotion. Six active users applied to participation after they had seen an ad in social media.

Introduction: In this investigation I have illustrated, teacher treatment in a mono-cultural pre-school class and in a multicultural pre-school.Purpose: The purpose of the study was to illustrate how educators go about it when they face bilingual children to see how they work in a comparative perspective. The purpose was answered, based on four questions relating to how teachers relate to the meeting with bilingual children, the approach teachers use, which operation mode the use, if the take advantage of children's traditions, and if there is any different in the teachers? treatment of bilingual children in the mono-cultural pre-school class and in the multicultural pre-school.Theories: The theory is linked to the concepts like operation mode, inter-cultural approaches and communications.Methodology: The used methods are qualitative interviews with four pre-school, teachers where an interview guide with formulated questions and observations were used. The purpose of the working methods was to highlight teacher treatment of bilingual children to discover different approaches to meet the bilingual children.Conclusion: The study has shown that the multicultural pre-school working inter-culturally, they are taking advantage of children's home language that is lifted in the nursery and the children's background, while in the mono-cultural pre-school class, they meet bilingual children foremost to develop the Swedish language and they also show interest to the children's traditions. Teachers? treatment leads to a growing confidence in the children and knowledge for the cultural background..

Från kunskapens öar till den ömsesidiga insiktens fastland Ett pedagogiskt utvecklingsarbete för en personalutbildning med förankring i praktiken Anne Johansson Olsson Sammanfattning Denna uppsats redovisar ett utvecklingsarbete kring utformandet av en så kallad arbetsplatsanpassad utbildning. Arbetet bedrevs i samverkan mellan Transkulturellt Centrum (TC) i Stockholms Läns Landsting och Lina Hage samt Wasa vårdcentraler i Södertälje. Projektet syftade till att via inledande arbete, inventering av utbildningsbehov, utbildningsplanering, genomförande och utvärdering skapa en modell för en utbildning med fokus på vårdpersonalens möte med patienter som har erfarenhet av migration. Vårdcentralerna stod i början av 2007, i begrepp att inleda ett arbete med en delvis ny patientgrupp, asylsökande och nyanlända flyktingar samt anhöriginvandrare. Arbetet innebar ett förbättrat och utvidgat mottagande med erbjudande om hälsosamtal och till de asylsökande även en primärvård som motsvarade den övriga befolkningens.

The harness racing industry has roots hundreds of years back in time and breeders through time have changed the horses to a mix of potential, harmony and speed. Breeding has changed the conditions and created a horse that perform better and better. A risk with high-performance horses is that injuries related to training and racing may occur more often. In training and racing situations, lameness is the most common injury. There are many factors affecting the occurrence of injuries and lameness of the trotter horses, such as how the horse is trained and raced, the surface condition of the racetrack, banking and angle of the curves of the racetrack and how fast injuries are discovered and treated.

AbstractMy purpose with this study is to find out if it helps children who have diffuculties with their concentration if they get to practise their motor behaviour knowledge during their day at the school to promote their learning capacity. My purpose is also to find out how schools works with motor behaviour training. To get answers to my questions have I done interviews with four educationalists and I have also used books and internet sites. Motor behaviour is of importance to how children learn things in the school, without a well working motor children gets difficulties to sit still and to concentrate. The children may put their energy at the wrong things in the classroom, when the energy instead should be need to learning things.

The aim of this master?s thesis is to investigate a possible connection between the development of mobile library services in Sweden and the development of cultural policy during 1945-2006. Our main question is: is there a connection between the development of the mobile library services in Sweden, as described in Biblioteksbladet, and the development of cultural policy as portrayed by Anders Frenander and Dorte Skot-Hansen? In order to answer this question, we formulated two secondary questions: - How are the mobile library services described in Biblioteksbladet between 1945 and 2006? - Are there any similarities or dissimilarities between the development of the mobile library services and the development cultural policy as described in our theoretical models? If so, in what way? Our study covers the entire time period since the start of the mobile library services in Sweden in the late 1940s. The final year for our investigation is 2006.

The principal questions that are high lightened in this study are: How is the discrimination of the Indigenous people in Latin-America represented in the works of Jose María Arguedas and Miguel Angel Asturias? How are these two authors interrelated in terms of the defense of a cultural belonging? And finally, can these be associated to Paulo Coelho?s narrative content and techniques?This work shows how, as Nelson Gonzalez-Ortega names it, a narrative discourse of resistance (based on the consequences of the cultural merging of the European and Latin-American people) is expressed and transformed into modern literature. It shows how the works of these authors protect and transmit the interests and the cultural origins of the Latin-American Indigenous people. These origins are expressed by language, myths, storytelling techniques and the presentation of an alternative perspective of the world. It also shows, through analysis of their writing, how some of these authors as dual cultural human beings struggled to balance the two cultural elements they are constituted of.Focus will be on Asturias Hombrez de Maiz, Arguedas Los ríos profundos and Coelhos 11 minutos and El Zahir..

The aim of this bachelor thesis has been to examine and develop our own understanding about how young people in Sweden (16-29 years of age), take part in cultural activities. As librarians it is important to know what kind of activities and interests this particular group has. With Pierre Bourdieu?s theoretical framework towards habitus and capital we are interested to see if there is a connection between one?s cultural use and background, if different access to capital with or within groups has an affect or not. With both statistics and interviews with people within our target, we believe this data has been sufficient enough to conduct a good and valid study.

Background: Good health at community and individual levels are key policy priorities. These priorities can be shown through supporting parents about various different healthy lifestyle choices. In order to know where interventions are needed, it is of interest to study how parents generally feel and how they perceive their parenting.Aim: To study how parents rate their own health and parenting skills, and examine whether there is any correlation between perceived general health and perceived parental competence.  Further, this study will show whether there is a correlation between rate of perceived general health and rate of perceived parental competence when it comes to gender.Method: 64 questionnaires were collected at strategic open kindergartens in the municipality of Uppsala. The questionnaires were distributed to the parents present and who chose to participate in this study.Main result: The result of this study shows that parents have a high rate of general health.

The Swedish government published their current proposition concerning cultural politics,Tid för kultur in 2009. Due to this proposition, culture is considered a basic human right we all deserve to be provided with. It contained goals and guidelines for how to enable culture to all citizens, to integrate and enrich the state, the county councils? and municipalities? work with diversity and multi culture in their culture-based institutes. However, there seems to be a lack of strategies in the issue of how to provide our nondependent elderly, suffering age related handicaps and diseases, with this proclaimed necessity.In recent years, there has been a lot of research proving the link between human wellbeing and a stimulating environment.

In 2009, the estimated number of residents in China was 1.331 billion, representing approximately 22% of the total world population. China is the world's most populous state and is in constant growth. This is also a market that offers huge opportunities. The major cultural differences between China and the rest of the world can often cause problems for companies that choose to expand in China. A major problem with the cultural differences is that Chinese employees feel that foreign managers do not understand the Chinese culture which is said to be the reason why Chinese people tend to change jobs often.

This work is about Cuban music and my relationship to it. My study contains two different parts. In the first one I try to give a short summary of Cuban music history. The second part is about possibilities and problems that can arise in the meeting with foreign cultures. I have focused on three themes: Music and respect, cultural encounters and travelling, and communication.

Background: Myocardial infarction is the most common individual disease among people in the west world. In Sweden there are over 50 000 women and men who get myocardial infarction every year and about 40 % of them dies. Exercise training is one part of cardiac rehabilitation and since 1980 Sweden use the guidelines from that time. Aim: The aim was to review exercise-training modalities in cardiac rehabilitation after myocardial infarction and the physiologic- and psychological effects. Method: Facts were obtained by searching through the database PubMed for articles published from 1994 and ten years forward.