The aim of our study is to explore the empowerment process among micro-business owners in Kayamandi, a black township of Stellenbosch in South Africa. What are the positive and negative implications for the empowerment process? Another aim is to find out the role of local and international support in this process. The theoretical framework of this study revolves around the concepts of gender, power and empowerment. Our methods are qualitative interviews and observations.

This thesis aims to identify bottlenecks in the internal communication of aSwedish public library. Specifically, it addresses the behaviour of the library staff when they seekfor work-oriented information through interaction with their colleagues. A fundamental assumptionof this study is that the information-seeking process depends on organisational culture. I have madean exploratory case study in a medium-sized Swedish public library, where relevant issues areidentified and correlated with the culture of the organisation.I have used Schein's three-level model to describe the culture of the library; this model definesculture as a set of basic assumptions and the actions of people as expressions of their culture. Datafor the study were gathered using several approaches, including interviews with the library staff andobservations of them.

This thesis aims to study brand change, which can be of interest since a brand during its lifetime can be expected to meet a lifecycle consisting of five phases; innovation, introduction, growth, maturity and recession. In order to avoid the recession phase and the sales decline that follows there is a need for a change of the brand.In order to study brand change, theoretical framework is compared to two real world cases that have gone through an active change.The conceptions of positioning, repositioning and revitalization are clarified. Positioning deals with how brands are located in customer?s minds as well as on the real market. Repositioning implies a change of the current position and is also often a move towards a new market segment.

The essay discusses a process of change at probationservice office. The purpose of the change was to decrease specialisation and increase flexibility of the probation officers. The change encountered several problems where the correctional supervisor was percieved to act unsurely and indecisively whilst parts of the staff constructed and implimented several courses of action to prevent the process of change..

Bactiguard is a Swedish company within the field of medichal technology. The company has been very prosperous since it was founded in 2005 and was electedÅrets MedTechföretag 2008 ?MedTech Company of the year 2008. According to a definition by NUTEK, Bactiguard is still considered a minor company ? despite high market value and international expansion.

This study aims at using discourse analysis to analyze SFI students attitudes to religion and religiosity in an SFI-context. The questions are: How is the discourse constructed and maintained by religion and religiosity of SFI students in an SFI context? How do SFI participants experience that their religion has affected their time at SFI?Using a case study approach, interviews were conducted with a group of SFI students. The results show that the religious discourse in SFI is influenced by the SFI-context and affected based on the current education discourse that exists there. Furthermore, the discourse is designed and maintained by the participants private religious beliefs and the religion of the majority of the group, One canhere speak of a strong social unit forming a plausibility structure The power structure that emerges is that the majority has the power to define the significance of religion and place within the SFI context. In the SFI-context the participants view is that religion is something private that should not be expressed in the school environment.

This report is a hermeneutic analytical study of a practical pedagogical situation. For three occasions I observed my own practice as a dance teacher and how a moment, choreographic approach in the governing documents for upper secondary school GY11 was executed in a group of dance students. The part is formulated in the course objectives for the courses on the arts program under the topic Dansgestaltning with focus on choreographic approach. The study is based on a socio-cultural thinking but also takes into account the prevailing gender theories and focuses on how the process of formulation level, through the transformation level is portrayed in the realization level of the dance regarding choreographic approach. The study illustrates educational research from both a dance perspective and a school development perspective.

The Civil Engineering office in Skellefteå needs to develop the users' participation in the planning of parks and playgrounds. In order to get such a procedure to work one have to find a method that can work in the daily activity. My work aims to find such a method and to implement it in practice. Apart from helping the Parks departement to find an functional method I will also develop a deepened knowledge about users?participation wich can be very useful i my future profession. This work can be divided in three stages.

This report is about an investigation which has been done as an assignment in aninternational company. An Intranet has been implemented in parts of this company, andprimarily there is a local group of people in the company which is responsible for thelocal Intranet as an informationsystem. This local group of people is also responsiblefor further development of the use of Intranet as an informationssystem in the localorganisation. To create a starting-point for this development, I have done aninvestigation that deals with:· acceptance of Intranet as informationssystem among members of the industrialmanagement.- what factors affect acceptance of Intranet in a negative way- what factors affect acceptance of Intranet in a positive way· rules by which further development of Intranet is supposed to be based on· existing and needed Intranet-applications..

The purpose of this study is to analyze how the blog as an arena is being used by youngpeople to discuss and reflect on reading and literature, and what purpose the blog as an arenahas for them in the forming of identity. The method used in this study is qualitative contentanalysis. Prior research is divided into two themes: young people?s reading, and young peoplein group constellations in and outside of the blogosphere. The theoretical framework is madeup of Louise M.

Involving prospective users in a development process is important. This makes it easier to make a more usable product. This thesis is about developing an intranet targeting a school and focus is aimed towards intranet usability.The reader is given knowledge into how to design and implement an intranet using persona. Design and develop by using persona is difficult when there is a group with large variety of knowledge, age and technology interest, so as in this case. Persona although always helps during the development phase because of the strong links to the personas that are created, which gives developers a constant reminder of the end users of the system.The thesis describes how information is collected and processed.

In 1993 the internal market within the European Union was formed and ensured free movement of goods, services, capital and people. This led to the removal of trade barriers between members of the European Union. When opening up for competition, price differences between countries decreased and more jobs were created. A single currency was introduced by eleven countries in 1999 with the goal of reducing transaction costs, eliminating exchange rate risk and to further simplify trade. In 2001 Greece joined the collaboration and introduced the euro.

This is a report that goes through the design process of designing and illustrating a virtual clothing shop with the theme ?Stockholm Streetstyle? for the website ?Stardoll.com?. The purpose of the report is to examine how you can manage to get as close to designing a certain style or theme as possible, and also how the process of designing a clothing line can work, The illustrations were made in Adobe Illustrator and the final result of the project was an illustrated fashion collection with 21 parts, in the total of 6 outfits, and also a background for the shop. .

Studien syftade till att undersöka gruppmedlemmars upplevelse av ledarskapsstilen, effektiviteten samt utvecklingsstadium. Detta för att undersöka om det fanns ett samband mellan upplevd ledarskapstil, upplevelsen av gruppens utvecklingsstadium samt den upplevda effektiviteten. Det finns forskning kring ledarskap och effektivitet i förhållande till högpresterande yrken (Chi, Chung & Tsai, 2011; Guardia, 2007; Pillai & Williams, 2003) vilket gjorde att författarna till denna studie fann det intressant att studera om detta samband också förekom på en grupp kontorsanställda. Populationen bestod av kommunanställda på två kommuner, sammanlagt skickades enkäten ut till 104 individer. Deltagarna fick besvara enkäter som var sammansatta av Bass och Avolio (1995) för att besvara ledarskapsdelen samt Wheelan (2010) för att besvara utvecklingsstadium och effektivitet.

This thesis sets out to investigate three questions, first, how the Belarusian democratization process has progressed since the country?s independence in 1991 to the year of 2006. Second, how the relationship between Russia and Belarus has progressed during this time and third, if and how Russia has affected the democratization process. The study has been conducted through qualitative method, mainly using books and articles as sources of information. It has been found that the democratization process in Belarus has evolved in a negative direction ever since the presidential election of 1994.