The purpose of this essay is to investigate and analyze how widely and intensive genderequality issues are considered within Swedish companies. Qualitative interviews werearranged with personnel managers within each company, and complemented with aquestionnaire amongst the employees. The collected information was analysed on the basis ofgender theory, organization and change theory, theory of equal opportunities and historicalstatistics. The outcome of the analysis indicates that companies find gender equality of highinterest, and important to address within the daily work. However the analysis also shows thateven though the companies find gender equality important it is only adopted within few areas,and not across all departments.

New laws and recommendations within corporate governance during the last years have affected the way board of directors work. The board is said to have and fulfill three roles: a control role, a service role and a strategy role. These roles could be understood by three theoretical theories: the agency theory, the resource dependence theory and the stewardship theory. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether, and if so how, the board work differs between two small firms based on these roles, given that one of the firms is a publicly listed firm and the other is a privately owned firm. Using a qualitative case study as research method we find that the board work differs between the two companies when it comes to these roles.

This essay is about publishing on the Internet and aims to understand the differences between publishing information on the webpage Wikipedia (Swedish version) in contrast to other information pages on the Internet, for example blog, discussion pages, homepages etcetera. The study is based upon an article which described that 90% of the information publishers at Wikipedia belongs to a small elite of white, western, well educated men between the age of thirty to thirtythree. This study examines why people who does not belong to this heteronormativity publish information in other Internet places but not at Wikipedia.Wikipedia is an open source site, where anyone can publish and are even encouraged to do so and is often described as an utopian dream of the digital democracy, so why don´t people express themselves on Wikipedia? The method is based on two discussion groups, which are compared and analyzed. The study is based upon theoretical competence within feminist theory and conceptions such as intersectionality, heteronormativity and digital divide as well as theories about digital devices and social order.

The purpose of this master thesis is to use marketing theory on the library?s activities. The marketing theory used is the 4Ps; product, price, promotion and place, as it's presented by Philip Kotler. Because the library can be seen as a service oriented organization Christian Gronroos theory of marketing in the service industry also has been used. A case study of the public library in Broby was made to illustrate how the public libraries? activities can appear in the light of marketing theory.

This Master?s thesis concerns the information behaviour of pastors in nonconformist churches (especially new evangelical and Baptist church communions) in Sweden in their spiritual service to the local parish. The thesis also looks into how the information flow functions in the pastors? context and why the information need appears as it does. The theory used in this study is contextual analysis based on Buckland?s, Weber?s and Patrick Wilson?s theories on authority and power structures.

Syftet med föreliggande studie var att undersöka hur bra vi är på att bedöma ålder på omaskerade och maskerade ansikten. Syftet var även att undersöka om det fanns systematiska fel som är förknippade med åldersbedömning av maskerade ansikten.Totalt fick 60 försöksdeltagare, samtliga ungdomar, skatta åldern på 60 fotografier av 30 maskerade och 30 omaskerade män.  Fotografierna var indelade i två åldersgrupper, yngre och äldre, och samtliga stimulipersoner förekom i både den maskerade och den omaskerade varianten.Resultaten visade att försöksdeltagarna var bättre på att skatta åldern på omaskerade ansikten än på maskerade. Inga skillnader i systematiska fel fans mellan maskerade och omaskerade ansikten.Bilder av unga ansikten skattades med högre precision än bilder av äldre ansikten..

The purpose of my study is to question the model service marketing triangle and propose an alternative ways of looking at service marketing. The study is based on a deep, qualitative research. In the research of the material an abductive approach has been used. The primary information sources are interviews with project workers, which are being analyzed together with the theoretical background in part argumentations in the course of the thesis. In the last chapter they are unified.

Theory of mind är att kunna tillskriva andra människor mentala tillstånd som förklarar deras beteenden. Dessa mentala tillstånd kan röra sig om uppfattningar, intentioner eller känslor.    Theory of Mind Scale är en bedömningsskala utformad av Wellman och Liu (2004), som undersöker olika nivåer av theory of mind. Theory of Mind Scale är uppbyggd i skalsteg med stigande svårighetsgrad. Syftet med föreliggande studie var att översätta Theory of Mind Scale från engelska till svenska samt validera bedömningsskalan för barn mellan 3 och 4 år. Studien syftade även till att se om det fanns ett samband mellan dessa barns förmåga till theory of mind, impressiva grammatiska förmåga och impressiva ordförråd.      Valideringen i föreliggande studie visade att skalstegen i den amerikanska originalversionen av Theory of Mind Scale var applicerbara på barnen i föreliggande studie, med undantag för den sista uppgiften.

This master thesis was made to describe how sales organisations are constructed in Sweden within an industry with almost every sales situation as a new task selling, and where almost every selling is over one million Skr. One of these industries is the homebuilding industry with companies that manufacturers prefabricated houses and semi-fixed manufactured homes in Sweden. The pre-studies where made by using the Internet, intervjues and theory studies to construct a conceptual framework. The sales organisation was conceptualized to be able to measure: salesman, sales leader, improved skills, communication, reported information, compensation and company targets. This conceptualisation and operationalisation lead to a survey that captured organisations within the homebuilding industry in Sweden.

The aim of the following paper has been to test the democratic peace theory through applying it on the conflict between Russia and Georgia in 2008.  This to either falsify the theory or come to the conclusion that the states? democracy was not satisfactory in regards to the definition of liberal democracy. The questions asked are: Was Russia and Georgia democratic states? Is democracy a protection from war? And which aspects of the liberal democratic theory, if any, were not satisfactory in either of the countries? The results show that the democratic peace theory is valid in this case and that neither one of the states were democratic.

The purpose of this paper has been to follow how a decision made has developed within anorganization. We have intended to find underlying causes for the development in order to contribute to the understanding of the lifecycle of decisions.The decision we have chosen is Gröna Skolgårdar (Green School Yards) within the city of Västerås. This project has aimed to make the school yards in Västerås more green, more beautiful and more useful for teaching.We have used Grounded Theory Method as our foundation, complemented with decisionmaking theory.The work with this paper has led to the conclusion that Gröna Skolgårdar changed over time, and did not turn out as first intended. This has had several couses such as how resources wasdistributed, political changes, and different views of the project.We have learned that over time a decision can take unexpected paths, and we have contributed with an example of how this can happen..

Swedish listed property companies report their investment properties under the standard IAS 40 that gives the opportunity to value investment properties to either historical cost or to fair value model. One problem with the fair value model is that there is no observable market price since the real estate market is far from complete which means that the price of the asset is hard to determine because of the limited information.IAS 40 gives companies the opportunity to choose between internal or external valuation and this study aims to show how the property companies? values appeared between the years 2007-2011. From the result we will study if there could be a difference in the outcome depending on if the company chose either internal or external valuation.To investigate this we observe all Swedish real estate companies listed on OMX Nordic Stockholm and their financial reports during this period of time and complement this information by interviewing people working with these matters in the property companies. The methodology for the study is therefore partly quantitative and partly qualitative since we collect data both from financial reports and from interviews.

Service branding is a subject that has been excluded from the traditional branding theory. Our main purpose with this paper is to distinguish what characterizes service branding. To do this, we have looked in to both service marketing theory as well as branding theory. We have also looked at the existing theory concerning service branding. Six qualitative interviews have been performed to explain what characterizes service branding.

This thesis investigates how inventory management is practiced at a Swedish sawmill company, how practice differs from theory in this field and how the company could make more use of this theory. To do this we have performed a study on relevant literature and compared our findings with a field study on Moelven Valåsen AB. Our analysis shows that a large gap between theory and practice exists. We identify several reasons to this, including some sector specific problems when calculating cost rate for timber inventories. Suggestions on solutions to these problems and an example of how a cost rate can be estimated with relatively simple means are presented.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate which the main determinants of capital structure in Swedish listed firms are and to identify which incentives lies behind managers choice of capital structure determinants. Further, the study investigates whether the Post Keynesian theory and theories which incorporate behavioral aspects can be used to explain the capital structure decisions or if the traditional Neoclassical theory give an better explanation. We have used a qualitative method to analyze the determinants of capital structure and the managers incentives behind capital structure decision. We conducted a survey which was sent to 83 Chief Financial Managers and financial executives in Swedish firms listed on Mid Cap or Large Cap. The questionnaire was on-line which enabled for the respondents to quickly and convenient respond.