In this thesis, the introduction of smoke-free restaurants and bars in several EU Member States in a policy convergence perspective is studied. The thesis sets out to explain whether policy convergence has occurred and the possible explanations connected with it. It is stated that 15 out of 25 EU Member States had introduced or decided to introduce smoke-free restaurants and bars up to April, 2006. Out of all the countries in the world, 35, including the EU Member States, had introduced or decided to introduce smoke-free restaurants and bars. The result is analysed by using policy convergence theory and by putting the case in a global environment where tobacco control has become an ever more central theme for public health policy.The EU Member States are different in several ways considered to be important factors for policy convergence, such as cultural, institutional and socio-economic similarities, and the conclusion is made that EU membership has been a most crucial factor for the rapidity of the policy diffusion.

This study analyzes Hungary's democratic backsliding under Viktor Orb?ns term of office between 2010 and 2025. The research questions addressed in this study are ?Which central institutional reforms can be identified as significant for Hungary?s democratic backsliding under Viktor Orb?n?s rule from 2010 to 2025?? and ?In what ways have these reforms contributed to a process of democratic backsliding?? The study is based on a qualitative case method. To be able to conduct this study, secondary sources such as academic literature and reports from international organizations have been analyzed in detail.

The purpose with our thesis is to understand and explain the advantages and disadvantages there is with the self scanning system. The advantages and disadvantages we will highlight from three different angels; the store management perspective, the staff perspective and the customer perspective. These three perspectives will together form an overall perspective over the advantages and disadvantages as the self scanning system has contributed with. Finally we will highlight the differences and resemblances we have found between the perspectives.Through a qualitative approach we have gathered data to our thesis. Furthermore we have based our theory chapter and our empirical chapter on the base of Grounded Theory.

This study investigates whether teachers working with children ages 6 ? 9 are including an LGBTQ perspective in their teaching methods. The purpose is to critically examine sexuality and gender as part of the teaching methods in Swedish schools; whether teachers are working with LGBTQ questions in their classes, and if so, how. The following research questions are answered: Are the teachers incorporating an LGBTQ perspective in their classes, and if so, in what sense?Are LGBTQ questions relevant and of interest in the education?Do teachers feel like they have gained the right tools in their pedagogical education and/or in their workplace to work with LGBTQ questions in their class room? And if so, in what way? The method used is qualitative research in the form of interviews and observations.

It is said that concepts of organizational management can pave the way to success. This is not accurate and it is something that will be shown in the following study. Its most prominent conclusion is that the valuation governance to some extent has an impact on the formal structures, but that it had no further effects on the employee?s way of work. The purpose of this study was to investigate how the valuation governance is applied in Medley AB and the meaning of it.

This Bachelor Thesis is entitled "WTO-spelarena för utvecklingsländer? En studie om avgörande faktorer för utvecklingsländers förmåga att implementera sina regimpreferenser". Through our empirical results in conjunction with realist theories, this Bachelor thesis attempts to answer the questions: (1) How does the decline in American power, the nature of existing institutional structure and Third World unity, influence the ability of developing countries to secure its preferred regimes? (2) What function do informal meetings in the WTO have? (3) How does access to informal meetings influence the ability of developing countries to secure its preferred regimes? The paper makes use of case studies from the Ministerial meetings in the Doha development round.The conclusion is that access to these meetings is an important variable to explain the extent to which the Third World can be able to secure its preferred regimes. The degree to which developing countries can secure their preferred regimes is therefore a function of four variables: the nature of existing institutional structures; Third World unity, the attitude and power of the United States and foremost access to informal meetings..

This thesis aims at exploring a national collaborative gateway-service, PictureAustralia, hosted at the National Library of Australia. This will be done by means of investigating some underlying principles for descriptive standards and conventions as of the library discourse which is the objective of bibliographic control and access. The reason to do this is to bring some main features of these principles into the context of a cross-institutional cooperation between libraries, galleries/museums and archives in a picture database service. The attention will lay on the objectives of what functions the system is designed to perform to give access, as defined by Elaine Svenonius in the Intellectual Foundations of Information Organization 2000, and how these objectives will affect this particular database-service collocating performance, which is a system- and logical approach. Though, this study will be done in an explorative and qualitative way, by a case-study, which is to examine some sample metadata records emanated from different institutions in this project.

In this paper discourse analysis on the Ethiopian National Action Program (NAP) to combat desertification is made. The aim is to describe how the overall image/picture of desertification, its causes, and effects and of possible solutions are presented in the NAP. The result of this analysis shows that the main cause of desertification is human activities mainly due to the poorly developed socio-economic situation in the dryland areas. It is indicated that an excessive dependency of the rural population on the natural resources, particularly land, is the major cause of land degradation and this deterioration of land is said to have been caused by the rapid population growth, overgrazing, forest clearing as well as past government and institutional failures. In addition it is indicated that the effect of desertification usually involves ecological changes that sap land of its ability to sustain agriculture and human habitation, therefore the most serious threat to human welfare.

Who is integrating school-holiday home? It is for the teachers, recreational pedagogue or the students? How do the students think and act to keep the different activities apart?My purpose was to study how children sort the day between school and recreational home interactions. The issues were: How do they distinguish between the different activities during the day?  See the students their stay after school program as part of the school day? Who decides whether you have to go to school, and whether you have to go to after school program? And do you really have to?I have interviewed six students at an elementary school, based from a phenomenographic perspective, I've used myself of issues that students have been able to respond from a school perspective and after-school perspective. My interview questions have been comparative in nature, where the same question have given different answers depending on whether the question focused on school or the afterschool program.

The purpose of this study was to examine social workers working process in social assistance with focus on the child´s perspective. We were interested in learning about the existence of variations in approach and attitude between two municipalities. Question to be answered about what methods and approaches used by social workers to include the child´s perspective in the process of social assistance. Another question to be answered about what the manner in which social workers took into account the child´s perspective when the families apply for social assistance in relation to the operations and requirement. To fulfill the purpose, qualitative methods were used.

This paper presents an investigation into the relationship between inmates and staff in a high security prison in Sweden. The primary objectives are to investigate this relationship from an inmate perspective and to identify key factors that may promote or hinder rehabilitative interaction with staff. Empirical data utilized in this study consist of semi-structured interviews carried out by the authors with nine inmates currently in custody of the treatment facility within the prison and six inmates housed within the study facility. This data collection method is an extension of grounded theory and four key themes were generated from the data analysis. The first of these examines the effect of rule enforcement on prison atmosphere and subsequent staff/inmate relations.

Many studies have shown that unethical acting can affect the share price of the company negatively. However, this is not always the case. The aim of this thesis is therefore to examine what it is that can cause the share price to be affected negatively by unethical acting exposed in media. This qualitative study is primarily based on interviews with institutional investors, but also with economic journalists and investor relations managers. Our conclusion is that there are three main reasons why the share price can be affected by unethical acting, namely economic consequences, the management's behaviour and psychological factors.

The purpose of this essay has been to seek understanding of how young people in high school and adult education experience the use of educational media tools in teaching. Examples of questions submitted material has been: What are the positive and negative experiences of ICT in the classroom?The essay is of a qualitative nature, in which five students were interviewed about their experiences of ICT in the school environment. The result is analyzed from a sociocultural perspective and from an inward-student perspective.The results showed that students felt that it was difficult to absorb many of the ICT facilities as sources of knowledge in the school environment. Due to lack of quality in teaching material and difficulties of the pupils to sort out the important information of the injected..

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to investigate potential associations between usage of the cash flow statement report and time perspective in which companies? acts and set goals. Method: Our approach is quantitative, using empirical data summarized in a statistical procedure. The result is thereafter analysed through the developed analysis model from which conclusion is drawn. Results: We have in the investigation stated that the usage of the cash flow statement report varies depending on the time perspective in which companies? acts.

The aim of the study is to examine how the executive leadership and the decision-making process are shaped by the leadership environment in a transition democracy as Venezuela. The questions I intend to answer are: What kind of leadership environment surrounds the leadership and what kind of consequences does it have on the leadership and the decision-making process in Venezuela? To answer my questions I will use the literature: Political Leadership in Liberal Democracies (Elgie, Robert 1995, London: Macmillian), together with the method ?The cultural determinist school of history? by Tomas Spencer, later reproduced by Kellerman. The leadership environment provides unique opportunities for a leader to gain control over the decision-making process. Institutional structures and the needs of the society are major parts in determining how the political leadership is exercised.