In 1989 the Cold War ended and in 1991 the Soviet Union ceased to exist, over night the ruling paradigm of International Relations was obsolete. What would happen now? Samuel Huntingtons answer was that in the future, cultural identity would be the most important factor behind international conflict. And that the threat of world war would come from clashes between civilizations instead of clashes between ideologies like during the cold war. Was he correct? This thesis is an attempt to find out if Huntingtons theory was right in its predictions of the world to come.

This thesis purpose is to determine an explanation of the efficiency in a labour-market related project. ?Enter? is an EU-financed project with a focus on long-term unemployed workers in the district Härlanda, Gothenburg. Starting in September 2004, Enter offers individually based coaching and job guidance to totally 110 young persons with problems entering the labour market. The goal is to provide these people courage to find either full or part time employment or to start study.

External forces have significant impact on organisations. This study analyzes the implications of one type of external forces in aid-focused NGOs through two qualitative case studies where it is investigated if Sida?s reporting requirements have the intended effects: learning and control using a theoretical framework where it is recognised that the requirements may also result in dysfunctional behaviour: decoupling and colonisation. The study shows that when the demands are the result of institutional pressure rather than an ambition to generate learning and control, the demands tend to be unrealistic and the NGOs therefore decouple the formal fulfilment of the demands from the actual activities. It is argued that a partnership, which incorporates trust and dialogue, is a prerequisite, not only for learning, but also control.

External forces have significant impact on organisations. This study analyzes the implications of one type of external forces in aid-focused NGOs through two qualitative case studies where it is investigated if Sida?s reporting requirements have the intended effects: learning and control using a theoretical framework where it is recognised that the requirements may also result in dysfunctional behaviour: decoupling and colonisation. The study shows that when the demands are the result of institutional pressure rather than an ambition to generate learning and control, the demands tend to be unrealistic and the NGOs therefore decouple the formal fulfilment of the demands from the actual activities. It is argued that a partnership, which incorporates trust and dialogue, is a prerequisite, not only for learning, but also control.

The society of today is dependent of secure transports and deliveries of electrical power. Interruptions in different activities because of fallen trees cost a great deal of money in form of reparations and claimed damages for transport companies and electrical suppliers. Fallen trees along some railway sections are a severe problem. For instance, to repair the damages of the storm of week 5 year 2002, costed 2 800 000 SEK for the line region of Hässleholm. Today, the Banverket railroad company has no norms in general for how close to the railway the forest is allowed to grow.

Background:Due to a more open climate in society for homosexual people several lesbian couples have given birth to children in their relations. Research has shown no differences between children in lesbian families and children in heterosexual families considering mental and social health. International research has also shown that lesbian parents often have bad experiences from meetings with healthcare providers.Theaim of this study was to describe lesbian child families/familyplannings and the lesbian parents experiences and expectations of the healthcare.Themethod for the study was qualitative interview with 9 lesbian parents. The data was analysed by the queer theory heteronormative concept.Theresults of the research was that lesbian families considered themselves as a nuclear family and at the same time distanced themselves from the nuclear family concept. The findings showed that lesbian couples are involved in a very long process when they try to become parents.

Many of us have grown up hearing or using words meant as insults or negative adjectives that were in fact names for social groups. Most of them have gone unquestioned in the mainstream consciousness, but the term Gay in the generally negative meaning has in the past years been given attention as offensive and homophobic, with debates emerging in response over whether or not this is true, particularly on the internet. It is the articles and forum threads from these debates that make out the empirical material for a qualitative study as I ask what these people?s thoughts are about this term and how it is perceived.After a qualitative coding and analysis of these texts, and interpretation of the results based on Erving Goffman?s theory of Phantom acceptance and stigma terms, Judith Butler?s theory of performativity, Ferdinand de Sassure?s theory of signifier and signified and how it connects to the community and Baudrillards theory of simulacra, this is the principal conclusion that I have drawn:For some of the people in this debate, the term Gay and its use is about homophobia and heterosexism, though mostly it?s not overt but a subconscious part of the continued dehumanization and stigmatization of homo- and bisexual people. This is a position I callThe socially focused skepticism.

In the paper three women with vulvar vestibulitis (long-term pain condition during sexual intercourse) were interviewed to find which conceptions the women experience exist about vestibulitis and how the women they self feel about the condition. Furthermore it was examined if and how the construction of vulvar vestibulitis affects the identity of the women. The method used was half-structured interviews with interview guide. Foucault's discourse analysis was used to analyse the interviews. Several constructions of vestibulitis were revealed from the interviews.

The purpose of this investigation is to see if there is any difference in how long pupils are staying in the activity of the music- and culture schools in the country. I have compared this with how large the teachers engagements are in average at each school, how many teachers each school holds and if one teacher is teaching within different areas, e.g. on different instruments. Thru mail contact with the headmasters at the music- and culture schools I have gathered data concerning the length of which the pupils are staying at the schools, the number of teachers at each school, the size of the teachers services and in how many different areas each teacher is teaching.It has been hard to get to any results in the investigation since the music- and culture schools don?t compile statistics on how long their pupils are staying at their schools.

The aim of this text is to study how sectional managers in the care of the elderly work so as to promote basic human values. Semi-structured interviews generated qualitative data from five sectional managers. A hermeneutical approach was applied for interpreting the interviews. The result shows that the respondents are conscious of the fact that it takes a lot of long term work before a change in current procedures will happen. Also, the common everyday principles of work and basic values will continue to be part of the care of the elderly.

This paper aims at assessing the relationship between female and male part-time employment and the business cycle in Sweden during the years 1987?2005 using quarterly time-series data and two alternative indicators of the business cycle. It further aims at determining whether the share of women working part-time has changed over time. Key results include that the relationship between the business cycle and female part-time employment is found to be significant and countercyclical. No significant effect is however found for men.

The dog (Canis lupus familiaris) is the first species ever domesticated. They can develop a close bond towards other dogs, almost like a relationship among siblings, which can be a high valuable resource for good relations and cooperation?s. Dominance in dogs is sometimes used to explain undesired behaviors and explained as a personality trait. Dominance though, is not a trait in a dog or a source for undesired behaviors, but can rather be explained as a relationship between individuals, were one of them receives more submissive signals from the other.

It is becoming increasingly important for companies to meet customer demands due to intense competition in today's global market, that forcing companies to improve their offerings and become better at managing their supply chain (Shen et al., 2006).  Long lead times can be reduced by using different methods and strategies shows various researches. Lead times occur in the planning, production, inventories and handling of products (Treville et al., 2003).The aim of the study is to develop a method to analyze the factors that affect the length of internal delivery lead time in manufacturing companies. The method also included suggestions for reducing delivery lead-time to internal customers.The main factors that influenced the length of the on delivery lead times has summarized to make a selection among the factors that can have the most significant impact. The selected elements will be used as a method to analyze how these areas affect a company?s length on internal delivery lead times.The study shows that the causes of the long delivery lead times was the location of the customer order point, uncertain forecasts, long material and production planning time, and long waits in the production and storage.The delivery lead time, according to this report?s suggested improvements reduced by centralizing CODP and makes more reliable forecasts.

BT is a global company within the lift truck industry. The main office is located in Mjölby. In Europe all sales and service activities are carried out by fully owned sales companies. I North America, BT RAYMOND develop and distribute trucks under a different brand. For the rest of the world BT works together with a distributor network, most of them are fully independent others BT has a small ownership in.

The aim of this master's thesis is to investigate and to explain the concept of folksonomy in the perspective of knowledge organisation. By creating a conceptual explanation and defining what folksonomy as a concept consists of, the intent is to establish a basis for evaluating folksonomy and to discuss what relevance folksonomy may have in the field of knowledge organisation. By applying a qualitative content analysis a review is performed on how folksonomy is perceived and discussed in a selection of articles written on the subject. Employing the theory of classification, subject indexing and bibliographic retrieval, folksonomy as a method for knowledge organisation is analysed. The practice of tagging in existing systems is also studied.