The purpose of this paper was to investigate how some teachers interpret, teach and assess listening strategies. Our investigation was based on interviews and a questionnaire answered by some year 9 English teachers. Furthermore, the aim was to study whether awareness and teaching of listening strategies are important for teachers in their everyday practice. The results indicate that the teachers interpret listening strategies as purposes for listening, such as listening for detail or the whole. The teachers do not explicitly teach listening strategies, and they do not assess them.

The purpose of this paper is to compare two different portfolio strategies consisting of insider transactions and stock recommendations and examine whether they posses any information advantage.  The portfolios are balanced once every three-, six- and twelve- months in the period of 2007-2009. Our results show a pattern for these investment strategies. The portfolio consisting of insider transactions generates a positive return in equity in a negative market environment and the opposite reaction in a positive environment. The result for the portfolio consisting of stock recommendations show a positive return of equity in positive environment and the opposite effect in negative environment. The pattern that has been observed can be classified as an anomaly.

It generally takes 10 to 12 years for a new drug to hit the market. The pharmaceutical industry invests huge sums in these early stages of research and development. In spite of the rapidly rising research and development expenditures fewer and fewer blockbuster drugs are being developed. Longer lead times and aggressive generic post-patent competition have narrowed the timeframe for the pharmaceutical companies to profit on their investments.In the face of these threats the pharmaceutical industry has developed a battery of strategies to prolong market exclusivity and to maximize return on investment. These emerging strategies are commonly known as Life cycle management (LCM), which actually is more of a concept than a method.

Background: The majority of nurses experience work relatedstress, which can lead to a negative impact on patient care. Thestress can be handled by coping strategies. Aim: To illuminatecoping strategies among nurses experiencing work relatedstress. Method: The study has been accomplished as aliterature study, with a systematic review of scientific articles.Findings: Following coping strategies appeared: problemsolving, long-term strategies, passive strategies, leisurestrategies, social support and mental strategies. Conclusion:Awareness of coping strategies for dealing with work relatedstress, can lead to improvement in patient care..

Hedge funds? importance within the financial system has during the most recent years increased dramatically. These special funds are unique instruments that differ from traditional mutual funds in a variety of ways, however especially in how they expect returns. Due to the fact that hedge funds are able to hold short positions they possess the possibility to become market neutral investment vehicles.Because of this possibility to sustain positions neutral to market fluctuations, the concept of absolute returns became a unique selling point for hedge fund managers and promises of stable returns unchallenged by market conditions was assured. This research paper aims to examine the theory of absolute returns in hedge funds by examining hedge funds from the Nordic region during the last years of economic turmoil that has occurred by  analyzing the results from their strategies, partially by quantitative measurements as well as qualitative.  The results show that none of hedge fund strategies managed to deliver absolute returns over the chosen period..

This paper focuses on traditional clothing enterprise IT strategies. The purpose was to investigate the correlation between traditional clothing companies IT strategies and their brand. In a market where the competition is high it has become more important that the company targets a customer segment. To reach their targeted customers the company builds their brand with different corporate strategies. This segmentation is necessary because of the high exposure to competition, and a well-established brand could be a prerequisite for profitability.  In today?s market, IT has a major impact on the clothing business.

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to give a contribution to the studies of what strategies those are of importance for challengers in consumer technological markets aiming for the market leader position. To be able to investigate this phenomenon we have chosen to study Microsoft?s second position in the video game console industry. In addition, we want to illuminate Microsoft?s competitive advantages, how Microsoft can take advantage from Sony?s setbacks and what strategies those are of importance for Microsoft in the battle of becoming the market leader.

The competition has increased with the establishment of the new banks and the credit institutes taking on the market, the big banks are no longer alone on the market.In speed with the increased range, have also the marketing and the recruit of new bank customers become more driven.Bank customers with lacks in the Swedish language, is a segment with potential which doesn?t get used by the banks and in turn of that the bank customers doesn?t get their needs satisfied.The purpose with this survey was to analyze if the four largest banks, Föreningssparbanken, Handelsbanken, Nordea and SEB had prepared strategies that were directed to bank customers with lacks in the Swedish language. In those cases the banks had strategies, respective measures were presented.Furthermore the bank customers with lacks in the Swedish language were studied if they experienced that the banks were using measures to satisfy their language needs in contact with the banks and presented the benefit of them.The information about the banks strategies was assembled through interviews with persons from each bank. The bank customers experience was assembled through a questionnaire survey.The result showed that the banks hade different strategies for reaching out to these customers, it was from showing understanding to multicultural offices. Half of the customers appreciated that the banks pressured themselves for them by being patient, explained the services and in some cases had staff that could several language.

This research paper has the aim of examining Swedish and Australian teachers? knowledge base and use of learning strategies in their language classes. After conducting qualitative interviews, the interviewees? answers are tabled to corresponding descriptions of how strategies are communicated in current curricula of the two countries. The answers confirm that teachers? understanding of learning strategies partly agree with previous research on strategies.

The aim of this study is to explore if and how library managers market their competence in communication with local politicians. It is also our aim to find a definition of the competence of librarians. The report identifies and describes problems and possibilitieswith marketing of competence to politicians on the basis of one Swedish municipality's library managers. In order to fulfil this aim we have used a literature study on marketing, competence, the political process and the librarian profession. We have alsocarried out an empirical study where we interviewed ten library managers in onemunicipality, seven politicians in the same municipality and ten representatives for central professional organisations mainly in Sweden.The results are that most library managers don't market their competence because they don?t believe in marketing competence.

Strategies for the board game Hive was implemented and evaluated in this project. The report covers the rules as well as the system that was implemented in order to build strategies. The strategies are evaluated based on how they perform against each other. Two search algorithms were implemented: Minmax and Alpha-Beta Pruning. Alpha-Beta with depth 4 had the best performance against other strategies as well as in individual tests..

We acknowledge the lack of empirical studies of the performance of analyst target prices in the Swedish stock market by examining the profitability of target prices for stocks publicly traded on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. We use consensus target prices issued between 2006-2010 and create two different strategies to observe the abnormal returns generated during this period. Going long in the top decile stocks with the best target prices and going short in the bottom decile stocks with the worst target prices generates a statistically significant abnormal buy-and-hold return of 8.9%. An active strategy with daily portfolio rebalancing and a timely response to target price changes generates a less significant monthly alpha of 1.4% against CAPM. The results show to be robust against the size effect discovered by Fama and French.

The furniture retail industry in Sweden has gone trough large changes during the last decades. Today the industry is tough and in the maturity stage where few new companies enter, especially if they do not have a unique offer. The furniture companies have become larger and fewer, the changes have lead to difficulties for smaller and medium sized companies to grow and be profitable.Our purpose is to analyse, evaluate and compare three smaller companies in Stockholm with the intention to find what kind of marketing strategies they are using to survive on the Swedish market. First we interviewed the three companies to see what they do to survive on the market, then we asked 100 persons to fill in a questionnaire to see if they had the same opinion as the companies described.With help from theories we prepared questions which laid the foundation to the empirical part of the essay.The result from this study shows that the three companies differ from each other when it comes to using relationship marketing and placing the customer in the centre. All of them are aware of the importance of doing so, but because of different limits and possibilities they can not fully adjust everything to the customer.

During the past decade environmental challenges have been intensified and given increased attention. This implies that businesses in all sectors strategically need to manage these challenges. The service sector is often considered as a sector with a low environmental impact if the direct environmental aspects are assessed. Still, it has been argued that the environmental impact that the sector gives rise to can create severe indirect environmental impacts. The products and services that are produced by this sector have a relatively limited use of physical resources which may make the environmental impact challenging to visualize. Banks belong to the service sector and it is partly banks that make the development of societies possible.

Management consulting firms are dependent on attracting and recruiting new talents since the human capital has a vital role in these types of organizations. In the following years a new generation, Generation Y, will to a large extent enter the labour market. According to several studies this generation has different characteristics than older generations.This thesis examines management consulting firms? views of Generation Y and which strategies they use to attract and retain the generation. The fact that the subjects are unexplored led the authors to conduct a qualitative study of seven management consulting firms through in-depth interviews.