Our common future involves many important challenges. People and nature need to improve the relationship in order to reach an ecologically sustainable development. In a society where consumption of products steadily increases, the consumer awareness about social and environmental issues connected to the products becomes an importent factor. More and more companies choose to work more actively with these issues and more and more products get labelled by some of the eco labelling organisations. From the cradle to the gate means that a study has been done on a part of a products life cycle.

The purpose of this Master's thesis is to investigate how the students at Chalmers University of Technology at Lindholmen in Gothenburg use libraries in their schoolwork. The empirical material consists of the answers of questionnaires that were handed out to two classes of students, on the second year of their education. To illustrate the topic there are a theoretical frame and examples of earlier studies. The theoretical frame is Limbergs texts that deal with for example information seeking and how important it is in all education. The earlier studies are about student's different ways of using libraries.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the importance of a school library for youths, age 14-16, from their perspective. We intend to study how they use and experience the school library both for educational- and leisure related purposes. We also intend to inquire their possibility to influence their school library. The literature that has been used consists of material from research concerning youth culture and school library.

With the purpose of finding the motives behind use, production and reuse of Open Educational Resources (OER), the writer has conducted a qualitative survey. The three main questions in this two years Master?s thesis are:? Why do people use others? unmodified OER?? Why do people produce OER?? Why do people alter and reuse OER?The theoretic framework is built around Manuel Castells? network society, with its social and efficiency seeking dimension, along with the Knowledge commons. Some pedagogy is included as well.A web survey was distributed to 796 users of the Connexions OER repository. 95 responses were received.

Recent studies show that manufacturing companies to a larger extent use historical cost accounting in their internal accounts, at the expense of calculated costs. The explanation behind this is claimed to be that firms are subject to careful scrutiny by the stock market. Consequently, top management stresses the need of evaluating all parts of the firm from external accounting. However, lower management levels express a general concern that the incentive to invest in machines will decrease. This Master thesis aims to investigate whether or not there is an objective reason behind this concern.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to examine whether the role of a public library in a rural community is different from that of a town library. To answer this, a case studie of two public libraries has been made. Interviews, collection of documents and observations were carried out on location in one public library located in a rural area, and one public library, situated in a town. A modified version of an analysis model, originally developed by Andersson and Skot-Hansen, was used to analyse the data.

Sweden has had statutory audit, which also includes a management audit, for all companies since 1988. A legislative proposal now suggests that the statutory audit shall be abolished for all small and medium sized companies starting on July 1, 2010. The aim for this Master?s thesis is therefore to study how the service of auditing will be affected by the legislative proposal. To answer the research question the authors have taken on a qualitative approach and fifteen interviews with representatives for different Swedish auditing firms have been completed.

During the late twentieth century, political and societal changes gave rise to an increased interest in performance evaluation in public organizations. This development also affected libraries in the public sector. The main concern for this Master thesis is performance measurement in libraries. In this study two different types of libraries are investigated, one public and the other academic. My aim is to find out if and how performance measurement appears in the libraries annual activity reports.

Purpose: The purpose of this Master thesis is to investigate how a pricing capability can be developed on a general as well as on a practical level in an industrial company working on the international business-to-business market. Methodology: We have conducted a case study of the work on pricing at Triton. After mapping the events we have evaluated the results. We have conducted interviews with people with information concerning Tritons work in the Pricing area. Theoretical perspectives: The theory includes organization and structure, pricing for the market with emphasis on transactions and theories on how to understand the customer.

This Master?s thesis aims to study how the concept ?youth? is understood and used in papers and publications about public libraries, written at The Swedish School of Library and Information Science from 1972 to 2002. It does this by answering three questions: Firstly, how is the concept ?youth? formulated in papers and publications at SSLIS from 1972 - 2002? Secondly, has the concept ?youth? changed in the analysed texts during the chosen time and, if that is the case, what constitutes this change? And, finally, what types of consequences for the understanding of the users can this have for the writers and readers of these texts? Discourse analysis is used to analyze how this concept is constituted, transformed and understood. Among the things studied in the discourse analysis is the interdiscursivity and intertextuality of the texts, as well as the meaning of the word, the wordings and modality of the analysed texts.

Course: Master's Thesis in Business AdministrationPurpose: The purpose with this paper is to give an insight, and to compare, the project management of two IT-projects ? one which product was implemented and put into use, and one, which was implemented but no longer exists on the market. Furthermore also examine the critical success factors that influence the success respectively the failure of the IT-projects. Method: To attain the purpose with our study we have chosen a qualitative method. We have carried out interviews with two of the project managers of the IT-project of the two large companies.Result: A couple of problems occurred within the IT-projects of the large companies.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to describe and analyse the origin and development of the municipal library of Västervik. There have been four previous libraries and our examination starts in 1859 with the foundation of a parish library. The other forerunners were a working-class movement library and two libraries in the International Orders of Good Templars. Before the merger of the libraries there were discussions in the municipal council, among the working-class movement and in the IOGT.

Due to an increasing global market with a growing competition and an escalating technologydevelopment the demands on companies today are increasing. To maximise the output fromtheir recourses they need to be more efficient. The research on product development and how toensure the efficiencies in the process are extensive and companies could by adapting andimplementing the result of this research use its benefits.This Master thesis is made for Knightec AB with the aims that through interviews anddiscussions with three companies investigate, collate, justify and give proposals for productdevelopment process together with supporting methods and procedures for technical projectmanagement. Besides Knightec AB three other companies located in Sweden has beenparticipating in this study. Through semi structured interviews and discussions in focus groupsinformation from the three involved companies were obtained.

How effective is consumer power? Can consumers regulate corporate behavior?And if so is the case, could the mechanisms where consumers regulate corporatebehavior have any democratic value to contribute with? These are the questionsthat this Master's thesis comprehends with. The purpose of this writing is toconstruct a theory of consumer power that is compatible with democratic theory,this in order to contribute to the ongoing discussion within the discipline ofpolitical science about the third democratic transformation. A discussion that hasbeen actualized due to the democratic deficit created by the growing corporatepower and the shift of power from state to private enterprises. Besides showingfor a parallel between the democratic mechanisms that exists in the relationbetween citizens and state on the one hand, and the consumers and corporationson the other hand, this paper argues that consumers do have a great potential inregulating corporate behavior towards a higher social responsibility andawareness.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the factors of children?s voluntarily reading in their spare time. We also want to know if the children choose non-fiction books for their voluntarily reading. The method as well as the empirical basis of this study is qualitative, with interviews of twenty-eight children in ages between 9 and 12 years. We conducted nine interviews with 3?4 children in each group.