The common literature about strategic alliances offers a very fragmented picture. This thesis gives a theoretical overview on strategic alliances and builds the basis for the following examination of the different dimensions most strategic alliances have. The examination of the different dimensions is the crucial point of this thesis. Here the reader gets a detailed insight into the different dimensions and the implications they have on the design of a particular strategic alliance. This examination leads in the end to a more differentiated view on strategic alliances and the insight that no simple models exist, which give a sufficient basis for decision-making and understanding strategic alliances, today.

This thesis explores how verbal and nonverbal signs communicate attitudes and the rhetorical functions of such attitudinal signs. Attitudes are regarded as rationalized evaluations of attitudinal objects, and through their manifestation in signs an attitudinal gestalt is communicated. This gestalt is regarded as the audiences perception of the rhetors attitude. It is shown that the attitudinal signs function as ethical, logical and pathetic proofs and that they can create identification between the audience and the rhetor. The signs can have effects on the audiences perception of the attitudinal objects, their perception of the rhetor and influence the social dynamic of the discourse.

Interaction is an important part of children?s development. The school is a main arena in which children learn to interact, mainly through their playing. This study aims at investigating the role of interaction in a leisure school didactic setting. The aim of the study is to gain a better understanding for how the pupils develop though use of social interaction.

The aim of this study is to examine the experienced life situations of siblings growing up with a brother or a sister diagnosed with autism. The study is qualitative and therefore suitable to the purpose of studying the informants´ own experiences. Three women and one man, aged between 18-24 years, were interviewed through chatt programs on the Internet. The constituted perspective is phenomenological and the analysis were made by identifying meaning units in the text from the interviews. The theory used to interpret the result is systems theory and more specifically the structual family therapy by Salvador Minuchin.

This is a comparative literature study between two children?s bibles and the Swedish Bible. The study compares three stories from the Bible with the children?s bible versions of them. The purpose of the study is to see whether God is portrayed differently in the children?s bibles, and if so, in what way.

Background: The meeting industry has had undergone a extensive changes due to a number of factors. The globalization has meant that supply increases and congress organizers have more options to choose from. Development in communications, for instance internet, means that meetings can take place without a physical presence. Congress organizers as clients have also changes. Stockholm as position as a leading city to hold congresses in has also changed for the worse, in 2006 Stockholm dropped of the top-10 list.

This qualitative study examines if an interest in soccer can give the same meaningfulexperiences in a person's life as a religion would. Five soccer fans were interviewedregarding the meanings and impact of soccer in their lives. Two theories in the fields ofsport and religion were used to analyze the data: Antonovsky's sense of coherence (SOC)with its components meaningfulness, manageability and comprehensibility and Heelasand Woodheads "life-as" and "the subjective-life? derived from the concept "thesubjective turn". It was concluded that the interest in soccer affected the respondents?views of life.The respondents? personal identities were strongly associated with groupmembership, meaning that their interest in common with others was perceived to makeeveryday life meaningful and manageable.

Sense of coherence amongst employees with reduced work-capacity at Samhall.Sanela Jakupovic TrostekScientific essay in public health, 15 hp, Academy of Health and promoting Working Life, University of GävleThe aim of this study was to examine how employees at Samhall who has reduced work-capacity experienced their sense of coherence (SOC). The study includes gender, age and civil status in the analysis. The study includes 34 respondents which are divided as 20 men and 14 women. To measure SOC a quantitative method with a 29 standardized questionnaire was used.It was found that the employees felt, in general, low SOC, which means more difficult adaptation to their life situation. Noteworthy is that 70 % of the men in this study showed low SOC compared to 35,7 % of the women.One conclusion that can be drawn is that within Samhall, it showed that women had a higher SOC mean value than men which means they are more equipped to handle, understand and find meaning in their work life. Keywords: Antonovsky, Samhall, disability, work-capacity, sense of coherence (SOC).

Political realism is a general theory within political science focusing on the principle interest defined as power. The theory?s mutual standpoint is that states are inspired by power politics meaning that military and economic power or security stands in the centre while moral and ethics are placed in the periphery. This essay?s purpose is to analyze realism which helps to understand the development and change of the perspective.

AbstractGroup processes within the free play- in a socialpsychology perspective In our socialpsychology study we have demonstrated how children?s free play is by observing 2-5 years old children in preschool. We have also interviewed two preschool teachers. The major subject in this study is how children?s group processes expresses in their free play.

Today a lot of consumer and media interest lie in food production. Food is something everyone of us has a relationship to hence foodstuff and their making is a topic of current interest.Cattle?s rearing is one of many factors that have begun to play a bigger role when consumersare selecting beef from the shops? meat counters. This may well be a result of productdiversification and greater investments towards marketing. Many cattle rearers considerseveral grounds for added values being linked to their products and consumers are becomingmore aware of these primary sector related added values.

This thesis aims to investigate and discuss the possibility for women in the early Christian church to make music, which in the ancient Roman society was something complicated. Afemale musician was looked upon as decadent and dissolute. This idea, in combination with the music ideals of the church influenced by the Neoplatonic movement, and the Pauline statement (1 Cor. 14:34-36), cast women to be completely prohibited in participating even in the psalmody during the service. My purpose is to discuss how this was looked upon in different Christian regions, using the church fathers as the main material source, since this has not previously been well documented or studied..

Religious phenomena, such as prayer, have more or less always interested and engaged people, but most likely for different purposes. Since the early 20th century, starting notably with Edmund Husserl and especially Martin Heidegger, phenomenologists have taken an interest in understanding and expounding the meaning of religious phenomena. The attention of such a discourse have not ceased but is rather current, and also of importance seeing that religious themes, such as prayer, still occupy a great extent of human life and practice.Phenomenology of religion is not a science of religion: the former approaches religion in terms of its meaningfulness, whereas the latter as an object of inquiry and in the same manner as an economist approaches economical indicators in order to understand and explain how the whole economy functions. In other words, phenomenology of religion expounds religion, as it were, from within, while science of religion does it from without or externally.When approaching prayer phenomenologically, it shows itself to be a process or structure through which the one praying empty himself in order to be able to receive the valuable presence of the other. The value that is received from the other will also be reflected by the one praying and in that sense effect his surroundings and fellow humans..

The aim of the study was to understand limitations and possibilities to the discretion of managers in order to fulfill wishes of users. The study is based on six interviews, three with managers and three with staff in common homes for mentally disabled people. The study took place in a municipality in Sweden in the spring of 2010. We used an interview guide with specific themes and questions. The theoretical framework was based on organizational theories as well as theories about management and discretion.

The aim of this qualitative study was to give an deeper understanding of how employees in the engineering industry experienced health education and how they understood and gave meaning to the terms health and health education. The study was based on interviews with eight men and women who participated in a health education project which had been held on their workplace. When the study took place the interviewees were in the age between 28 and 58 years. The results indicate that the employees understood health as a combination of both physical and psychological factors. The positive aspects described by the interviewees based on their experiences from the project were increase physical activities and that the project had helped them to get a better diet.