This is a thesis about the American empire. I also focus my work to see if this American empire is declining. The two main questions I ask and want to answer in this thesis are: is America an empire and is it in decline?I first conclude that America has been an empire ever since the end of the Second World War. The sheer military and economic power of the American empire matches and exceeds the ones before them.

The aim of this study was to understand how social workers deal with honour-related violence, with special focus on the processing from sheltered housing. Our qualitative interviews with social workers that work with this kind of problems show that there are both obstacles and opportunities in the processing from sheltered housing. On the negative side are the loneliness, the shame and the guilt that the girls may experience when they need to leave their families. The social services can both be an obstacles and an opportunity. When the girls need to create a new life in a new city they have a lot of opportunities and in the same time it is hard to get to know new friends when you don´t know the city or have much money.

The purpose of this thesis was to illustrate the connection between personal networks and entrepreneurial business in the music industry. It also aims to examine how and why entrepreneurs in the music industry use personal networks in their entrepreneurial business activities. In order to explore the extent to which entrepreneurs in the music industry obtain support through personal networks, a case study was conducted based on interviews with entrepreneurs in various areas of the music industry. The study has shown that entrepreneurs in the music industry clearly see distinct advantages through the use of their personal networks, especially in terms of an enhanced supply of resources and through an increased amount of business opportunities. Personal networks have also shown to constitute a considerable amount of moral support for the entrepreneurs in the development process of the entrepreneurial business.

Is it possible, and suitable, to use multimedia in classic literature studies at Swedish upper secondary school? What alternatives are there?  Is there any foundation in the curriculum for an expanded conception of text as in multimedia?  Will the conception literacy support use of multimedia in classic literature studies, and in what ways? How do we generally look upon the definition text, is it only printed letters, or something more? To get an answer to the questions we decided to examine a number of theories, Gardner?s theory about the different intelligences, the conception literacy and the expanded text concept. In these three theories we took our starting-point for the following work. The main subjects became two interactive sights on Internet and one CD-ROM, all containing classic literature. Our previous knowledge in this subject field was very meager.  This work has given us an opportunity to discover some of the multimedia that is available, and the result we have come to is that multimedia absolutely belongs in studies of classic literature as well as in other subjects.

The purpose of this study is to contribute with new knowledge of  how Talent Management can be seen as a an opportunity or threat for organizational development, concerning competence, on the basis of HR. The research questions asked are: Out of wich aspects can Talent Management be seen as an opportunity or threat on the basis of HR-employees? How can it affect the work of HR? To answer these questions qualitative interviews with five employees within HR from four different companies has been executed. The essay has been investigated on the basis of an explorative aim and with a qualitative method. The empirical results has indicated common themes such as director support, HRs view of Talent Management, HRs development and shifts of generations.

Swedish Armed Forces are according to their development planning process taking actions to establish a new joint unit (SWEWOSE), with electronic warfare capability. SWEWOSÉ S main task will be designated to produce electronic warfare libraries for electronic warfare systems within the armed forces. The unit shall have capability to support with libraries in any state of conflict situation even if the supported unit with library needs conducting operations abroad.This essay examines the requirements that justify the establishment of a new unit in times when the armed forces conducting reorganizations and cutbacks in both economy and personnel.The possibilities to buy complete system solutions from an external supplier are examined. But also what kind of library support model that is to prefer according to the demands that the Swedish Armed Forces desired, in terms of capability in platform protection and battle space awareness.The results show that the demands that the Swedish Armed Forces has decided, best will be ful-filled and justified by a national electronic warfare unit, with library production as a main task..

GNT Group is a Nordic/Baltic wholesaler that distributes products in the IT, entertainment and home electronics sector. GNT is facing problems with inaccurate inventory levels which can lead to unnecessarily high inventory carrying costs or lost sales. Currently the decisions about when and how many to order are made somewhat arbitrarily by the responsible personnel. Their decisions are based only on some brief sales history and on experience. GNT wants to develop its ERP system to be able to support the purchaser in these and other related decisions.

The educational underachievement of children in foster care has been known for a long time. This study aimed to compile and analyze the current knowledge about interventions, intended to improve foster children?s school achievements. The method used was a systematically undertaken narrative review. Despite a comprehensive searching strategy, only ten relevant studies were found, indicating that little has been done to improve the educational outcomes for children in public care.

Antalet kvinnor som drabbas av bröstcancer har ökat sedan 60-talet och sjukdomen är i dag den vanligaste cancerformen bland svenska kvinnor. Syftet med litteraturöversikten var att beskriva vilket stöd drabbade kvinnor behöver under början av sin sjukdomstid. Studien är baserad på tio kvalitativa artiklar publicerade mellan åren 1997-2012. Resultatet delades in i fyra kategorier; emotionellt stöd, informativt stöd, praktiskt stöd och stöd från kvinnor med liknande erfarenheter. I resultatet framkom att behovet av stöd hos kvinnorna var omfattande under början av sjukdomstiden och kvinnorna önskade stöd både från anhöriga, vänner och sjukvårdspersonal.

Introduction:Violence towards women is an extensive and important problem in the society. Confronting women who are assulted by their male partner is a demanding task for the nurses.The aim of the study:The aim of this empirical study was to illustrate the experiences of nurses in the meeting with women exposed to violence by their male partner.Method:This is a qualitative interview study including nine female nurses. The material recieved from the interviews was analysed with help of content analysis. Categories were formed named Comunication, feelings, Ability to recognize the women, Lack of time, Need of support and further education. An application to the ethical council at the University of Kristianstad were remitted and approved.

The purpose of this essay was to look into whether any attention is paid to the biological children in foster families when the investigation about foster home is made. I did some qualitative interviews with six foster home-investigators, working in five different municipalities. Some of the main questions have been: Do the investigator meet the biological children during an investigation? Are the children´s opinions taken into consideration? Is the suitability of a foster home judged even from the biological children´s perspective?It was shown that it could happen that a foster home was not approved, if it for some reasons should be a negative experience for the biological children, if a foster child would be placed in their home. All the six persons in my interviews thought that it is important to take the biological children´s opinions into consideration, and that the family is not suitable to be a foster home if not all of the family members have a positive attitude.

Uppsatsens huvudsyfte är att undersöka om det finns en gemensam kultur bland företagarna på ett kontorshotell. Studien har ett socialpsykologiskt perspektiv där interaktionen mellan de olika aktörerna antas vara den viktigaste komponenten i uppkomsten av en kultur. De frågeställningar som studien avser att besvara handlar om interaktionen mellan aktörerna och på vilka olika sätt kulturen uttrycks. Den teoretiska referensramen utgörs framförallt av teorier kring organisationskultur. I första hand har Scheins tre kulturnivåer och Bangs fyra former av kulturuttryck legat till grund för kartläggningen av kulturens uttryckssätt.

The research of today shows that natural environments are importantfor children's physical and mental development. It alsoshows that children often opt out of the traditional equipmentplaygrounds have to offer. By breaking the boundary betweenthe playground and park, is it possible to create a new spacethat will encourage rather than demand play? Through gatheringinformation and talking to landscape architects, designers,and children, I realized that today's parks already have environmentsand objects that could be used for playing. But whatthey need is something that makes the environment even moreinviting for children to play.

In the latest years the Swedish armed forces have gone from an armed force with conscripts to voluntary men and women. When the basic training is voluntarily may the question be if the new men and women have the same approach to Desirable competences and pedagogy that is used by their officers during their training. Desirable competences are a part of the model transformational leadership and are divided into task related competence, management competence, social competence and capacitate to cope with stress.To deal with this problem I have used questionnaires from conscripts and a new questionnaire made on voluntary recruits.I have compared the results in a case study method and it shows a positive progress from the recruits view how the officers use examples from the transformational leadership. The study shows that recruits want officers to make demands, motivate and inspire them. The recruits want to know the goal with the education and they want the officers to make demands on them..

Humanitarian intervention is a concept that generates several problems in our time. The idea of humanitarian intervention concerns the modern norms of sovereignty and noninterventional principals. It also concerns the conventional norm, which declares that states are not allowed to interfere in other states? internal affairs. The use of military force to implement humanitarian intervention is restricted according to international law.