Given a considerable increase in knowledge-based companies, the interest for measuring and valuing intangible assets, particularly human capital, has increased accordingly. Human capital has climbed the management research agenda as human assets make substantial contribution to the value creation in knowledge-based companies. Neither internal nor external financial statements reflect the value of an organization?s human assets. Against this backdrop, we find it interesting to explore how counting and controlling for human capital is devised.

Given a considerable increase in knowledge-based companies, the interest for measuring and valuing intangible assets, particularly human capital, has increased accordingly. Human capital has climbed the management research agenda as human assets make substantial contribution to the value creation in knowledge-based companies. Neither internal nor external financial statements reflect the value of an organization?s human assets. Against this backdrop, we find it interesting to explore how counting and controlling for human capital is devised.

As today, companies are facing an increasing competition; markets are expanding while customers are getting more informed and fastidious toward companies and their products. For this reason it is crucial for enterprises to create loyal customers, or at best hyper loyal customers. With today's prerequisite this creation is difficult and it is therefore of highly interest to examine possible and alternative ways for enterprises to attain this type of hyper loyal customer. In this thesis we have examine hyper loyal football supporters with the aim to identify mechanisms that create and characterize this type of loyalty. By means of a survey and a focus group we were able to identify six loyalty mechanisms; the ability to influence, vicarious achievement, self-esteem, group affiliation, family and social relations.

Survey's purpose is to illustrate why and how the process happened when Piteå relocated its commercial port away from Skuthamn to the new construction on Haraholmen 1950-1973. How decision-makers worked to achieve their goals, how the work changed and what incentives motivated them to act. The results showed that the decision was taken not to retain the existing commercial port in large part due to Skuthamns physics attributes, which made it impossible to ship large deep vessels from there. The reason that the decision about the port took such a long time was due to a local political conflict which was based on interest in the ownership of Haraholmen. The reason for the location of the trading port became Haraholmen had political backgrounds.

 This study examines the way Swedish students in Upper Secondary School respond to two excerpts from a classic Swedish novel. The paper?s aim is both to give an overview over some of the theoretical concepts concerning the field of reader-response criticism, and to describe and analyse what the students experience in their first meeting with an older text. The background to my interest is the many studies showing that young readers regard reading of fiction in school as boring. By using the method of written reading responses I want to contribute to a deeper understanding of how an older text can be received, understood and engage its readers.

This report deals with the attitudes within municipalities of open source software and open standards and if open source software may be an option to gain open standards. The aim has been to find out if open source software and open standards would be able to solve the lock-in problems that municipalities have against proprietary software. The study is conducted as an exploratory, inductive and qualitative study with depth interviews of subjectively selected informants as data collection method. A literature review has also been implemented by the relevant books and articles. Some economic determinants of municipalities to make use of open source software have not been considered in this study.

The majority of the interest for Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794), has been focused on his work in mathematics and political science, especially on his famous method on voting tally. With a background in the French enlightenment, on the brink of the revolution, this essay focuses on his political and philosophical ideas, specially his thoughts on the role of education in humanity?s struggle toward greater freedom. Is it possible to identify a connection between the concepts of education and freedom in his writings? This question is largely unanswered, even though it is fundamental for the understanding of the underlying reasoning of Condorcet.

This Master?s Thesis aims to examine the attitudes concerning gender issues among children?s librarians. The main purpose is to examine what their views on the subject are, and if they consider gender issues when acquiring and mediating books. We are also interested in their opinions about gender stereotyping in children?s books.

Web 2.0 is a relatively new concept which has made significant progress on the Internet. More recently, corporations as well have begun to get use of the different types of applications that are assigned to the Web 2.0. Organizations are primarily interested in making use of Web 2.0 in two areas: inside the company to increase efficiency and productivity, and from the organization to the customer to improve revenue and customer satisfaction. We have chosen to take a closer look at this last area, as can be seen as a CRM context. Our interest is to investigate how such a context may change by implementing some kind of Web 2.0 technology.

Finnish student have for several years proved to be successful in reading in international studies. This interview based study aims to describe how teachers in Finnish schools for Swedish speaking children are relating to reading and reading education during the first two years of schooling. The result shows that reading, reading training and reading comprehension are natural elements in all teaching during the first two years in school and that teaching is based on students? ability and interest. The teachers claim that they provide the students with varying opportunities to practice different kinds of reading.

Because of my interest and experience within the field of children and teenagers with an antisocial behaviour and who are acting out I wanted to devote my essay to researching these children through the perspective of the teachers. In this essay I, therefore, interviewed 4 teachers with 4-16 years of experience within this occupation. The method I've chosen can be described as qualitative interview with semi-structured questions to enable the teachers to thoroughly describe their answers without diverting from the original question. The questions that form this essay are: What strategies do the teachers possess to enable stability, a safe work environment and enabling knowledge-sharing for the children that are acting out? What kind of tools do the teachers use when they work with children who are acting out? The results were analysed through the theory of socialization, which simplified can be compared with upbringing.

Human presence has always influenced the surrounding areas, the forest as well. Structure and species composition have changed during human land use. Knowledge regarding these changes should be of great interest for conservation and forestry. We have analyzed human impact on the tree species composition on five study sites during 2000 years in Ångermanland, Sweden. More specifically the change in tree species composition in percentage amongst alder, birch, spruce and pine over time.

It is of increasing importance to in the most effective possible way, manage and control all the transactions of raw materials, products and information that are exchanged between an organization and all its operators. These flows and the need for strategy and managing the processes of planning, implementing and control of the supply chain, has given name to the concept supply chain management. Supply chain management involves all movement and storage of raw material, and all the processes that is needed to manufacture a product from origin to consumption. Globalization, technology and increasing time and quality-based competition are all driving forces behind the concept and reasons for an increasing interest in supply chain management.The purpose of this essay is to by using a qualitative case study examine which decisive success factors that can be identified for effective supply chain management. We have compiled different theories on the subject to use for analyzing a case study Li & Fung, who is a successful supply chain management company.

The purpose of this Bachelor?s thesis is to examine university librarians? perceptions of information literacy, of students? information literacy and of education in information literacy. The focus is on how they perceive the students? information literacy development during their university studies. Also of interest in this study is how librarians think that their teaching in information literacy should be included in the students? other courses. Three librarians at a Swedish university library were interviewed using qualitative interviews.

The aim is to find out how teachers apply the knowledge they get from mathematics pilots in preschool and from mathematics developer in the municipality, as well as how they work further towards the children with mathematics.The study is based on qualitative interviews with two teachers, one mathematic pilot and one mathematic developer. I used the semi-structured interview questions.The results show that teachers believe that mathematics pilots will inspire the teachers in their work with mathematics in preschool. One of the teachers who were interviewed said:?Mathematics pilots should be those that have the strongest glasses and coming up with new ideas and they push the rest of the teachers in their work with mathematics in relation to children in preschool?.The teachers use the correct terms for mathematical concepts with the children. They also stressed how important it is to point out to the kids that it is mathematics that they are doing.The conclusion of the study is that the teachers agree that it is their approach towards the children that is important and how they can lead the children?s interest of mathematics forward.