A growing need to strengthen ones position on the market, even as a city in competition with other cities, has resulted in an increasing number of municipalities developing brand platforms. When the city of Umeå developed their platform, they identified decision makers and investors as one of four important target groups.The aim of this study is to explore the portrayed image of the city of Umeå in two Swedish trade journals which addresses the specific target group decition makers and investors in both public and private sector. The aim is also to compare the image of Umeå in the two papers, to the ambition of the municipality, expressed in the brand platform.In order to make the observations as firmly established as possible, the method of the study is a combination of a quantitative content analysis and a qualitative text analysis. The study draws on the theories of Eli Avraham and Philip Kotler, concerning how to improve city images and how to market a specific city among others. The study shows that the city of Umeå in large extent is portrayed in accordance to the ambition which the municipality expressed in the brand platform.Umeå is displayed as an expanding city.

The aim of this thesis is to examine how four decision makers at a University College and a library director at the same University College perceive the profile, image and identity of their library. This University College library is used as our main example. We have evaluated the main example in relation to two other University College libraries, in order to obtain a deeper understanding of how these library directors view their own libraries and to attain a more multi-dimensional view of the main example of our study. Our intention is to analyse the current situation, not the past nor the future. Qualitative semi-structured interviews with decision makers and library directors have been conducted.

Forest enterprises have always searched for ways to improve efficiency. For the past few years there has been an emphasis on stock-keeping levels. Increased demand for fresh round timber and the need to decrease the amount of tied-up capital has made the forest industry reduce its inventory levels. This has brought on a higher demand on the timber supply from the forest management districts concerning both delivery in time and assortment output. As a result, the flow of timber has fluctuated a lot with serious consequence for the timber supply during 1994.

This study focuses on oral communication in the classroom involving discussion and dialogue amongst pupils, but also between teacher and pupil. The overall aim is to study the choices regarding the group composition and working methods that might occur in four individual teachers? lessons plans with the intention of increasing the pupils? knowledge through oral communication. The main focus is to explore what the teachers think of the choices they make and how they believe these changes affect the pupils. It is also focused on how the teachers perceive their pupils? learning is improved by oral communication and how they incorporate all pupils, especially the pupils who rarely participate in classroom activity.The methods used are qualitative studies using interviews and observations.

A growing need to strengthen ones position on the market, even as a city in competition with other cities, has resulted in an increasing number of municipalities developing brand platforms. When the city of Umeå developed their platform, they identified decision makers and investors as one of four important target groups.The aim of this study is to explore the portrayed image of the city of Umeå in two Swedish trade journals which addresses the specific target group decition makers and investors in both public and private sector. The aim is also to compare the image of Umeå in the two papers, to the ambition of the municipality, expressed in the brand platform.In order to make the observations as firmly established as possible, the method of the study is a combination of a quantitative content analysis and a qualitative text analysis. The study draws on the theories of Eli Avraham and Philip Kotler, concerning how to improve city images and how to market a specific city among others. The study shows that the city of Umeå in large extent is portrayed in accordance to the ambition which the municipality expressed in the brand platform.Umeå is displayed as an expanding city.

Education in information seeking is often traditional and focused on technology. When it comes to this sort of education, research proves it is unusual to pay attention to the interaction between students. My intention has been to examine if it is possible to pay attention to the interaction between students, in order to create more and better situations of learning. The issues in this work are about describing the students? interaction.

Sweden is going through big changes within the bank sector. Increasing card usage, decrease of cash acceptance in the society, an attempt to reduce money laundering, and a possible increase in profitability has lead to the rescindment of cash management among three of the four major banks. This has lead to a big debate in the society, a lot of frustration from customers, and a drop in customer satisfaction for every bank that started the process of removing cash management. The purpose of this study is to find out how the banks could keep their customer satisfaction when removing cash management. When doing the study, the rescindment of cash was a deduction of a part of the service, compared to the normal adding or starting of a service. The study was done through a focus group that was the base of a questionnaire that got answered by 125 respondents.

There is an irregularity in the interregional migration in Sweden. An increasing proportion ofthe population is drawn to the metropolitan areas, which creates problems for the smallermunicipalities and towns when their population declines. At the same time, our whole societyis faced with a great challenge: we need to redirect towards a sustainable development, wherethe environmental issues are discussed and dealt with to secure that all present and futuregenerations are given equal opportunities to live a good life.The aim of this study is to, focusing mainly on the environmental dimension of thesustainability concept, examine the attractivity of housing with sustainability claims. Toanswer this, three research questions were used:? Was the migration motive to reduce their environmental impact a part of the decision tomove, among migrants who had moved to housing with sustainability claims?? If the motive was a part of the decision, how much impact did it have compared to othermigration motives?? Which factors in housing aiming at sustainability are considered important by peopleliving in housing with sustainability claims?The research questions have been answered using quantitative data, gained in the form of selfadministeredquestionnaires which were distributed in four different residential areas withsustainability claims in the county of Västra Götaland, Sweden.

Syftet med denna studie var att med hjälp av kvalitativa intervjuer undersöka lärares medvetenhet angående betydelsen av användandet av barnens erfarenheter i skrivundervisningen, för att erbjuda eleverna en god möjlighet till att utveckla sin skrivförmåga. För att uppnå syftet formulerades två frågeställningar, hur lärare beskriver barnens erfarenheter utifrån skrivundervisningen och hur de beskriver att de utformar sin skrivundervising med tanke på elevernas erfarenheter.I studien har framkommit att lärarnas intention är att utgå från barnens erfarenheter. De lärare som intervjuats ser barnens erfarenheter som viktiga och som en förutsättning i skrivundervisningen, men de ser också att olika erfarenheter förbereder eleverna på olika sätt inför den undervisning som ges. Detta gör att de värderar och väljer ut vilka erfarenheter de vill använda i skrivundervisningen. Samtidigt ser lärarna sig själva som viktiga förmedlare av erfarenheter som barnen kan bygga sin skrivutveckling på.Uppsatsen har som teoribakgrund Vygotskijs sociokulturella perspektiv men även Deweys erfarenhetsteori och Bourdieus teori om fält, habitus och kapital.

The function of budgetary controls is to control the resource allocation within companies. It can also be an instrument for measure and control subordinates and/or business units? performance (Van der Stede 2001). This paper concerns the latter; when the budgetary control function is used to measure and control subordinates performance based on budget. Previous research in this area has not yet accomplished to explain the effects of tight budgetary control which Hartman (2000) considers as the main issue to be concerned about in management accounting research.Previous research has presented contradictory findings regarding tight budgetary control explained by positive effects as well as negative effects during the last decades.

Rätten till mark och vatten i lappmarken har genom århundradena varit föremål för debatt i Sverige. En genomgående intention från statens sida har varit att nyttja lappmarkens resurser på ett, för de olika tidsperioderna, ändamålsenligt sätt. De grupper som har bebott lappmarken, samer med eller utan renskötselrätt samt övrig befolkning, har därför varit beroende av den statliga politiken. På grund av att statens intentioner har medfört fördelar för olika grupperingar under olika epoker har konflikter varit och är fortfarande vanligt förekommande. År 1989 utfärdade FN:s fackorgan ILO en konvention, som fick namnet ILO 169, och behandlar ursprungsbefolkningars rättigheter.

In recent decades, demands has emerged that the companies shall take a greater social responsibility for the impact that they have on their environment and that this impact shall be reported, which is known as Sustainability Reporting. The Sustainability Report is based on a number of general principles that ensure the content and the quality of the Sustainability Report. One of these principles is the principle of completeness. In the research, this principle seems to have been interpreted in terms of number of reported aspects and indicators, which can be a limited view where only the existence of the aspects and indicators is observed. By including the degree of the reporting in terms of full, partial and no reporting as well as a comparison between the real and the alleged reporting, our intention is to extend the principle of completeness and to develop a tool that we also apply through an empirical survey in a particular area.

This essay aims to generate understanding for todays grammar teaching in the early grades.Through base in previous research, I intend in this work to seek understanding of what affects the grammar development and its impact on education. I investigate in this essay teacher's approach to grammar and how it affects the incidence of grammar teaching.Work empiricism consists of qualitative research interviews and a survey with the intention to present a broad picture of grammatical meaning. Regarding to the informants that are involved in the investigation, I have deliberately chosen teachers from different generations to find reflections of their own education and how itinfluenced their view of grammar. My study shows that teachers acquire greater part of teaching about languagefunctional side compared to the form of the language. The teachers who participated in the survey indicated that the language functional side priority by reason that the more responds to students' learning needs and promotes a desire to learn through meaningful for the student.

In this study we wanted to have a closer look at how a specific working team of pedagogues in the senior part of elementary school works with student influence through a pedagogical concept created by themselves. We have used qualitative interviews as a method to achieve relevant information from the pedagogues, and from students teached by the same.The purpose of the study was to investigate how the working team, through the concept, pursue real student influence within different school subjects and how the individual student is favored in his/her learning process. Another intention was to find out to what extent the students experience this influence. We also wanted to elucidate the advantages as well as the disadvantages of this concept, and to shed some light on how the informants view the future development of the concept.The result shows that consensus prevails to a large extent among teachers and students regarding the signification of real student influence in the everyday learning situation. It also appears that the students? abilities to exercise influence vary between different school subjects.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to investigate the factors that contribute to childrens feelings of enjoyment and wellbeing while reading pleasure reading. The research is founded on qualitative interviews with eight children aged between 9 and 12 years. In the review of the literature different theories of reading experiences are examined and the theory of flow is used to analyse and interpret childrens statements of reading experiences. The theory of flow has not been developed to investigate reading but aims to describe and explain when and how people experience happiness and joy. The results of this study reveal that many different factors influence childrens reading.