This thesis aims to develop a theory in the under researched field of international comparative cultural policy studies. lt does so by combining theories from the fields of political scienceand cultural studies, researching how and to what extent the concepts of culture of different states have an impact on the way cultural policies are constructed.The thesis uses this theoretical development in order to research a specific problem, namely the perceived possibility that Swedish and German cultural structures are slowly converging. Two recent official policy documents from each country are the objects of study. Through comparative idea analysis and with Michiel S. D Vries theories on decentralization, the thesis explains the convergence between the countries by differing cultural views between them.

The purpose of this thesis is to through the analysis of interviews with finance professionals in listed companies answer the question on what lies behind capital structure decisions, and to see how well the prevailing theories fit the answers. This article is an explorative and descriptive hypothesis creating study. We have used a qualitative method to analyse practice through theory. We have conducted telephone interviews with CFO:s and financial executives in Swedish listed companies on how they reason when they make capital structure decisions. We have then thoroughly reviewed the theory and empirical tests of the theories.

This essay was written at Södertörn University during the spring semester of 2010, in the field of Business Administration, and more precisely within management and organization. The essay is based on a case study of the management of the staff working at the commuter train stations in Stockholm. The study consists of a number of interviews with the management staff and with the personnel working at the stations, where the aim of the study is to describe how management works within ISS Trafficare AB and what the personnel working at the stations think of it. ISS Trafficare AB is the entrepreneur who runs the commuter train stations in Stockholm by an agreement met with Stockholmståg KB.The study is based on information from the interviews with the personnel and other material from ISS Trafficare AB. Research on the area of management have been used to put data into perspective and to further deepen our analysis and conclusions from the case.The essay shows that the management has tried to implement several changes on the organization in order to provide more service to the travelers.

This final thesis was performed at Ericsson in Gävle between April and June of 2008. Ericsson is a world leading manufacturer of radio base stations (RBS), which handles mobile phone traffic with 2G and 3G technology. The main purpose of this study is to examine if two different types of products (RBS and site material) should have different terms and conditions, today the terms and conditions are the same for both types. During the course of our study we have tried to think of the terms reliability, validity and generalization. The intention in doing that was to keep the thesis at a high academic level. To name an example of this we have tried to keep our minds at an objective level during the interviews and informal conversations.

The aim of this study was to measure the castration coverage and the attitudes among people towards castration in an area in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, where a castration program has been running for a few years. Another aim was to review the literature to examine the link between castration coverage and rabies prevalence. Two areas (Area 25 and Area 23) in Lilongwe were studied through standardized household interviews. In Area 25, a non-governmental organization had been castrating dogs weekly to twice weekly for free for 3 years. In Area 23, no official organization had done castrations, and this area therefore acted as a control in the study.

This study is about job training for people with psycho-social problems without income. The purpose with this sort of job training is to bring these people back to the regular labor market as well as the experience of having a job. In the labor market situation in Sweden today there?s no guarantee that the individual will return to the labor market after having undergone job training. The aim of this study is to understand how supervisors at job training activities experience that the organizations of the activities and resources affect their work.

The purpose of the study is to analyze what conditions the specific company provides employees to enable organizational learning. To clarify the framing of the study a few quastions has been specified to narrow the issu. The questions that has been used are: what opportunities does the company creat to enable organizational learning and how does the emplyees contribute to organizational learning.In the search of knowledge to the previously questions this study becames a qualitative study with an ethnographic approach based on observations and interviews. This method gives the knowledge that makes us understand the actions that takes place in the oraganization and the shared image the oraganization provides. An understanding for the employees and the organization has been achived after compiling the empirical material from observation notes and transcripts from the interviewsIn the work whit the analysis the empirical material based on transcripts and observation notes has been the main material.

We aim to develop knowledge of how new technology, in this case social media, can contribute to how sports fans interact with their idols. Therefore our framing of a question is to present how fans experience their contact with mixed martial arts (MMA) & ultimate fighting championship (UFC) through social media platforms. To specify our study, we also have a supplement question with in which way sports fans uses social media.We have chosen to conduct a qualitative study consisting of interviews and data observations of websites, related to the organization UFC, to approach our main question. We have interviewed nine randomly selected people with one common interest - MMA/UFC. With an implant of theories, consisting of social media, fandom and lurking, on the result of the interview and website data, we try to come closer to a conclusion for our intention with this thesis.Our conclusion is that the interviewed fans express that through the usage of social media, they feel like they have come closer to UFC.

A daily newspaper?s main purpose is to inform its readers without creating noise. Theimportance of the visual presentation is therefore of weight for an effectivecommunication process. This study informs about the importance of typography inthe visual decoding process. The study includes the Swedish newspaper DagensNyheter?s transition from printed media to digital media adapted to an Ipad.

Due to the forest industry downsizing, many communities in rural forest regions in Canada and Sweden are facing problems to survive. In order to create community sustainability, resilience and well-being in remote forest regions, the view on the forest resources has shifted towards multiple use, through the concept of sustainable forest management (SFM). Beside the economic and ecological elements of sustainability, the social forest values are needed, contributing to the human well-being, local participation, stakeholder collaboration, human rights and cultural connection. In this thesis the embodiment of the social component of SFM within Prince Albert Model Forest (Canada), and Vilhelmina Model Forest (Sweden) will be examined. Being partners and facing similar challenges as rural boreal forest regions, the two model forests are compared through analysis of projects and activities, conducted interviews and organization documents. Looking at projects mentioned as successful by the interviewees, they all have elements from the social values of SFM. The direction can be explained by the introduction of the Forest Communities Program in Canada, demanding the Model Forests to work towards community stability and resilience, the Model Forest organization concept itself and the way global focus are increasing around social forest values. In the future, it may be important that the role of the MFs enable some kind of political authorization and legitimacy in order to improve conflict solving and indigenous rights equality.

AbstractTitle: Welfare officers personal experiences of stress and coping in an emergency hospital in StockholmThe purpose with this study was to describe how welfare officers in an emergency hospital experienced stress in their workplace and what coping strategies they used. Through qualitative interviews the welfare officers thoughts and experiences were examined. The result showed that welfare officers experienced some stress at the workplace; this was related to lacks in the organization, heavy workload and short of time. The most commonly used coping strategies were social support, physical training, short breaks during the day to handle the stress at work. The conclusions of this study was that factors that reduces stress for welfare officers who work at emergency hospitals was a functioning organization and management, the ability to control and at some levels effect their own work, to have guidance and other opportunities to ventilate with co-workers.

Our purpose with this paper has been to analyse and discuss how motivation of the personnel affects the service quality in service companies. This has been done through two studies; a literature study with existing theories and an empirical study on the divisions of Lyckohjul and Shopping at Liseberg. In the introduction of this paper we put the question of research; why is there a need for work of motivation in service companies. When collecting information we used literature briefing, a questionnaire study and depth interviews. The literature briefing focused on the well-tried and most dominating theories on the subject motivation.

AbstractThe rise of globalization has made ??the sustainability aspect emerged as a sign that peoples? actions must change. Tourism is now one of the fastest growing industries in the world that has an impact on people, nature and cultures. The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding how different tourism actors use and express the concept of sustainable tourism development in the co-operation organization Kiruna Lapland. One of the most visited places in the north of Sweden.

Benchmarking is an established method of working which is often used in order to develop the quality of the organization. However, almost 70% of the organizations with benchmarking fail due to the lack of planning and structuring of the benchmarking exercise. Maintenance sections in the paper and pulp industry are one of those who have decided to conduct benchmarking. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to gain knowledge of how the maintenance sections in the paper and pulp industry deliberately structure and plan to use benchmarking as a driving force for quality development in the maintenance sections.The study is a hermeneutic case study. Telephone interviews and document analysis have been used as data acquisition methods.The results show that there is a lack of both planning and structuring in the benchmarking process, and lack of management commitment for quality improvements within industrial maintenance.

This thesis investigates the dynamics of the relationship between a leader and the followers within a chosen organization. The research on leadership has generally been focused on the leader, and consequently treating the followers like passive subordinates. We pursue a more multidimensional view of the subject, meaning that leadership descends from an interaction between leaders and followers, which makes it relevant to study the dynamics of the relationship from both perspectives. We chose to do a qualitative case study on a middle- and preschool which has won a price for being an ideal place to work at. This price peaked our interest to investigate why the relationships are highly functional in this particular organization.