My essay is an investigation of American Psychos Patrick Bateman. Why is Patrick Batemans identity one so easily described as shallow and superficial? I discuss theese questions from a marxists point of view putting Bateman in the context of Georg Lukács theories of reification. I compare the structure of Patrick Batemans identity with the idea of an reified identity to se how the mechanisms of reification creates the entity that is Patrick Bateman.My conclusion is that one answer to Batemans shallowness is the phenomenon of reification. To get a grasp of how shallowness might be understood I combine the theories of Lukács with Bakhtins idea of the aouthorative discourse.If one look upon reification as an aouthorative discourse and one also presume that human existence is social and verbal the conclusion is that Patrick Bateman cannot exist because of what he is an example of.

The purpose of this thesis was to investigate the implications and challenges of intercultural communication. An in-depth study was performed of the perspectives from people who work within an international organization. How they experience cultural differences and how they handle them, in particular when it comes to communication. Also, their perceptions of communicative competence were explored. The study was carried out at Svalorna India Bangladesh, at the Swedish office in Lund.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to analyse school librarians and teachers perspective of childrens reading and reading progress, the impact of informational texts on childrens reading and how school librarians and teachers work/teach to improve their students understanding of informational texts. We also intend to study what consequences school librarians and teachers believe that childrens reduced understanding of informational texts can have in the long run and how this could be improved. The theories applied encompass different literature-pedagogical strategies, theories about reading purpose and direction of the reading process together with a theory that shows the school librarys function in the education. The empirical material has been collected through interviews with one school librarian and one teacher at three different schools. The material has then been analysed and interpreted from theories and earlier research.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to study how DIK (Documentation, Information and Culture), the major trade union for Swedish librarians, work with the status and professionalization of the occupation. The status is, as we see it, low and depending on several factors. They are among others: the knowledge base, how extended the research base is and the domination of women within the profession. These factors all work together to maintain the status and the prestige of the occupation at a low level. With the help and work of the trade union DIK the status can improve if the focus is right.

Today, the definition of literature has changed. Walter J. Ong talks about the secondary spoken language that has surfaced as a result of new technical innovations to our writing tools. This also transforms our attitude towards literature and we can see a return to literature based on verbal characteristics. According to Hans Hertel the verbal renaissance reflects a modern man need to come closer to each other and create togetherness.

Our aim with this paper is to study the debate concerning the refusal of entry of the two Egyptians and the involvement of USA, to see if the Swedish sovereignty has been compromised. We have chosen two theories, realism and radicalism, to read if opinions can be identified of supporting one of them. The empiricism we selected are from debate articles in the big news papers Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet and Expressen. We also studied the debate in the Riksdag . The method we used was qualitative and is called analysis of content.The result we could conclude was that most of the debaters are disappointed with how the government handled the whole situation, but still believes that it made the decision on itself.

This thesis serves to examine how manufacturing SMEs consider outsourcing. Furthermore, we aim to identify the main characteristics and patterns for these types of companies that can explain their rationale in such a decision. The chosen method for this thesis is abduction and selected research approach is multiple case studies. Seven case studies have been conducted at EAB AB, Esbe AB, Hörle Automatic AB, Pelly Industri AB, SGV Industrier AB, Swede-Wheel AB and Wulkan AB. Our findings have illustrated that although traditional outsourcing theory provides a good platform for explaining the rationale behind outsourcing decisions in SMEs, we have identified additional considerations that SMEs, operating as 2, 3 or 4-tier suppliers towards OEM-corporations, make.

This master thesis is an analysis of how the amount of health centers per inhabitant has changed since the Swedish government implemented a new health care reform in 2010. The reform implies a free choice of health centers in the Swedish regions and opens up the market for private firms. The purpose of the thesis is to study the effects of the different financing systems toward the health centers in the regions. The models are based on theories of the need of health care. Two of the independent variables which are studied are income and age.

The study deals with the causes of unjustified differences in pay between women and men in the banking sector. The purpose of this paper has been to examine how a gender project implemented in the private banking organizations from a gender-and implementation perspective. The aim of the project examined is to even unjustified differences in pay between men and women in the banking and finance sector. The main issues are: ? How has the project been implemented and what are the real and perceived results? ? How can the opportunities and barriers to successful implementation course with emphasis on gender? The method used is a qualitative study, where the empirical material consisted of focus group interviews.

The law firm industry has during the last years met new demanding conditions and one tool to handle these new conditions has been to implement a Knowledge Management system. Large investments have been made in these Knowledge Management systems but the implementations have met many challenges from within the organizations.With a multiple study, based on interviews with Knowledge Management Managers included in a Knowledge Management network, this thesis aims to study the challenges with Knowledge Management and the underlying causes. The result, based on McDermott's theories shows challenges within technical, personal, social and management areas where the law firm need to shift a focus from Information to Knowledge Management, create a culture of trust and integration and use the informal powerbase.The causes for these challenges are found in the base of Mintzbergs theories of Professional bureaucracy where the Knowledge Management is affected by strong self-regulated individualist, a divided organizational structure and industry conditions..

The 26th of February 2009 the Swedish government gave a referral to the council of lawregarding the removal of a law concerning mandatory membership at a student union andstudent nation while studying at a university or college in Sweden. This has led to adiscussion amongst the student nations in Uppsala as to how this proposed change will affectthe nations? future operations. Some, including the chairwoman for Kuratorskonventet,Therez Olsson, and the 1Q for Norrland?s student nation, Jon Stridh, have expressed theirworries that this could lead to a decrease in members.

The aim of this study was to gain a greater understanding of what social workers perceive to be mentally demanding and emotionally challenging work, and which strategies they use to handle it. I chose to interview six social workers, three of them had long experience of social work, and three of them had worked for less than a year. The justification for this choice wasthat I wanted to interview people with different experience of social work over time, to be able to see possible differences in what was perceived as mentally demanding and emotionally challenging work, and how it was handled. The social workers were interviewed with a semi structured interview manual.The results showed that the organization of the social service is not fitted to the work that social workers execute. This means that what is perceived as mentally demanding and emotionally challenging work largely depends on this.

Purpose: The study examines the risk a rising from the acquisition of shares, and its relation to the expected return. We would like to see how a high-risk portfolio is related to a low-risk portfolio. Although studying the portfolios annual performance.Theory: The theories that have been used in the study are, Capital asset pricing model, CAPM and portfolio theory.Method: The study is based on a quantitative method, the time interval is from 2008 to 2010.The annual reports, historical stock prices for companies and the index are used to perform calculations based on the essay theories.Conclusion: The beta value has positive liner correlation with the expected return. When there are bad times in the world, the companies are negatively affected regardless of industry. The Portfolios developed in the same direction during the time period..

The value of an organization?s availability and transparency towards the public whenever and wherever it is necessary has increased. Internet and the social networks have become essential to most of the citizens of Sweden but for organizations social networking still is an area that is relatively unexplored. As the Internet and social media progresses it becomes a greater part of people?s lives, which leads to more demands but also a great amount of possibilities for the organizations that participate in this technical revolution.The purpose of this quantitative study is to examine if and how the people receiving the information published on the Växjö and Alvesta police department?s Facebook-page are considering Facebook as a channel of communication.

The relational database model was defined in the 1970?s and is the dominating database type today.  The main difference between data from a relational database and a hierarchical data structure is that the relational database stores records in tables. The records have no particular order, but can include links in terms of relationships with other records. A hierarchical structure organizes data in the form of a tree structure  and  can for an example be found in organizational structures in which different levels involves different responsibilities. If the data stored in a relational database is to be presented in a hierarchically, a conversion of the data structure is required. The intention of this paper is to describe how such a conversion can be performed.  To investigate the conversion methods, case studies has been conducted on the basis of a specific organization?s hierarchical structure.