Background: Different cultures meet to a greater extent than before as a result of the increasing globalisation. Therefore, international leaders have to count on greater differences in behaviour of their employees within organisations than they have experience from. It can consequently be difficult in an international environment to understand what motivate individuals of a different culture. Purpose: The purpose of this report is to make greater understanding for how national cultures influence leaders methods to motivate their employees in an international environment in Spain where two different cultures confront. Performance: The study has been made by 14 qualitative interviews with Spanish and Swedish leaders in Spain.

The aim of the thesis was to provide further understanding on how Swedish consumers use the Internet as an information source in their purchase decision process. The subject was investigated from different perspectives: gender, product type and information type. The authors used a quantitative approach, and a survey (n=120) was conducted. It was concluded that men and women are equally influenced by traditional word-of-mouth, but more men than women search for product information online and they are more likely to let their purchase decision to be influenced by it. Women tend more to trust commercial sources.

The main topic of this thesis is to evaluate the impact on the usability of web pages when using responsive web design, a concept for developing web pages whose design adapts to the screen size being used. This is done by creating a responsive prototype based on an existing web site. A number of usability tests are conducted on the two versions of the site in order to compare the time to complete the tests and to observe the behaviour of the test participants. The tests are conducted on desktop as well as on mobile devices with varying screen size.The number of test participants was relatively low, and so the quantitative result is not statistically valid. However, the conclusion is that the most effective combination is to use either of the sites on desktop format.

Zambia is a country in Southern Africa where poverty is widespread and the traditional keeping of local poultry therefore plays a crucial role in improving nutrition. Meat and eggs from poultry are important sources of protein but also of income. Improving the poultry production is thereby a method to fight poverty. For poultry, the access to light is an important factor for both growth and egg production. In this paper, the focus is on the traditional village chickens used for both egg and meat production, how they are kept, their health and welfare and if the use of a solar lamp will influence their behaviour, growth and egg production. Three studies were conducted in Chibombo and Choma Districts in Zambia were 17 farmers were interviewed regarding the village chicken management of which six farmers participated in a solar lamp experiment.

ABSTRACTThis paper aims to shed light to what extent a financier have learnt about sustainableorganizational change, through development projects taking part in the Swedish knowledgeFoundations program, ICT in Teacher?s training. Some questions asked were: Has theSwedish Knowledge Foundation learnt by researchers? and self evaluation?s ?stirring up? ofongoing projects? What type of learning process has been going on? Has new, mutual,knowledge been constructed or has already existing knowledge been transferred?The study consists of one participating observation and three interviews. They showhow the financed projects have been ?stirred up? so that a developmental learning process hasstarted within their organization.

In the wake of the electronic revolution digital library has become one of the central themes concerning libraries. The present study takes up the question whether digital library can function in the same way as the conventional library. The question can obviously be posed from different perspectives, e.g. technological-, the user-, or the organizational perspective. The study investigates if (and how) digital library can have the same functions as the traditional library.

The purpose of this study is to examine the usage of IT technology within preschool and study how IT tools are used by preschool staff for administrative as well as pedagogical assignments. Several aspects affects the work preschool staff do with IT which concerns availability to technology, how technology is used and how technology is made available for the children. There are a number of questions linked to these aspects where some examples this study examines are which advantages, disadvantages, obstacles or other limitations that comes with introducing IT? This study also examines how, when and in what contexts IT is being used? Other questions examined are the pedagogue?s general views of IT, competence development and eventual needs of investment? Further on this study examines to some part how children interact with IT during pedagogical activities? The overall objective is to shed light on problems that preschool staff encounter  in their daily work and on the basis of identifying important questions at issue that could constitute a basis for further research. The results of this study are based on both a literature review and a field study.

Our post-modern society is being continually more characterized by the working life, where corporate relations and the understanding of human momentum, limitations and knowledge is the basis of the quality of the corporation. In other words, it is of the greatest importance to keep in mind the attitudes, behaviour, stress levels and motivations that constitute a good working environment. We find it interesting to study what social psychological approaches and social processes could be of importance to good cooperation. The research has its starting point in a qualitative method focused on semi- structured interviews, where we have interviewed eight respondents working within the psychiatry. The research has strengthened our pre-understanding but also made clear the existence of other social processes and approaches that affect cooperation.

Tail-biting in pigs is an animal welfare issue and in Sweden during 2002 the producers lost tree million Swedish crowns because of tail biting. This economic loss depends on the pigs which are discarded at slaughter because of tail biting. Tail biting can be separated into two stages, "pre-injury" and "injury". The aim of this study is to investigate if tail biting depends on environment or genetic background.A lot of research on the environments effects on the behaviour of pigs but not so much on the genetic effects has been performed. The frequency of tail biting in pig farms influence among others of environment enrichment, ventilation, gender and breed of the pig.

Försvarsmaktens nya personalförsörjningssystem har medfört utmaningar och aktualiserat frågor kring de nya personalkategorierna. Utifrån att personalkategorin specialistofficer i framtiden ska utgöra kontinuiteten inom förbanden är syftet med studien att undersöka specialistofficerens relation till arbetsgivaren Försvarsmakten. Arbetets ansats är att ge en ökad förståelse för specialistofficerens relationship commitment, dvs. engagemanget för själva relationen till Försvarsmakten.Studiens teoretiska ram bygger på Meyer och Allens konceptuella trekomponentsmodell om organizational commitment. Studien genomförs som en attitydundersökning i form av en enkät, med framförallt slutna påståenden men även två öppna frågeställningar där resultatanalysen innehåller både en kvantitativ och en kvalitativ del.Resultatet visar att specialistofficeren tillmäter den känslomässiga komponenten störst betydelse för relationen vilket bekräftar tidigare forskning avseende kännetecken förprofessionsyrken.

Executive summary This master thesis was originally based on a specific assignment given to the authors from ABB Full Service, a unit specializing in providing maintenance outsourcing: ?How can ABB Full Service expand its offering of providing fundamental maintenance by seamlessly incorporating the business concept with competencies and solutions from other ABB divisions?? The academic issue was developed throughout the thesis, resulting in the following formulation: ?From an organizational perspective; how can service providers bring continuous added value to intra-organizational outsourcing partnerships?? Many of the key findings of this thesis are reflected in the issue. The term intra-organizational outsourcing is a proposed addition to the terminology in the academic discourse on outsourcing. The definition of the term is: ? Where an organization outsources a business process interlinked with the physical operations, requiring the service provider to take over a preexisting unit and its employees.This is an accurate description of the form of outsourcing that ABB Full Service is engaged in.

The Public vs. private movement has over the past decades identified numerous significant differences between public and private organizations. The observed differences covers almost every field in administrative economics ranging from organizational structure, management accounting, goal-setting and in the past few years even leadership. Strangely, in the majority of these studies little or no regards are given to organizational characteristics or fundamental differences between compared organizations and if these organizations really are comparable when studying the effect of sector.The aim of this study is to compare leadership in relatively similar organizations from both the public and private sector and so clarify if earlier identified differences in leadership styles still surface when leaders working with approximately the same thing in a similar work context are studied.A sample of 348 Swedish principals was drawn from both municipal and private elementary schools. The respondents answered a web-based survey based on the CPE-model resulting in leadership styles mapped according to three orientations: change, production and employee.

African elephants (Loxodonta Africana) are kept all over the world in different kinds of enclosures. The enclosures are however often unsuitable for the elephants. Research has shown that elephants are nocturnal animals. Therefore it is important to keep elephants occupied, for instance by using enrichments, also at the night. Five elephants were studied at Borås djurpark, four elephants in one room and one elephant, named Nyoka, in one room.

Tail-biting in pigs is an animal welfare issue and in Sweden during 2002 the producers lost tree million Swedish crowns because of tail biting. This economic loss depends on the pigs which are discarded at slaughter because of tail biting. Tail biting can be separated into two stages, "pre-injury" and "injury". The aim of this study is to investigate if tail biting depends on environment or genetic background.A lot of research on the environments effects on the behaviour of pigs but not so much on the genetic effects has been performed. The frequency of tail biting in pig farms influence among others of environment enrichment, ventilation, gender and breed of the pig.

Practitioners of financial statement analysis are dependent on key ratios in a multiple number of situations, one in particular being equity valuation. A lack of historical benchmarks, and knowledge regarding the time series behaviour of such ratios, has been identified regarding Swedish companies. Therefore, this study sets out to provide such data and knowledge. Companies listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange are examined over the period 1979-2009 where the sample is divided into nine industry groups. Historical values for eight common key ratios are documented with regards to median, mean, standard deviation and percentiles.