The personnel policy program for the employees in studied municipality includes guidelines for the working environment, saying that health promoting activities is offered to all employees.                              Objective: To investigate how these activities were used and how the staff perceived the activities offered. The aim was also to find out how well the information about current health promotion efforts reached the staff.Method: A qualitative approach was used in the form of interviews. The sample consisted of municipal employees from seven different work sites.  A total of 12 women aged 32-52 years participated. The interviews were recorded and a hermeneutic theory was used to interpret the results.Results: The results showed that most informants used some form of fitness activity. In most cases health care-time was used for anything from walking to organized workouts. The great barrier was lack of information and lack of trained and dedicated health motivators. In several cases, informants had no knowledge about what a health motivator is supposed to do. The informants own suggestions for health promotion interventions included stress management and foot care.Conclusion: The survey showed that respondents were poorly informed about which wellness activities the municipality offered. The result could also be interpreted as a communication gap between the local authority, health motivators and the employees. A request for group activities was detected.  .

The aim of this Master's thesis is to examine the ways in which culture and cultural policy are being articulated in the process of Lund's application to become Sweden's European Cultural Capital of 2014.I have used Dorte Skot-Hansen's three cultural political rationalities: the humanistic-, the sociological- and the instrumental rationality, as well as and Jenny Johannisson's extension of those into three cultural-political discourses, as sensitizing concepts in my analysis. The questions raised are: How are the three rationalities/discourses articulated in the chosen central documents and in the process surrounding them? Which themes and arguments dominate the chosen documents?The main objects of my study have been four texts that have been produced in the applicationprocess: a Prestudy, a Plan of action, a Broschure and a Cultural policy. Along with them local political protocols, newspaper articles and other related material have been used. The research method applied was a qualitative eclectical textual analysis with emphasis on the content and on tracing the way the rationalities were expressed in the material.The rationalities were all found to be articulated in the four texts.

This examination studies the gender balance of contemporary art exhibitions in Sweden. To what extent genders are equally represented assumes to be based on how the curating process considers equality work. Three categories of art organisations are studied with the intention to determine differences in equality approach between the categories. Official documents of each organisation are examined to understand how they formally relate to equality work. Statistics of the actual gender balance of each organisation are produced based on the last two years exhibition archives.

Addressing increasing global environmental problems requires greater resource efficiency, and one way of working towards this is through industrial symbiosis. Industrial symbiosis means that companies collaborate through sharing of resources for collective benefits. The documented benefits of working with industrial symbiosis indicate that there is potential for companies to operate commercially with facilitation of industrial symbiosis. An interesting company to study within this context is Econova. Econova operates within the recycling and gardening industry and has been identified as a possible catalyst for industrial symbiosis.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to examine what effect two different models of acquisition have on user satisfaction with information resources at academic libraries. The two models examined are the traditional model where a subject specialist librarian makes the selection, and the user-governed model where the larger part of the selection is based on user requests. The scope is the libraries of Roskilde University, which employs the traditional acquisition model and Malmö University, which employs the user-governed. Both libraries have a user-oriented approach to acquisition. The study encompasses a close examination of the acquisition policy through document analysis and interviews with the librarians in charge of acquisitions at each university, as well as a user-satisfaction survey among the professors and senior teachers on two faculties at each university respectively.

This essay examines the European Union?s (EU) ability to play a leading role as a global actor on the world stage in international relations. Specifically, this essay studies the EU?s role of negotiator in the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009.  This essay also analyzes explanations for this role. Research is based on case studies, with conclusions drawn using an inductive approach.

The aim of this study was about how librarians in Sweden work with their web page to reach young people between the ages of fifteen and nineteen. Most of the youths in Sweden today use Internet every day for several reasons, and the library should have an obvious place there as well. It shouldbe obvious because almost all youths uses Internet every day and therefore the library needs to be seen there as well to reach out to them. Earlier research has shown that librarians and youths think differently in this question. Youths think that the library web page is more important for the librarythan the librarians do.How do the librarians work with marketing for youths on the web page? Do their policy documents help them in their work?To study this area we have interviewed librarians from six quite large public libraries from different parts of thecountry.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how the researcher experiences its role in real life in relation to the field of education and adult learning. The context of the study is the academic department of education and adult learning in Swedish institutions. This is a qualitative study, inspired by Grounded Theory. Data consist of interviews, texts from policy documents and reports. Both the aspects gender and context have been taken into consideration.

User education is an important aspect of university libraries' service to its users. This Masters' Thesis is about online user education. The aim of this study is to analyse five Swedish online user courses in relation to information literacy and learning theory. The web-sites were explored through textual analyses to find how concepts of information literacy and learning theory are expressed. The theoretical framework is based on Carol C Kuhlthau's three levels of user education, Paul Ramsden's three theories of teaching in higher education and Christine Bruce's different aspects of information literacy.

While almost 23 percent of the students in the Swedish upper secondary school are foreigners, only a fraction of the school libraries? collections consists of literature written in other languages than Swedish or English. This study examines how five school librarians experience the task of working with literature composed in foreign languages in the multicultural and multilingual school of today. The results of the qualitative interviews are analyzed in relation to the legislation and policy documents that the school libraries are working by, and also in relation to the theoretical framework of sociocultural theory and the theories on second language acquisition developed by linguist Jim Cummins.The study shows that while multilingualism is discussed as an important matter in the legislation and policy documents that the school libraries work by, the librarians in this study largely view the question of foreign literature as peripheral. Most part of the librarians connects first language reading to leisure-time activities rather than curricular activities, and stresses that the Swedish language should be prioritized in Swedish schools.

Sara Lidman?s first novel, Tjärdalen (The Tar Pit, 1953), addresses ethical issues in a remote village in the north of Sweden. This essay discusses the novel?s narrative technique and the ethical aspects implied by the narration and aesthetic design. The approach is based on Adam Zachary Newton?s narrative ethics, which links narrative theory and method with an ethical perspective.

This essay examines the differences and similarities, weaknesses and strengths of the two Cognitive Semantic theories Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Principled Polysemy Approach to Meaning Analysis. To illustrate the two theories, the Swedish verb-particle construction "gå upp" is examined and analyzed accordingly. The results showed differences in the number of polysemous meaning found. The methodological evaluation showed that the differences in the underlying ideas concerning meaning-construction behind these two theories make them incompatible..

This essay conducts a descriptive analysis of the ideas expressed by NATO´s official security strategy "Strategic Concept" from 2010 and the European Union?s security strategy "A Secure Europe in a Better World" from 2003. The purpose of this analysis is to examine whether the ESDP and NATO are compatible with each other when it comes to the role of security policy actor. To do so, I´ve chosen to analyse the actors' security strategies based on three dimensions. These dimensions are: Their view of the international scene, their views on cooperation and their views on how to reach security.

At the EU summit in Cologne in 1999, a consensus was reached concerning the common foreign and security policy within the European Union. It was decided at the summit that the WEU (Western European Union) should be incorporated into the EU - whom would then be given military capability to act autonomously without the necessity of Nato involvement. This essay investigates the factors that made this agreement possible from a rational choice perspective, but also from the perspective of the power and influence on negotiations on behalf of various types of leadership present at the meeting. Many nations at the summit of Cologne where for the creation of a military force in the form of ESDP (European Security and Defence Policy) within the Union, and many where against such a decision. However a consensus was reached and that is what this essay shall try to explain.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) is widely regarded as a significant catalyst for economic development especially in emerging and developing economies. While previous research has found different effects from foreign direct investments in different countries this study aims to explore the varying effects of FDI in Serbia and Montenegro. The study focuses on how FDI influences key economic indicators, specifically GDP per capita and employment rates, in the context of their aspirations to join the European Union (EU). Employing a comparative approach, the thesis examines the differing trajectories of Montenegro and Serbia in utilizing FDI for economic advancement. The research reveals that while Serbia shows significant positive correlation between FDI and both GDP per capita and employment rates, Montenegro displays no significant relationship in these aspects.