In large organizations one can often find middle managers at several different levels within a company. Middle managers regularly experience their positions as complicated as they have both superiors as well as subordinates? to please. We have chosen to refer to this problem as ?the middle-management dilemma?.

This paper aims to give an account of, and to discuss the view-points and theories of different researchers on the christianization of Sweden, especially the province of Öland, during the early middle ages. Its purpose is to investigate how, and in what sense, their positions can be said to correspond to what we may know of the historical ?facts?. This will be possible by comparing different points of view with a study of the development in a single parish. An overall difficulty however, is the nature of the sources relating to the time in question, they are scarce or even non-existent.Part I of the paper consists of an outline of the field of research and the different theories put forward on the subject.

The purpose is to illustrate the phenomenon of self-harm from a social psychological and sociological perspective. The purpose is furthermore to examine the role social relationships play in the individuals´ self- imagine and what role does identification play for anyone who harm themselves? We want to examine in what way social relationships are important and how they function for individuals who harm themselves, both once they have started to harm themselves, and if the relationships in any part caused the cutting to begin with.Questions:How do individuals shape their identity based on self- harm? Which self-image do individuals have who self-harm? Is there anything in the person's previous social relationships that have caused them to begin to hurt themselves?Method:In this paper we have analyzed five autobiographies. We have used open coding from grounded theory as analytical method and subject positions based on discourse analysis.Theory:We have used the Cooley concepts looking glass self, Foucault's theory of power, Giddens' concept of ontological security and existential anxiety.Results and Analysis:We found six different categories that we thought were central. These were negative self-image, guilt, lack of family support, negative experiences of others' views, the protective identity as self- harmer and insecure social relationships in school.Conclusion:The self-harming is a very complex behavior.

For the last ten years Internet has become more popular and is now used by most Swedes every day.  Internet has made it possible for many people to access a great deal of information about news all day long. Internet has also made it possible for people to create their own news and comment on happenings as they are taking place. One way to do this is to start your own blog, which is a kind of diary where you can publish your own thoughts about politics and news.In Sweden the media is often referred to as the third governmental power since the media is examining the government and people in power positions and bringing the people as consumers of news closer to the government. There is a theory called agenda setting that says that the media is an actor that shapes the political issues discussed by the people and politicians.In this essay I have used the agenda setting theory and linked it together with the Medias references to blogs in their news. This I have done to see if the media might be influenced by blogs.

Title: Defending one's origin ? a musical journey to Transylvania.A journey to the Transylvanian part of Romania was pursued with the intent to investigate the cultural aspects of the historically and politically rooted set of relations between the Hungarian peaking minority and the majority of the population, the Romanian speaking group. Music pedagogical ambitions within the two cultures were used as reflections of these phenomena. In trying to shed light on my questions and extract the relations between the dominating and the dominated in this specific cultural and social context I have used the central themes of Bourdieu ? capital, habitus and field.

The aim of this study is to obtain a deep knowledge about identity creation of preschool child-ren at the age of four to sex with creative pictures and its aesthetic learning processes with childrens perspective as a starting-point. The issues that I have used in this study are how childrens identity creation relates to the aesthetic learning processes in the preschool enviro-ment, how children experience the figuration of their own identity related to other individuals and the enviroment by taking different positions in aesthetic learning processes and how childrens identity creation becomes visible in preschool.In order to explore preschool childrens identity creation in aesthetic learning processes the qualitative research-oriented approach has been implemented with unstructured observations and the informal interview as the methods for data acquiring.This studys theoretical points are sociocultural perspective and symbolic interactionism. Both these theoretical perspectives emphasize the significance of communication, taking different perspectives and learning in an interaction between an individual and enviroment within given sociocultural frames of referens which results in an individuals identity development.Results from the study show that childrens painting is more than an occupation with a picture as a product. Childrens painting is rather a playfull aesthetic expression form and a relation-oriented, dynamic learning process which is related to the enriching of individual self, the consciousness and the creation of meaning within preschools frames of reference.My expectation is that my study will contribute to didactic discussions about childrens iden-tity creation while using aesthetic expression forms..

Globalization is described as processes of economic, social and political character and a tendency in the field has been to study these aspects of the phenomenon separately. Another common feature of previous studies is to relate to the field at a high abstraction level and talk about the effects and changes in general terms. Such studies of quantitative and statistical nature in which people are constituted as homogeneous groups hides the fact that the relationship between social attributes and context creates unique positions where the effects of globalization are diverse (Sprague, 2005, pp. 16 - 18). The purpose of this bachelor thesis is therefore to break with this entrance to the field and instead focus on a micro level perspective.By conducting a qualitative interview study guided by the globalization theory of the Globalife research team, which shows how structures at the macro level can be understood to affect the micro level, the aim is to reveal potential knowledge gaps within the field.

The formation of sovereign states in regional blocks has become an essential feature in the world system. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate which motives and driving forces that affect the creation of projects of regional integration outside Europe and the Western World. By choosing the Latin American project of integration ALBA (the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas) as a case of regional integration outside Europe and the Western World, the study investigates the motives expressed by the most prominent actors of the project, Venezuela and Cuba. ALBA is chosen as a representative and a unique case and through the consumption of the gramscian and the realist approaches, the essay defines two motives that affect the creation of projects of regional integration. As a way of investigating the actors? motives, the paper studies political statements, especially those of the Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, and official positions expressed in central documents and declarations.

The object of this explorative theoretical study is to compare similarities in three perspectives for evaluation of credibility. The perspectives are the historical method source-criticism, cognitive authority and domain analysis. These perspectives, regarded as intellectual tools for critical thinking in a process of information seeking, by asking questions about credibility related to the social and theoretical context of the intellectual background, can give support in articulating which documents that gives a specific and essential answer to a question. In this sense credibility is seen as a qualitative aspect of relevance. Patrick Wilson argues that we can attain some critical independence towards cognitive authorities and the literature by investigating the social and theoretical topography of a field.

Although women express a desire to be managers and although they constitute the majority of Sweden's newly graduated academics, they are still heavily underrepresented on senior management level in the Swedish private sector, where men hold as much as 95 % of the top positions. Considering the massive waste of resources that this implies, this thesis sets out to investigate the underlying reasons for the skewed gender distribution on senior management level in two Swedish professional services companies - an industry where the described problem has been palpable. Additionally, the thesis explores the effects of actively working for increased gender equality. With a basis in gender and organization theory, a broad theoretical framework has been compiled and applied to a qualitative case study design. The thesis reveals seven distinct impediments, which together create a parable of an obstacles course, that prevent women from advancing the corporate ladder in the same manner as their male colleagues.

Responsible production is a subject of increasing importance for companies toadopt and communicate to their environment and many companies choose to implementenvironmental ? and ethic considerations into their brand strategy. There is, however, adividing line between companies according to what extent they choose to implementresponsible production into their brand strategy and to which extent they choose tocommunicate it to their stakeholders and surroundings. It is the hypothesis about a dividingline that is the foundation for this essay and something we believed could be interesting forfurther analysis.The purpose of our essay is to find out how the brand strategy of a company is affected by theresponsible production and in what extent they communicate it to their environment. Byanswering those questions we hope to find out why some companies communicateresponsible production more actively than others.We have conducted in-depth interviews with the Swedish clothing companies; MariaWesterlind, Zion and Dem Collective and we have through our analysis reached interestingconclusions.

This is a degree project performed at Halmstad University in Sweden on the subject carpet ofreinforcement. This project is developed in association with Celsa Steel Service in Halmstad.The purpose of this report is to investigate how much time that can be saved if carpet ofreinforcement is used instead of the traditional way to work with reinforcement and seewhat kind of parameters that is important between the choices. We are also going to seehow this product affects the situation for reinforcement workers from an ergonomic point ofview.Carpet of reinforcement is made by straight reinforcement?s bars that are welded togetherwith steel bands. These rolls are made at a factory with a machine that welds together thebars in determined centre distance, with desired dimensions after the constructionengineers? blueprints.

While the strategy of lending a voice to the monstrous is a well known aspect of Howard Phillips Lovecraft's works, the female monster is a notable exception to this case. In this thesis, I excavate a theory of female monstrosity through a reading of some of Lovecraft's most read stories and the agency of female characters that appears within. Comparing these female registers of monstrosity to their masculine counterpart, I develop a concept of female monstrosity manifested through categories of class, race and gender with the help of Judith Halberstams theories of monstrosity.Rather than treating these women as active characters, I argue that Lovecraft's inability to handle these monsters forces him to literally put them away ? in attics, cellars, or boxes. These are the marginalized positions from which these women elaborate a monstrous form that transcends the boundaries of sex, gender, class and race.

Globalization and demographic changes are forcing today?s companies to be more competitive in order to reach success. The increasing competition is proving a challenge for companies to recruit and retain competent, talented staff. To meet these challenges, Talent Management was developed during the 1990s and supplies a new and innovative way to deal with personnel management. Due to Talent Management being a relatively new theory, there is at present no generally accepted definition of the theory.

This project has been created with the assistance of Fredells. Fredells is a Stockholm based company with a focus on the retail of building products. Fredells also produces prefab- or prefabricated products which are either completely or partially ready for assembly the moment they arrive to the building site. These prefab-products are primarily delivered to customers within the Stockholm region. The building industry is a conservative market where the incentive to changes has been relatively low compared to other industries.