The representative democracy has become weakened during the last decades. At the same time the United Nations declared at the Rio de Janeiro meeting in 1992 that environmental problems can best be solved by involvement of all concerned citizens in decision-making. The main purpose of this study has been to examine if citizens panels is a possible way to involve citizens in environmental decision-making and what the outcomes can be. Furthermore the study has investigated what the participation has contributed to environmental politics and how representative the results have been. This has been carried out by investigating the Piteåpanel in the municipality of Piteå by conducting interviews.The result of the study shows that the involvement of the citizens in the decision-making influenced the environmental politics of the municipality.

The thesis aims to increase our understanding about parents reasoning about the elementary school choice by studying which factors parents perceive as important during the decision making process and also by giving meaning to Pierre Bourdieu?s concept of capital through the parents perspective. The empirical material comes from seven BNIM-interviews made with parents, which has been analyzed according to the thematic field analysis.The results show that the parents are not especially concerned about making an active school choice. Stability, closeness, friends, rumors, development and adaptability to the reality are the factors that are perceived as the most important in the decision making process. The school choice has a limited meaning as an investment in social capital, from Bourdieu?s perspective.

People are given better opportunities to participate in polity today. Democratic equality entails that all individuals are equal and therefore they should be included in the process of making the decisions. How can participation be defined and does it mean that having the possibility to participate means that people can influence the process of making the decisions in polity process?This paper focuses on participation and influence in polity and examine the relationship between having the possibility to participate and having the possibility to actually influence polity process on more local level. Therefore I have been examining the citizens? participation and influence in Helsingborg which is my case study.

Organisations tend to focus more and more on product and process development to increase their competitiveness. Several major organisations, among them ABB, have developed models aimed to more effectively control and manage product development processes. ABB is using its standardised model ABB Gate Model for this. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze how the introduction of ABB Gate Model has affected the outcome of decisions and also the decision-making in the product development process. The study is limited to elucidate the version of ABB Gate Model handling product development projects.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the ways in which emotion regulation and mood affects risk taking when it comes to decision making competence. Emotion regulation is an essential part of the attachment process, the development of an autonomous self and functional stress coping systems. Research indicates that there is a relation between a distorted emotion regulation and some psychological disorders like depression, PTSD, anxiety disorders and borderline (or instable emotional personality disorder). There is a definite need to analyze the relation between emotion regulation and decision making competence since it is relatively unexplored. A digital questionnaire was distributed amongst the participants.

The investigation aims to clarify to what extent non-conscious thought has efficacy in for instance decision making,and also examine some aspects of the question whether decisions are caused by free will. This is done by an analysisof new research in neuroscience, economics, the combination of the two within neuroeconomics, evolutionarytheory and especially the new theory of Unconscious thought (Nordgren & Dijksterhuis 2006), which will enjoyspecial scrutiny due to its recentness in the scientific field. A decision strategy ought to put high-level consciouscognition to use where it is most effective, and this is on a different level than the canonized one. Meta decisionmaking is decision making concerning which decisions ought to be made consciously. It is the area where the largestamount of freedom can be obtained wherein the largest amount of thought effort ought to be invested.

Bakgrunden för denna studie är problematiken kring beslutsfattande. Tidigare forskning visar att en individ dagligen fattar en mängd medvetna och omedvetna beslut. Dessa beslut faller sig olika utefter vilka erfarenheter, preferenser och känslor individen har och hur detta påverkar individen vid köp av dyra sällanköpsvaror. Syftet med studien är att identifiera faktorer och personlighetstyper som influerar köparens beslut gällande dyra sällanköpsvaror..

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the ways in which emotion regulation and mood affects risk taking when it comes to decision making competence. Emotion regulation is an essential part of the attachment process, the development of an autonomous self and functional stress coping systems. Research indicates that there is a relation between a distorted emotion regulation and some psychological disorders like depression, PTSD, anxiety disorders and borderline (or instable emotional personality disorder). There is a definite need to analyze the relation between emotion regulation and decision making competence since it is relatively unexplored. A digital questionnaire was distributed amongst the participants.

The Stockholm Bypass is an infrastructural project planned to be located west of Stockholm. This study investigates the argumentation concerning the project from different perspectives. The theoretical starting point is within Decision Theory. The main theories include Bounded Rationality, Kingdon's study of the political agenda and theory regarding venue shopping, framing and lobbying. The method chosen for this qualitative case study consists of both gathering data through semi-structured interviews and through documents provided by stakeholders and information available publically through archives and media.

It is important, for companies operating on a homogeneous product market, to understand and adapt to customer needs. Since coffee is a homogeneous product in food retail it is vital for coffee companies to work extensively with differentiation and the fierce competition. The prevailing homogenity makes it difficult for companies to develop the product itself and must therefore work to create added value to the product.The purpose of this thesis is to carry out a study on consumer decision-making when purchasing homogeneous products, and to examine how companies work to strengthen their brand and gain market share in a homogeneous product market. The market that this thesis highlights is the coffee market.To answer the purpose of this thesis the writers have conducted a questionnaire survey regarding consumers? decision-making process and interviewed two marketing managers for two major actors on the coffee market.

Making decisions have always been part of human life. Political decisions consist of many participants with both formal and informal ways to highlight problems and reach the political agenda. Processes difficult for an individual to distinguish and understand surround political decision-making. The purpose of this study is to investigate the decision process for a specific political issue, Swedish wine producers' desire to be able to sell their own wine at their vineyard; gårdsförsäljning. This is currently prohibited in the Swedish model due to an alcohol monopoly.

Information technology (IT) with its enormous capacity involves more and more in our daily activities and public sector is using IT to make their activities more efficient. The government goal with electronic government (e-government) among other things is increasing the availability and service to the public as well as improving the democratic process. Democracy can be strengthened by involving citizens in public decision making process but this goal has not been achieved yet and the development of e-government has mostly been focused on improving efficiency within administration and electronic services (e-services). Promoting the democratic process has been postponed in the development of e-government because of the lack of political commitment and decision. Digital divide is also preventing public sector to promote democracy with the support of IT.

Decision-making and valuation when buying small caps is a poorly explored area. Likewise, since disputes about deficiencies in the company?s financial and legal standing are, almost without exception, resolved in arbitration with confidentiality requirements for both sides, there is very little empirical knowledge about such disputes. This paper hopes to add empiric experience by describing such a take-over ? the purchase of the Jon Blund companies.

Throughout the years more and more charitable organisations have appeared and the competition between them has increased. This has forced the charities to use more marketing strategies in their work in order to strengthen their competitiveness. Research in philanthropy in terms of economy and marketing has been neglected in Sweden and the research that is done today is mainly focused on why individuals donate to charity. A donation, according to the writers of this thesis, has been seen as an economical activity and can therefore be explained and understood through economical models and theories. This thesis aims to see how a contributor to charity makes the decision to donate money, consequently see how the donation decision process actually works from a theoretical model of a buying decision process from marketing literature. The purpose of this thesis is therefore to from a buying decision process concerning products describe the donation decision process for contributors to charity. By achieving this purpose the writers aim to compare if a donation decision process go through certain steps similar to a buying decision process.

The inequality and separation of sexes seen in organizations may lead to inefficient use of human resources. Therefor, a more equal organization could lead to higher productivity and efficiency. Inequality within organizations is a problem also for the society as a whole since who is chosen for a position is not depended upon merits, leading to inefficiency. To not reflect upon traditional division of labor and decision-making could also lead to an undemocratic and unjust society. The aim of this thesis is to explore women and men?s engagement a family business in an agricultural setting. Gender theorists argue that gender arises from the social situation in society.