This thesis aims to examine why women are prevented from attaining high positions in organizations. By executing a case study through qualitative interviews with employees from the Human Resource Department at the agency for Swedish Armed Forces, this study presents eight general and specific explanatory factors that hinder women from making a vertical career. The general factors include that women are discriminated against, women are perceived as less competent, men have created organizations and it is easier to recruit men. The specific factors include that a hierarchical organizational structure is correlated to inequality, that both the agency for Swedish Armed Forces and leadership are associated with masculinity and that women with civil competence face double misfortune. The division between general and specific factors indicate that the explanatory factors vary between organizations, which among other things implies that equality work should be tailored for the specific organization.

The purpose of this thesis was to describe what factors influence consumers? choice when buying probiotic products. Functional Foods have been predicted a bright future on the food market but so far the concept have not been embraced by the consumers. The reasons for this are many and not clearly understood. Positive health effects are what set a functional food product apart from traditional food stuffs of the same type.

This report summarizes a Bachelor Degree Project in Integrated Product Development, carried out during the fall 2007 till spring 2008 by three students at the Product Design Engineering Program at the University of Skövde. The project was performed in cooperation with Lundbergs Möbler AB in Tibro. Lundbergs wants to start selling furniture to the public eldercare. The purpose of this project was to adjust one of their chairs. The project layout was to first make a preliminary investigation where the market, competitors? assortment and the purchasing process are studied.

Clarice Lispectors is one of Latin Americas most famous writers, and she wrote a number of books during her lifetime. Her novel Stream of Life (Água viva), which came out in 1973 and was translated into Swedish in 2007, is considered to be one of Lispectors most difficult texts to read. It consists of several fragments put together into one text; however the text has no traditional narrative or structure. It is the flow of moments that moves the text forward, as it is written down by the protagonist in the book.The primary aim of this essay is to examine how the protagonist in Stream of Life through different means, as the moment, the description, the word and the variations, creates an active participation in the formation of its identity. I will discuss the moment and its act of constructing the book?s circular structure, which is of importance.

The middle ages is a time in our history that is often used as a frame when portraying fantasy on tv. HBOs immensely popular series Game of Thrones could easily be counted as one of these. But to what extent does the creators of the series approach the history of our world while creating their own? The aim of this essay is to analyse a number of characters from the tv- series out of gender- and their place in the social structure and then compare the findings with the image of the middle ages that is given in academic research. By analysing the two released seasons of Game of Thrones the study has shown that there are many similarities between the fictional world and the actual world but that it also differs through choices made by the creators of the series. .

The project has been performed in collaboration with Thule Sweden AB, a global leader in developing safe, simple and elegant solutions for the transportation of various types of equipment. The company has developed a new T-track which is telescopically, they stand mount system to connect the roof box to the roof rack does not fit into this. Therefore, the company considered that it was necessary to have a new product that meets the requirements of the new roof rack. They wanted a new, smarter solution would be developed. The bulk of this essay has been to find a new concept to connect the roof box to the roof racks. The result is a saxkonstruktion that slides down the roof rack T-profile and protected out of a puck-like housing. The product is small, simple and elegant solution.

In autumn in 2010 the project group came in contact with the travel company Golf Joy in Halmstad. They had been briefed on the problems of their customers had when they travel with their golf bags and contacted Halmstad University for help in solving this problem. When we heard about this idea, we became curious and contacted the company. After a successful meeting, we took the problem with us to the school and began to brainstorm to see how we could solve the problem. The goal was to produce a stylish and functional travel golf bag with the cart and bag in one and launch it in the golf season in 2012.

Since a couple of decades the community of Jönköping has worked out an urban vision of how the city should be appropriated expanded. The prospect extends to around year 2040 and deals with the area south of lake Munksjön in Jönköping, Sweden. Today there is a proposal of how this would look like and what main public functions that should be located there. One issue in the so-called urban vision 2.0 indicates a congressional building. This report describes how such an object can be designed according to the urban vision conditions.The work is focused on three main themes;* Architectural concept and a modern form of expression.* A functional attractive congress building in a new planned town centre.* General concept of a realistic structure system that meet the spatial and architectural possibilities.Various concepts in the meeting industry and in the architecture field are identified in order to understand the concepts and ideas with today´s congress buildings.

Statistics indicate an increase in online shopping. This indication could result in the loss of safety factors for the customer, for example the possibility to physically examine the product, interact with professional store personnel and try the product before purchase ? factors which all could support the customer in her choice of company and product. The purpose of this study is to increase the theoretical knowledge regarding strategies in the area of trust-development between customers and companies. We have chosen to investigate what strategies web based companies apply and how they are perceived by their customers.

Background: Mass customization has been identified as a competitive business strategy by both companies and academics because of its ability to incorporate the voice of the customer into companies? products and services. Although mass customization may sound appealing, the strategic concept is still developing and firms adopting this business strategy face several challenges. Production concerns are of high relevance since mass customization implies a high level of customer involvement in the product design. Since the areas are closely linked it is reasonable to ask how a mass customization strategy affects production concerns.

This paper describes and develops a trade off model of optimal capital structure by Bradley et al. (1984). The model is then tested to examine how changes in corporate tax rates affect the optimal capital structure of firms. Based on theoretical implications of the model, four hypotheses are derived stating that firms? optimal debt-to-value ratio is (1) negatively related to financial distress costs, (2) negatively related to non-debt tax shields, (3) negatively related to firm volatility and (4) positively related to the corporate tax rate.

This project is about investigation and improvement of a V-plow for the company Swekip. A V- plow is used for snow removal but this product has been found to have deficiencies in its construction, breaking down and not living up to the desired objectives. This is because the product is ordered from a company in China where they have some problems with understanding the purpose of the plow.Initially the existing plow is investigated, all the shortcomings set out and examined, what is wrong and what needs improvement?When the solutions were done they were evaluated and examined that they actually live up to the desired requirements.This assignment is a pure construction project where the majority is implemented in CAD, where models are developed and FE analyses are carried out. But the project also includes a feasibility study, idea study and hydraulic design.The results are presented in the form of a CAD model and associated drawings that will serve as the manufacturing basis for the new V-plow.

This thesis was conducted at SverigeGrepen in Vänge-Körlinge, Uppsala, Sweden.SverigeGrepen is a family business that develops and manufactures a few different parts of different kinds of products. My task is to come up with a good idea that facilitates the coupling of trailers, i.e. from an idea to a fully functioning prototype. The product is intended for use by all customers for all kinds of trailers. The actual goal of the work is to develop a full prototype that you can install and use in the easiest way possible, a prototype that follows the specifications.

How can a vacuum cleaner motivate you to use it? From a sustainability perspective,the author asked the question of how such a solution would looklike? These where issues that the project tackled and devised solutions for. Theproject wanted to explore the physical modeling and a large part of the finalresult consisted of a full scale model. The project found that the problem ofvacuuming largely consisted of the problem of storage the product. The projectfound that the motivation for the job, therefore, could be resolved by a betterdesigned vacuum cleaner with a built-in hose, folding handles, which couldbe stored integrated within the vacuum cleaner.

The paper evaluates two housing proposals with Space syntax as method. The proposals are very different in a topological sense but are in a configural sense almost the same. This effect is because both proposals connect themselves to the existing configural structure of the city in the same way. Neither of them takes advantages of the most integrated streets in the existing structure and use them to concentrate pedestrian and car flows to the streets or points which are intended to be the most urban areas. The knowledge of Space syntax and this evaluation puts focus on the pour understanding among architects and planners of what effect urban design proposals will have..