Purpose: The purposes of the current study were to investigate whether there were any differences in the perceptual ability between professional and non-professional ice-hockey players and whether professional players are better at distinguishing, paying attention to and concentrating on what is important during intense physical activity. Method: Twenty male ice-hockey players (10 from both the Swedish first and third divisions) participated in the study. Wingate test were used for physiological measurements while three psychological tests were presented in front of the participants. Stroop, Flanker and Fast counting tests were used to measure perceptual and coping abilities during intense physical activity and the differences between the two groups. Results: Fast counting and Flanker word 2 tests showed a significant difference between the two groups, whereby the professional groups was faster and more accurate than the non-professional group in answering.

Military dogs in Sweden spend their first 18 months after weaning with a foster owner that has volunteered to care for its upbringing. The foster owner is advised by a consultant and offered three opportunities to train the dog together with other foster owners. There is a positive correlation between the number of attended training opportunities with the consultant, or other professional dog trainers, and the results of the dog in the temperament test at the end of the 18 months. The test results are in turn positively correlated with the likelihood of the dog to enter service. This thesis aims to investigate why the number of training opportunities is important for the dog?s chance to enter service by identifying foster owner factors that influence the success of the dog and which temperament test items the factors have the strongest impact on.

The communicator has a professional role which is relatively unspecified and hard to define. To work with communication can mean several different tasks, who also might vary between different types of organizations. The purpose with our study is to clarify the professional title communicator and its meaning. By applying a power perspective on the communicators experienced professional role in meaning to find out who has the power over the communication.     Our study is made of qualitative interviews with four professional communicators working in private organizations. We have used semi structured interviews in our study which means that we before we went through with the interviews defined themes which the interviews were built upon.

This thesis attempts to clarify the impact of cultural differenceson customer expectations of service level. Furthermore, wewant to determine whether or not expectations of service differenough to be quantifiable between two countries, Sweden andthe US, mostly regarded as similar in business practices. The conclusion showed that higher ratings on four of Hofstede?s five cultural indexes were associated with higher customer service expectations overall, and in all four SERVQUAL dimensions. This research contributes to retail internationalization and customer expectations theory.

Purpose: To examine the governance mechanisms and the competence PE-firms adds to theirholding companies through an active ownership in order to create growth.Methodology: A qualitative study with interviews as its main source of data.Theoretical perspectives: Corporate governance and relevant theories within that subjectsuch as agent theory, board of directors and management. Previous research within the subjectwill also be presented.Empirical foundation: The empirical foundation consists of three conducted interviews anddata collected from the chosen PE-firms as well as six different holding companies.Conclusions: The governance mechanisms used in the PE-firms we have chosen are stronglyrelated to both theories within corporate governance as well as previous research on thesubject. The governance mechanisms being used are an explicit owners agenda and strategy, athorough acquisition process, usage of external competence, active ownership through theboard of directors and the insertion of incentive systems..

This is a qualitative study based on two focus group interviews with a total of six social workers who work with assessing financial aid in two municipalities. The study aims to examine how the social workers experience and handle their ambiguous professional role, on the basis that they are expected to support and control the client. The theoretical framework is the theory about discretion and role theory. The results show that social workers find it difficult to combine these different approaches. Two different groups of strategies that social workers use to manage their professional role have been distinguished, the first is used to combine the different approaches (combination strategies), which are: empathy, to be distinct and to "blame" the organization.

Competition is keen in the fashion industry of today. Homogenous products and prices aredriving competition and most firms are struggling hard to attract customers. Brands havebecome one of the most important assets for success and are often critical for the choices of theconsumers. A strong brand is often considered as a substantial value in the eyes of the consumerand gives the individual firm a competitive advantage in the marketplace. To build a strongbrand it takes that the brand identity not is in conflict with the brand image of a firm or a product.Sometimes one of these conflicts exit and sometimes the firms are not even aware of it.In this thesis we study how two firms, Lindex and Prada, perceive their own image and then wecompare how the images of the firms are perceived by the customers.

The deregulation during the last decade within the airline businesses have called upon a more fierce competition among airlines. This fact forces airlines to continuously focus on service development in order to offer attractive solutions to satisfy customers changing needs and stay competitive. This paper focuses on service development at Scandinavian Airlines. The aim of this case study is to examine the sources of information used in service development and new service development at Scandinavian Airlines. Further the aim is to examine whether information derived from customers can be shown to play a more important role in either service development or new service development.

Public Service är ett svårdefinierat begrepp. De gamla idealen handlar mycket om enmedieideologi som baseras på etermediernas möjligheter och begränsningar, vilket har skapatsvårigheter när Public Service har letat sig ut på Internet. Kritik från bland annatbranschorganisationen Tidningsutgivarna ifrågasätter Public Service-företagens breddning påwebben. De anser att gränserna för vad Public Service-företagen får och inte får göra äralltför otydliga.Med hjälp av fyra kvalitativa samtalsintervjuer (tre personer från Sveriges Television samt enfrån Tidningsutgivarna), och med kvalitativa textanalyser av statliga propositioner ochutredningar angående Public Service-uppdraget undersöks hur Public Service-uppdraget ochdess medieföretag påverkas av medieutvecklingen.I uppsatsen jämförs resultaten med Anna Maria Jönssons tankar kring Public Service och denmedieideologiska inriktningen ?Social ansvarsideologi?.

Scania CV is one of the world's largest truck manufacturer. It is not only the directproduction of vehicles and methods that are important for Scania but also the servicemarket handling spare parts, repairs and workshops. The department Vehicle ServiceInformation construct standard times through work measurement for particularworks in the workshops. The software application STAM is used in the servicemarket to create and store standard times which then are exported to theworkshops' own systems.The purpose of this master thesis is to analyse and evaluate the internal workmeasurement system that includes standard times and the software STAM. Also,based on external analysis and benchmarking of other systems suggest appropriatefuture development within the area for Scania Vehicle Service Information.In order to perform the investigation, interviews and studies have been doneinternally at the departments that are involved in work measurement as well asexternally at Scania workshops.

This master's thesis reports on our investigation of how the public librarian's professional identity is formed and what it is formed of. We have considered factors such as: education, competence and daily tasks. In order to fulfil this aim we have used a literature study on concepts such as competence, education, professional identity and profession. We have also carried out an empirical study where we have interviewed nine librarians on public libraries. The method of analysis is qualitative.

Scania CV is one of the world's largest truck manufacturer. It is not only the directproduction of vehicles and methods that are important for Scania but also the servicemarket handling spare parts, repairs and workshops. The department Vehicle ServiceInformation construct standard times through work measurement for particularworks in the workshops. The software application STAM is used in the servicemarket to create and store standard times which then are exported to theworkshops' own systems.The purpose of this master thesis is to analyse and evaluate the internal workmeasurement system that includes standard times and the software STAM. Also,based on external analysis and benchmarking of other systems suggest appropriatefuture development within the area for Scania Vehicle Service Information.In order to perform the investigation, interviews and studies have been doneinternally at the departments that are involved in work measurement as well asexternally at Scania workshops.

Scania CV is one of the world's largest truck manufacturer. It is not only the directproduction of vehicles and methods that are important for Scania but also the servicemarket handling spare parts, repairs and workshops. The department Vehicle ServiceInformation construct standard times through work measurement for particularworks in the workshops. The software application STAM is used in the servicemarket to create and store standard times which then are exported to theworkshops' own systems.The purpose of this master thesis is to analyse and evaluate the internal workmeasurement system that includes standard times and the software STAM. Also,based on external analysis and benchmarking of other systems suggest appropriatefuture development within the area for Scania Vehicle Service Information.In order to perform the investigation, interviews and studies have been doneinternally at the departments that are involved in work measurement as well asexternally at Scania workshops.

The theme of this thesis is the professional ethics of public librarians. Qualitative interviews have been conducted with fourteen public librarians, with the aim to investigate their thoughts·and opinions concerning professional ethics and their experiences of ethical dilemmas in professional situations.The result shows that the majority of the librarians often discuss problems concerning what's right or wrong but that the discussions are conducted on the basis of practical situations and not in terms of professional ethics. The majority have vague ideas of how the term professional ethics should be applied on the work of public librarians, though all the interviewees consider the professional ethical discussion to be important.We examine the librarians opinions and experiences of ethical dilemmas conceming four subject areas: the principle of the librarian as a neutral and nonrestricting information intermediary, the principle of equal treatment of all the library visitors, difficulties. concerning media selection and the problems based upon the librarians flexibility towards the intemal rules of the library. The librarians experienced the behaviour towards the visitors as the greatest problem.

The purpose of this thesis is to test whether firms have target capital structure, and if so with what speed they adjust toward this target. Findings that support this purpose are also in line with the trade off theory. One of the key elements of this thesis is the method used, which successfully enables fulfilling the purpose. The panel data method captures the data characteristics of the cross sectional and time series dimension. By using this approach the dynamic effects of capital structure can be studied, thus if there actually is an adjustment towards a target the speed can be estimated.