In Europe, the central governments are the ones to coordinate the international standards and strategies regarding GPP; Green Public Procurement. However in Spain a GPP program was introduced late and only applied to the Central Government Institutions, (AGEA) (BOE nr. 027, 2008). These means that smaller administrations, such as, Autonomous Regions, Municipalities and Town Councils were not included in the program. The absence of a national program which excludes those governments made them introduce their own criteria for GPP, and the difference in criteria varies from one government to the other.

This paper will answer which factors are important for the business relation between a small Swedish import company and a Chinese contractor. The problem is based partly in theories that points to cultural and organizational differences between Sweden and China, and partly in current examples from Swedish companies. The relevant data has been collected by interviews with three small Swedish companies that are currently using Chinese contractors.The result is that the differences between the countries and organizations exist, but that they do not interfere with the inter-company relations. The conclusion is that our result contradictsthe established theories in the field, and that a more comprehensive investigation is warranted..

The purpose of my study is to investigate teacher?s perceptions of their mission in the preschool class, and how they work to promote children?s written language development. What methods and working methods they use to awaken curiosity and motivate children to read and write. I am using the qualitative research method to get answers to my questions. I have made four qualitative interviews with four teachers in preschool classes from different schools.My questions are:What conceptions does teachers have about their mission in a preschool class?What different methods and approaches does teachers use to stimulate and wake children?s curiosity for reading and writing development?The theoretical basis for my study is the socio-cultural perspective, where learning occurs in interaction.

Our premiss in this study is the escalating competition in the swedish newspaper market, which have become an issue regarding smaller editions for the newspapers, and some scientist have claimed that this has brought an sensational touch to their news. With this in mind, we have studied if a sensational touch is brought to the two biggest Swedish newspapersAftonbladet?s and Expressen?s first pages. Our purpose with the study is to look into the newspapers development regarding a more sensational newsworthiness on the front page over time. The use of quotes, images and news themes is indicators to measure the development.Trough a content analysis from three different years, 1972, 1992 and 2012 we have measured the data with the computer program SPSS.

In subsequent to Post-colonialism the African nations have dilated into different political directions. While some nations have established well-functioning democracies, others are still under authoritarian regimes. The aim of this thesis is to examine if civil society has an impact on democratic development in West Africa. Therefore the theoretical starting point is Putnam?s theory of social capital, but this study will also examine other possible causal explanations for democratic transition.This study will be based on a comparative analysis of Ghana and Guinea.

The group of elderly people in Sweden will increase significantly in the future and science point out that the future elderly people will not accept today?s standards and offers of assistance in today?s public elderly care. Therefore public elderly care stands before a significant challenge in terms of development that has to be sustainable. New research also points out that middle managers can be a great strategic resource, and a founder of success, in the challenge of sustainable development. The aim of the report was to increase the knowledge about what middle managers in public elderly care think sustainable development has to embrace, when it comes to quality and personnel administration, in order to meet the needs of the future elderly people.

The actual project presents the development of a testing rig for a steam engine. A short overviewabout the development of steam engines is presented, until arriving to the development of thepresent engine, which will require to be tested in different ways.The testing rig studied on this project (based on a Lanchester engine) will be used to testdifferent materials and layouts for the group Piston-Cylinder.The engine is a high performance steam power engine, which is going to have a highpower/dimensions ratio, what will lead to require high performance components and materials.An introduction to the testing rig is presented, and the entire design project is done in order toreplace the disappeared documentation of the current testing rig, built on the 1970?s. Also somemodifications done in the original testing rig are presented, as well as some detected problemsand their possible solutions..

Product development cycles become shorter and shorter. The time from idea to market has become an important competitive factor. Despite this, methods used for making the product development process faster are surrounded with uncertainty about their efficiency. The purpose of the thesis is to describe the pros and cons of ?best practice? methods for shortening lead times and how these methods effect the lead times in research and development.

The purpose of this examination paper is to get an understanding as an upcoming teacher about how friends make an important impact on children?s identity development in school, their choice of friends circle and what kind of groups there can occur among them. With a deeper comprehension of these circumstances should an educationalist be more considerate and adapt his or hers education to prevent negative group formations and to be an outsider. To achieve my results I used a qualitative research method where I through observation handpicked eight students from upper level of compulsory school with different friend circles from two classes for further interviews. Beside this I observed students in their school environment for three days.

The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of how medium-sized construction companies adapt and how they choose to reorganize their operations in relation to the recession. The study has as its theoretical starting point theories about organizational learning, the impact of the economy on construction companies and strategies for dealing with recessions. The method used to conduct the study was semi-structured interviews with representatives from 15 different construction companies. The results of the study show that they used several strategies to adapt and reorganize the business in accordance with the recession. Some construction companies had to make cost savings as a result of the recession.

This study aims to illustrate the Leader approach and analyze the work of collaboration development within Leader. The idea has also been to describe some of the difficulties that might be encountered in this type of development work. By highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of this approach we hope to enhance the chance that future work in similar projects can be implemented more easily. Leader is a tool and methodology used in the European Union (EU) for work on sustainable rural development and it has been used since 1991. The purpose of Leader is that by supporting rural projects they will gain social capital and development in the rural communities.

The purpose of this essay is to study if and how five South African educators work with music as a special pedagogical tool in children's language development. To achieve the purpose of this study, two research questions were created. As method, interviews of a qualitative character were chosen.  The aim of the method is to give the educators the opportunity to think about and use their own experience before answering the questions.The result shows that the South African educators are not using music as a special educational tool. They rather use music as an everyday educational tool to promote children's language development. The result indicates that music in educational activities promotes children?s communication with each other.

This Master?s thesis is one of two parts of a combined project called Sustainable development around the Lake Victoria, the purpose of which is to investigate the importance of local anchoring and active participation in the work towards sustainable development. The present study aims to investigate whether men and women are empowered by the participatory rural appraisal (PRA) process promoted in their villages by the VI Agroforestry Project Masaka/Rakai. The study is primarily based on interviews with farmers within the project area and brings up a local perspective on the concepts sustainable development, active participation and empowerment. The study shows that to improve the farmers? livelihood and to create a sustainable development in the community, the farmers have to be actively involved in, and in control of, the process.

The profit a company makes is dependant of its employees which means that their competence is important for the company to perform well. The middle manager has a central position in the organization and is expected to take on different roles. This probably puts a lot of demands on the middle managers and their competence. We want to contribute with a comprehension of how learning, competence and needs for competence can look at a middle management level. Furthermore we also want to find out what kind of strategy for competence development the middle managers want the company to use so their competence development can be facilitated.

The purpose of this study is to examine how pre-school teachers think about the importance of circle time in regard to the child's language and social development from a sociocultural perspective. Furthermore the study will include what role the educators? have during the circle time.To answer our purpose we have chosen the following question:What is the role of the teachers in the circle time?What are the teacher?s thoughts about the circle time?s importance to children's social development?What are the teacher?s thoughts about the circle time?s importance to children's language development?The study is constructed on qualitative methods, where we conducted structured interviews with six preschool teachers and observed their circle time to collect our empirical material. The study is also based on Vygotsky's sociocultural perspective which says that all learning takes place through relations and interaction with other people in the cultural context you are in. The results have shown that pre-school teachers are aware of the circle time?s importance to children?s development, and purposely plan the circle time to give children the opportunity to develop both socially and linguistically skills..