Background: Today many companies are competing to get space in our minds. Companies spend a tremendous amount of money on building strong brands. It is not just about making us aware of their logo, today it?s more about giving the brand a ?soul? and to load it with different values. Due to today?s globalization there is also interesting to look at it from a cultural perspective.

In May 2005 the Swedish cinema chain Astoria Cinemas is founded and in July two years later the company goes bankrupt. In this thesis Astoria Cinemas is used as an example to illustrate the conditions for a culture-producing company in a commercial market. The purpose of the thesis is to discuss the strategies for cultural production that has been used by the actors involved in the Swedish cinema market, and also to discuss the structural environment on that market. It is a qualitative study based on interviews and documentation. A few conclusions are possible to draw from the empirical material, one is that Astoria Cinemas? management did not agree on the company?s business strategy and therefore might have acted strategically inconsistent.

Problem: What are the characteristics of Polykemi?s management control system and how is it affected by growth? Purpose: To describe and analyse the management control system of a medium-sized family-owned company from the perspective of Simons? Levers of control. Research design: An abductive, interview-based case study of Polykemi AB. Conclusion: Polykemi?s management control system is primarily a traditional one which is rather strong in terms of Levers of control.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine the view of funding and sponsorship of culture within Swedish governmental cultural policy. The main issue is to discover changes in attitude towards funding and sponsorship of culture by comparing the discourse of cultural policy in the 1970s with the discourse of cultural policy in the 1990s. The theoretical and methological starting point is Ernesto Laclaus and Chantal Mouffes discourse theory. Another theoretical starting point is Danish cultural policy reasearcher Dorte Skot-Hansens theories of the development of cultural policy in the Nordic countries, and Norman Faircloughs, of critical discourse analysis, theory of the marketization of discourse. Four governmental cultural policy documents, two from the 1970s and two from the 1990s, are analysed through a model loosely based on Laclaus and Mouffes idea of nodalpoints and elements constituting a discourse.

This essay is a study of how teachers in social studies relate to three central curriculum concepts; cultural diversity, swedish culture and common cultural heritage.Through unstructured interviews, I have taken part of two practicing school teachers interpretations and understandings of the concepts and their practical approach for teaching about identity. An area mentioned in the core content of the courses Social studies 1a1 and Social Studies 1b.The conclusion of my study is that teachers interpret the key concepts in a transparent manner. It is believed that the main task is to problematize the concepts rather than define them. In contrast to this, the practical teaching is largely based on normative values. An open discussion and a normative practice can be said to balance right on the border between the schools values ??and the demands of the curriculum on transposition of the current culture..

The purpose of the thesis has been to explore the use of hedge fund styles when constructing portfolios of hedge funds (i.e. funds of hedge funds). The central question is if the use of hedge fund styles can significantly explain and improve risk adjusted returns (characterized by Sharpe ratios). The study has been done in collaboration with Optimized Portfolio Management AB who desire further knowledge and evaluation of hedge fund styles for their fund of hedge funds.To be able to create successful ex ante portfolios we have explored various prediction models for both risk and return. Our findings indicate that return prediction is problematic using simple models such as regression since the risk exposure of the indices appear to change significantly over time.

The aim of this study is to describe how nature is portrayed in swedish poet and critic Aase Berg?s two earliest poetry collections, Hos rådjur (1997) and Mörk materia (1999), and how it relates to notions of humanity, culture and civilisation. The concept of ?nature? is problematized in a short survey of how it has been used by and critizised in ecocritical literary theory, which is used as the main theoretical framework for this survey, with an emphasis on selected theoretical concepts by Donna Haraway. As a methodological starting point, ?nature? is tentatively defined as ?that which does not let itself be subsumed under the human, culture or civilisation?, and this definition is contrasted with how the concepts are handled in the texts.The investigation shows that the relationship of nature to the human is a fundamental theme that provides a structure for both poetry collections.

Farmers are constantly facing changes, and the exposure to risk requires monitoring these changes. Financial risks, institutional risks, market risks and production risks are the different risk categories that the farmers face. Production risks stems from factors the farmer cannot affect or is beyond his control. The crop?s output is the basis for the primary income of agricultural operations, which is why it is important for farmer to manage their production risk. A tool to reduce the consequences of production risks is crop insurance.

There are several Project Management Softwares onthe market today. These tools are powerful andextensive to the degree they become too timeconsumingand complex and therefore often defeatits original purpose. This is the case especiallywhen the project manager is inexperienced and/orthe scope of the project is moderate.The purpose of this thesis arose from this context,there seems to be a gap between a home-made MSExcel spread sheet and the advanced softwaresavailable. The thesis and the product has beendeveloped in alliance with Faveo ProjectManagement with the shared goal to create a toolwhich is easy to use but still covers the essentialareas of project management theory. The tool willbe used internally by Faveo-employees as well asexternally together with Faveo?s clients in aneducational purpose.

The aim of this study was to understand how social workers deal with honour-related violence, with special focus on the processing from sheltered housing. Our qualitative interviews with social workers that work with this kind of problems show that there are both obstacles and opportunities in the processing from sheltered housing. On the negative side are the loneliness, the shame and the guilt that the girls may experience when they need to leave their families. The social services can both be an obstacles and an opportunity. When the girls need to create a new life in a new city they have a lot of opportunities and in the same time it is hard to get to know new friends when you don´t know the city or have much money.

The purpose of this essay is to study the film culture in South Africa in a national cinema-context, focusing on the relationship between anti-apartheid film from 1974-1994 and the film in South Africa today. By pitching the South Africa-specific works of Lucia Saks and Jacqueline Maingard against the over-arching debate on national cinema as formulated by, amongst others, Stephen Crofts and Andrew Higson, this study aims to find whether or not a specific South African national cinema have existed, and exists today, or not. The study finds that an underground culture of documentaries and short films made by and for the black population has been in place since the apartheid, and the distribution method on video and television is still being used to reach the black population today. By re-examining the concepts of both the national, and of national cinema to also include film on video and television, the study shows that South Africa has indeed a film culture that can be called a national cinema..

In this two years master's thesis a regional project, Futurum.kom, is studied through the experiences of eight librarians from two of the participating libraries. The interviewees have all attended local and regional seminars where questions about core values, target groups and the role of the public library were discussed, among others. The seminars resulted in a number of core values and target groups. During the project, a number of advertising campaigns are to be conducted. The first one of these had recently been implemented at the time of the present study. The aim of the thesis is to investigate the interviewees organizational self-perception in relation to the project.

För att förklara varför småföretagare fattar de finansiella beslut de gör, har vi antagit ett processuellt perspektiv. Vi har gjort en kvalitativ studie på fyra småföretag där ägaren även är företagsledare. Detta för att vi förväntade oss att beslutsprocessen i dessa företag till stor del kretsar kring denna person. Genom att utgå från teorier rörande beslutsprocesser, risk, osäkerhet, lärande och kapitalstruktur belyser vi vilka överväganden och faktorer som påverkar de finansiella besluten i småföretag. Uppsatsen visar att beslutsprocess och beslut är beroende av de som medverkar i beslutsprocessen.

Ground work like blasting, piling and excavation has always had a great influence during the planning phase of a construction project since it can cause damages on adjacent buildings and have severe economic consequences. This thesis deals with how vibrations caused by ground work influence near-by buildings and what methods geotechnicians and construction entrepreneurs use to handle these risks.The purpose of this thesis is to explain risk management in relation to ground work. In order to achieve this I have used a qualitative method by interviewing a geotechnician and a ground work contractor who possess knowledge and experience useful to this thesis. The result shows that vibrations from ground work spread through the ground as seismic waves that cause displacements and packing in the ground visible in adjacent buildings as cracks and subsidence damages. Geotechnicians study ground work vibrations by means of ground investigations and experience from previous projects in order to produce a risk analysis that entrepreneurs can use to reduce damages.

BAKGRUND: Bröstcancer är allmänt känt i samhället, men få känner till den ärftliga aspekten av bröstcancer. Genom ett blodprov kan vårdpersonal påvisa om kvinnor har en genmutation, som ger ökad risk för bröstcancer, eller inte.SYFTE: Syftet med studien är att beskriva kvinnors upplevelser av att leva med ärftligt ökad risk för bröstcancer.METOD: En kvalitativ litteraturstudie där 14 vetenskapliga artiklar har analyserats.RESULTAT: Kvinnorna som lever med ärftligt ökad risk för bröstcancer lever med en ständig oro och osäkerhet. Varje kvinna är unik och hennes erfarenheter är därav individuella. Trots denna individualitet kan vissa mönster identifieras. De mest framstående ämnesområdena är oro och osäkerhet samt svårighet att hantera hotet.DISKUSSION: Kvinnorna med ärftligt ökad risk för bröstcancer ser till familjens bröstcancererfarenheter vid hantering av den egna situationen.