In a society where children are getting a bigger influence over the family?s consumption and where more products for children are purchased, the market for children products has expanded. This growth is due to a higher amount of older parents which have a god economy and are choosing to spend more money on products for their children. Also the fact that parents use fashion products for children as a way to reflect their own status and that children are becoming more fashionable and aware of trends have contributed to the markets expansion. All together this leads to a grown importance of knowledge for marketers concerning the market.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how staff at secondary schools are thinking and reasoning about notifications to social services based on norm breaking behaviors in students. To find this out five qualitative interviews has been made with counselors in two public schools and three private schools in Örebro län. The results show that there is no clear definition of what norm breaking behavior is which making the reasoning difficult. There are clear procedures for the staff to dealing with norm breaking behaviors but they do not know when they will be applied. The decision to report behavior to the social service is usually not taken individually, it is a result of several people?s views and experiences.

How is research and science being used in political debate? An idea analysis of the debate about försäkringsmedicinskt beslutsstöd (decision tool in healthcare security)This is a case study on different types of research use (utilization) The aim of this paper is to examine how the politicians make use of expertise and research in the parliamentary debate surrounding the decision tool in healthcare security (försäkringsmedicinskt beslutsstöd). The aim is also to find out to what extent different types of research use are present in this debate. In this case study the qualitative method of idea analysis is being used on the empirical material. The tool of analysis is based upon the theories of research use by Amara et al.

Title: Globalization ? Meeting a new market Author: Anna Nubäck Supervisor: Anders Nilsson Institution: School of Management, Blekinge Tekniska Högskola Course: Master in business administration, 15 credits (FED006) Purpose: The purpose of this essay is partly to create an understanding of the decision to establish a branch in Japan and especially to look at if and how the Swedish company in this study has adjusted its corporate culture to suit the Japanese market. Method: Data is collected thru a number of semi constructed interviews. A first telephone interview was followed by an interview made face to face that was also followed up by interviews performed over telephone. E-mails have been used to clear and correct collected data.

The aim of this study is to create an increased understanding of shared leadership and how it takes shape in the relationship between first-line managers in human service organizations. Shared leadership is seen as a complement to the traditional one-man leadership and briefly means that two managers share the role that usually is held by a single leader. The study has a qualitative approach based on semi-structured interviews with managers in human service organizations. The interviews mention the mangers thoughts and experiences about shared leadership and gain approval in the hermeneutic science field. The study is analyzed based on symbolic interactionism where perspectives from the theoreticians Mead and Goffman are used.

In this study we have investigated how care users in a nursing home experience their possibilities for influence and treatment from the staff. The study was conducted through focus group interviews with six participants who we met on four occasions. Questions the study departs from are: How do users experience their opportunity to influence? How do the users experience the treatment from the staff? The study has a qualitative approach and has been analyzed by means of symbolic interactionism, with an emphasis on the Self. Our results demonstrate that in situations of good treatment there is also a good influence.

Starting in January 2007, capital adequacy of internationally active banks will be regulated by the new Basel Capital Accord, International Convergence of Capital Measurement and Capital Standards ? a revised framework, [Basel II]. The framework introduces for the first time minimum capital requirements for operational risk and encourages market discipline of capital adequacy by initiating requirements for public disclosure of quantitative and qualitative information on operational risk exposure. This thesis examines the nature, definition, management and public disclosure of operational risk in Scandinavian banks based on regulations and recommendations presented in Basel II. We find that the models currently available for addition of operational risk to the capital requirement do not reflect actual operational risk exposure of banks.

With numerous applications in both military and civilian life, the demand for accurate 3D models of real world environments increases rapidly. Using an airborne laser scanner for the raw data acquisition and robust methods for data processing, the researchers at the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) in Linköping hope to fully automate the modeling process.The work of this thesis has mainly been focused on three areas: ground estimation, image segmentation and classification. Procedures have in each of these areas been developed, leading to a new algorithm for ground estimation, a number of segmentation methods as well as a full comparison of various decision values for an object based classification. The ground estimation algorithm developed has yielded good results compared to the method based on active contours previously elaborated at FOI. The computational effort needed by the new method has been greatly reduced compared to the former, as performance, particularly in urban areas, has been improved.

The competitive environment forces companies to find new ways to meet their customers? needs and satisfy their wants. Companies have to get to know their customers and therefore they collect more and more information about them. The purpose of this study was to examine how convenience stores use customer information. To meet this case study?s purpose two interviews were carried out at both a central level as well as a local level at the studied company.

Objective: In recent years there has been an increasing interest within the clinical (medical) science in measuring people?s health. When estimating quality of life, present practise is to use the EQ-5D questionnaire and an index which weighs the different questions. The question is what happens if the individuals estimate there own health, would it differ from the public preferences? The aim is to make a new prediction model based on the opinion of patients and compare it to the present model based on public preferences.Method: A sample of 362 patients with unstable coronary artery disease from the Frisc II trial, valued their quality of life in the acute phase and after 3, 6 and 12 months.

The aim with this thesis is to investigate the risk management at the department Road construction, The National Road Administration Region Mälardalen. The aim is also to study how the risk management could be improved to better support the project leaders. Included in theses aims is to examine potential problems with the current risk management and to suggest changes. It is of utter importance to define the concept of risk, to study how risk can be measured and in which ways risk can be analyzed. In doing so, a literary study has be done and fourteen respondents has been interviewed.Risk is to be seen more as a concept than a quantity.

Det finns en problematik för ensamstående föräldrar att på ett tillfredställande sätt balansera arbetsliv och familjeliv, än mer problematisk blir situationen om barnet eller barnen har särskilda behov. Studiens syfte är att belysa, analysera och skapa en förståelse för hur karriärutvecklingen formas för ensamstående föräldrar till barn med särskilda behov. I fokus är föräldrars karriärutveckling efter att ha fått barn med särskilda behov. Informanternas bakgrund, karriärutveckling, samhällsstöd samt förändringen det innebar att få barn med särskilda behov, är fyra faktorer som särskilt belyses. Examensarbetet utgår från en hermeneutisk ansats.

Det finns en problematik för ensamstående föräldrar att på ett tillfredställande sätt balansera arbetsliv och familjeliv, än mer problematisk blir situationen om barnet eller barnen har särskilda behov. Studiens syfte är att belysa, analysera och skapa en förståelse för hur karriärutvecklingen formas för ensamstående föräldrar till barn med särskilda behov. I fokus är föräldrars karriärutveckling efter att ha fått barn med särskilda behov. Informanternas bakgrund, karriärutveckling, samhällsstöd samt förändringen det innebar att få barn med särskilda behov, är fyra faktorer som särskilt belyses. Examensarbetet utgår från en hermeneutisk ansats.

The purpose of this study is to increase an understanding of what prevents the mandatory reporting law, based on the preschool staff's approach to mandatory reporting law about child abuse and neglect to social services, and how these barriers affect their decision to report. The study will also understand what preschool staff experience facilitates the mandatory reporting process and what can be done to improve the process even more. The questions of the study were based on the purpose of the study and have been formulated in two questions:What prevents the mandatory reporting law requirements for preschool staff and how can these barriers be removed? What facilitates for preschool staff to be confident in the decision to report child abuse and neglect, to social services?The study used qualitative semi-structured interviews with five people working at the preschool, including two preschool teachers and three childcare workers. An interview guide was designed as a help to answer the questions about what the barriers are and what it is that makes it easier for the preschool staff, regarding the decision to report cases of child abuse and neglect to social services.The results, based on the five interviews , shows preschool staff's thoughts of the knowledge on the mandatory reporting law, the mandatory reporting process, their perspective of the mandatory reporting law and the uncertainty surrounding the mandatory reporting law.The study's analysis consists of the results that have been analyzed using the theory of social representations, in which the analysis shows an understanding of how the preschool staff act and think about the mandatory reporting law requirements based on their everyday knowledge.

The aim of this study is to explain the paradox of the memberstates willingness to surrender power of important issues such as asylum and refugee policy and therefore partly abandon its sovereignty. We also discuss the relation between internationalization, regionalization and globalization since these processes form the context in which our research problem is found. A case study is used as a method in this paper.In our quest for answers we use a theory of internationalization that we place in its context by primarily discussing the relation between globalization and regionalization. The theory is used as an explanatory force and to give it a concrete form we operationalised its three processes; internationalization of problems, internationalization of the societies and internationalization of the descisionmaking.The result of the case study shows that the increase in asylumseekers leads to a higher risk of negative competition wich give rise to the memberstates need to coordinate their politics.We found that when societies and problems are being internationalized, the state finds it difficult to resolve problems on their own and this leads to the internationalization of the dedescisionmaking. The internationalization of the decision-making process is therefore natural, which in this case means the decisions are taken by the EU rather than by the member states..