This paper is a Master thesis for the Master?s program in International and European Relations in the Department of Management and Economics at Linköping University. As the title indicates, the aim of this thesis is to make a comparative analysis of the conflict resolution initiatives that were employed in the Sierra Leonean and Liberian conflicts. The research questions are: ? What were the root causes and trajectories of the Sierra Leonean and Liberian conflicts? ? What were the conflict resolution initiatives employed in resolving both conflicts? ? Why did the Lome Peace Accord succeed in the case of Sierra Leone whilst the Abuja Peace Accord failed in bringing peace to Liberia? In order to answer the afore-mentioned questions and fulfil the aim of this paper, a qualitative research method has been chosen.

The study aims to describe and analyse the relationship between norm and practice regarding social services casework on honour-related problems. The relationship between norm and practice involves the difference between the way it is intended that social workers shall operate in these cases and how they perceive that this works in practice. We interviewed two focus groups of eight Swedish social workers, four in each group. We also held an individual interview with a social services business developer. Focus group interviews were based on two vignettes; one depicting an honour-related case and the second an "ordinary" case.

We have left the industrial society, and instead, we live in a post-industrial knowledge and information society. It is often said that industrial production has disappeared or that it has changed greatly. This means that fewer are employed in the manufacturing sector while the service sector is increasing, resulting in that the boundaries between production and administration decreases. The production goes from mass production to more flexible and specialized solutions. This puts greater demands on the logistics chain that continually need to work to meet customer requirements.

Organizations are about people in interaction. Human itself is complex, and the complexity increases when people are grouped. When creating groups there is a need for a structure, an order between the people in the group. Companies have an organization - riding school is also a company and should have an organization. Many studies have been done related to the riding school but there is no documentation about organizations at riding schools, and a research is needed. The aim of the study was to clarify if riding schools in Sweden has a well considered organization.

Purpose: The purpose of this essay is to describe the social media usage of five European official national tourism organizations (NTO). The essay proceeds to discuss and evaluate the findings, whilst reflecting on the advantages of social media usage from the point of view of an official national tourism organization.Method: The authors used three different methods of research: one structured observation to study the national tourism organizations? everyday work in social media, one field stimulation to study if and how different NTO respond if a prospective visitor makes them a direct question via social media and finally an email interview to gain insight into NTO?s underlying strategies and policies about social media usage.Theoretical framework: The theories that have been used in this paper include the Uses and gratifications model, theories of one-way and multi-way communication, theories of social media and relationship marketing.Conclusion: By making use of social media the company releases some of its control to the customers as the latter can express their opinions freely in this type of media. One of the advantages of social media is that the platform favors dialogue and feedback. Social media can be used for traditional one-way communication, but works best as a supplement to the regular marketing activities, allowing the activities on social media platforms to focus on branding and building long-term customer relationships.

Purpose: The purpose of this essay is to describe the social media usage of five European official national tourism organizations (NTO). The essay proceeds to discuss and evaluate the findings, whilst reflecting on the advantages of social media usage from the point of view of an official national tourism organization.Method: The authors used three different methods of research: one structured observation to study the national tourism organizations? everyday work in social media, one field stimulation to study if and how different NTO respond if a prospective visitor makes them a direct question via social media and finally an email interview to gain insight into NTO?s underlying strategies and policies about social media usage.Theoretical framework: The theories that have been used in this paper include the Uses and gratifications model, theories of one-way and multi-way communication, theories of social media and relationship marketing.Conclusion: By making use of social media the company releases some of its control to the customers as the latter can express their opinions freely in this type of media. One of the advantages of social media is that the platform favors dialogue and feedback. Social media can be used for traditional one-way communication, but works best as a supplement to the regular marketing activities, allowing the activities on social media platforms to focus on branding and building long-term customer relationships.

This study investigates a method for identifying human capital and its effect on company valuation. We devise a measure for the efficiency of human capital based on the personnel cost. We include all companies listed in the financial and industry sector on Nasdaq OMX Stockholm in an attempt to examine human capital and its effect on firm valuation. Our results indicate that a higher efficiency of human capital has a positive effect on return on assets. However, we find that our measure can be interpreted in two ways; either as a firm?s level of human capital efficiency or its dependency on human capital, to achieve its net sales and revenue.

At the time being there is limited experience within turbine decommissioning in Sweden and the economic effects are unknown. Despite this, there are expectations that revenues generated by sales of materials will cover decommissioning costs. The model developed identifies thirteen parameters that vary between different types of turbines and that affect the economic consequences of decommissioning. The three most important parameters are turbine location, tower material, and the scope of decommissioning. Trends in the wind energy industry show that these three factors are developing in a manner that increases decommissioning costs dramatically.

The purpose of our study is to find out if insiders in Sweden generate abnormal earnings through insider trades. We want to pinpoint the cause for abnormal earnings by dividing transactions after company market value, size of the trade and type of insider. A quantitative approach using the market model have been used. We have conducted an event study over two short term event windows. We conclude that insiders in Sweden generate positive abnormal earnings for sales and negative for purchases in our ?long? event window.

Organizational democracy has been a popular research area in recent decades but the implementation in real organizations is slow (Kokkinidis, 2012; Verdorfer, Weber, Unter Rainer & Seyr, 2013). Several researchers (Schön Jansson, 2012; Falkheimer, Heide & Johansson, 2013) argue that communication practitioners have a key role in democratic processes and that because their job role is under constant change there are only a few modern studies regarding the subject. The purpose of this study is to illustrate how communication practitioners in private and public organizations experience their role in the process of internal communication and to what extent they are aware of, and work with internal organizational democracy.The practitioners we interviewed had a strong feeling that they were a support function for the business and the organizational management. As a result of the study it is clear that communication practitioners are very loyal to their employers and to the organization they work for. They are, therefore, not neutral in their professional role and argue that their task is to represent the management's interests.

This thesis was developed as an assignment from Ludosity Interactive where the goal was to develop a copy of the Xbox Live Indie Games-marketplace from the Xbox 360. Ludosity Interactive had a necessity to easily test a game's attractiveness to potential customers using testing people from outside the company in a simulated Xbox Live Indie Games test environment; excluding this developed system there is no other way to do such an analysis without actually releasing the game on the Xbox Live Indie Games marketplace and then analyze the resulting sales from the product.The finished system had to be similar to the original system to the degree that a user could see past the interface itself and use the system just as he/she would have used the real marketplace. It also had to be easy to change and add games to the system so that Ludosity Interactive easily could show the games and the data that they deemed interesting for their tests. The final product was developed using C#, XNA and XML together with an Agileinspired development method in combination with Pivotal Tracker. This report describes how this product was developed..

Purpose: The purpose of this essay is to describe the social media usage of five European official national tourism organizations (NTO). The essay proceeds to discuss and evaluate the findings, whilst reflecting on the advantages of social media usage from the point of view of an official national tourism organization.Method: The authors used three different methods of research: one structured observation to study the national tourism organizations? everyday work in social media, one field stimulation to study if and how different NTO respond if a prospective visitor makes them a direct question via social media and finally an email interview to gain insight into NTO?s underlying strategies and policies about social media usage.Theoretical framework: The theories that have been used in this paper include the Uses and gratifications model, theories of one-way and multi-way communication, theories of social media and relationship marketing.Conclusion: By making use of social media the company releases some of its control to the customers as the latter can express their opinions freely in this type of media. One of the advantages of social media is that the platform favors dialogue and feedback. Social media can be used for traditional one-way communication, but works best as a supplement to the regular marketing activities, allowing the activities on social media platforms to focus on branding and building long-term customer relationships.

This thesis deals with the concept of how price affects demand for a good by estimating various price elasticities of demand for snu sold in Sweden. Information was gathered on price development for snus and cigarettes as well as sales data from Swedish Match, the largest supplier of snus in Sweden. Income-, price- and cross-price elasticities were estimated based on log-log regression. Results show that snus is an inelastic good since the coefficient for price of snus was -0.536. This proved that a 1% increase in price causes a 0.536% decrease in quantity demanded.

In this report the two authors, and project contributors alike, describe their work withdeveloping a solar cooker intended for usage in the developing countries of the world.Specifically, the work aims at developing a new, solar heat driven cooking device, possiblybased upon the current product. This should, in comparison to the current product, be lighter,easier to transport and to produce. Also, the new product?s production mustn?t be more costlythan today and the included materials and components must be obtainable from within theBolivian national borders where the product is currently produced. During the project, certainadvantages with a more efficient, and, above all, a more moderately priced product, werediscovered.

Title: Change Communication within organizations ? How perceptions differ between managers and employees in an organizational changeAuthor: Emma Ender & Fanny TeschTutor: Anne-Marie MorhedPurpose: The purpose of this thesis was to study and compare different perceptions of change communication between managers and employees within two smaller organizations. We wanted to examine how the communication process within the change was carried out. We also aimed to compare the results with change communication models of Johansson & Heide (2008) and Lewin (1951), and also existing concepts, to see if our result differed from earlier research. Our key questions to answer were: How do managers communicate a change to the employees in two smaller companies? How do the managers think that the employees perceive the information about the change? How do the employees perceive the information about the change? How does change models from previous research correspond to, or differ from the change process?Method/Material: The material used in this thesis consists of a total of twelve interviews with both managers and employees at two small companies.Main results: The main results shows that communicating a change is complex, and that it is difficult to create models and theories for the phenomenon, as each change is unique.