This essay discusses people's perception of what is important for their well-being where they live. The main aim has been to find out what factors in the outdoor environments of the city are appreciated and why they are valued positively. A comparison has been made between Uppsala in Sweden and Tarapoto in Peru to see if, and in that case what, differences can be found in the values of people. I chose to carry out a survey study that got a response rate of 57 persons in Tarapoto and 63 in Uppsala. The results show that there are some common basic values, but on the whole the outdoor environments are valued differently in the two cities. In short, the Peruvians value functionality, cleanliness, small distances to family and service, while the Swedes value a central location and short distances to friends apart from functionality and good service opportunities. Conceivable reasons for this might be for example different cultural prerequisits, material standard and climate. .

This qualitative study involves the implementation of Lean and Kaizen methods in a Swedish Service industry. Lean philosophy is based on a method to achieve more with less. In practical terms this means that the use of an organization's resources is improved. The origin of Lean is the Toyota Production System. Now, Kaizen methods give managers and employees a better more efficient system to reach their goals within the organization or company.

For many years, the construction industry in Sweden has not developed much of an integral approach for design across disciplines. The sector?s impact on society, economics and environment is huge. To make the interactions within the construction industry more efficient, a relatively new concept called BIM (Building Information Modeling) has been introduced. The idea with BIM is that the different actors of the construction industry will work through intelligent CAD software, with common file formats and more cooperation between different actors during the various steps of the building and construction process.The technical consultancy company WSP Sweden is working actively to implement BIM within the frame of its activities.

The aim of this study is to look at censorship and attempted censorship of books about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual (GLBT) people in public libraries in the USA. People from the public can submit formal challenges to a book at the library when they find the material offensive which can lead to those books being taken away from the library shelves. The questions asked are why GLBT- literature is being challenged, and sometimes banned, and how do the libraries deal with the challenges to the books.It is nowadays the people from the public, rather than the government or the librarians that are behind many cases of removal of books with homosexual themes. The study presents some of the fictional GLBT- literature that has been cause for much controversy in the USA. All the five examples mentioned are children?s books concerning GLBT- themes and are among the most challenged books in American libraries in the past twenty years.

A central discussion within society and businesses today, is the change of generations in the business market which occurs within the upcoming years. A change of generations is unavoidable and a natural step in business. The challenge of the forthcoming reform is the large number of people leaving the labour market and the grand entrance of new labour; Generation Y. The characteristics of Generation Y differ from the older generation which enhances the challenges for the businesses to attract a new workforce. It may also be necessary for the organisations to adapt to the younger generation.

The aim of this master thesis was to find out about librarians opinions of childrens libraries on the Internet, if it is a resource to reach children. Qualitative interviews were conducted with three librarians who had participated in the construction and development of childrens libraries on the Internet. IT and the Internet play an important role in childrens lives and children are using it to a greater extent. Libraries have begun to integrate IT and Internet into their services and are offering service on the Internet. The public library websites are usually for grown-ups and very few are directed to children.

The essay's aim is to explain how responsibility distribution between private and public bodies, primarily within three important service areas, can be visualised in light of the fact that they have experienced different forms of readjustment. We have chosen to study this by looking at the restoration work taking place after the hurricane Gudrun swept across southern Sweden on January 8-9, 2005; and we have chosen to concentrate on the service areas of electricity- and telephone supply, and public transport. The responsibility distribution has been depicted by carrying out qualitative interviews with employees within both private and public bodies included in the restoration work. The conclusion produced is that there were obscurities in the formal responsibility distribution between private and public actors taking place in conjunction with the hurricane restoration work.In a deeper analysis, the result can be explained by a ?several hands? problem arising since the number of actors has increased as the public sphere has adopted leadership forms influenced by the private business sector.

This study has been executed at the Public Employment Office, an institution that has beensubject for much debate during the last couple of years. The government has instructed theLabour Market Board to change the Public Employment Office toward a more effectiveorganization. This study examines one of the Public Employment Offices that are included in apilot project that aims to improve and develop work methods with the objective to become amore service minded organization. From this starting point we have investigated which effect thisorganizational change has had on the employee within this organization and within the pilotproject. In addition we investigate whether attitudes of the unemployed has an effect on thestaff´s work situation.

This paper examines family owned tourism businesses with a special focus on succession. In Nordic countries tourism has been widely promoted and used in rural development as a replacement economy for ?traditional? livelihoods based on rural production. Because the tourism and hospitality industry, especially in rural areas, is dominated by family enterprises, the topic of succession is of great relevance for tourism and tourism destinations. This paper looks at family businesses? special characteristics, challenges and advantages in terms of ownership structure, lifestyle, motivations, employees and destination impact.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the organizational buying behaviour in the purchase of travels abroad. We have conducted a case study of two companies, one medium sized and one larger. Our empirical studies have shown that the companies? buying process is divided into two types, the process of recruit a new travel supplier and the process of a straight rebuy of a regular travel service. In the recruiting process we found that the evaluation process of the purchase is an ongoing process that contradicts estab-lished theories.

One of the most distinguishing features of contemporary globalisation is production fragmentation, a splitting up of the manufacturing of a good into several different stages. Production fragmentation creates new opportunities through vertical specialization; a country incapable of mastering the entire production process may specialize in the manufacturing of one separate part. The aim of this thesis is to examine to what extent international integration affects a country?s ability to engage in vertical specialization in an industry characterized by production fragmentation. The analysis focuses on the european integration process over the last decade, where countries in eastern Europe with relatively low labour costs have been integrated with more capital abundant western economies.

During the last 20 years, the Swedish health care system has faced major changes. One of them is the increasing pressure to generate economic profit due to private businesses entering the market. Health care units are forced to make some structural changes in order to become effective and efficient. As a result merger and acquisitions has become a part of the health care sector, and seems to be an increasing phenomenon. Mergers and acquisitions have mainly been studied in the industry.

The aim of this thesis is to study the effects of self-service on professional qualifications of library assistants in three public libraries in Sweden. The research questions are: - How do the library assistants experience that their professional qualifications have changed since self-service was introduced at the library? - Does the view on library assistants? professional qualifications and future differ between library managers and library assistants? - Does the view on library assistants? professional qualifications and future differ between the three different libraries? The method used is qualitative interviews with six library assistants and three head of libraries from three different public libraries. The theoretical framework for this study is constructed by theoretical ideas about professional qualifications and technology's impact on professionalism. The results indicate that the cognitive qualifications of library assistants have increased and social qualifications both increased and decreased.

This master thesis was done for a company called BRUKS which is active in woodprocessing,bio-energy and bulk material handling industry. The idea for the master thesis wasto develop a new reclaiming method for silos where wood chips are being stored. A mediumsegment of between 1000 ? 5000 m3was defined as the segment with the most sales potential.Two different concepts were produced, one for new constructions and one for rebuildingalready existing silos.In the beginning of the master thesis a lot of time was spent on visiting different BRUKSoffices and customers to get an overview of the industry and the product. This informationwas the basis when the idea generating phase began.

In present-day situation many libraries use detectors so that they can be able to prevent attempts too take out books without registering them. The university library in Jonkoping is one of the libraries that have such a detector. But unfortunately it doesn?t always work correct and can also react on other things a part from books. This is a big problem since the library staff don?t have time to check all signals that comes from detector.