Can landscape architecture be seen as an economical asset rather than as a cost? Can well designed outdoor environments affect real estate values? This study investigates the economical value of landscape architecture and its influence on real estate prices. Research results on the relation between landscape architecture and real estate values are here compiled together with a survey made among players on the Swedish real estate market of their attitudes towards the problem. This study shows that the players on the Swedish real estate market often are unaware of the economical effects of landscape architecture pointed out in the compiled research. The study also shows that to use this information in actual projects several steps need to be taken: better knowledge of the problem, more and better compilations of research results, effective channels to spread the compiled information, proper employment and implementation of the knowledge. Extended knowledge of the relation between landscape architecture and real estate values will result in new ways of making money on outdoor environments. This would in turn have consequences for how the real estate business treat outdoor environments and how landscape architects work. The study is divided into four main questions: 1: Is there a relation between good landscape architecture and real estate prices? 2: What is the view of the players on the real estate market in this matter? 3: Is there more knowledge, research and practical models at hand? 4: What future steps can be taken to broaden the knowledge and apply it to real situations?.

AbstractThis master thesis is a hermeneutic inspired case study of how the value base regarding the environmental and social responsibility in the Swedish coffee company Löfbergs Lila AB is affecting the company's business. A thesis inspired by hermeneutics means that it is based on two ideas, the one of interaction between entirety and partitions and the one of interpretation (Alvesson & Sköldberg 1994). This cause that the emphasis is on how the reality is interpreted and that it never can be seen as completely objective.The case study was conducted during the spring semester of 2010 at Karlstad's University and consists of both empirical and theoretical material collected during this time. The empirical material in this thesis includes, among other things, interviews with four representatives of Löfbergs Lila AB, written material from the company regarding its work related to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), some information about the coffee industry as a whole and different certifications for "ethical? coffee that exists on the Swedish market.The basic idea with CSR as a business strategy is that it can be financially beneficial for companies to take a social and environmental responsibility outside of the company (Vogel 2005).

In today's society there are a lot of offers towards consumers, where they actively have to choose the most appealing offer. In order for an offer to be attractive it must add value in line with the customers demand. Also, it requires that the offer provides a sufficient level of attraction so that the customer selects the particular product/service over another. Furthermore, each offer must exceed the expectations of the visitors to an event, so they feel that the event is something "extraordinary". We have chosen to study how LHC (Linkoping Hockey Club) works with marketing in order to improve the overall customer experience.

In our globalized society massconsumption is widespread. However there is a trend showingthat people are starting to re-use clothes instead of buying newly produced garments. Reasonsfor buying secondhand clothing are many. During the 1950s people strived to look likeeveryone else but in the 1960s this changed. Subcultures grew stronger.

The purpose of this study was to increase knowledge about what the lives of the unemployed youth of immigrant background looks like, and what the views of the unemployed young people are about work and employment. The study is a qualitative study where the empirical material is based on interviews with seven unemployed immigrant youth between the ages of 19 and 25 years. A study where the central questions was to explore how the informants' living conditions and identity are affected by being unemployed. The other issues aimed at how informants background affected their ability to enter the labour market, and the job expectations the informants had about the future and the Swedish labour market. Empirin have been analyzed with regard to methodology tool based theory, as well as theoretical starting points, such as social capital, formal and informal channels, ethnicity and stigma theory.

Abstract The 1st of January 2009 there will be a new discrimination law in Sweden. That means that the Parliament finally will interpret three EC-directives in there entirety. The new law means that the present discrimination laws will be merged to one law. The situation for disabled persons on the labour market has improved, since the discrimination law was founded in 1999. The Labour Court got some cases to judge and media has attracted attention to disabled persons rights.

The aim of this comparative study is to analyse the French and the Polish regional governance in order to see if there are any differences in their regional ruling systems. Further more I will study their different possibilities in taking part in the European Union regional political market. The shape of the regional systems will be explored both organisationally (study of the institutional entities of the regional construction) and functionally (study of the competencies of the regional body etcetera) to focus on its cause on the regional development. My over all focus will be to find out whether regional rule means differently in the countries France and Poland.Several questions are dealt with and the two main ones are as follows; How do the different structures of the form of government in France and Poland influence the governance on the regional level? Do Poland, as a new member state of the European Union, have what it takes to face the challenges of the new membership; or are there a complex of problems arising from the admittance that prevent its regions from fully taking part in the European regional political market?Some of my conclusions are as follows;There are major differences between the two countries when it comes to their regional ruling systems leading to different abilities in taking part in the European regional political market.

The purpose with this essay is to study how a micro enterprise builds a brand. This because the current situation makes it difficult to stand out from the vast amount of marketing messages available in the market without having an extensive marketing campaign. Small companies do not have the opportunity to put a lot of recourses as money into marketing as the large companies do. Neither do they afford to repair a brand failure.Brand building is a process that constantly is in progress in a company, large or small. To make this process concrete we have chosen to study the four factors; brand awareness, perceived quality, brand associations and brand loyalty.

This thesis is about university spin-offs and the competition in high technology industries. In the light of efforts to increase the competitiveness of the European Union, an effective transfer of cutting edge technology from universities to the industry plays an important role. University spin-offs, start-ups founded to exploit academic inventions, are likely to face considerable market entry barriers. This is among other reasons due to high capital requirements for further technology development and lack of complementary resources. With a combination of relevant literature and empirical investigation, commercialisation of technologies within spin-offs is investigated and analysed.

The underlying purpose of this study is to investigate how the libraries in Sweden organize and administrate the service of providing literature in other languages than Swedish. The study focuses on the central guiding principles that regulate the provision of multilingual literature and how these guidelines are implemented in to practice at the libraries. As the guidelines are closely connected to the official discourse in Sweden concerning policies targeted towards immigrants, the guidelines will be examined from a perspective of integration politics. To assemble data a survey has been conducted looking into factors such as how the libraries perceive the guidelines, how the libraries do business intelligence and user inquires to reach out to the users of the multilingual media, forms for statistics and method of working. The results points out that the libraries in their work with multilingual media are confronted with three tensions; the first tension is that between the libraries aim to promote equality and freedom for the individual and at the same time to fulfil certain collective interests and goals.

The aim of this study was to study how Swedish youth national football players handle stressful events in sports. A longitudinal questionnaire diary was constructed from a revised version of Nicholls and Polmans (2007) design with the intention of recording in-sport and psychosocial stress, choice of coping strategy and coping effectiveness. The participants were 59 Swedish youth national football players born 1992 observed during a four day national training camp held by the Swedish Football Association. Data were drawn from a quantifying analyzing method. The main result showed that the most common stressors reported were, physical injury or pain, experiencing teammates or opponents to perform better and feeling generally insecure during training camp.

Thesis purposeThe study aims to examine the effects vertical and horizontal line extensions might have on the total parent brand equity in terms of strength and its baseline product regarding of market share, loyalty and penetration under an elapsed period of time. The study aims to investigate a number of actual conducted line extensions effect on the above mentioned aspects of Kellers (1993) definition of brand strength as a part of the total brand equity. MethodologyThe effect of a number of line extensions of the parent brands and the baseline products is being examined in terms of market share, loyalty rate, cannibalization and market penetration. The thesis is focused on the correlations between these different parameters during a certain elapsed time ratio in order to test our theoretically routed hypothesizes in a deductive manner. Occasional correlations are derived from an indexation of data collected from the Gfk database.

Officially, the EU gender policy since 2000 has been guided by the strategy of Gender Mainstreaming. This strategy aims to promote gender equality and is informed by a feminist ontology which stipulates that women are structurally subordinated.In this essay, I examine whether the European Commission has adequately adhered to this gender policy in its free trade negotiations with the ACP (African, Caribbean, and Pacific) countries as part of the Cotonou Agreement. As a result of my text analysis of documents related to the negotiations, opinion pieces by interested actors and policy papers of the EU, I find that the Commission does not act in accordance to its stated gender policy.To explain this discrepancy between policy intent and actions, I employ postliberal feminist theory and Robert Putnam's Two-Level Game Theory Model. By analyzing statistics and published research, I explore how gender issues are being represented politically on a domestic and international level.My findings show that a key cause of this discrepancy lies in the low levels of female participation in the political institutions of the EU and ACP; a lack of participation that is especially pronounced in the area of international economics. In explaining the constraints on female participation and the prospects of full implementation of the EU's gender policy in the international political economy, I emphasize the role of culturally and historically gendered institutions..

The Swedish retail business has been characterized by a small number of ruling distributors. These distributors have been affected negatively by the internationalization which has made it possible for international distributors to establish their stores in the Swedish market. These international distributors are focused on low price stores. Their establishment on the Swedish market has led to a decrease in market shares for the Swedish distributors, which has damaged their profitability. Another change that has affected the Swedish distributors is that the behavior and needs of the customers has changed.

The investigation aims to clarify to what extent non-conscious thought has efficacy in for instance decision making,and also examine some aspects of the question whether decisions are caused by free will. This is done by an analysisof new research in neuroscience, economics, the combination of the two within neuroeconomics, evolutionarytheory and especially the new theory of Unconscious thought (Nordgren & Dijksterhuis 2006), which will enjoyspecial scrutiny due to its recentness in the scientific field. A decision strategy ought to put high-level consciouscognition to use where it is most effective, and this is on a different level than the canonized one. Meta decisionmaking is decision making concerning which decisions ought to be made consciously. It is the area where the largestamount of freedom can be obtained wherein the largest amount of thought effort ought to be invested.