During the second part of the 20th Century celebrities became more commonly used for commercial purposes as they could enhance purchase intentions, word-of-mouth- intentions and change attitudes towards brands and products. Over the last few years blogs and bloggers have become more and more used for product placing and the bloggers? power over consumers? behaviour has grown rapidly. The aim of this study is to compare a celebrity?s and a blogger?s impact on consumer behaviour and try to understand the underlying reasons why they do have such power over their audiences.

In this essay, we have compared a conventional house to a passive house. The housesshared the same local conditions; they have the same living area and the same layout. Thedifferences between the houses were the different construction solutions for the roof, theouter walls, the floor and the heating system. Both the houses qualify the standards fromBBR and the passive house also lives up to FEBY?s special conditions.The purpose with the essay was to examine if it really is profitable to build small hoses aspassive houses.

This paper describes how teachers of media view and construct their subjects. Eight teachers have been interviewed about their views and opinions about the media environment, their goals for media education as well as their opinions about the different course plans used in media education. The term Media Literacy works as a theoretical starting point for the study, since Media Literacy is the goal for most media education. The teachers? answers have been analyzed by using three different approaches to media education: protection, promotion and empowerment.

This essay studies what has been written about religious experience and visions both in the past and now. It deals with both the religious experience and tries to explain how and if there is any place in the modern society for religious visions and experience. The essay has a strong theoretical perspective to psychology of religion as presented by Anton Geels whose writings in the subject have been of one of my main sources.The study shows that people of all times and cultures have had religious visions and the feeling of a divine experience even if this has changed because of tradition, time and place. Religious experience and visions can furthermore occur both in a spontaneous, unprepared way as well as being cultured through ascetic practice in order to facilitate the divine reception. The study also shows that religious experience in no means is reserved for special ?chosen ones? but can occur to each and every one, no matter what class, race or position in life.

Background: A majority of strategic alliances do not create value for the participants. One of the main reasons for the high failure rate is an inadequate process for partner selection. If the correct partner is not selected, it can have serious effects on the management of the partnership. This is a serious problem since failed alliances usually are very expensive for the involved companies. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to investigate which theoretical factors are important when selecting a partner for a strategic alliance.

The aim of this thesis was to examine the ways in which librarianswork to stimulate the joy of reading in boys. Four children- andschool librarians were chosen for interviews in which they wereasked questions about boys' reading and the approaches they usedto help boys. The librarians were asked if they perceived boys'reading as problematic, what methods they used to stimulate thejoy of reading and if they thought it would be helpful to work withboys and girls in different ways. They were asked what theythought was the biggest challenges in changing the boys? attitudestowards reading and what they would do if they could choosefreely without any constraints in time or money.Aidan Chambers' "The circle of reading" was used to compare atheory about reading to the ways in wich the librarians worked andtheir thoughts about how to initiate reading.

Moldova is one of Europe?s poorest countries with a struggling business environment and an unpredictable political situation. The purpose of this thesis is to understand the implications of corruptions and why networks have come to play a key role in the Moldovan culture and if the formations of network are due to heritage or an effect of functionalism. The focus of the study is also to explain how the networks develop and the formation and maintenance of loyalty and trust among the members of the network. The study is of a qualitative nature that uses a key informant sampling method to get access to members of different business networks.

This paper examines and compares several different sites in Sweden in addition to one in Mexico regarding whether the ecological requirements theses sites have had during planning and construction has affected the design in any way. Is it possible that, for different reasons, one thinks ?like nature? when one thinks of ecology and, if true, how does this reflect on the spatial and structural design? This paper tries to identify if some sort of general design expression is used in projects with requirements on ecological sustainability. In total, five projects have been compared in different areas such as choice of materials and their composition. These projects have an ecologically sustainable processing of water in common, although most also have ecological consideration in other areas as well.

Alla barn har rätt att lyckas med sin läs- och skrivinlärning. Syftet med studien är att undersöka om tidig medveten träning ger många tidiga läsare och därmed undviker onödiga läs- och skrivsvårigheter. Den empiriska delen av uppsatsen har genomförts i två kommuner. Studien består dels av en kvantitativ enkätundersökning vars syfte var att spåra skolor med många tidiga läsare och dels av en kvalitativ intervjustudie, i syfte att undersöka bakomliggande faktorer till grupper med många tidiga läsare. Respondenterna består av åtta lärare verksamma i sex förskolegrupper i två kommuner i södra Sverige. Studien visar vad gäller de undersökta skolorna att metodisk träning ger bra resultat, men också att bakomliggande sociala faktorer har betydelse.

This thesis has been written within the research project ?Tillfälligt Uppbrott?, which concerns youths who have run away or been thrown out of their homes. The project is based on a na-tional poll among more than 3000 high school students. Our purpose has been to study youths who have left home and their own experiences. We have looked at all the question-naires in which the youths stated they had left home and focused on their answers to five open questions.

The need to attract and retain individuals who add value to the organization constitutes an increasing challenge facing human resource professionals. In this context it is essential to establish stronger links between the individuals and the organization they work for. The aim of this study is to explore and discuss the role of ethical core values such as trust, respect, fairness, and honesty as a critical antecedent to employee commitment. From the perspective of employees, a comparative case study is conducted in two organizations with two different reasons to exist - a profit organization and a non-profit organization. The study concludes that organizations should have a high focus on people's core values when they recruit new employees as well as for educating and training their existing employees and managers.

AbstractThe aim of this study was to investigate the reason why students contact adults if they are involved in any kind of bullying, what support they had received and wished for, as well as to investigate why student don?t contact adults. About of 150 students, 50 girls and 56 boys (70%) had experienced bullying of different kinds; some had more than one kind of experience. The students expressed that they had contacted adults when they ?felt unwell? and to ?stop bullying?.

This Master thesis is about how to involve young people in a creative process. The aim is to see what methods can be applied to make them reach the kind of knowledge they need to be able to contribute to the creation of a memorial place. Issues such as if a place that displays death has a right to exist in an urban environment or why young people should be involved in the creative process are brought up and discussed in this thesis.The memorial place that the young people contribute to is unique, in some sense, due to it not commemorating any special event or person. The purpose of the memorial is rather to serve the public when larger catastrophes occur or to serve individuals who do not have a grave they can visit to commemorate their loved ones. The idea is to place the memorial in an urban setting in the city of Borås.In this thesis the process that the young people participate in is reported in a form similar to a diary where the reader can follow the developments of the young participants, from how they gain knowledge to how they develop their ideas.

This paper seeks to clarify the attitudes and positions of five Swedish Christiannewspapers in relation to the Suffrage reform (1907-11) and the Courtyardcrisis (1914). Furthermore I try to investigate the reasons behind their attitudesand positions. The five newspapers examined are: Göteborgs Stifts-Tidning,Församlingsbladet, Vår Lösen, Svenska Morgonbladet and Wecko-Posten.The results of my research show both convergence and divergence. Commonfor the newspapers is their criticism of the political agitation on the basisof ethics and that they all, except for Göteborgs Stifts-Tidning, recognizedemocratic principles. Divergence is evident, for example, in the reactions tothe consequences of the Courtyard crisis.I have distinguished three main factors that may help to explain the attitudesand positions of the newspapers?: nationalism versus internationalism,confessionalism and polarized political positions, and have found that the conceptof a ?Christian press? can be defended as well as put into question.

After having reviewed the cases in the Veterinary Disciplinary Board of Sweden regarding certificates year 2000 to October 2007 I have found that these cases more often than in all other cases result in disciplinary action. The punishment is to a greater extent the more serious form, i.e. warning. When I examined the reasons for imposing the punishments and the material that constituted the foundations of the reports, I came to the conclusion that the statistics above do not depend on a general lack of knowledge in the Swedish veterinary profession. A possible cause is that the demands set upon the veterinarian are exceptional and that the responsibility board has a physical object to examine (the certificate) and regulations that describe how the certificates are supposed to be formulated. The fact that the knowledge about how to write veterinary certificates does not generally seem to be lacking does not exclude that lessons can be learned by examining the mistakes made by others.