The conflict in Aceh had been going on for 30 years time, but ended after a tsunami hit the area in 2004. The impact the natural catastrophe had on the conflict was that both GAM and the Indonesian government was brought together with the intent of reaching a peace agreement. The authors to this thesis paper ask the question of why it became peace after such long time of war, but also if rational choice theory can explain this event. The answer to the first question is that the tsunami was the main reason to why it became peace. As to the second question, the conclusion would be that, depending on which view of human nature one has, rational choice theory can only answer the question if cultural, religious and emotional factors are disregarded.

Purpose: Corporate communication strategies have a central role in disseminating and creating meaning to the organizations? visions, strategies and goals. But many employees do not know the organization?s overall strategies and goals, nor how well the organization achieves these. The aim of this study was to investigate and describe perceptions about internal communication, primarily focusing on communication about strategies and goals.

Organic food is produced in a way that strives towards maintaining and improving natural resources. The welfare of both producers and consumers is central, also taking both animals and the environment into account. The Swedish government finds this important and in 2006 they made a resolution that the consumption of organic food should be stimulated. The goal was that 25 % of the municipalities? consumption of food should be organic in 2010.The municipality of Ludvika reached the government's target in 2011 and is currently increasing their proportion of organic food by one new product every year.  Ludvika is a member of The National Association of Swedish Eco-municipalities and the town of Ludvika is also a Fairtrade city.

The thesis discusses new social movements and how they act on the conditions of the late capitalistic society. The purpose is to examine a new social movement trough its own members. What is their view of the movement?s aims and visions? How do they look upon the strategies to achieve these goals? The study is based on eight qualitative interviews with members of Attac Sweden. The results show that the members are highly aware of the movements avowed aims and strategies.

The aging population is a challenge for Europe and there must be cooperation between EU member states to join the challenge to meet. The purpose of this study is to describe and analyze the EU's ability to influence older people's health, based on experiences from a selection of European officials and on a review of the EU's common strategies. The authors studied and problematize the implementation of the strategies that the EU has negotiated for the work against the elderly poor health, with a view of member countries have different conditions. Using qualitative methods, we have collected and processed statements from targeted interviews and publications by a range of European policies. The material was then analyzed from implementation theory and organizational theory, and based on results of previous research. The result shows that the EU is developing common strategies and coordination methods to the aforementioned challenge to meet. The results also show that the differences existing between Member States causes implementation difficulties of the common strategies. The study states ultimately decide that there should be common strategies to facilitate the work of Member States when it comes to countering the elderly poor health.

Entrepreneurial firms face unique challenges in attracting and acquiring human resources due to difficulties associated with resource constraint and organization legitimacy, often described as liabilities of "smallness" and "newness". The aim of this paper is to examine the "smallness" and "newness" challenges met by small entrepreneurial firms, which strategies they apply to counter these challenges, and if these strategies can be explained by the firm's HR philosophy. Since few studies on Human Resource Management (HRM) in small entrepreneurial firms exist, a framework combining theory from the research fields of HRM, entrepreneurship and small firms has been developed. Employing a qualitative case study design of five small Swedish entrepreneurial firms, our findings demonstrate four "smallness" and "newness" challenges and seven strategies that either counteract or prevent them. Furthermore, results showed that the strategies applied seemed to have no significance with regards to the firm's HR philosophy.

Studiens övergripande syfte var att studera och jämföra hur två olika metoder för att förebygga konflikter införlivas i en svensk grundskola. För att finna svar på syftet har vi använt oss av följande frågeställningar: Hur arbetar lärarna på skolan i praktiken med metoderna Projekt Charlie och Gruppen som grogrund för att förebygga konflikter? Vilka likheter och skillnader finns i lärarnas arbete med de olika metoderna på skolan?Studien tar sin utgångspunkt i den kvalitativa forskningstraditionen. Med avseende på studiens syfte och frågeställningar har intervjuer gjorts för att finna svar på frågeställningarna.Fyra intervjuer gjordes med lärare på skolan, två lärare som arbetade med Projekt Charlie och två lärare som arbetar med Gruppen som grogrund. I både Projekt Charlie och Gruppen som grogrund arbetar lärarna på skolan med att införliva konfliktförebyggande arbetsmetoder.

The purpose of this masters thesis is to examine how managers in public libraries are managing financial cuts. Questions posed are: What strategies are used by the library manager to handle the cuts and how are the strategies being worked out? What are the consequences of the cuts? How do the managers use their library plans in the work with the cuts and how do the plans change as a consequence of the cuts? Library managers in eleven communities are interviewed about their financial cuts in 2003 and/or 2004. The result shows that cuts are made in different ways. The study analysed the managers statements with a model about strategies created by Oulton.

In query expansion (QE) terms are added to an initial query in order to improve retrieval effectiveness. In this thesis we use QE in the sense that a reformulation of the query is done by deleting the terms in the initial query and instead replacing them with terms from the documents retrieved in the initial run. The aim of this thesis is to, in a experimental full text invironment, study and compare the retrieval result of two different query expansion strategies in relation to each other. The following questions are addressed by the study: How do the two strategies perform in relation to each other regarding recall? What may be causing the result? Are the two strategies retrieving the same relevant documents? Two strategies are designed to simulate a searcher using automatic query expansion (AQE) either with or without relevance feedback.

The main subject with this master thesis is to take a closer look on how some of the university libraries of Gothenburg have evaluated their electronic services (such as search-systems, Internet-based services, CD-ROM etc.). The information technology has made its way into the library field during the past century and needs to be evaluated and quality measured to ensure the best possible service to the users. Since evaluation of electronic services is a new area in the evaluation field, some problems has arisen in terms of choosing evaluation strategies and finding the appropriate performance indicators for the evaluation process. The main questions asked in the thesis are; - Which are the most common theoretical strategies for evaluation? - How do some of the university libraries of Gothenburg perform evaluation in practice? - How does the various strategies for evaluation apply to the context of this thesis? The results show that specific strategies for evaluation aren't used in the reports discussed in this thesis.

This study discusses the European Union´s influence regarding the Cyprus Conflict since 1998, when the EU began the official membership negotioations with Cyprus. The first aim of the study is to investigate in what way the EU has tried to practice influence concerning the Greek- and Turk Cypriots, but also Turkey, since Turkey is seen as a relevant party in the conflict. The second aim of the study is to examine what effects the EU´s influence has led to for the parties involved. The theoretical approach in the study is the theory Normative power, the theory stresses that Europe and the EU practices non-military power, and is able to do so because of the fact that the EU is based on internationally acknowledged desirable norms, as democracy and human rights and liberties. The result of the study shows that the EU has been an active participant concerning the Cyprus Conflict by successfully influencing the Greek- Cypriot government and Turkey e.g.

Syftet med studien var att bland högskoleanställda undersöka skillnader i Work-Life Balance och arbetstillfredsställelse beroende på deltagarnas kön samt beroende på om deltagarna hade barn under 18 år eller ej. Studien syftade även till att undersöka skillnader i arbetstillfredsställelse beroende på deltagarnas ålder. I studien ingick manliga och kvinnliga högskoleanställda som arbetade minst 80 % och som undervisade och/eller forskade inom den aktuella tjänsten. Studien genomfördes som en web-enkätundersökning på två högskolor i Sverige. Totalt besvarade 125 deltagare på enkäten som utgick ifrån två olika mätinstrument; Netemeyers, Boless och McMurrians (1996) skala som användes för att mäta Work-Life Balance uppdelat på Family-Work Conflict samt Work-Family Conflict och Minnesota Job Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) som mätte inre och yttre arbetstillfredsställelse.

The purpose of this essay is to examine how administrative officers at the Swedish social insurance agency experience and deal with the goal conflicts they may experience. Furthermore, the purpose is to gain a greater understanding on how they perceive their role in the implementation process, and their position as the link between the citizens and the state. Two potential conflicts are examined; between quantitative goals and performance measures and those more qualitative and hard to measure; between economic values such as cost efficiency and productivity and democratic values such as the rule of law. The other conflict examined is that between implementing and following the laws set forth, take into account the individual needs and interests of the citizen. The theoretical framework consists of Lundquist?s theory on public officers as the guardians of democracy, which means that they should not only implement laws and rules according to political intentions, but also make sure that the democratic values and principles are followed in the relationship between state and citizen.

The purpose of this study is to examine senior high school students? strategies and reasoning when solving mathematical problems and make a review of the concept problem solving. The purpose is also to examine if the students? choice of strategies are influenced when their mathematical knowledge is improved.The study was conducted in two science classes at a senior high school. All the students were asked to individually solve two mathematical problems.

The usage of visions and strategies is something that helps an organisation to create an imaginary scenario and guide them of how to realize these goals. During the years of 2006-2008 Region Gotland presented a document that was supposed to show the region's visions. The theoretical framework of this thesis is based on the stakeholder theory, Balanced Scorecard (BSC) and Management Control Systems Package (MCS). Personal interviews were conducted within the organisation Region Gotland, with individuals whom are directly linked to the visions and strategies of the organisation. The purpose of this study is to clarify the concepts of vision and strategy, and what their impact is on the organisation's work on the operation level.