The analysis of regional development and the formation of regional policy have experienced an increasing importance in Europe and in Sweden during the last decades. There is a widespread assumption that the increasing significance of regions is due to the diminishing role of the nationstate in the era of globalization. This essay suggests that there is a hegemonic discourse, heavily relying on the assumptions of New Regionalism, when addressing regional building. Sometimes described as an ideology, New Regionalism, which is derived from research of successful regions, is based on the assumption that regional competitiveness and autonomy creates economic growth. The Committee on Public Sector Responsibilities (Ansvarskommittén) suggests that Sweden requires new regional structure, due to the increasing expenditures facing the welfare state.

Purpose: This study examines pedagogues? thoughts about children?s understanding of death, and their reactions to the death of a relative. The aim is also to examine pedagogues? thoughts about their part in supporting bereaved children, and how they wish to do so. Method: Seven pedagogues, who work with six to nine year old children, were interviewed.

The European Water Framework Directive (WFD; 2000/60/EC) was incorporated into the Swedish legislation in 2004 through the ordinance Förordningen om förvaltningenav kvaliteten på vattenmiljön (SFS 2004:660). The objective is that all water bodies shall reach a good status by the year 2015. In Sweden the comprehensive plans of the municipalities can play a large role in reaching these goals. A comprehensive plan deals with the long term water and land use of the municipality, which can facilitate an early consideration of water management in the planning process of the municipality. In Sweden five river basin districts have been established in accordance with the Water Framework Directive.

Purpose: This thesis aims to study how students in upper secondary school evaluate sources in their everyday school work and how the role of the school library and librarian officiate in this context.Methodology: A web questionnaire was conducted and 155 students from different schools, with or without school library and school librarian, participated. We coded and aggregated the questionnaires according to the strategies that are used when evaluating sources, identified by Francke, Sundin and Limberg. Cognitive authority, a theory by Patrick Wilson, was also a part of our analysis. Conclusions: The study shows that students use different strategies, separately or combined, as a way to evaluate sources. The teacher is regarded as a cognitive authority and is the main influence concerning source evaluation. It also shows that the role of school libraries and school librarians, in this context, seem to be non-existent.

The structural rationalization of rural firms in Sweden has led to many new creative ways of developing companies. The agriculture sector is characterized by the need of capital in form of buildings, labor and inventory. The rationalization process has led to free capacity in rural firms when new technology make buildings and inventory not longer necessary for the production process. To get a better cost coverage this free capacity can be used to start-up new business areas that help the rural firm to growth.The study aims to identify factors that motives entrepreneurs in rural firms to develop new business areas. The purpose is also to analyze driving forces that lies behind development of rural firms and the forces that support or not support development in rural firms.The study is built upon five cases that all can be categorized as firms with different size and orientation.

Social media on the Web has become more common over the last decade and in recent years it has grown immensely. The social media with the highest amount of members is Facebook, where not only private persons are found - companies started to establish their profiles on the network in 2006. However, little is known about how these companies succeed and reach their audience with information dissemination and interact with them. The aim of this study is to contribute with information to local companies on how they can manage to maintain their activity with different approaches and strategies. This study examines how three different local companies chooses to spread information and maintain relationships with their members on Facebook.

The post-modern western city is going through two central changes in the organization of paid labour. One is the switch from production of goods to production of services, and the other is the increasing rift between well-paid labour with permanent jobs, and temporarily employed workers with low wages. Both of these processes are rasified and gendered, and strike harder against women, young persons and people of emigrant background. The flexible capitalism creates an informalization of the economy, breaking with earlier regulations of the labour markets, in which workers also need to find informal strategies in their individual and collective struggles. In this paper, I search for these ?new? experiences of living and working in late capitalist society, by doing open interviews with three women of Latin-American origin, working without official permission (without documents) in the informal economy of Stockholm.

Our consumption habits are today under development and alteration. The market for mobile commerce is increasing, as well as the use of social networks with mobile devices. This relatively new approach to online shopping requires that retailers adjust to new strategies related to trust issues. The purpose of this study is to examine how social networks affect the establishment of trust between retailers and customers in mobile commerce. We investigate what kind of strategies retailers apply in order for consumers to gain trust in the mobile environment.

Hedge funds? importance within the financial system has during the most recent years increased dramatically. These special funds are unique instruments that differ from traditional mutual funds in a variety of ways, however especially in how they expect returns. Due to the fact that hedge funds are able to hold short positions they possess the possibility to become market neutral investment vehicles.Because of this possibility to sustain positions neutral to market fluctuations, the concept of absolute returns became a unique selling point for hedge fund managers and promises of stable returns unchallenged by market conditions was assured. This research paper aims to examine the theory of absolute returns in hedge funds by examining hedge funds from the Nordic region during the last years of economic turmoil that has occurred by  analyzing the results from their strategies, partially by quantitative measurements as well as qualitative.  The results show that none of hedge fund strategies managed to deliver absolute returns over the chosen period..

The main purpose of this thesis has been to identify and discuss problems connected with the preservation of newspapers in Sweden. Another purpose was to see if the preservation of newspapers has been influenced by the fact that preservation studies in general concerns printed monographs and digital materials. This qualitative study is partly based upon interviews with four librarians experienced in working with newspapers and preservation. The thesis deals with cultural heritage in general and on a more specific level with newspapers where the following questions are dealt with: Why preserve? Who preserves? How to preserve? and What is preserved? Strategies used for preserving newspapers such as paper, microfilming and digitization are described as well as legal deposit, the Swedish microfilming programme and TIDEN, a digitization project of newspapers.

Purpose.The purpose of this essay was formulated as to examine the relationship between the development of deaths caused by unintentional injury and fast economic development in a country. The purpose is to create a picture of the development in the chosen countries.Background.Injuries and the deaths that sometimes follow are a problem for all communities, if nothing else just because of costs and the absence of incomes for the state. Countries ability to restrain these deaths should be of interest. Studies show that the number of deaths causedby unintentional injuries correlates inversely with the GDP/c, we can therefore expect that better economic conditions leads to fewer deaths and vice versa. It has been shown that an economic crisis often leads to considerably higher death rates.

AbstractEvidence based research has shown that organized parent support programmes have a goodeffect in strengthening the role of the parent and preventing problems during growth. Thisin turn has a great significance for Public Health.Komet is one of the evidence based programmes used in Sweden, based on Americanprogrammes and adapted to Swedish conditions.This qualitative study consists of interviews with six children between six and nine yearswith behaviour problems, whose parents have taken part in the Komet programme.With Grounded Theory as research approach the children?s experiences of the programmeand relations within the family have been looked into and analysed.The result of this study suggests that a space for growth of their own is a common need ofthe children, and that this can be achieved by giving them the opportunity to function in afamily environment where they are seen and understood.The Komet programme contributed to this by giving the family tools to strengthen relationswithin the family, create calm and make the children more visible.The self image of the children in this study had improved which gave them more room togrow in a strengthened family situation. This in turn improved conditions for good feelings,and sense of well being, of importance for child development and health..

The purpose of this study is to examine the experiences of five students searching for information in the context of writing a bachelor thesis. The main questions regard what strategies they use whilst searching for information, their relevance judgements and their feelings. The method used is the qualitative interview. The students were doing their third term in psychology. All the students were interviewed twice while working on the thesis.

Study objects: JM, Folkhem and ABB.Purpose: The purpose with this study are to examine how the supplier relations are in the construction branch and compare that result with how the supplier relations are for ABB a production company.Theoretical: The theoretical chapter illustrates important and relevant parts of supplier relations, purchasing and supplier strategies to give good overview. The theoretical review will combine information from different fields to consent with the research problem.Method: A case study has been made on three different companies, one of the companies was active in the production industry the other two were active in the construction industry. Data was mainly collected through semi structured interviews on each of the three companies.Conclusions: The size of the company decided which point of view the company had on purchasing, traditional or modern view. All three companies had a centralized purchasing organization but the construction firms were more decentralized than the production company. The reason was that the construction firms were dependent with more flexibility when every construction project is unique..

Purpose This thesis tries to create an understanding of how male homosexual entrepreneurs, both as persons and as a concept, relates to the fact that entrepreneurship, as well as the society as a whole, is heteronormative. Moreover, it examines by what methods the male homosexual entrepreneurs cope with the seemingly paradox of a homosexual man who also is an entrepreneur. Method The method has been qualitative from a social construction-point of view. We have made semi-structured interviews with nine male homosexual entrepreneurs and structured the findings from the interviews with a computer programme and mind mapping techniques. We have compared the structured findings with theories, in an abducting manner, to find out an answer to the purpose of this thesis.