Background: Mass customization has been identified as a competitive business strategy by both companies and academics because of its ability to incorporate the voice of the customer into companies? products and services. Although mass customization may sound appealing, the strategic concept is still developing and firms adopting this business strategy face several challenges. Production concerns are of high relevance since mass customization implies a high level of customer involvement in the product design. Since the areas are closely linked it is reasonable to ask how a mass customization strategy affects production concerns.

This thesis aims to develop a theory in the under researched field of international comparative cultural policy studies. lt does so by combining theories from the fields of political scienceand cultural studies, researching how and to what extent the concepts of culture of different states have an impact on the way cultural policies are constructed.The thesis uses this theoretical development in order to research a specific problem, namely the perceived possibility that Swedish and German cultural structures are slowly converging. Two recent official policy documents from each country are the objects of study. Through comparative idea analysis and with Michiel S. D Vries theories on decentralization, the thesis explains the convergence between the countries by differing cultural views between them.

In today's society there is a significant focus on energy efficiency. Despite this, people leave lamps, televisions and computer screens etc. powered on unnecessarily. The goal of this project is to build a simple prototype for home automation where a user, via an application on a mobile phone, can switch on and off the power of an electrical products in the home and as well as being able to check whether such products are switched on or off. The prototype will also collect data on power consumption for these electrical products.

From an anti-oppressive and a gender perspective, the aim of this paper is to examine whether three English teachers at a comprehensive school in Stockholm make gender conscious selections when selecting novels for their English literature lessons. Through quantitative research, semi-structured interviews and e-mail interviews with these teachers I have attempted to find out if they include both male and female writers when selecting English novels for their students and also what factors affect their selections. I have analyzed the interviews and the quantitative research by using a qualitative and a quantitative content analysis. The theories that I have established my analysis upon are gender theories about the male norm in society, the feminist Simone de Beauvoir?s ideas about the woman as a second gender and the sociologist Raewyn Connell?s gender regimes.

The purpose of this thesis is to describe the marketing channels Gen Y is exposed to, uses and is influenced by. The thesis also seeks to comment on whether there are other factors, in addition to the marketing channels described, which influence Gen Y in their consumption choices. In addition, we intend to develop knowledge about whether the generalizations of Gen Y have any bearing, or if they are only assumptions with no support. From the empirical results, we have seen a consensus among the respondents concerning which properties they want commercials to hold, but they differ in their opinions regarding which marketing channels the commercials should be distributed through. Overall, the respondents want the commercials to be entertaining, relevant to their interests, and they want to be able to choose themselves whet­her to take part of them or not..

This is a study on how a group of ten pupils choose their upper secondary schools (gymnasium). All pupils are ninth graders in a middle school in Husby which is a suburb of Stockholm. Like the big majority of Husby citizens, they all have immigrant backgrounds and their time in Sweden varies; some are born here while others are born abroad and migrated later with their parents. My aim was to understand their upper secondary school choices through own and their parents? "cultural capital".

In Stockholm there are currently five women, out of a total of 102 employees, working in public sports arenas. In sports arenas men are numerically superior amongst the workers as well as the visitors. These arenas are in many ways male dominated, masculinized environments. In this essay I investigate the reasons behind the uneven distribution, in terms of gender, among sports arena workers. I do this by interviewing seven female sports arena workers (the five current and two former), and by observing their workplaces.

This report aims to describing the work behind the development of a masonry heater.The masonry heater is developed in collaboration with the company Transient Design KB that is a product development company located in Alingsås. The company sees a possibility to cover a market segment where modern technology and design are missing.The report presents those methods and approaches that have been used and gives an overview to how the project has been carried out. It describes how the ideas behind the final results have produced and how they have been developed during the project's time. In the report you can also read about the final concept with its choices of construction and materials.The report is completed with a presentation of a final concept and a ground for possible future production..

The main purpose of this Master's thesis is to investigate the new librarians' experiences and skills in the context of their present work situation and the ongoing debate about the librarian's professional identity and status. Further, the authors wanted to find out whether the new librarians' experiences and knowledge developed throughout their education correspond to the requirements of the employers. Finally, they try to assess theimpact of the "academization" of the library schools on the status of the profession. The data consist of an opinion poll. The investigation is based on questionnaires distributed as a web survey.

Sammanfattning: Examensarbete belyser om det är möjligt att kategorisera studie- och yrkesvägledares upplevda arbetssituation i KASAM. För att kunna kategorisera utifrån KASAM vill vi veta hur studie- och yrkesvägledare upplever sin arbetssituation och hur deras kompetens tillvaratas inom deras arbetsorganisation. Dessutom har vi valt att ställa frågor om hur arbetsgivaren ser på deras profession och vilka möjligheter de har till kompetensutveckling. Examensarbetet är en kvalitativ studie med sex olika studie- och yrkesvägledare yrkesverksamma inom statlig, kommunal och privat arbetsorganisation i västra Sverige. Vi kontaktade studie- och yrkesvägledare för att höra om det fanns intresse att delta i en intervju.

Det är viktigt att se hälsa ur ett helhetsperspektiv där den sociala, fysiska samt psykiska hälsan ingår. Människan tillbringar en stor del av sitt liv på arbetsplatsen, det är därför en viktig arena att arbeta hälsofrämjande med. Hälsofrämjande sjukhus är ett exempel på en sådan arena. För hälsofrämjande sjukhus är det bland annat viktigt att främja den egna personalens hälsoutveckling i en positiv riktning, med hjälp av en aktiv kunskapsförmedling. På arbetsplatsen är det viktigt med nyckelpersoner som kan förmedla kunskap om hälsans villkor till övriga anställda.

The increased media clutter requires of brand managers to be innovative and creative in their choices of marketing communications in order for brands to be salient in the minds of consumers. Recent studies emphasize incongruent marketing as a means of "standing out" from this competitive clutter and reaching existing and new potential customers. The aim of this thesis is to examine the effects of brand incongruent sponsorships (sponsorships which are incongruent with established brand associations) on consumer response to well-established brands from the perspective of high and low levels of loyalty. A quantitative survey was conducted and the results show that incongruent sponsorships improve brand attitude, brand interest and brand credibility, while not affecting ad attitude, purchase intention and word-of-mouth intention for customers of low loyalty. For highly loyal customers the findings were that brand attitude, brand interest, brand credibility, purchase intention and word-of-mouth intention remained unchanged while ad attitude decreased.

A quantitative and qualitative study of all LIS Master theses applying a gender perspective on children-centred issues previously published at the Swedish School of Library and Information Studies. Two hypotheses were investigated: 1) studies with explicit gender perspective express strongest urgency; 2) study results confirm predeclared assumptions. A content analysis of all theses, and closer thematic analysis of ten, form the main question: Is there a risk that the theses? similarities in terms of urgency and confirmation create predictable conclusions? The theses? motivations behind the choices of research problems are explored in the content analysis. Two categories of motivation can be identified: 1) personal; 2) generally applicable.

Detta är en undersökning av fördelningen av sökande till en musikhögskola vid tre söktillfällen med fem års mellanrum, 1997, 2002 och 2007. Mot denna bakgrund diskuteras förändringar i instrumentval som antas spegla förändringar för ca 20 år sedan då de sökande antas ha gjort sina val.Förändringar som jag har iakttagit är att instrument som går under den klassiska genren har tappat sökande men den är fortfarande den största genren. Instrument under afrogenren blir mer och mer populära och folkmusikgenren blir större och större..

AbstractBachelor essay in Pedagogy by Johan Lidén &Kristian Sagfors, 2011."Genus i gymnasieskolan: En oengagerande fråga?".Supervisor: Zeki YalcinGender and gender equality in our school system has throughout the years become a well researched subject, however most of that research has focused on the lower levels of compulsory school. The upper secondary school has not gotten the same attention.We have chosen to explore how social science teachers in upper secondary school treat the subject of gender and gender equality, what strategies they apply in the classroom and how their pupils respond to the subject.We wanted to get access to their classrooms so we could do an ethnographical study to find the answers to how their lessons were planned and executed, if different teachers made different didactic choices depending on the orientation of the class. As our work progressed we ran in to an interesting problem which ultimately made us rethink the purpose of this paper.In our pursuit of respondents we contacted many schools by e-mail and later visited the schools to find participants. This proved difficult as we were met with a wall of silence and lack of interest.