Human capital is professional service firms' most valuable resource and its quality is closely linked to the quality of its services. The purpose of this study is to investigate how professional service firms appraise their employees. A comparative study between an architecture firm and a management consulting firm is conducted with the aim to identify and explain similarities and differences in performance appraisal. Two qualitative case studies are performed and interviews as well as documents are used to explore the area. The thesis builds on a critical perspective and it has an explorative approach.

The aim of this study was to investigate factors that ex-criminals believe have been of importance to them when they decided to leave a lifestyle of criminality behind. The study was based on eight semi-structured interviews with informants who had committed various forms of crime. Common to all informants is that they are now members in the Swedish association KRIS (In English: CRIS, Criminals Return Into Society), living a life without crime. The stories of the informants have been analyzed on the theoretical basis of social ties, the exit process, role loss, motivation and the life course perspective. Our study showed that the informants have been affected and motivated by various life events that could be identified and pin-pointed during the interviews.

Career Event är en årlig rekryteringsmässa vid KMA. Under mässan möter studenterna potentiella arbetsgivare inom sjöfarts- och driftsnäringen.  Observationer och informella samtal som gjordes under föregående Career Event, 2011, visade på att det finns ett behov av att undersöka om studenterna vid KMA innehar de förberedelser som önskas utav rederiernas rekryteringsrepresentanter. I rapporten sammanställs information baserat på intervjuer med rekryteringsrepresentanter från åtta rederier inom den svenska sjöfartsnäringen. I intervjuerna ger rekryteringsrepresentanterna sin syn på vilka förberedelser som de anser vara viktiga för att studenten ska ses som en intressant arbetssökande.Samtliga rekryteringsrepresentanter anser att förberedelser är viktigt och kan vara avgörande för att en anställning blir av. Kraven på förberedelser varierar parallellt med konjunkturen.

Title: Spykist ? of course, what then? - A study of the future plans of young music students in a Swedish high school. This study is dedicated to examine in what direction music students on a Swedish high school are planning to continue their education. The students, mainly 18-19 years old, are in different ways influenced in their specialised music studies by the arts program offered by their school. Will they aim for future higher musical studies or are they satisfied to have music only as a leisure pursuit? This study is based on a survey which included 99 students from grades 2 and 3 in a high school in the south of Sweden, called "Spyken".

The purpose of this master thesis is to describe the professional and literary life of Karl-Gunnar Wall, city librarian of Katrineholm between 1944 and 1975. Questions at issue are the reasons for Walls literary interests, Walls choice of occupation, crucial personal meetings, the context in which Wall acts, Walls fundamental principles as a librarian and as a critic, and the features comprising Walls life history. The method used is a merely qualitative one called "life history". It is founded on in-depth interviews with the persons involved and emanates from the individuals own story about his life. I have carried out three taped interviews; one with Wall himself, and two with his colleagues.

Rapporten handlar om rörelsehindrades studie- och yrkesval och deras erfarenheter av studie- och yrkesvägledningen under studieåren. Undersökningens syfte är att visa på om respondenterna utsatts för ?cooling down? av sina studie- och yrkesvägledare. Den har genomförts medelst nio intervjuer med unga rörelsehindrade personer. Intervjuerna har analyserats med två kvalitativa analysmetoder, meningskoncentrering och dikotomi.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to examine difficulties concerning information acquisition, use, and management experienced by graduate students in physics during their first years of research work. Semi-structured, qualitative interviews were carried out with nine doctoral students. The theoretical background for analysis of the material is based on the work of Patrick Wilson, with particular focus on the concept of cognitive authority, and on that of Lars Seldén, who has proposed the idea of an information seeking career running parallel to the academic career of the researcher. Results from the interviews indicate that most of the students, in the early stages of their information seeking careers, rely to a great extent on supervisors and more experienced colleagues when identifying material needed for the research project. In a situation where information of potential relevance is abundant and where experience and focus are not yet fully developed, senior researchers function as cognitive authorities and as guides to other cognitive authorities.

Detta examensarbete handlar om övergångsprocessen från studier till arbetsliv för studie- och yrkesvägledare. Syftet med examensarbetet är att undersöka hur nyutexaminerade studie- och yrkesvägledares övergångsprocess från studier till arbetsliv och etablering har upplevts. För att uppnå vårt syfte och för att få svar på våra frågeställningar intervjuade vi yrkesverksamma studie- och yrkesvägledare, arbetsgivare av studie- och yrkesvägledare och sistaårsstudenter på studie- och yrkesvägledarprogrammet. Den tidigare forskning inom ämnet som vi tagit del av har i huvudsak resultatet att övergångsprocessen kan vara en utmaning. Detta eftersom det finns ett kunskapsglapp mellan de kunskaper utbildning ger och det arbetsgivarna kräver.

Syftet med uppsatsen är att utvidga kunskapen om generella resmotiv hos äldre turister på besök i Stockholm. Detta för att bidra med kunskap som kan förbättra produkterna för och marknadsföringen mot denna målgrupp.Äldre turister är en intressant grupp att undersöka då de ofta behandlas utifrån stereotypa uppfattningar och antaganden om likhet. Gruppen är dock på inget sätt homogen. För att förstå gruppen bättre är det nödvändigt att använda sig av undersegment. Undersökningen intresserar sig för om det är fruktbart att göra undersegmenteringar med hjälp av variablerna resvana och livssituation.

This study examines university employees? perception of their employment situation and career opportunities. By tradition, fixed term contracts are used in the Swedish research community due to dependency on insecure funding. There is a current debate that questions this use of insecure employments. The employments are said to negatively affect the university?s societal role and international competitiveness.

My study was conducted to provide a deeper understanding of the identity of employee soldiers in the armed forces and their experience of their role in the military context. To describe and identify the soldier's identity formation, values and norms working in group processes are taken into account. As the individual identifies her or himself whit the group, the various phenomena as hostility to other military groups arise. The individuals weld together with other group members to form strong normative relationships within the group. Through a qualitative research approach eight soldiers in a regiment in western Sweden were interviewed, four of them were group executives or deputy group leaders and others were ordinary soldiers.

The purpose of this paper is to study Uno von Troil's book Bref rörande en resa til Island MDCCLXXII as part of the transfer of knowledge about Iceland to Sweden and Europe during the late 1700s. On the basis of discussions on travel books and the image of 'the other', 'I will argue that von Troil, using the skills he already had access to, as well as the skills he acquired after his trip, provides a multifaceted picture of Iceland. At the same time, I will examine how von Troil conveys information about Iceland both to a Swedish and a European audience and illustrate his network relationships and career aspirations..

Who is the most typical woman in ELLE Sweden (2013)? In this study we investigated the typical woman represented in the Swedish fashion magazine ELLE (2013) for women. Does a typical woman exist in the magazine at all and if so ? in what words and roles is she described in? How is this woman perceived in relation to the male gender? Based on the theory of constructionism; that the gender (i.e. What is female versus male) is constructed in the society and that media has an affect on our physical and psychological well being as well as our behavior and thoughts, the investigation of the female gender representation in women magazines, was of great importance to us.

Author: Elisabeth Wahlberg Title: ??I?ll just get mum to help me?About Young Adults? Strategies for Coping with Reading and Writing Difficulties in Daily Life  This study investigated how seven young adults, who during senior high school underwent a syllable based intervention due to reading and writing difficulties, developed their literacy skills, and what strategies they used to try to overcome reading and writing problems, whether at work, during studies or in their leisure time. The period from when the participants had left school ranged between three and eight years. Qualitative as well as quantitative data was compiled for the study. Qualitative data consisted of  semistructured interviews and quantitative data of tests performed before the intervention and on two occasions after, in order to compare results over time.

This study is based on six narrative interviews which I conducted with students at the University of Namibia in Windhoek, Namibia. My aim is to find out how these students are creating their identity in the environment of the university, how they look at their family structure and how Namibia´s independence in 1990 has created new opportunities for young people in contemporary Namibia. I have been using postcolonial theory and identity theories to analyse the interviews. Five of the six respondents are from the northern parts of Namibia, Ovamboland, and this area is seen as a rural area. The students have made an emotional journey from the rural areas in the north to the urban area of Windhoek and they feel that they have many new opportunities and they are willing to change Namibia into a more developed country..