The development of productivity in the construction industry has long been at a steady state compared to the manufacturing industry. Studies have shown that, amongst other things, waste on construction sites can reach up to one third of the total production cost. This has been observed from different aspects, and change is forthcoming.This thesis aims to provide a foundation for an increased productivity at production sites of building bridges. It is primarily based on a field study at Skanska, at a bridge construction site near Grängesberg. Via continuous interviews with the whole production crew, construction workers and management, information on interference and possibilities of improvement at the work site has been documented.

A new line of business has arisen on the Swedish information market. The information broker is still quite an unknown actor but the future seems to hold a prosperous outcome for this kind of alternative information service. The information broker has many definitions but can generally be described as an intermediary between information sources and users. The Swedish market for this kind of information professionals has not yet developed into a big, well-established and lucrative branch as for example the one in the USA. The Swedish actors are still coping with resistance in form of insufficient support from the government, competitiveness from other more established information services and the clienteles lack of understanding the brokers purpose and utility.

The main purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine three Swedish librarians views on their role regarding their local learning centre and its adult students. The thesis also tries to find out whether the persons responsible for the local learning centres in these municipalities regard the libraries as a resource in this context and if the municipalities express the importance of such a cooperation in documents. Previous research in information seeking and learning is presented and a survey of lifelong learning, local learning centres and libraries is made. Relevant theories, such as Loertschers taxonomy, Kuhlthaus approaches of library skills instruction and levels of mediation as well as Bruces categories of information literacy, are presented and later used in the analysis. A qualitative method was found to be most appropriate for this study, as the majority of the empirical material has been collected through interviews.

When contemplating entering an alliance the rationale behind the decision should differdepending on the size of the companies involved as well as on other important factors. The importantfactors influencing the decision are related to the resource pooling potential of the alliance,the power structure along with the business network the companies are a part of. Theanalysis has shown proof of a need for cooperation if one wish to succeed in the telecommunicationindustry and it has also determined which resources that are deemed to be most important toget in touch with, for our study object, to facilitate its access to the market. Those resources aredefined as a direct channel to the customer, funds/capital and the access to relevant businessnetworks. To get in touch with these lacking resources, three alternative approaches has beenproposed; all of them involving a strategic alliance decision.

International expansion has long been associated with a positive trend that many companies, regardless of industry, choosing to realize mainly to expand its market share and hence its profitability. Various theories describe differentiated strategies to promote corporate expansion. Either they shall be financed by internal funds, or balancing equity with debt, or only increase leverage in order to achieve the desired results. This study focuses on the Swedish fashion market and its degree of internationalization. The purpose is to attempt to discern whether there exists a correlation between the degree of internationalization and its financial performance.The study was based on a quantitative approach where secondary data was collected so that we then would be able to perform regression calculations.

The object of this thesis is to discuss the limits of the hypertext concept. The issue is whether the concept of hypertext necessarily depends on the conditions of the electronic media and www, or if the concept of hypertext more likely is founded on certain textual structures and strategies. In the light of contributions to hypertext theory during the 1990s, this thesis compares different views on hypertext, and concludes with an evaluation. The poem it the authors own translation of the original Danish title det, written in 1969 by the system-poet Inger Christensen, is the object of this case study. The poem is analysed with respect to its structural organisation and literary composition.

The aim of this study has been to, through a couple of chosen theories, examine in what way and for what purposes Japan has used its international aid system, How can the nation have been said to have implemented and acted in lines with the philosophies and principles set forth in the ODA declaration. What approaches, concerning positive and negative aid sanctions in the matters of aid to Cambodia and Burma, have been chosen and what have the motives for these choices been. What have been the determining factors of the outcome related to these sanctions - economic, political and/or matters of identity? I have found that a concern for possible decrease in economic profit and investment related areas, combined with a feared loss of political prestige and worsened diplomatic relations to the neighbouring countries in the Asian society, have come to overtrump the notion of advocating democracy, human rights, environmental and anti-militaristic issues..

In the last couple of years changes in the legal systems treatment of young offenders has given the social worker more legal responsibility. In view of this, our purpose with this study was to examine how social workers and prosecutors apprehend the role of the social worker during the legal process. The study was delimited to look into the handling of young offenders between the ages of 15 and 18 years old. The questions we intended to look at were: How do the social workers reason when trying to see the need of a child within a legal context; Do prosecutors and social workers experience that they have different approaches when looking at young offenders, as a consequence of their different professions; What is the opinion among social workers considering the duty of the social services to administrate community service for young offenders; How do the social workers argue when determining whether or not a young offender has a "special need for care". These questions were answered through empirical studies where six social workers and two prosecutors were interviewed.

CSR, Corporate Social Responsibility, has become increasingly important in a globalised world where the responsibilities of companies and governments are somewhat blurry. The textile industry is an industry where long supply chains and raw material production in developing countries are factors adding to the complexity and difficulties of solving ethical issues. Cotton production faces many environmental, social and financial challenges in the value chain. Therefore this case study takes a closer look at five Nordic home textile companies, Ikea, Hemtex, S Group, Moko and Finlayson, and how these companies choose their cotton related CSR tools and communicate their work on this area. These companies are of various sizes and therefore the resources for CSR work are also different, as well as the perceived values for working with CSR.

In this composition, a study of consignment inventory on basis of the factors which are important for implementation and application of consignment inventory are made. Logistics chain from subcontractor to end customer is becoming more complex when the volume of items constantly increases to satisfy the needs of the market. From that perspective, companies had large inventories but today it is a lot of different solutions to streamline inventory management. One way that recently becomes increasingly common is to let the subcontractor fill up the customers stock using different approaches such as VMI (Vendor Managed Inventory). A further step in the evolution can be to make use of consignment inventory where the vendor owns the stock of the customer.

A great amount of todays drivers? are constantly exceeding the speed limits on the roads. As a consequense of this, a large number of speed redusing devises, for example speed bumps, has been built around the country. As reports in local medias point out, the acceptance for these types of speed reducing devises, differs and there are many thoughts about location, construction and effect on the traffic safety. This paper approaches the complexity of these problems from the drivers? point of view, based on literature studies and a questionnaire. The goal is not to argue for or against speed reducing devises, but to try to find the source of annoyment and how to proceed further. Some of the problems turned out to be easy to fix, for example porly marked speed bumps.

The focus on this essay is derived from an international and national dialogue for sustainable development. The recommendation from international level has been to find solutions for governments to implement strategies for sustainable development between local and regional level. This initiative is to improve and stimulate the dialogue between the local inhabitants, officials, entrepreneurs and stakeholders in the communities together with the authorities on the regional level. The purpose is to share knowledge and find ways to learn about the natural systems and how to co-operate in the work of preserving the natural resources and developing different processes for a sustainable development. Many scientists? today stress the importance that ecosystem resilience is promoted by biodiversity conservation and that we need to find solutions for local ecosystem management practices.This essay aims to find theoretical approaches and perspectives that can be used in a wider framework to study co-operative processes between the local (agent) and regional (structure) level.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the Greeks in connection with the crisis in Greece is portrayed in Swedish newspapers, as well as the second generation Greeks in Sweden experiencing and interpreting the portraying and how it affects their everyday lives. The idea is to create an understanding of what happens when ethnic aspects is being portrayed in the media and how it is perceived and interpreted by second generation immigrants, and what this might mean for the impact of their daily life. The study is based, therefore on the following questions; how are the Greeks in connection with the crisis in Greece being portrayed in Swedish newspapers? How does second generations Greeks in Sweden perceive and interpret the portraying, and how it affects their everyday lives?The study's basic methodological approach is qualitative text analysis and qualitative interviews. Qualitative text analysis is to bring out the essential content through careful reading of the text parts and the context in which it is included.

This study is qualitative and will show what?s causing anxiety in a class. Further it will describe how teacher?s act and how they handle when anxiety becomes a problem in the education. How can one as a teacher handle and act in to these disturbing situations? The children, who are anxious, take important time from those students who really need help in their learning.

The purpose of my study was to find out how staff in after-school activities thinks they work with norms and values, we may call this values education, and how this in turn may influence children's norms and values. By extension, how children are socialized with each other and develop socially. In my research, I have interviewed five of the after-school activities staff who work with children aged 6-9 years at a school in the neighbourhood Rinkeby-Kista in northwestern Stockholm.The results show that after-school activity according to the staff can play a very important and sometimes crucial role in children's social development. Staff believes that if they do not learn the social rules by participating in playing and games in early childhood, when growing up they are outside and cannot participate. By their pedagogical approaches, in terms of values and norms, the adults in after-school activities can help children to become socialized into a community of solidarity and eventually as adults become responsible citizens able to function and participate in society..