Title:                          Leadership development of individuals in management positions Authors:                    Carl Renér and Peter Simonsson  Institution:                Linneaus University, School of Business and Economics Program:                   Human Resource Management Course:                      Business administration ? Organization including thesis, 15 credits Supervisor:               Olle Duhlin (Linneaus University, School of Business and Economics) Examiner:                 Mikael Lundgren (Linneaus University, School of Business and Economics) It is widely known that the role of managers may result in stress and a heavy workload. As a result of this negative effects organisations have to counteract and find new solutions and systems to facilitate and assist leaders in their work. A popular method for leadership development has come to show both in research and in practice, especially in recent years, this popular method is known as mentoring. This form of leadership development is often applied in so called mentoring programs.

Due to soft grounds in combination with seasonal variation in soil humidity, there is a lack of stands that are possible to cut during spring and autumn in some geographical regions. For Holmen Skog this sometimes means that a large proportion of the contracted private forest is cut during the winter when the ground is frozen. One consequence of this is that the proportion of winter stands in the stand bank of own forest increases while spring and autumn stands becomes a scarcity. This in combination with milder winters, especially when there is a long period of reduced bearing capacity in spring or autumn, means that the situation rapidly can become critical. The overall goal with this study was to generate basic data for decision support in the work to achieve a sustainable distribution between own forest and contracted private forest in the stand bank. The study took place at Holmen Skog, district of Umeå, during autumn 2007 and was based on interviews and an analysis of harvest planning and delivery data. The study showed that there is a problem with how the cutting is distributed between own and contracted private forest during the year and that it foremost is the proportion of winter thinning of own forest that has increased in the stand bank.

In the middle of Australia there is a city called Alice Springs. The city has one of the highest amounts of daily sunshine hours and sun irradiation in the world. The Australian Government runs a project called Solar Cities, and Alice Springs is one of the participators. The main part of the goal with the Solar Cities project is to increase the amount of electricity generated by solar power and by doing that lower the impact on the environment. This thesis examines the possibilities for construction of a large scale solar power plant in Alice Springs. This is done to determine the potential of creating a more sustainable energy system in the city.

The purpose of this study is to examine how four educators in two different departments at two different preschools in Stockholm, selects children's literature in preschool and how literature is used in the activities and how much influence children have in the choice of literature. Based on qualitative interviews as a method we have interviewed pedagogues to get answers to our questions. We will also interview some children to find out how involved they are in the purchase of literature on the departments we examined. We consider the social cultural perspective to be a well rounded starting point for our survey, because the theory gives us the opportunity to study how the interaction and meetings between educators and children develop for each reading encounter. And through the analysis a thorough display between educators and children towards literature will be shown.

Trade is the driving force for economic development. A greater equity in international trade can improve the livelihoods and the well being of producers in developing countries. The small-scale farmers have limited resources and have difficulties to get access to the international market. As a result of this, the Fair Trade movement has been developed and has now formed a trading partnership between the producer and the consumer. This study analyses if the Fair Trade movement can be a way for the workers in developing countries to achieve more justice in their production manner in the international trade of cut flowers and continue to be an important competitor of these products, but with better livelihood conditions. My method has been to do a comprehensive literature study of the Fair Trade movement, in which I describe the certification process, and the market of Fair Trade in Sweden.

The aim of this thesis is to explain what actions Sweden and the international communities have been taking in terms of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) in order to realize the Programme of Action from the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo 1994. In a theoretical perspective, donor countries and multilateral organizations are seen as interacting actors involved in global development cooperation. Through applying a human rights approach I will show shortages in terms of supplies to contraception, international agreement on the issue of safe abortions and a new era that comes with new rules for aid and development cooperation. In addition, for human rights to be realized there is the feature of accountability. Without accountability, SRHR cannot be fully respected, guaranteed and protected.

This project was conducted during the spring semester 2013 at mechanical engineering program at University Halmstad. The project was conducted in collaboration with MPQ Consulting in Halmstad. MPQ Consulting is a newly established company looking to take step into the product development world. The company has already had ideas and existing products. One of the ideas is to construct and design a form of beach games whose rules are based on the volleyball rules.

Hållbar utveckling är en viktig utmaning i vår tid och folkhälsa har betydelse för begreppets alla tre dimensioner. Det finns många styrdokument om vikten av att integrera folkhälsa i arbetet med hållbar utveckling men forskning saknas om hur folkhälsoaspekter integreras in i hållbar utveckling. Studien syftade till att undersöka folkhälsans betydelse i arbetet med hållbar utveckling i kommuner utifrån ett underifrånperspektiv. En singel case-studie har genomförts i Sörmlands län och data samlades in med hjälp av styrdokument och intervjuer. Resultatet visar att folkhälsobegreppet inte används i samband med arbetet kring hållbar utveckling.

The parent-student-teacher conference presumes school responsibility of the development of the student. Teacher, student and parents are supposed to talk freely and in confidence, the conference should lead to a forward looking and long term plan. The parent-student-teacher conference should presume equality amongst the parties. The intention of this paper is to illuminate how the conference can be a way to clarify the process of learning. I intend to do this by showing the practice of four teachers, by making conclusions from their experiences they have made in their practice.

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.

This study aims at examine what kind of interest the European Union (EU) have in promoting a democracy process in Eastern Europe. The study is a descriptive case study where the case Ukraine is used to draw general conclusions. The questions asked to pursue the aim are: why does the EU want to promote a democracy process in Ukraine, what kind of methods does the EU use  and why is Russia trying to prevent the EU-Ukraine development and instead supporting a Russia-Ukraine development. In this study an analytical model is created and used to analyze EU:s way in promoting democracy in Ukraine. The analyze model consists of six steps used to describe the general promotion of a democracy process and it?s applied in the empirical analysis.

This master?s thesis will try to describe the beginning and development towards a modern public library of the town library in Karlskrona between 1906 and 1959. The specific years refers to the year the library was established and the year it moved to the new library building in the centre of Karlskrona. The aim of the thesis has been to do this historical description and to look at the course from the perspective of the national policies and development for the Swedish modern public library. The thesis is based mainly on reports of the proceedings of the public library and other biographical documents and literature, which has been found in two local archives.

The main aim of this study is to examine the development policies of Sweden and the European Union from a postcolonial perspective. Sweden and the European Union are increasingly coming to be viewed as normative powers rather than military powers. So how does the colonial past of the western societies affect the policies of today? Are there any signs of the power structures of the past, and if so, how are these power structures manifested in the development policies of today? Since both Sweden and the European Union have come to be viewed as normative powers they are compared with each other to highlight their similarities and differences. The results of the study shows that both Sweden and the European Union can be seen as carriers of western values and interests.

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to study the causal relationship between bank sector development and economic growth in four Nordic countries (Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway).Method: Our thesis is based on a quantitative method. The study consists of a compilation and analysis of key financial indicators that represent economic growth and bank sector development. A Granger causality test has been conducted on the time series in order to measure the causal link between economic growth and bank sector development.Theoretical framework: The study is based on the theory of endogenous growth and the causal relationship between bank sector development and economic growth also known as the demand following and supply leading hypothesis. Results: The results of the four countries are ambiguous. Except for Denmark, that follows the supply leading hypothesis, the remaining countries do not show a unanimous result..

New method for measuring road quality- A statisticalstudy of the relationship between road quality andsocioeconomic development A new tool with implications for road maintenance has the potential to yield statistical data for road quality in a large number of regions. This thesis investigates the possibility to develop a method, from this data, for evaluating the effects of road quality on socioeconomic development.The thesis is essentially divided into two parts. Part one looks to qualitatively establish the link between socioeconomic development and road quality and the second part focuses on how to develop a method for evaluating the effects of road quality on socioeconomic development. A method was devised using categorical data and a multinomial regression model. This method provides a comprehensive overview of the complex relationship between a variety of different variables.