Performance appraisals- a study of the performance appraisals significance as a tool for development in the public sector.Anders Larsson and Åsalill OlssonPerformance appraisals have been given a central role in leading businesses in the public sector and are seen as a tool to create development opportunities and achieve better results. This has resulted that performance appraisal in many organizations takes up capacity and time. This was the starting point of our interest to study whether the time spent on performance appraisals effectively pays for itself in the organization, in other words whether the effects expected actually are achieved. The paper examines first line managers` views on staff appraisal purposes and effects of a function within the Landstinget. The survey design, methodology and transaction are of qualitative and quantitative method with three different sources: literature review of previous research, interviews with first line managers in Landstinget Västmanland and the results from an employee satisfaction survey conducted on behalf of Landstinget Västmanland.

This qualitative study is aimed to explore the leaders? experiences of difficult conversations in their work. We have examined if they take on a different role during the difficult conversations and how communication can affect their leadership during the conversation. We have also examined the importance of the leaders? ability to distance themselves from the sensitive subject and situation, to maintain their role as leaders.

In the profession of architects there is an element called architectural competitions, where several architects compete in submitting the best solution for a certain task. In this master?s thesis I am studying the competitor?s perspective of an international architectural competition, while at the same time gaining experiences for my future career as a landscape architect. The aim of this thesis is to through an introspection of my own process examine a competitors view of the international architectural competition and how to approach the difficulties concerning international competitions. Through that I hope obtain experience about the international competition as part of the profession of landscape architects and other involved professions. To examine a competitor?s reflection of an international competition, I entered and competed in LE:NOTRE Student Competition, a competition for students where the task was to develop 25 kilometers of complex urban periphery along a chain of natural and artificial lakes in Bucharest, Romania.

Background: Employees acting towards company goals and having a strong desire to remain in the organisation are very important for the success of a company. In order to generate such organisational commitment of the employees, the knowledge about what motivates and satisfies them is essential. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to investigate and analyse the factors which motivate employees, under consideration of individual characteristics. Limitation: Age, gender, marital status, work area, position and the years a person has been working in the company represent the individual characteristics examined in this study. Realisation: Literature research as well as a practical survey consisting of mail questionnaires and personal interviews were carried out in order to best serve the purpose of this thesis.

Background: Traditionally defined boundaries and borders between organizations are at present being re-evaluated because of new and tougher demands. Today we can see a trend where these boundaries are being lowered or even eliminated when organizations choose to co-operate instead of compete. Purpose: In order to create an understanding for the partner selection process in the newly founded joint ventures between the companies which are building the Swedish 3G Network, the determining factors are being studied. Delimitation: The studies companies are co-operating as network operators but are at the same time competing as mobile operators. This relationship is in the literature described as co-opetition, which will not be investigated in this paper.

I och med Försvarsmaktens nya riktning, där ett nationellt försvar skall ersättas av en insatsorganisation, kommer det ske omfattande förändringar inom organisationen. En av dessa berör personalförsörjning då värnpliktssystemet ersätts av frivillighet och personalen utgörs av yrkesanställda soldater. Det kan antas att ett förändrat personalförsörjningssystem får konsekvenser för kraven på Försvarsmakten och dess anställda. Fokus i den här uppsatsen ligger på plutonchefer och deras chefs- och ledarskap. Detta arbete syftar till att fastställa om det finns någon skillnad mellan att vara plutonchef över värnpliktiga respektive anställda soldater.

Syfte: Verksamheten har sta?llda ma?l som de inte uppna?r, da?rfo?r har en omorganisation genomfo?rts. Syftet med underso?kningen a?r att fa? kunskap om hur mellancheferna beskriver sitt arbetssa?tt med att utveckla sin personal och hur omorganisationen har pa?verkat mellanchefernas arbete. Fra?gesta?llningar: Hur beskriver mellancheferna sitt arbete med att utveckla sin personal mot o?verga?ngar? Hur upplever mellancheferna implementeringen av omorganisationen och dess pa?verkan pa? o?verga?ngsarbetet?Metod: I va?r studie anva?nds fra?mst teorier som bero?r ledarskap och fo?ra?ndring.

The purpose of this master thesis is to examine how Dublin Core corresponds to the findings in the IFLA report Functional requirements for bibliographic records FRBR, and what consequences this correspondence has on the usability of Dublin Core as a bibliographic standard. While the study describes the conceptual model of FRBR and the entities work, expression, manifestation and item, its main focus is the mapping of attributes and relationships to the user tasks defined, namely to find, identify, select and obtain entities. The study makes a comparison between data that FRBR rates as highly important for any user task, and the elements defined in DCMI Metadata Terms. The outcome of the comparison is then analyzed as to how it affects Dublin Core's possibilities to assist in the different user tasks, and common problems are discussed. The results show that problems in expressing attributes and relationships through Dublin Core elements concern all of the four user tasks.

The aim ofthis study was to examine how economic growth affects the level of democracy inauthoritarian states. Some of these states have experienced high economicgrowth. However, one can discuss how it affects the country?s democratization-process.For that reason this study was needed to contribute to a clarification of howeconomic growth can affect authoritarian rule and democratization. This wasdone through an examination of the development in China.

Ledarskap finns på flera platser i samhället och kan se ut på olika sätt. Det är något som alla känner till eller har kommit i kontakt med på ett eller annat sätt. Likt ord som lycka eller kärlek är ledarskap subjektivt och öppet för tolkning. Vissa hävdar att ledarskap är en medfödd förmåga medan andra menar att det är en förmåga som kan tränas upp. Ledarskapets speciella karaktär med sin skiftande betydelse och utseende fick oss att skriva det här arbetet.

In recent years cognitive training in order to improve cognitive abilities have becomeincreasingly popular and a lot of research has been conducted within this field. The natural agingprocess has a negative effect on many of our cognitive abilities and this relationship also has a strongconnection with hearing loss. Elderly with hearing loss is therefore a group that could benefit fromcognitive training. Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate different types of cognitivetraining directed towards working memory in older adults and to examine the results observedregarding efficacy of this type of training and its transfer effect. Method: A literature reviewconsisting of 17 scientific articles published between 2005-2014.

Background: Knatteskutt is one of the largest organizations in children's sports. Operations are located in approximately 150 cities / areas and have both sports and dance focus. The children are aged 3-7 years and may try several sports activities or dance styles during the semester, focusing on play and motor skills. All who are leaders at Knatteskutt has undergone Swedish Sports Promotion of Child Leaders Training. There are also regional managers around Sweden is as a sounding board for leaders and as an extended arm between the office and the leaders.

The most recent couple of years the boundaries of the world have been erased and we have come to live in a more global environment. It has been even more evident since the European Union has got a more prominent role in the society. It appears as obvious for most of us that we live in a changeable time and that a new, global perspective has been developed. Companies have to focus on the effect globalization and differences in culture have, to be competitive in the market today. Because of that business managers more often can come to work in other countries than their country of origin, it becomes interesting whether these managers adapt their management style or if they continue to work the same way as they did in their native country.This thesis aims to investigate if business managers with a foreign background bring along their national culture when managing a company in Sweden.

The purpose with our study is to investigate in which way a public field of action has succeeded to make the economic management more effective and also find out which factors/activities that have contributed to get the result of the budget in balance. We also want to find out in which degree the balanced scorecard (BSC) has contributed to the positive result of the budget. Method: We had started out from the qualitative method theory which is based on the hermeneutic theory, because we will interpret and understand. With this starting point we have chosen to use a case study with semi-standardised interviews supplemented with information from different documents, and to get the theoretic connection we have studied literature in the subject field. The analyse and even the theoretic connection have then started from, for this study, a special analyse model.

Title: Creativity and blockings: Non-musicians? experiences of music making The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the ability of music-making can benefit from and/or be inhibited by extra-musical factors, such as one's own or other people's opinions, criticism, prejudice and values. An experiment was carried out, where 10 nonmusicians were instructed to solve a compositional problem (writing pieces of music to a picture) which had been expressed in two different ways, one of which (A) was intended to block creativity and the other (B) to facilitate the creative process. All subjects also had to answer a questionnaire, where their experiences in connection with the task and their attitudes towards music and composition were mapped. The result was that all subjects succeeded in composing one or more pieces of music, regardless of which instruction they had been given.