Over the past thirty years the political parties in Sweden have lost five out of six members. In order to retain existing members leadership in these organizations has become increasingly important. The aim of this paper is to identify what group leaders for party groups within the municipal council believe are the driving forces that underlie the councillors' voluntary commitment, identify the group leaders' leadership style and identify whether there exist a relationship between these driving forces and the leadership style. The approach applied is qualitative consisting of twelve interviews with twelve group leaders from six different municipalities in Stockholm county. The Theoretical framework of this paper includes the Volunteer Functions Inventory and the Full Range Leadership Theory.

Sustainability reporting in Sweden is a voluntary disclosure action for non-governmental companies. Since 2009 all state-owned companies must however publish a sustainability report according to GRI guidelines and with independent assurance statement. Three different sustainability reporting methods are primarily used: (1) Separate Sustainability Report, (2) Sustainability Report included in the Directors? Report, and (3) Sustainability Report forming part of the Printed Annual Report. The aim of this paper is to explore why some companies choose to publish a sustainability report and identify the motivational factors behind this decision, as well as attain an understanding for companies? choice of reporting method.

The problem of separating a non-rectangular foreground image from a background image is a classical problem in image processing and analysis, known as matting or keying. A common example is a film frame where an actor is extracted from the background to later be placed on a different background. Compositing of these objects against a new background is one of the most common operations in the creation of visual effects. When the original background is of non-constant color the matting becomes an under determined problem, for which a unique solution cannot be found. This thesis describes a framework for computing mattes from images with backgrounds of non-constant color, using Bayesian statistics.

The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate and develop a useful theory of human behavior that recognizes the importance of our emotions. The new framework, called the theory of emotional choice, is developed by a holistic method in which results from the fields of psychology, sociology and (neuro-) biology are used to mutually support the conclusions. The theory is distilled into six preliminary points, which are based on the finding that we are not thinking as logical, rational and longsighted as is often assumed. Instead the regular human thinking is suggested to be shortsighted, intuitive and ruled by our emotions and our needs for generality, causality and normality.To demonstrate the usefulness of the new framework, it is used in an analysis of financial bubbles. Additionally, the fields of negotiation, election and ethics are suggested as potentially interesting to analyze with the new theory..

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to study an electronic reference service from a user perspective. By qualitative interviews with eight students the thesis examines their information behaviour, why and when they use the service, the user?s experiences of the service and the communication with the librarian. The users have all used the Swedish electronic reference service Fråga biblioteket ? Forskningsbibliotek.

Recent studies about refugees have shown that there are differences in how refugees are framed, depending on where they are fleeing from. Studies have also shown that right-wing populism and refugee framing can be linked. With the Theoretical framework of Banulescu-Bogdans three frames and right-wing populism, this study examines how polish politicians within the PiS party have framed refugees fleeing in 2015 in contrast to refugees fleeing in 2022.The aim is also to analyze how and if right-wing populist discourses are reflected in the frames. Using framing analysis, nine statements from different PiS-politicians were analyzed. The results show that the dominating frame towards refugees during 2015 was the threat-frame, contributing to frame the refugees as a cultural threat and security threat. The dominating frame used towards refugees 2022 was the victim-frame, contributing to frame the refugees as deserving and worthy of help. Furthermore, right-wing populist discourses were clearly existing in the framing of refugees in 2015. Discourses as ??us?? and ?? the other?? along with signs of nativism are reflected in the frames.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate how student nurses seek and use information and libraries. Furthermore, I want to know how they think information can be used in their future occupation. Seven student nurses were included in the study. A qualitative method with personal interviews was used. The analysis of the empirical material was made according to a socio-cultural perspective.

Background: When firms grow through acquisitions it is commonly debated whether the two entities ought to be better off as standalone companies rather than as a merged company. This thesis aims at discussing this issue of M&As advantages and disadvantages in terms of source of synergies from the perspective of resource allocation. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyze to what extent pre-M&A differences (against similarities) in resource allocation and corporate culture between the acquiring and target firm have an impact on the post-M&A performance. Theoretical framework: Efficient market hypothesis, resource based view, strategic fit. Methodology: A longitudinal study is conducted on the EU market during 1992 to 2002 based on balance sheet and income statement data.

The aim of this master thesis is to study electronic publishing, and our main purpose is to examine different strategies of publishing such as: markup languages and page description formats. We examine in what context these strategies are used for publishing, when it comes to scholarly documents produced by Swedish universities and university colleges during the spring of 2002. We apply a sociological perspective as the Theoretical framework for to identify the main purposes for scientists to publish their work. We also discuss properties belonging to the different formats: XML, HTML, PDF and PostScript. By doing a content based survey of the websites at Borås University College and at Gothenburg University, we have found that the most common form of electronic publishing, regarding scholarly documents, are lists with bibliographical information on publications and presentations of current research.

In august 2006 the Swedish government official report (SOU) about the structural discrimination was published and caused a lot of debate in the media. This paper is about the report as such, as much as the academic quarrel it caused in the newspaper Dagens Nyheter. My aim is to explore why the report is so provocative and what the debate actually is about. I use discourse analysis both as a method and Theoretical framework, inspired by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Using this methodology I explore which discourses that are articulated.

Purpose/Aim: The purpose is to describe, analyze and compare the two communication campaigns Världens Chans and Utrota Fattigdomen Nu, and discuss how and to what extent communication campaigns in Sweden can be used to reduce global poverty. The Theoretical framework is mainly based on communications strategies and other relevant aspects of the planning process of campaigns.Material/Method: Within the qualitative case study as an overall method, the main material to the two cases is obtained through five qualitative interviews with the premier representatives of the campaigns.Main results: Världens Chans can be seen as an information campaign by the government which purpose is to contribute to the fulfilment of the millennium goals by drawing the attention of the public to their existence. Utrota Fattigdomen Nu, on the other hand, is an influence campaign by the civil society which purpose is to exterminate poverty by putting a pressure on power holders and to change the attitudes and the behaviours among the public. Both campaigns are based on a network with lots of different actors, functioning as opinion makers. Furthermore, communication campaigns are important tools in the fight against poverty..

Compared to all existing ethnic groups in Sweden, the integration of Somali women has failed the most within the aspect of employment. This bachelor?s thesis investigates the obstacles in the integration of Somali women by focusing on one case, a project named ?Kvinnokraft?, partly financed by the European Socialfund.By interviewing eight key actors, opinions about obstacles in the project have been identified. A Theoretical framework that incorporates integration, project research, multi-level governance and intersectionality contributes to explaining difficulties in integrating Somali women.The empirical findings show that there are individual, social and institutional holdbacks. Stereotypical perceptions were common amongst officials, which contributes to a creation of an inferior position in the structures of the society for Somali women.

The aim of this study has been to highlight how school social workers experience their discretion, and furthermore how they feel about working in a context mainly dedicated to teachers. The study is executed with a qualitative research method where ten interviews with school social workers, in eight schools in the area of Stockholm have been conducted. The Theoretical framework used to analyze the results was discretion, street-level bureaucracy and human service organizations.The main findings of this study imply that the most important ambition of the social work that was conducted in the schools was to help the students reach their knowledge goals. The assignment is, however, not clearly defined, which has lead to school social workers defining the mission and goals themselves. They all have wide discretion and great possibilities to decide how to execute their work, but how they use the freedom that was given seems to vary among them.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine which role public libraries play or could play within bibliotherapy. The study is based on qualitative interviews with five librarians who, in one way or another have experienced bibliotherapy activities. Further, we have interviewed two treatment assistants and one counsellor, who have cooperated with the librarians, to get their view. We have used the following research questions: Which bibliotherapeutic activities, if any, are pursued in public libraries in Sweden, and how do they look upon bibliotherapy? What role do public libraries play/could play within bibliotherapy? Ever since the term bibliotherapy was coined in the beginning of the twentieth century, the definition has been under debate. We have identified four main subjects of discussion.

Study objects: JM, Folkhem and ABB.Purpose: The purpose with this study are to examine how the supplier relations are in the construction branch and compare that result with how the supplier relations are for ABB a production company.Theoretical: The theoretical chapter illustrates important and relevant parts of supplier relations, purchasing and supplier strategies to give good overview. The theoretical review will combine information from different fields to consent with the research problem.Method: A case study has been made on three different companies, one of the companies was active in the production industry the other two were active in the construction industry. Data was mainly collected through semi structured interviews on each of the three companies.Conclusions: The size of the company decided which point of view the company had on purchasing, traditional or modern view. All three companies had a centralized purchasing organization but the construction firms were more decentralized than the production company. The reason was that the construction firms were dependent with more flexibility when every construction project is unique..