This bachelor thesis is a study of the European Union as a role model in the world. Its main focus is to answer the question ?In what respects did the European Union (EU) work as a model at the establishment of the African Union (AU) and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR)?? By doing so it hopes to shed some light on how other unions in the world contemplate the EU. The method is partly theoretical and partly empirical. In the theoretical part, the thesis discusses in what respects the African Union and the Union of South American Nations might and might not be similar to the European Union.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to, from a users perspective, investigate which factors affect the library use for six persons with disabilities or visual handicaps. My method has been a case study and the methods applied are interviews and observation. As a theoretical framework I use Tom Wilsons theories and models about information behaviour and transform them to a model about library use. Answers are sought to the following questions: - What does the library use look like for six persons with disabilities or visually handicaps? - How do they experience the library in their own municipality? - Which factors affect the disabled persons library use and experience of the library? All interviewees showed a very positive attitude towards the library and the majority of them visited the library regularly or received audio books by mail.

The theologian Sarah Coakley has developed a theological method, which she calls théologie totale.This essay examines the methodological criteria for this method. To understand how its anthropology, epistemology and theology are shaped, the criteria are analyzed within a theoretical framework, in which mainly David F. Ford's theological typology and Stephen Bevans models of contextual theology play parts. The material consists of Coakleys texts, essentially the first part of Coakley?s projected systematic theological work.

This thesis presents a system which has been implemented to satisfy a need in theresearch on how speech planning interacts with syntactic and prosodic structure inspontaneous speech. The long-term purpose of the research is to provide models forautomatic parsing of spontaneous speech and for psycholinguistical modelling of speechproduction. Identification of inhalation pauses is an important step in the developmentof automatic methods for spontaneous speech parsing.Identification of inhalation pauses is considered to be a keyword-spotting speechrecognition problem. Hybrid HMM(Hidden Markov Models)/ANN(Artificial NeuralNetworks) approach is applied to this problem. Method gets 90,8% in Recall, 66,4% inPrecision and 76,7% in F-score.

The purpose of this dissertation is to create an understanding of how a personal idea in the mind of an entrepreneur becomes an outspoken vision in one biotech company. More specifically, for what purpose the vision is used at different stages, how it is communicated, its content and what impact previous visions have on future vision work and in order to reach a deeper understanding of how vision develops over time and how it is used we have employed a qualitative approach based on a case study. The theoretical framework starts with the concept of vision and related concepts. Furthermore, the entrepreneur?s and manager?s usage of vision is examined.

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.

The accounting scandals that have attracted attention in recent years have led to internal control becoming a more central part of business activity. Doubts about what firms actually do have increased, all caused by the attention of accounting scandals. To counter this, frameworks and laws evolved and gained a significant role in the organization and its surroundings. The aim of the present study is to find out how four companies in the Kristianstad region are working to ensure its internal control and how they work to minimize risk and reduce uncertainty. We have used a qualitative method and interviewed a person in a senior position in each company.

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..

The purpose of this master thesis is to examine the opinion about school libraries among principals at the independent schools in the municipality of Lund. In order to fulfil my purpose I used a qualitative method with an introductory questionnaire, which gave background material to the interviews. All seven principals answered the questionnaire and five of them agreed to participate in an interview. Another two interviews were made with two informants, this material was included in the background material. As theoretical framework I have used literature about the school library development, the role of the principal for development and David V.

Problem: On the basis of the franchisees role and how he look up on his role in his business, should one like the Swedish Law applies characterize the franchisees role as the role of a contractor?Purpose: The purpose with this research is too survey the franchisee in his business and how he looks upon his role as a franchisee and see if this like the Swedish Law states be characterized as the role of a contractor.Methodology: By doing a proportional stratified selection within the the Swedish Franchising community, nine semi structured interviews has been made. The empirical foundation of these interviews has been concentrated and analysed with the support of the chosen theories. The result of the analysis has created the conclusion.Theoretical perspectives: The research is built up of three angels of approach; the role, the business and the economy within the franchisee and the contractor. The three approaches aim too illustrate the role of the franchisee, the franchisees role in the business and the economical effects in franchising.

This master?s thesis seeks to examine how a public library use the intranet with regards to the possibilities that today?s intranet technology offer ? especially concerning functionalities that support information, communication and knowledge exchange in the organization. The purpose of the study is to investigate how employees in one specific public library perceive and use the intranet in their daily work. The theoretical framework takes its point of departure in two complementing models regarding the implementation, development and management of intranets and a model of a multi perspective view of the intranet as a shared information space for content, communication and collaboration. The study is based on interviews with eleven of the intranet users, whom with the aid of an interview guide have been asked questions regarding goals, implementation, content, design, applications and advantages/disadvantages with the intranet.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how key performance indicators are being used as performance management tools within the production industry. Specifically the purpose is to investigate how the KPI:s within the telecommunications industry drives reusability regarding production test systems. This thesis will also highlight today?s cost models and suggest improvements of the KPI and what new ones could be introduced. A case study at Ericsson AB has been performed.

The cost of capital for traded companies is basically assessed on information from thefinancial market. Small and non-traded companies are lack of this necessary financialmarket information in order to determine an appropriate equity risk premium and tocompute the cost of capital.In the absence of financial information necessary for an external investor, it is difficult toevaluate a non-traded company with the Capital Asset Pricing model (CAPM), which isbased on the financial market information. It measures only the systematic risk, which isthe contribution of one share to the market risk of a portfolio. It is therefore important tofind models that reflect the small and non-traded companies? real business value and theirunique characteristics.

The Swedish government have a goal that wind turbines shall produce 30 TWh by the year 2020, compared to about 3,5 TWh produced in Sweden during 2010. To minimize the disturbance that wind turbines create the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency has stated a guideline value that noise from wind turbines at nearby residents shouldn?t exceed 40 dBA, at 8 m/s wind speed. With advanced calculation models, like Nord 2000, the emitted sound from future wind turbines can be calculated at an early stage to optimize the power production without exceeding the 40 dBA. When the turbines have been built there is a need to verify that they really are within the guideline.

The purpose of this study was to find out why the law that regulates downloading copyrighted material does not work and which of the most important main reasons lies behind downloading behaviour. The phenomenon being well investigated earlier has actualized a new demand for normative investigation in connection with the hot debated IPRED-law.Using qualitative method comprising of interviews with three typical file sharers and anchored in Max Webers action typology, rational choice theory and the norm model followed by two assessment models, we found that four important reasons lies behind downloading behaviour: 1) economical reasons was the most central and frequent determinant followed by 2) accessibility and comfort, and 3) social acceptance and moral and also 4) habits. Although the content of the law was correctly provided by the interviewees, it was clear that they did not perceive the impact of the law as meaningful or threatening.The results, being compatible with previous research, are discussed in terms of the named theories and assessment models. We suggest further research to take into account peoples norms as the new IPRED-law soon will be functional as well as studies from a perspective of the legal rights of the individual..