The aim of this study is to illuminate images and discourses, in which media describe people with disabilities. The purpose of the study will be fulfilled, by answering the following questions: Is it possible to discern categories of how people with disabilities are described in the media and is it possible to find associations to handicap models? We have chosen to focus on how media describe people with physical impairments and have made a content analyses of articles, based on the theoretic aim of this study, social constructionism, handicap models and earlier research. Underlying the analyses, are six articles from two Swedish news papers. The results of our research are divided in three categories: assumptions which are taken for granted, hidden meanings and contradicted categories.

Grief research generally demonstrates that children and teenagers who have lost a parent in suiciderisk developing severe psychological and physical morbidity, as well as social disabilities, in adultlife as a result of traumatic aspects of the death and complicated grief reactions. The youngbereaved also run a highly increased risk of developing suicidal behaviour or to commit suicidethemselves. Despite these alarming reports, the research field is poorly explored and studies thattake an interest in the long-term consequences and the subjective experiences of the bereavedyoungsters are lacking. A qualitative study using narrative methods has been carried out toexamine the experiences of four young women, who during adolescence lost a father in suicide.The study specifically focuses on the grief process, the short- and long-term consequences, and theneed for social support in relation to family, extended network and society. The study reveals thatthe women?s traumatic loss has shattered their basic assumptions about the world as a safe andmeaningful place.

The gap between practise and theory is often described in negative words in teachers? professional lives. Learning study is a model for teachers´ professional development where a theoretical framework is used to enhance practice. The theoretical framework used by teachers in learning study is variation theory. In this study the research object is variation theory and the aim is to present how variation theory becomes a guiding principle to understand teaching and learning processes.

Reading and analyzing literature has a long tradition of being an essential part of the teaching of English in Sweden. As the offers of entertainment have increased in popular culture with the introduction of computer games, internet and other media, interest in reading novels has decreased. Literature is still a compulsory part of English teaching and the question is how teachers of today use literature and what kind of literary instruction they use.The aim of this study is to explore and discuss the literary instruction discourse in pedagogical texts, lessons, created by and for English teachers of Swedish Upper Secondary Schools. The lessons have been collected from the site lektion.se, where teachers are able to share knowledge and lessons. The study uses an analytical method based on Norman Fairclough´s Critical Discourse Analysis in order to analyze the lessons.

This master thesis concerns whether Swedish non-financial listed firms act in accordance with the optimal capital structure theory and/or pecking order theory. The examined period is 1998-2004 and we discover that Swedish companies neither follow optimal capital structure theory nor pecking order theory. From our results we conclude that there exists no single point of the capital structure which is optimal. Rather it seems as if the optimal point lies in-between an interval from 0 to the industry average, where firms tend to be indifferent to their debt-ratios. Our results show that Swedish companies prefer internal financing followed by equity and as last choice debt issuance..

One must consider cost effectiveness when deciding how resources within the health sector should be distributed. Quality adjusted life years (QALYs) are used to measure the value of different medical treatments. QALY is based on utility maximization theory, which suggests that a QALY is always a QALY regardless of who receives it. Therefore, a produced QALY is worth the same regardless of the age or the initial health of the patient. Previous research has shown that these assumptions do not seem to fit the real preferences of individuals.

This text concerns itself with war, the just war theory, and the application of that doctrine on the ?war on terrorism?. I present different views on the theory's place in the discourse, its relevance for unconventional wars followed by the analyses of above mentioned empirical situation.Particular interest is given the criteria concerning proportionality, both ad bellum and in bello, due to in part its difficult nature, and the attention it has received from others. This paper asks the question: Is the just war theory adequate for analysis of modern war?There are few alternatives.

Several studies have investigated the relationship between different measures of innovative activity, such as patent statistics and R&D expenditures and some have looked deeper into the differences between large and small firms regarding number of patents issued per employee or per R&D dollar. In this paper, the objective is to find out if there are any indications of a barrier to entry (due to economical factors, lack of knowledge etc) for small firms to get into the field of patent handling. The approach is to first set up a hypothesis based on some simple assumptions about how firms would make decisions about whether to apply for a patent or not and thereafter use econometric methods in an empirical investigation. The data used for this study are figures on number of employees, number of patents granted and R&D expenditures for the Swedish firms in the pulp and paper industry. The main conclusion is that, based on the analysis of the data from this rather limited group of firms, no such barrier can be seen..

Through trading with countries that have a relative aboundant supply of labor, Sweden changes it's effective supply of labor, in a Factor Content perspective. This essay does two Factor Content analyses, one for year 1995 and one for 2000. The first comparison of these analyses shows that Sweden exports about 27 600 labor-years more year 2000 than 1995. However, since Factor Content analysis arguably underestimates the imported labor, some assumptions are made in order to correct for this. This correction has great importance for the final analysis.

Lean is one of the recent years most popular methods for organizations to use in order to increase efficiency, productivity and quality. Despite Lean's increased popularity, Lean is still difficult to define and can be explained and described in different ways. Previous studies have also shown that Lean is difficult to implement and challenging to maintain successfully. Knowledge of Lean is viewed as a necessity in the implementation of Lean, which leads to that organizations often chooses to bring in this knowledge through external consultants or other experts in order to implement Lean in their organization. Thus, it is interesting to examine the consultants view on Lean and the implementation process of Lean.

In 2011, the new upper secondary school curriculum Lgy 11 set out to distinguish the characteristics of the two subjects Swedish and Swedish as a second language. This thesis analyzes the consequences, or rather the underlying premises for such a characterization with the contradictory ideologies of the multicultural society as a point of departure. Using theories of cultural and linguistic hegemony, the thesis applies an ideological critique to the comparative text analysis of the two curriculums. The aim is to reveal the underlying assumptions of the two student bases as representatives of the majority society and the minorities. The results show that the characterizations of the two subjects are dominantly made along the line of the multicultural experience versus linguistic and cultural heritage.

Background: Businesses are traditionally valued with the so called Discounted Cash Flow-model. When valuing newly-started businesses, surrounded by high uncertainty, and whose capital mostly consists of unrealized business opportunities, the Discounted Cash Flow-model needs to be complemented if the total value of the business is to be captured. A valuation with the help of real options is capable of valuing these unrealized opportunities, which often exist in newly-started businesses. The unrealized opportunities are to be found in the business plan of the business, why this needs to be valued to capture the total value of a newly-started business. Purpose: To demonstrate what the use of real options can result in when valuing businesses.

Adam Smith?s economic theory is often subject to criticism, in which it is claimed to be inherently inconsistent. Recently, criticism from well-known scholars has arisen claiming Smith should be characterized a labor value theorist anticipating Karl Marx. This study seeks to analyze whether such criticism is legitimate. Firstly, the economic theory of Smith is discussed in terms of consistency, and secondly, a number of typical and main points of the critique, from the most influential of his contemporary critics, are lifted up and analyzed.

Discussions of structural racism has now moved to the forefront of the Swedish society, and many researchers have sought to understand what form it takes, how it is manifested, how it is exploited and challenged. At the core of this debate we find the media, and its logic embedded with mechanisms of simplification and polarization.Media is our key source of knowledge and information, why it also affects our norms, beliefs and preconceptions. Media thus has the power to mediate, amplify or challenge how we conceptualize the world, and subsequently our (unconscious) racist beliefs.To investigate how media content is influenced by underlying colonial or racist assumptions and stereotypes thus becomes a way to investigate our understanding of reality.In accordance with postcolonial thought, structural and symbolic racism is embedded in language and hidden in images, and surface in the form of domination and feminization, and the portrayal of the subaltern ?Other? as passive and irrational.This paper thus departs from postcolonial theory and media logic to undercover hidden patterns of structural, symbolic and historically contingent racism in one of Sweden?s most prominent in-depth foreign TV-magazines, namely Korrespondenterna.Adopting Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this paper explores to what extent racist and colonial stereotypes are reproduced and/or challenged in Korrespondenterna?s representation of Sub-Saharan Africa.In line with postcolonial theory it is found that historically contingent racialized stereotypes are prevalent in Korrespondenterna, and that tendencies of portraying Africa and Africans as passive, feminine and irrational are prevailing.It is thus argued that media logic, imbedded with mechanisms of simplification, polarization and intensification, contributes to the use of colonial stereotypes in media, and thus to the mediation of structural and symbolic racism..

This thesis studies how the Swedish government articulates social exclusion within the spring budget of 2007. Through a discourse theoretical approach, inspired by Ernest Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, the empirical findings are reconstructed through the nodal point of labour and two chains of equivalence, based upon the duality between employment and unemployment. By viewing social exclusion as a phenomenon concerning discourse, identity and politics, this duality forms the basis of a deconstructive and hegemonic analysis.I argue that the term social exclusion is a powerful and flexible political concept in that it obscures ideological assumptions and objectives as well as draws attention away from alternative social concepts. Throughout the thesis social exclusion is stressed as a social category constituting the relation between individual and society. Hence I argue that it is of vital importance that the values underlying its usage are made explicit and that social exclusion as a floating signifier is made an object of academic analysis..