The main focus of this essay is to analyze whether strict employment protection legislation has a negative effect on the labour market possibilities for youth in the EU or not. To empirically examine the labour market possibilities for youth, data for unemployment rates and incidence of temporary jobs are used. By doing simple correlations between the different labour market characteristics and OECD?s employment protection legislation index the effect of the latter is tested. The result is that a tendency for youth unemployment and frequency of youth with temporary employment to be higher when employment protection legislation is strict can be seen.

The research work performed in this thesis has been carried out at the Production Tech-nology Centre where the Thermal Spray research group of University West has its work-shop and labs.This research work has been performed in collaboration with the International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials (ARCI), Hyderabad, India.First of all, I would like to express my sincere thanks and gratitude to my supervisors Dr. Nicolaie Markocsan and Dr. Nicholas Curry for their guidance, great support and valuable suggestions without which this work could not have been possible. I would also like to thanks Prof. Per Nylén for keeping faith in me and providing me an opportunity to work at PTC, which is a great place to perform research.

A tough working climate and the lack of extrinsic motivation at workplaces within health care raise the question of what instead drives employees within this industry. A possible answer to this is Public Service Motivation (PSM) - a type of motivation that is based on the desire to do good for society and its individuals. In order to investigate this further we have performed a qualitative study consisting of ten interviews with people working with institutional care, where the purpose has been to identify the sources of motivation and determine the impact of PSM. The results show that the compassion dimension of PSM appears to be one of the most salient motivational factors. While the rest of the PSM dimensions fail to explain the level of motivation to the same extent as compassion, other factors are recognized, such as relatedness and aspects of the nature of the work itself.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine and question the use of mindfulness in the workplace. Mindfulness in the workplace can be understood as an organization recipe and is now a so called trend. We believe that there may be an issue of how mindfulness at work is advertised when it is described in such a way that it could be the solution to many organizational problems, such as reducing stress, increasing efficiency, creativity and productivity. To get a better understanding of what mindfulness is and what it can bring to a stressful work, we conducted semi-structured interviews with four mindfulness instructors. We analyzed the interviews from a theoretical analytical framework consisting of both a constructivist perspective and a power perspective.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to, through user studies, analyse whether Carol C. Kuhlthaus information search model is applicable in a Swedish school. Furthermore, the guidance that the students may receive from the teacher and/or school librarian is analysed. Answers are sought to the following questions: · How do the students perceive their information seeking? · How do the librarian and/or teacher support the students during their information seeking process? The study is based on a qualitative method of approach, through interviews with four informants: a librarian, a teacher and two pupils.

Working life changes, just like the rest of today?s society, at an accelerated pace. It is through changes and challenges that human beings develop, personally and professionally. Changes are often met by resistance. The purpose of this study is to see how different factors influence individuals? experiences of change.

During late autumn/winter in the years of 2005/2006 and 2006/2007 a questionnaire study was made in Västra Götaland county in the south west of Sweden. Inspectors responsible of animal welfare answered the questionnaires during their routine visits to different horse stables in the county. The questionnaires contained questions about the number of horses at the farm, hoof condition, body condition, how often the horses were fed outside and the pasture condition. The purpose of this study was to investigate if a connection could be seen between environmental factors and health factors within the horses in this material. The connections that were analysed were between; hoof health and pasture condition, how many times the horses were fed outside and the body condition and between the number of horses in the pasture and pasture condition.

The aim is to find out how teachers apply the knowledge they get from mathematics pilots in preschool and from mathematics developer in the municipality, as well as how they work further towards the children with mathematics.The study is based on qualitative interviews with two teachers, one mathematic pilot and one mathematic developer. I used the semi-structured interview questions.The results show that teachers believe that mathematics pilots will inspire the teachers in their work with mathematics in preschool. One of the teachers who were interviewed said:?Mathematics pilots should be those that have the strongest glasses and coming up with new ideas and they push the rest of the teachers in their work with mathematics in relation to children in preschool?.The teachers use the correct terms for mathematical concepts with the children. They also stressed how important it is to point out to the kids that it is mathematics that they are doing.The conclusion of the study is that the teachers agree that it is their approach towards the children that is important and how they can lead the children?s interest of mathematics forward.

Lean production is the name given to Toyota?s Production System (TPS) by the west. The continuous improvements of their operations through Lean has made Toyota into the largest car manufacturer in the world. This, in turn, has led to several studies regarding both Toyota and their system as to find ways to apply Lean in other organizations. Even so, over 90 percent of all companies fail to implement Lean.

The aim of this study was to develop, implement and evaluate a mindfulness- and acceptance-based smoking cessation program in group (MRG). MRG was developed into an intervention consisting of 6 group sessions during 35 days including individual homework assignments. 8 of 10 participants completed the program. In order to evaluate the effect of MRG a quasi-experimental design with pretest and double posttest (second posttest at 1 month) was chosen. At second posttest, 50 percent (of 8 completers) were non-smokers, and the rest showed a decrease in smoking at a rate between 45 and 75 percent.

The aim of this study is to examine how two Kenyan school's approaches gender roles, by what the curriculum says and by how the teachers way of teaching are effecting the creation of gender roles. The aim is further to find out what the Kenyan school settings are, according to gender and equality, and how these are implemented in practice. This was examined through interviews at two local schools in Kenya, with five practicing teachers from grade one through grade six. This work compares the respondents' answers to the research that is related to the topic. Because of lack in the research about Kenya, the research has been based on mostly Swedish investigations.

For centuries Islam and Muslims have been subject to islamophobic attitudes in the west. The purpose with this study was to see into the making of open and closed attitudes against Islam and Muslims from a conflict in southern Thailand, and also to so see if Muslims are portrayed as more violent than the Buddhist groups in the conflict. The aim of the study is also to see if Muslims fall into a violent stereotype. This was studied by looking at five Swedish newspapers coverage of the conflict, during a given time. To be able to look into this, two theories will be used, the first one is the Runnymede Trust theory, which is about open and closed attitudes against Islam and Muslims.

Face-to-face communication is always complemented with non-verbal signals that give us clues as to how a message shall be interpreted, but as communication is moved online the possibilities to express oneself becomes more limited.This paper focuses on the instant messaging client Windows Live Messenger and three of the non-verbal functions that it provides (nudges, winks and emotes). The purpose of the paper and its underlying study is to compare the senders' intentions with the receivers' conceptions when it comes to these functions.The study was done as a questionnaire with two different versions of the questions, one looking at the senders' intentions and the other at the receivers' conceptions.The results were then compared in order to look for tendencies. The results showed that the most common intention among the senders was also the most common conception among the receivers, but that the rest of the attitudes didn't match at all. The functions that are supposed to help the conversation flow often create ambiguity instead and lead to vagueness, misconceptions and annoyance..

This thesis is concerned with how identity is connected to historical writings and what normsshapes the perspectives of history. The purpose of this study is to investigate the possibilitiesfor identification offered in history books used for history teaching. This study is concernedwith what role the nation plays and how it shapes the conception of history, with the hope ofcounteracting negative attitudes towards those not being identified as ?Swedish? in the historytelling.The study was conducted through discourse analysis. The material for this analysis consistedof three history books directed towards 4-6th graders.The study shows how identity is created through putting ?us? against ?them?.

In the past years the traditional donors of development assistance have been increasingly aware of changes in the donor landscape. This as emerging economies like China and India has undergone a transition from recieving aid to becoming emerging donors. By identifying and comparing ideas, beliefs and interests pursued using foreign aid between so called emerging and traditional donors, the greater purpose of this thesis is to take a closer look at the alleged changes in the world order. The starting point is Goldstein & Keohanes framework of the impact of ideas and interests in foreign policy and the one of K.J Holsti about institutions as markers metrics of change. The results show that there is no vast difference in interests but a detectable difference in the ideas behind foreign aid.