Konsumenter använder varumärken dagligen och exponering av varumärken sker överallt: i reklam, böcker, filmer, människor och så vidare. Tidigare forskning visar att konsumenter använder varumärken för att bygga upp sin självbild och skapa sin identitet, samt att konsumenter kan ha mer eller mindre starka relationer till varumärken. Varumärken i sig är bara materiella markörer, de blir meningsfulla för konsumenterna först då de sätts in i ett sammanhang och får en individuell historia uppbyggt kring sig. Studiens syfte är att utifrån ett konsumentperspektiv visa hur meningsskapande i en relation mellan ett varumärke och en konsument kan se ut. Detta genom att reda ut frågeställningen: ”Hur kan en konsument skapa mening i sin relation till ett varumärke?”. En fallstudie har genomförts, där en individs meningsskapande kring ett varumärke har undersökts. Fallstudien bestod av två djupgående intervjuer och fem observationer. Resultatet har analyserats med hjälp av teorier kring bland annat meningsskapandeprocesser och varumärkessymbolik. Slutsatsen är tre faktorer som kan bidra till meningsskapande kring ett varumärke: överensstämmelse med konsumentens ”jag”, symbolisk innebörd och visuellt tilltalande, och användning. / Consumers use brands daily and the exposure of brands takes place everywhere: in advertisements, books, movies, people, and so on. Previous research shows that consumers use brands to create their self-image and identity, and that consumer can have stronger or weaker relationships with brands. Brands in their selves are only material markers, brands become meaningful to consumers when they are put into a context and receive an individual story built around them. The purpose of this paper is to show how consumers can create meaning in their relationship with brands. This is by sorting out the issue: “How can a consumer create meaning in the relationship with a brand? “. A case study has been carried out, in which an individual's meaning creation to a brand has been investigated. The case study consisted of two interviews and five observations. The results were analyzed using theories about meaning creation processes and brand symbolic. The conclusions are three factors that may contribute to the creation of meaning towards a brand: correspondence with the consumer's “self”, symbolic meaning and visually appearance, and the use of the brand.

This thesis is concerned with the work of business leaders. The interest lies in the holders of positions as Chairpersons, Boardmembers and Managing Directors. This study, however, goes beyond the position holder to consider the actions of actors, as they operate within networks with concurrent multiple business activities. The purpose is to generate knowledge and understanding of the activities and relations of multibusiness leaders involved in managing small and medium-sized companies. Major schools of thought on the manager's job are described. The review relates the scientific debate about different schools and emphasises the need for more inductive research. The call for processual and contextual analysis leads to an epistemological position grounded in understanding through interpretation. The method used in this study adopts such an approach, and thus aims to discover qualities of the studied phenomenon based on social constructivism. Empirical reality is approached by means of intensive studies of a few cases. Case descriptions of the work of multibusiness leaders in the National, Regional, Intermediary, Independent, and Developing Networks are undertaken, where the inter­action processes of the different actors are described according to the working life his­tory of the actor, and to the networking and work activities carried out. The analysis is based upon four themes (the actor's 'task legitimacy', 'economic legi­timacy', 'idea development' and 'network'). The first two themes have been given the generic term 'legitimacy concept', not only to reflect the interactive and changeable aspects of work, but also to illustrate how work in itself is intimately interwoven in an institutional context. The creation of 'task legitimacy' and 'economic legitimacy' of the leaders is analysed. The analysis of the actors' idea development results in a description of differing visions in the individual networks. This description takes up visions covering long-term industrial leadership, regional co-operative leadership, restructuring leadership, flexible market-adaptive leadership and network-based leadership. In a survey of the existing literature, the role of a leader is seen as one of many managerial roles, a view that is based upon the work of Mintzberg (1973). This study contrasts with the above picture, by discussing a reciprocal dependency between the leader's leadership role and his/her other roles. This reciprocity and concurrency is dealt with by introducing the concept of identity as a theoretical aid, thus reflecting in a more appropriate way the complex and interactive actor. The social identity concept (Tajfel, 1982) is used, in order to answer more profoundly the research questions. As leaders are reciprocally dependent on a network for their own existence, we must both look inward in order to be able to understand at a deeper level the actors' motives, and look outward to be able to look at identity creation in a wider industry context. What I have termed näringslivsledaridentitet (the Identity of Multibusiness Leaders), is a substantial part of this study's findings. The concept is used in order to be able to describe how the actors' inner and outer motives merge in identity creating processes. The actors' different patterns of interaction are absorbed into a composite whole. / digitalisering@umu

This thesis uses an exploratory case study design to chronicle the shifts, recognition, and implementation of programs, tools and policies designed for high need federally sentenced women in Canada that were created after 1990, in accordance with or opposed to the gender specific principles outlined in the Creating Choices (1990) report. The body lens is used as an analytic tool to deconstruct eleven of the most pertinent documents regarding policy and strategy for high need women offenders that were implemented by the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) personnel and the Office of the Correctional Investigator (OCI) over the past twenty years. Coding of a wide range of documents reveals that despite appearing to be rhetorically progressive, CSC’s attempt at creating a women-centered mental health strategy uses contradictory disciplinary techniques that control and restrain the bodies of federally sentenced women in hopes of normalizing the behaviours of high need women. The policies imposed by CSC for high need women offenders fail to make any substantial changes in women’s prison reform and resulted in a different form of regulation and control. High need women offenders are imprisoned in their own bodies.

This thesis uses an exploratory case study design to chronicle the shifts, recognition, and implementation of programs, tools and policies designed for high need federally sentenced women in Canada that were created after 1990, in accordance with or opposed to the gender specific principles outlined in the Creating Choices (1990) report. The body lens is used as an analytic tool to deconstruct eleven of the most pertinent documents regarding policy and strategy for high need women offenders that were implemented by the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) personnel and the Office of the Correctional Investigator (OCI) over the past twenty years. Coding of a wide range of documents reveals that despite appearing to be rhetorically progressive, CSC’s attempt at creating a women-centered mental health strategy uses contradictory disciplinary techniques that control and restrain the bodies of federally sentenced women in hopes of normalizing the behaviours of high need women. The policies imposed by CSC for high need women offenders fail to make any substantial changes in women’s prison reform and resulted in a different form of regulation and control. High need women offenders are imprisoned in their own bodies.

Abstract The purpose with this essay has been to gain a greater understanding and clarify how an arena can create value within place marketing and development of a place brand. This will be achieved through a description of which values an arena causes in the surrounding areas and an understanding of how these values can be interpreted through the place brand. We decided to base our study according to the following two questions: 1. What are the underlying reasons why there has been such a big trend with arena project? 2. How can an arena create value for a city in the use of place marketing? We have chosen to use a qualitative research method for this essay and we have shifted between an inductive and deductive character. The qualitative research method was a fitting choice for us since our purpose was to obtain an indepth understanding of the research problematics. Therefore there have been six different semi-structured interviews; four of them are composed of actors involved in two recently completed and ongoing arena projects. And the other two interviews where from experts on arenas. One of the most important conclusions that we can draw from the research and analysis is that it has become such a big trend of the construction of arenas do to the professional sports associations. Also arenas will contribute to a financial flow for the city. You can clearly see that the professional sports are the core of the entire arena project and a big contributing reason for the constructions of a new arena. An arena is of value for a city in its use of place marketing because it creates a strong added value within professional sports for both the players and audience, which then reinforce a strong identity for cities.

Every day brings changes that influence on the whole process of development in society. As a result, there are many challenges for business in this turbulent time. Factors like: sustainability, government influence, cooperation, eco-friendly products and others define new ways of doing business. I provide understanding of innovation based on leadership view. This dimension is significant important for todays’ organizations in order to be on the market and to have success. Leaders have to know possibilities based on many internal and external factors that can be seen as opportunities for organization. Innovation is an essential part that should be taken into consideration by leaders. Innovation without leadership has less value or even can lose this value at all. The main components of innovation investigated by a big variety of interviews and dialogues with experts in the field of innovation, based on appropriate literature sources and represented in this paper.

The purpose of this study was to find out how gender roles are described in two popular children’s detective stories, one of them written in 2002 and the other in 1946, to be able to compare the two. In order to do this, I used a qualitative research method in which I read and analyzed the text and illustrations of the books out of a gender perspective.I used gender theories describing how stereotypical gender roles are displayed, and these theories were later associated with the books I studied. I also used previous research concerning gender roles in other children's books in order to compare those results with my own.After having read, analyzed and compared the two books, I found vast resemblances between them, but also certain differences. However, it is obvious that the gender roles in both books for the most part are traditional. It is mainly the girls (although not the adult women) that diverge from the stereotypical gender roles, but this is also what is most common and most acceptable in today's society.

In this conceptual report the idea to establish an European Positron Source for Applied Research ("EPOS") based on new LINAC facilities in Germany (ELBE/Rossendorf or TTF-DESY/Hamburg) is considered. The report contains not only the outline of obvious applications in atomic physics, materials science and surface physics, but also several new methodical developments which are only possible with an intense positron beam. This opportunity will also allow the use and further development of imaging techniques being of special interest for industrial applications.

<p>The Company Siemens Industrial Turbo Machinery AB manufactures and launches in operation among other things gas turbines, steam turbines, compressors, turn-key power plants and carries out service for components for heat and power production. Siemens also performs research and development, marketing, sales and installations of turbines and completes power plants, service and refurbish.</p><p>Our thesis for the engineering degree is to develop an automatic status log which will be used as a tool to control how the status of the machine is before and after technical service at gas turbines. Operational disturbances will be registered in a structured way in order to get a good possibility to follow up the reliability of the application.</p><p>An automatic log function has been developed and will be activated at start, stop and shutdown of the turbine system. Log files are created automatically and get a name with the event type, the date and the time. The files contain data as timestamp, name, measured values and units of the signals which are going to be analyzed by the support engineers. They can evaluate the cause of the problem using the log files.</p>

Denna studie syftar till att undersöka hur förskollärare tänker kring och arbetar med bilderböcker i barngruppen i den dagliga verksamheten. Studien undersöker förskollärares attityd till lässtunden och bilderbokens vidare användningsområden. Datainsamlingen gjordes genom kvalitativa intervjuer med fem förskollärare från fem olika förskolor. Materialet har bearbetats genom analys och resultatet är en förståelse för professionens möjligheter och begränsningar inom det berörda området. Denna studie utgår från en hypotes om att den planerade lässtunden i förskolan ofta är kort och utan bakomliggande tanke vad gäller språkutveckling. Resultatet visar på en tydlig språklig medvetenhet bland förskollärare i deras arbete med bilderböcker. Studien visar utifrån min hypotes andra resultat vad gäller bilderbokens vidare användningsområden samt barnens delaktighet i både lässtunder och annan användning av bilderboken. I resultatet av studien framkommer också förskollärarnas önskan om utökat arbete kring flerspråkighet, vilket vissa tror att en vidare användning av bilderboken kan ligga till grund för. / The purpose of this study was to explore preschool teachers’ attitudes and work with picture books as an active component of daily activities. The purpose was also to investigate in what other ways picture books are used apart from reading them out loud to the children. In order to examine this, qualitative interviews with five preschool teachers were used as a method of investigation. An analysis of the interviews indicates the possibilities and limitations of the profession in this area. This study is based on the hypothesis that the planned reading sessions with children in preschools are often short and without purpose in terms of language development. The result shows that the preschool teachers are well aware of the possibilities and applications offered by picture books. The result of the study shows a different view compared to the hypothesis, of how the preschool teachers use picture books in several different ways in their projects with the children. It also shows that the participation of the children while reading, and in other preschool activities, is a constant factor. The result also shows how preschool teachers wish to work more with multilingual development and that preschool teachers believe that picture books can provide the foundation for that kind of work.