1 Abstract This diploma thesis deals with the current plan to connect ski resorts Svatý Petr and Medvědín in Špindlerův Mlýn within a case study. The approval of this plan will not be easy at all, as its realization would involve relatively substantial interventions in the Krkonoše National Park. The aim of the thesis is to find out how the decision- making process is taking place in the case of this plan, which actors are involved in negotiating of its implementation, what are opinions of representatives of the selected actors of the decision-making process and whether residents of Špindlerův Mlýn like or dislike the plan. For answering the research questions that arise from the goal of the thesis, qualitative and quantitative methodology, namely semi-structured interviews and questionnaire survey is used. The theoretical part introduces the reader to a more general context of the realization of the plan, the methodological part describes and justifies the selected research methods and the practical part deals with the results of the research. The conclusion summarizes the main pieces of knowledge. A significant revelation of this diploma thesis is the fact that without many positive side-effects of the project, outside the main motive to allow skiers to ski on both slopes without taking off their skis, it...

The purpose of this study is to provide a deeper understanding to business managers, of how the Swedish Generation Y consume furniture and if there is a want of consuming more green furniture. The thesis identifies previous research of sustainability development within furnishing and the phenomenon of attitude-behavior gap among consumers. Hence, the purpose of investigating consumer’s behavior and attitudes, the qualitative method has been used to understand the processes and influence factors of the contextualized setting. Further, this study follows a deductive approach because of the unexplored research area and due to the importance of studying sustainability within furnishing from a new point of view.   Continuously, the literature review of this thesis includes previous established scientific research and theories concerning; green practices within the furniture industry; the characteristics of Generation Y; and the phenomenon of attitude-behavior gap. From the literature review a conceptual framework has been conducted to illustrate the main concepts and their relation, which are examined in this study. These concepts have been used to analyze the empirical data originating from interviews of 37 consumers within Generation Y in Sweden. From the purpose of this thesis the research resulted in two clear research questions that were defined as; (1) How does the behavior and consumption pattern of Gen Y occur when consuming furniture?; and (2) Which are the needs and wants of Gen Y in Sweden, when it comes to sustainable furniture? In the conclusion chapter, the answer of these research questions is completed together with the theoretical and practical implications.    The main theoretical implication from this research is the finding that an attitude-behavior gap exists within Generation Y when consuming furniture. This gap is present due to barriers and influencing factors which are; (1) consumers lack of knowledge; (2) the limited supply and information from companies; (3) the unclear or lack of green furniture marketing; and (4) companies not being transparent in their actions.   Finally, the practical implications of this study presents suggestions for furniture companies and how they can increase their green operations to meet the request of Generation Y. Companies should focus on marketing sustainable furniture to a larger extent in order to raise the awareness of  Generation Y and to be more transparent in the supply chain and business operations, so the consumers can have a greater insight in the process. By implementing these recommendations, companies will improve Generation Y's purchasing of sustainable furniture as well as increase their awareness regarding green furniture consumption.

Background/problematization: The audit industry has historically been characterized by male dominance, and it has long been a problem to succeed in retaining women throughout the work life. Female senior managers are influenced by triggering factors that cause them to consider their continuation in the audit profession. A high number of women opt out audit firms especially at the senior managerial level and choose to restart elsewhere.   Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to understand the decision-making process of leaving the audit industry of midcareer female auditors. By studying the phenomenon from a life world perspective, it will be described as it is perceived by the women.    Methodology: The study is based on a narrative interview method with an abductive approach where the interviews were conducted with six former female senior managers from the audit industry who left less than 10 years ago. A thematic analysis was conducted in order to analyze the collected data.   Findings: The findings indicate that family, discrimination, heavy workload, job offer and renumeration are influencing factors during female senior managers’ decision-making process. Further, the findings show that the factors influence their decision to varying degrees in different stages of the process.

Sustainability has been on everyone's lips in the last decade. However, the fashion industry has been proved to be the second-largest contributor to environmental destruction being just behind the oil industry. As the fashion industry keeps growing, measures need to be taken to make it more sustainable. When shopping for fashion products the channel with the least environmental cost is using physical stores. However, physical stores are becoming less and less attractive and are losing their customers to e-commerce instead, a phenomenon that has been called the retail apocalypse. When comparing physical stores to e-commerce one clear advantage that the physical stores have is that they can take advantage of sensory cues to enhance the customer's shopping experience. This thesis wants to test if sensory touchpoints in a fashion retailing environment will affect customer decision-making. Ultimately contributing to the thin available research in the field on how to make physical retailing more attractive and counteract the ongoing retail apocalypse.  The empirical findings were obtained using a quantitative survey consisting of 32 questions sent out via social media to Swedish fashion customers and were analyzed through the theoretical concepts of evaluation of alternatives and purchase decision which are two of the steps in the customer decision-making process model. Concluding this thesis showed that all research questions surrounding sensorial touch points' impact on customers came back with positive outcomes.

Background: There has been an increasing trend of more Swedish higher education institutions competing for international students in response to international student mobility trends, self-management and budget securement, and government-backed recruitment campaigns. An emerging stream of higher education research is brand personality, and it may represent a robust basis for differentiation between many universities competing for student recruitment. Therefore, the study was built to get a deeper understanding of the impact of university brand personality on international students' choices. Purpose: Given the importance of brand personality for higher education institutions to deal with the international competition or differentiate themselves, the purpose of this study is to explore international student's perception of the university brand personality that affects the selection of a Swedish university. Method: To address the purpose of the exploratory study, the qualitative research approach was applied, combining with interpretivism philosophy. Semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions were conducted with 11 international first-year students. By utilizing abductive reasoning, the data was analyzed and interpreted through thematic analysis. Conclusion: Cosmopolitan is perceived as the most distinct brand personality dimension that Jönköping University possesses. Nevertheless, the degree of perception among foreign students regarding each brand personality dimension is different during the decision-making process. In the early stages, the potential students perceive prestige as the most distinct and significant dimension, followed by cosmopolitan. However, when the consumption process nears, cosmopolitan becomes an essentially more important dimension. Further, lively and sincerity are found to partly influence students' choice for higher education.

Human resource accounting is a concept that was created to deal with the problem of the measurement of the value of human capital. This concept can be very influential for many different human resource practices. This concept is of the utmost importance as it deals with one of the biggest problems within the sectors of accounting and human resources, the constant seeking of an acceptable way of acknowledging human capital in the financial statements as an asset and not as an expense. The skills and knowledge that people can bring into a company are vital for its prosperity and yet no realized. Hereby identifying the similarities and differences in the decision-making factors of HR managers between traditional accounting and human resources accounting (HRA) focused organizations, we want to examine the perceptions of managers who work under both types of organizations. Therefore, the research question we have formulated is the following: What are the similarities and differences between the decision-making processes of HR managers of Traditional accounting and Human Resource Accounting focused organizations? The field of HRA is not new. It is approximately 70 years old, but progress in it has stopped for a while now. The problem besides that is that it is not accepted by international accounting principles. However, nowadays more and more companies try to find a way to allow them to use HRA. In this paper, we have managed to interview HR managers that are currently working under HRA or traditional accounting practices. We selected HR practices in which HRA can have a strong influence so that we can understand and examine how it influences the decision-making process of the managers. The choice of Patterson´s model was based on the fact that it contains four HR practices (recruitment and selection, training and development, retention and turnover, and performance management), in which HRA has a strong influence. Overall, our findings showed us that when it comes to recruitment & selection, and retention & turnover there are more differences between HRA-focused and traditional accounting-focused organizations than in the practices of training & development and performance management. The main difference in recruitment and selection is that HRA-focused organizations make decisions based on measuring the total cost and value of their resources; in training and development the main difference is that HRA-focused organizations calculate the cost of learning by HRA; in retention and turnover, the main difference is that HRA focused organizations can calculate and forecast all cost have already spent and need to spend for replacement an employee, and finally in the performance management the main difference is that HRA focused organizations take into serious consideration the job level of their employees in contrast to traditional accounting focused ones. This offered us the chance to develop a suggested framework. It is based on Patterson’s model but also includes our findings. Finally, we believe that this paper has the possibility to contribute in many different ways. For example, it can be used as a manual from HR managers in order to help them see and understand the differences and similarities between HRA and traditional accounting and extensively manage to focus on the important factors for each respective practice. Moreover, the findings could contribute to the general evolution of HRA, as this paper is one of the few that have approached the HRA concept via qualitative research.

Background: The emergence of mobile phones today and in history proves to beexceptionally unique in the consumer electronics market as well as the telecommunicationmarket. The reason behind the huge growth of the industry has been the exceptional evolutionof the technology used in the mobile devices in terms of performance and miniaturization. Purpose: The purpose of the research is to investigate the different stages within theconsumer decision making process and the influencing factors that have a grip overconsumers and shape the consumer behaviour towards smartphones. The study is aimed atexploring the main reasons that affect the buying decision of students regarding a specificcase, which is the iPhone product and its student users in the Swedish market. By focusing ona specific segment of the iPhone consumers, the research will present more accurate and clearresults. The theoretical perspective of the study will be using the traditional five-stagedecision-making model as a backbone thus putting the main focus of the analysis on theconsumer behaviour of the respondents. Method: Additionally, the paper will take the customers’ point of view in order to portray theinfluencing factors that exist within the consumers’ decision-making. For the purpose of thestudy, 12 iPhone users will be interviewed through semi-structured interviews and thegathered data would be analysed and coded in order to find and synthesize the results into aframework that will be developed specifically for the case. Conclusion: According to findings that were made regarding the iPhone case, there were afew factors that stood out as the most relevant when it comes to the students’ purchasedecision - brand loyalty, culture and society, perceived risk, financial influence, usage andproduct features. After the initial purchase of an iPhone which is mainly influenced by socialinfluences, it can be concluded that brand loyalty plays a key role in the repurchase behaviourof customers.

This thesis focuses on the role of the advisors in the US foreign policy, especially in the decision-making process, which constitutes a part of presidential system in the United States of America. The methodology of the conceptual part is based on individual typologies of presidential control of the US administrations. The thesis also describes evolution of this discipline, which in the USA is studied in the field of Foreign Policy Analysis. The conceptual scheme of the presidential control is based on the models by Johnson, George and Mitchell. The theoretical approach to the roles of advisors is patterned on the models of Mulcahy, Crabb and Hönig. The thesis combines these theoretical bases to describe and explain the evolution of presidential control typologies. Some problematic particularities of the Mitchell typology are also reviewed in this part. The next part based on the theoretical models analyses empirical reality. The analytical part constitutes of two case studies, which describe the role of the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs in the key deliberations of the presidential administrations of William J. Clinton (reaction to the conflict in Bosnia) and George W. Bush (preparation of the invasion in Iraq). The aim of this thesis is to applicate the typologies of...

The goal of this thesis is to examine the term of public interest within the framework of the 'shale gas' issue in the Czech Republic. The theoretical section is divided into two basic parts. The first part defines the term public interest from the point of view of political science, sociology and economy. The second one describes the issue of shale gas extraction in global context. The examination is focused on the context of administrative procedures defining the prospecting exploration area of unconventional hydrocarbon resources in the Trutnov region and around the Berounka River The intention of private companies to extract shale gas in the Czech Republic caused a big discussion. In its core there is the dispute between the economic development of the country connected with energy security on one hand and the environment protection on the other. Within this debate the term public interest appears in many different contexts. The way it is used by the people involved and their interests are described through interviews with them and analysis of the gained material.

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