The thesis examines two interrelated topics; the perception of management theory in general, and the efficacy of the learning organisation in particular. The purpose of this thesis, therefore, is to compare the rhetoric espoused in the learning organisation literature with a survey of senior managers in large, commercial organisations. The results revealed a positive disposition towards business and management theory in general. The survey also demonstrated that leadership is considered the most important variable in the success of a company. This is facilitated through the attraction and retention of the appropriate staff and creating sufficient space for them to operate. Learning is embedded by anticipating the future, learning from the past and enabling good communication. However, the latter is balanced through change management. This is derived through legitimate authority and a reliance on planning. Finally, a strategy of experimentation is balanced by challenging industry rules. Themes involving politics, corporate alignment and corporate longevity were found to have relatively little convergent validity. The third section of the questionnaire reveals a positive disposition towards the learning organisation. The contribution of this thesis is in three areas. First, it is the only work to evaluate the anti-guru school. Second is the development of a syncretic model of learning organisation concept using structural equation modelling. Finally, it explains and examines the largely misunderstood concept of management fashions.

La notion de souveraineté est souvent analysée, interprétée et critiquée sous un angle purement individualiste, comme appartenant à l'État. Toutefois, en raison de la pluralité des États qui caractérise le droit international, la souveraineté est une notion nécessairement pluraliste. L'analyse de la structure normative et institutionnelle de l'ordre juridique international montre effectivement que la souveraineté appartient à l'ensemble des États et signifie et assure leur statut privilégié dans cet ordre juridique. Dès lors, la souveraineté devient une qualité pour justifier les privilèges et les exclusivités des États par rapport aux autres entités de la scène internationale: tout dérive des États et tout doit nécessairement et obligatoirement passer par les États. Cependant, il existe un certain nombre de phénomènes qui affectent cette configuration état-centrique de l'ordre juridique international. Il s'agit notamment des phénomènes dits de la mondialisation qui font fi des divisions spatiales fondées sur l'organisation politique des États. Dans ce processus de mondialisation qui rend floues et in effectives les frontières étatiques, le rôle des États se trouve de plus en plus affaibli et remis en question. L'émergence de nouveaux acteurs représentatifs et des normativités alternatives est la manifestationde cette évolution qui va dans le sens d'un dépassement de la conception état-centrique du droit international et, par conséquent, d'une remise en question de la souveraineté des États.

This study examines if there is a difference to what degree the cognitive, affective and normative aspects of the country of origin effect influences the consumer in their evaluation of wine. Wine was the product chosen for this study because it is a product that often uses the country of origin effect as a tool in its marketing. The three aspects were divided into elements to be better suitable for measurement. A questionnaire was handed out to consumers outside liquor stores in Uppsala. The questions examined how much the elements influenced the consumer in their evaluation of wine. The results showed that there is a difference with the affective aspects having more influence than the normative aspects. When further tests were conducted, other results illustrate that cognitive aspects can have bigger influence than normative aspects as well. These results indicate that it is not the country of origin effect as a whole concept that is interesting when it comes to practical use. / Denna studie undersöker om det finns en skillnad i hur mycket de kognitiva, affektiva och normativa aspekterna av ursprungslandets effekt påverkar konsumenterna i deras utvärderingsprocess av vin. Vin valdes då det är en produkt där ursprungslandet tydligt används i marknadsföringen. De tre aspekterna delades sedan in i beståndsdelar för att kunna mätas. En enkätundersökning genomfördes utanför systembolaget i Uppsala. Frågorna undersökte till vilken utsträckning beståndsdelarna påverkade konsumenterna i deras utvärdering. Resultaten påvisade att det finns en skillnad mellan aspekterna. Den affektiva aspekten påverkar konsumenterna mer än den normativa aspekten. Vidare tester visade även att den kognitiva aspekten kan ha en större påverkan än den normativa aspekten. Sålunda påvisade forskningsresultatet att hela ursprungslandet i sig självt inte är av primärt intresse vid praktisk användning.

Weight loss maintenance is essential for the reduction of obesity-related health impairments. However, only a minority of individuals successfully maintain reduced weight in the long term. Research has provided initial evidence for associations between weight-related teasing (WRT) and greater non-normative eating behaviors. Further, first evidence was found for associations between non-normative eating behaviors and weight loss maintenance. Hence, the present study aimed to examine the predictive value of WRT for weight loss maintenance and the role of non-normative eating behaviors as possible mediators of this relationship. The study was part of the German Weight Control Registry that prospectively followed individuals who had intentionally lost at least 10% of their maximum weight and had maintained this reduced weight for at least one year. In N = 381 participants, retrospective WRT during childhood and adolescence, current non-normative eating behaviors (i.e., restrained, external, emotional eating), and change in body mass index (BMI, kg/m2) over two years were examined using self-report assessments. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the assumed mediational relationship. As a result, a greater effect of retrospective WRT during childhood and adolescence predicted less successful adult weight loss maintenance over two years. Current emotional eating fully mediated this relationship while current restrained and external eating yielded no mediational effects. Hence, a greater effect of WRT predicted greater current emotional eating, which in turn predicted a smaller decrease or a greater increase in BMI. Our findings suggest that suffering from WRT during childhood and adolescence might lead to emotional eating which in turn impairs long-term weight loss maintenance. Thus, our results highlight the need for interventions aiming at reducing weight stigmatization and targeting emotional eating for successful long-term weight loss maintenance.

Syfte: Syftet med studien är att utifrån arbetstagares perspektiv förstå hur ledarens kontroll och förtroende påverkar den anställde. Metod: Studien är utformad utifrån en kvalitativ metod där vi har tillämpat en semistrukturerad intervjumetod. Vi har utfört intervjuer med tio stycken intervjupersoner vilka är aktiva inom fastighetsmäklarbranschen. Vid analyserande av det material vi fått in har vi använt oss av en tematisk analysmetod.  Resultat och slutsats: Studien visar att det existerar en kopplning mellan ledarens kontroll och förtroende för den anställde. Det som även framkommit av studien är att det finns olika former av kontroll som enligt de anställdas uppfattning har olika påverkan på ledarens förtroende för denne. Vår slutsats är att tvingande kontroll har en negativ påverkan på förtroendet medan lönsam och normativ kontroll har en positiv påverkan på förtroendet för den antsällde. Förslag till fortsatt forskning: Eftersom denna studie har varit en djupgående kvalitativ forskning anser vi att det vore av intresse att utföra en motsvarande studie genom en kvantitativ metod.Vi finner det även tänkvärt att utföra samma studie men med betydligt fler respondenter, vilket hade utökat trovärdigheten i slutsatserna. Vidare skulle studien bli mer djupgående och preciserad om de två inriktningarna skulle utforskats var för sig. För att skapa en större förståelse för vårt valda forskningsområde skulle samma studie fast ur ledarens perspektiv komma att vara mer omfattande.  Uppsatsens bidrag: Studien bidrar till den företagsekonomiska forskningen genom den kunskap som vi fått inom ledarskp och organisation. Denna forskning anser vi vara användbar för det specifika säljyrket fastighetsmäklare. Vi anser det eftersom studiens resultat kan ge en insikt för vad som är värt att eftersträva och arbeta vidare med inom ledarskap, för att motverka en dålig effekt av kontroll. Vi har förtydliggjort utifrån teori och analys att tvingande, lönsam samt normativ kontroll kan ha olika påverkan på ledarens förteoende för den anställde. Därför har studien även bidragit samt klargjort för hur de olika formerna av kontroll påverkar förtroendet. / Aim: The aim of this study is to on the basis of employees’ perspective create an understanding how the leader's control and trust affect the employee. Method: The study is designed based on a qualitative approach where we have applied a semi- structured interview method. We conducted interviews with 10 individuals who are active in the real estate broker. When analyzing the material we have used a thematic analysis. Result & Conclusions: The study shows that there exists a connection between the leader's control and trust in the employee. What also emerged from the study is that there are different forms of control which accordingly to the employees' perception have different impacts on the leader's trust in them. Our conclusion is that coercive control have a negative impact on trust, while remunerative and normative control has a positive impact on trust in the employee. Suggestions for future research: Because this study has been a profound qualitative research, we believe it would be interesting to conduct a similar study as a quantitative method.    We find it is also notable to perform the same study, but with significantly more respondents, which had increased the credibility of the conclusions. Further study would be more thorough and precise if the two approaches would be explored individually. In order to create a greater understanding within our chosen field of research, it would be more extensive to study the same subject but from the manager's perspective. Contribution of the thesis: The study contributes to the business economic research by the knowledge that we gained in the field of leadership and organization. This research, we consider to be useful for the specific sales profession of real estate brokers. We believe this because the study's results can give an insight of what is worth striving for whithin the field of leadership, to counteract the bad effect of control. We have clarified from theory and analysis to coersive, remenuretive and normative control has different effects on the leader's trust in the employee. Therefore, the study has also contributed and made it clear how the various forms of control affects trust.

The purpose of this thesis is theory development. It begins by evaluating existing explanations of why states undertake humanitarian intervention. Realists argue that states only intervene when their national interests are at stake. Normative scholars argue that states are at times motivated to save foreign citizens. Neither approach adequately accounts for the pattern of post-Cold War state practice. Building from this conclusion, the thesis conducts research based on two propositions derived from an analysis of existing debates: that examining state motive holds promise for elucidating the weaknesses in current approaches and that studying state argumentation can provide insight into state motives. To better investigate state motives, a theoretical framework is developed to explain how motives translate into state decision-making and manifest themselves in state argumentation. By employing process tracing, argumentation analysis, and elite interviews, this framework is applied to three cases: Northern Iraq in 1991, Rwanda in 1994, and East Timor in 1999. Each case study constructs a theoretically informed narrative, assesses debates between states at the United Nations Security Council, and evaluates the consistency between state discourse and state practice. The cases are then used heuristically to identify opportunities for improving existing theory and developing new theory. This yields several conclusions. First, not only do states often possess mixed motives, but the humanitarian impulse also appears in some cases to have been a necessary condition for humanitarian intervention. Second, the norm of humanitarian intervention does not function as a general rule. Rather, it is a cluster of principles derived from just war theory and international law, but also connected to related norms about sovereignty, human rights, and self-determination. Third, state decision-making is a collective process structured by the prevailing post-Cold War institutional and normative context. The thesis concludes by outlining promising avenues of research for better understanding why states respond to some occurrences of mass atrocities and not others.

Objective: Weight bias internalization (WBI) is associated with eating disorder psychopathology and non-normative eating behaviors among individuals with overweight and obesity, but has rarely been investigated in prebariatric patients. Based on findings demonstrating a relationship between emotion dysregulation and eating behavior, this study sought to investigate the association between WBI and eating disorder psychopathology as well as non-normative eating behaviors (i.e., food addiction, emotional eating, and eating in the absence of hunger), mediated by emotion dysregulation. Method: Within a consecutive multicenter study, 240 prebariatric patients were assessed using self-report questionnaires. The mediating role of emotion dysregulation was examined using structural equation modeling. Results: The analyses yielded no mediational effect of emotion dysregulation on the association between WBI and eating disorder psychopathology. However, emotion dysregulation fully mediated the associations between WBI and emotional eating as well as eating in the absence of hunger. Further, emotion dysregulation partially mediated the relationship between WBI and food addiction symptoms. Discussion: Prebariatric patients with high levels of WBI are at risk for non-normative eating behaviors, especially if they experience emotion regulation difficulties. These findings highlight the importance of interventions targeting WBI and improving emotion regulation skills for the normalization of eating behavior in prebariatric patients.

This study aims to investigate how individuals that have been playing pen and paper role-playing games since the 1990s to 2016 view their own experiences and the development of role-playing games. Six informants were interviewed in-depth about their experiences and how they view the change of roleplaying games and how society sees it. All the informants had been playing roleplaying games since the 1990s and are still playing. In the thematic analysis, five themes were identified: negative experiences, relationships, fantasy, development and normative change. This study exemplifies the complexity of belonging to a stigmatized group and also how a cultural phenomenon can grow, change and become accepted. It also highlights the role the informants themselves played in that change. Interestingly, it was found that the informants kept playing, despite the stigma around their hobby, because they found role-playing to be meaningful and stimulating and not for the reason that they identified themselves as role-players. Furthermore, all informants mention that thanks to role-playing they have developed a skill-set (e.g. creativity, problem-solving, understanding of group dynamics), which has become valuable to them later in life. The informants always believed that role-playing was something positive and meaningful, which also was confirmed once enough research had been done.

Le droit de la famille constitue un sujet très sensible dans les pays musulmans et donne lieu à une controverse récurrente, principalement structurée autour des pôles islamique et féministe. C’est le cas au Sénégal et au Maroc où l’option retenue par le législateur - qui vise à renforcer les droits des femmes dans le cadre d’un texte cherchant à concilier impératifs islamiques et injonction à la modernité - est loin de faire l’unanimité. En prenant les débats sur le droit de la famille comme point de départ, ce travail se propose - à partir d’une analyse croisant action publique et sociologie politique du droit - de voir comment l’Etat cherche à réguler l’intime pour s’affirmer comme entreprise totale de domination dans un contexte marqué par un fort pluralisme normatif. La comparaison par contrastes dramatiques permet de centrer l’analyse sur le différentiel de capacité et de légitimité des Etats marocain et sénégalais pour mieux saisir le processus différencié d’institutionnalisation de l’Etat au sud. Dans les deux cas, l’Etat cherche à tirer avantage de la controverse en jouant sur les différents systèmes normatifs et en impliquant l’ensemble des acteurs qui le reconnaissent comme arbitre légitime, ce qui lui permet de conserver le pouvoir déterminant de la mise en forme juridique. Afin de pallier les difficultés d’application du droit, l’Etat s’appuie également sur les acteurs non étatiques pour le diffuser, ce qui confirme le caractère co-produit de la politique du droit de la famille. Si le droit étatique ne constitue pas la norme unique mais une norme mobilisable parmi d’autres, il contribue néanmoins à l’orientation des schèmes de perception et d’action des individus et renforce ainsi la prétention de l’Etat à constituer l’autorité politique ultime. / In Muslim countries, Family Law is a highly sensitive matter, which generates recurrent controversy, mainly polarised around Islamic and feminist positions. This is, for instance, what can be observed in Senegal and Morocco. In both countries, the legislator tried to mediate this tension by strengthening Women’s Rights within a text that conciliates Islamic imperatives and injunction to modernity. But this solution is far from receiving unanimous support.Taking the Family Law debate as a starting point, this work combines public policy studies and political sociology of law to analyse how the State tries to regulate the intimate sphere in order to be viewed as the sole domination apparatus within a context of strong normative pluralism. The comparison between the Moroccan and the Senegalese States - a comparison based on ‘dramatic contrasts’- allows to focus the analysis on the differences between the Morocco and Senegalese states in terms of capacity and legitimacy, and thus helps us in better understanding the specificity of state-institutionalisation processes in developing countries.In both cases, the State tries to take advantage from the controversy. It plays on the different normative systems and involves all the actors who acknowledge it as the legitimate arbitrator in order to keep and consolidate its power of law framing. Furthermore, in order to overcome the difficulties linked to law enforcement, the State relies on non-state actors to apply the law. This evidences and confirms the fact that Family Law is the result of a process of co-production. Even if State jurisprudence does not constitute the only normative order, but one amongst others, it nevertheless importantly influences individual behaviour on both the cognitive and the experiential levels. It thus reinforces the State’s pretention to constitute the ultimate political authority.

This thesis provides the theoretical groundwork for a 'virtue ethical' account of international political conduct. The project begins by investigating the distinct patterns of normative theorising within international scholarship, noting not only that moral philosophical foundations are unpronounced and interchangeable, but that even in this diminished capacity the influence of virtue ethical thought is limited and fragmentary relative to its competitors. Redressing this underrepresentation is thus dually motivated: developing a fresh perspective on important global issues, whilst also subjecting the theory to an atypical angle of scrutiny. Adapting virtue ethics to the international realm requires, most essentially, that we settle the level at which its concepts should be applied. Can the theory’s central focus on character be reconciled with the collective nature of global political interaction? Can we accurately ascribe virtues and vices to governments and states? These questions of group agency form the heart of thesis investigation. Beginning from abstract foundations, the possible justification for such ascriptions is sought in competing theories of joint action and attitude. The 'individualist' accounts of Searle and Bratman are ultimately rejected in favour of Gilbert's non-reductive 'plural subject' theory, and - presenting group-level accounts of intention, motivation, practical wisdom, emotion and disposition around her concept of 'joint commitment' - a general model of collective character is constructed. Allied to additional requirements of moral responsibility, this framework is then used to assess the virtue-capability of actual political bodies, considering the decision-making hierarchy of the United Kingdom as a case study for the modern state. Tracing the route of policy authorisation across cabinet, government and parliament, a sophisticated yet ultimately impermanent picture of group-virtue-ethical agency is established, in tension with the notion of enduring state liability. By shifting focus to the national level, it is argued that this fluctuating footprint of agency can nevertheless be unified, modifying Gilbert’s notion of a 'population joint commitment' to tie institutional virtue and vice to a persisting state identity. This provides a template for international character evaluation.