What role does the state play in economic development? This thesis seeks to investigate the relationship between a strong state and economic development. To define the concept of a strong state I focus on the relationship between the scope of state functions and the efficiency of which these functions are implemented. The concept of a strong state is in this thesis defined as the efficiency of the state functions. By using a database constructed by three economists; David Kaufman, Aart Kraay and Massimo Mastruzzi as a measurement of a strong state I test the relationship with economic development empirically.

The essay, based on interviews with eight people, deals with name changes from a foreign-sounding name to Swedish-sounding name. The aim is to investigate the reasons behind the name change and whether experiences of ethnic discrimination were among these reasons. Furthermore, I explore the consequences of the name change, and whether the name change was an effective strategy to avoid ethnic discrimination. The study employs qualitative method; I carry out eight interviews with four women and four men, and analyze the empirical material by means of post-colonial theory in which categorizing, otherness and passing are significant terms. The results show that the name change takes place primarily to reduce a sense of otherness, and the discursively locked positions a foreign-sounding name creates.

Syftet med denna studie var att beskriva betydelsen av studie- och yrkesvägledande aktiviteter med barn i åldrarna sju till tolv år. Kvalitativa intervjuer genomfördes med sex examinerade studie- och yrkesvägledare som bedriver studie- och yrkesvägledningsverksamhet med barn i grundskolans år 1-6 eller fungerar som stöd till pedagoger som arbetar med studie- och yrkesorienterande verksamhet med barn i dessa åldrar. Resultatet visade att intervjupersonerna anser att arbetet måste påbörjas tidigt, helst redan i grundskolans första år, för att målen så som de skrivs fram i de nationella styrdokumenten ska kunna uppnås. De förutsättningar intervjupersonerna menade krävs för att tidig vägledning ska kunna bedrivas är av såväl strukturell som av individuell art. Slutsatsen som drogs var att studie- och yrkesvägledande aktiviteter som påbörjas i grundskolans tidigare år och som följer elevernas kognitiva utveckling kan medverka till att eleverna ökar sina förutsättningar att göra väl underbyggda val i framtiden..

Title: Female leaders within the bank sector. Level: D-level in Business Author: Emma Roos & Fanny Wiklander Supervisor: Maria Fregidou-Malama Date: 2011 ? January Aim: The aim of this study is to examine which factors are behind the low number of female leaders compared to male leaders within the bank sector. Method: We have adapted a qualitative method. This means that the researcher works close to the object of research and tries to understand it. We believe that this is a suitable method for our study since it?s based on seven personal interviews.

My purpose with this paper related to my questions was to find out how professionals preeschool teachers working on multilingualism. I also wanted to get answers on how pedagogues in the preeschool may promote multilingual children´s language development, the factors that promote multilingual children´s language development and the role parents have in the language development of multilingual children. I chose to do my study in the form of interviews with professional preeschool teachers and interviewees described including the need for more knowledge of pedagogues around multilingualism. My result based on theoretichal background and the study is that pedagogues should let the children´s all languages esemble together. A factor influencing the multilingual children´s language development is ambient attitudes to multilingualism.

This paper aims to give an account of, and to discuss the view-points and theories of different researchers on the christianization of Sweden, especially the province of Öland, during the early middle ages. Its purpose is to investigate how, and in what sense, their positions can be said to correspond to what we may know of the historical ?facts?. This will be possible by comparing different points of view with a study of the development in a single parish. An overall difficulty however, is the nature of the sources relating to the time in question, they are scarce or even non-existent.Part I of the paper consists of an outline of the field of research and the different theories put forward on the subject.

Rural development in Southeast Sweden- three different views and their consequences for the agrarian landscapeThis paper deals with the future for the rural areas of the southeast province of Östergötland, Sweden. The aim is to unveil, analyse and compare different views on rural development and their consequences for the agrarian landscape. Three views are considered, namely that of the different levels of Governments and their departments, that of the farmers and landowners and, finaly, that of the inhabitants of the rural areas.Differences in the views upon rural development is reflected in differences in the ways of thinking of landscapes. Is the open, and actively cultivated, landscape the ideal for all? Who is to decide what needs or ought to be done to achieve certain desired values and/or goals ? and who pays for it? The one thing that is, and should be, clear from the beginning is that all development, whether positive or negative in an area, bears consequences for the landscape.

In recent years the interest for ethics has increased exponentially. It has become more and more common with the ethic rules and guiding of principles within the business world, both in companies and in different professional groups. Auditors face difficulties and have to deal with different ethical problems where ethics and morality is taken up. It is important that accountants can react in a legal and correct manner. To become an accountant a person should have gone through college or university where the schools have some responsibility to provide the student with basic ethics course for a accounting education.The main aim with our paper is based on the theories of Lawrence Kohlberg about ethical development investigation potential differences in the ethical reasoning among student who are in first or last year of the studies with orientation in accounting.

The aim of this political scientist paper is to describe and analyze the quasi state Iraqi Kurdistan 1992-2006 using the theory of Kolstö about how and why quasi states develops and the theory of Pegg regarding how the international society deal with quasi states. A qualitative case method is used. In the study the two theories are combined. Iraqi Kurdistan is used as a case to study to confirm Kolstö?s and Pegg?s theories.

This essey discuss competence development for the employees in a unit of the Swedish police authorities. The purpose with this survey has been to show an understanding for how this unit within the Swedish police authorities works with competence development and what kind of competence investments they carry out and also why competence development is important in their organisation. To answer the purpose of the survey and the questions a qualitative method has been used remaining interviews with five involved respondents working in the investigated unit. The result shows that needs for competence development are made clear during meeting for personal development and during the local educational council inventories. Competence development for the employees is prioritated for the policemen comparing to the civil employees on account of that the policemen have a demanding work and they have to develop their work all the time because of the resisting circumstances.

In 2009, the Swedish Basketball Federation started a Region U15 development project in order to change the structure of the regional organization to get into a more transparent and similar operations throughout the country. My purpose is to study the attitudes to the change among the region leaders in the regional operations and evaluate the change from an organizational perspective. The study is primarily based on the following questions: What are the experiences of the change process among the region leaders in the regional organization? How involved have region leaders been in the changing process? Which are the positive and negative aspects with the regional operation today? What can be done further to develop the regional operation and to what extent do the organizational change follow general organizational theories? In my study, a qualitative method was used in terms of interviews with 8 regional leaders to understand their attitude to the project and the changing process. To analyze the results of the region leaders ?responses, a transcription have been made.

The purpose of this thesis was to investigate how people from Iran experience reading in their mother tongue, Persian, compared to how they experience reading in Swedish and if there was a difference. The questions to be answered in the thesis were: What is the dominant purpose when people read their mother tongue and when they read in Swedish. Do they read because they need information, because they want to relax or do they, when they read, reflect on their own lives? The method was qualitative, interviews were conducted with 8 Iranians living in Sweden. The theoretical background consists of a description of theories on reading and theories on language and identity.

The purpose of this study has been to compare the present with the future syllabus of mathematics. With a text analytical approach has questions about how the structure is different, how the look at knowledge has changed and which learning theory that characterizes the two syllabus been answered. As a theoretical framework I adopt three different learning theories, behaviourism, cognitivism and the socio-cultural perspective. The pervious research I have looked at is the concept of knowledge an the underlying theories to previous curriculum. During the increase results in the greatest difference seen in the structure.

The concept of sustainable development is a challenge that demands cooperation from all levels of society for it to be successful. The focus for this thesis is how politicians within the local councils understand the concept of sustainable development and how they implement it in political decision-making.The basis for the study is a questionnaire that was distributed to 303 local politicians in three municipalities of varying size in Southern Sweden. The study concentrates on departments within the local councils that are directly connected to the Swedish environmental law and the Swedish planning and construction law. One of the primary goals with the aforementioned laws is the achievement of sustainable development within one generation.The outcome of the study was that over half of the local politicians could correctly define sustainable development according to the World Commission on Environment and Development?s (WCED) definition.

The aim of this report is to examine the possibilities to use network theories to perform vulnerability analysis on complex networks. The scoop of this work is also to improve the possibilities to chart, analyze and present the vulnerability in a power grid. In this report it has been, using power outage statistics, possible to verify, that network theories can be used to evaluate the vulnerability of an infrastructure network. However further studies to establish values on how vulnerable a network is are needed..