With background in the acknowledgement of the current period of major change in the characteristics of traditional Swedish foreign policy, considering the membership in the European Union, as well as the new contextual scenarios that Sweden has been situated in after the end of the cold war, this thesis aims at scrutinizing the Swedish Foreign Policy from 1991 to 2010. The purpose of the thesis is further to localize continuity and change in the ideas which Sweden has explicitly stated in its foreign policy. Based on the theory of institutionalism, the thesis also aims to bring forward plausible explanations built on the main empirical findings. This has been done by identifying different types of goals and means within realism and liberalism as well as categorizing each theory within three ideal types.The chosen research method has been a qualitative text analysis with focus on an ideational analysis. The material on which the descriptive analysis is based upon is constituted by the annual statements of government policy in parliamentary debates on foreign affairs.The results of the thesis show that the ideas that are related to solidarity, consensus and active foreign policy are constant through the period of examination.

This qualitative study was conducted to investigate how subordination and superiority emerges in the interaction between heterosexual couples between 20 to 30 years old, without children. Eight semi-structured interviews with four couples have been conducted to provide insight into how subordination and superiority is made in the interaction between the cohabiting couples. All interviews were transcribed and then manually categorized along specific main themes and sub themes. The empirical data were then assayed by a hermeneutic interpretation.   Three previous studies have formed the basis for this study, Det kallas kärlek by Carin Holmberg, the anthology, Jämställdhetens pris and Familjer i tiden by Christine Roman and Helen Peterson. The theoretical framework consists symbolic interactionism, and especially the concept of asymmetrical role-taking and also doing gender.

This study aims to build a deeper understanding of how differences in identities and communication can affect the possibilities of achieving a successful merger between companies from different type of industries. Our study is of qualitative nature and looks into the specific merger between Företagshälsovården AB and Managementkonsulterna AB. The study builds upon 16 semi structured interviews which are carried out with employees from both parts of the organization and with management personnel. Firstly our study shows that the different identities existing within the different parts of the organization, highly affect the integration process after a merger. Secondly we show that the level of communication transmitted from the management, but also between the different parts of the organization, affects the possibilities of creating a successful merger.

This thesis will address a problem concerning availability of information systems at an enterprise within the financial sector and its external suppliers, so called trusted third party. The information system resides on the internal network of the enterprise and must be available to both employees of the enterprise and the trusted third party simultaneously. This contradicts the company policy which disallows third parties access to the internal network. The HAVECA-model introduced in this thesis provides a framework of methods, each solving a sub problem identified in the model. The identified methods are hardening, verification, control and assurance, together supplying a method for continuously securing the internal network against a trusted third party.

The aim of this essay is to analyze how students are constituted as subjects in local curricula. The theoretical perspective is grounded in Michel Foucault?s notion of governmentality and power/knowledge and his critique of a sovereign subject. From this theoretical perspective I use Foucault?s concept of formation of objects and Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe?s idea of subject positioning as tools for a discourse analysis.

The Swedish bank Handelsbanken has, according to their own way of measuring, been more successful than a weighted average of their competitors during the last 38 years. They have also handled the recent financial crisis, as well as the one in the 1990´s, better than most other banks. This paper studies their management control system at branch level in order to identify the controls which have been enforced to ensure that a low risk level is retained in the lending. The controls that have been identified are; (1) A decentralized organization with the offices as profit centers where the manager has restrictions regarding risk level and the results are measured as K/I (cost/revenue). (2) The absence of bonuses and individual follow-up regarding performance measurement.

The purpose of our study is to examine how parents experienced their participation and their involvement in a solution-focused parenting group. The parenting groups are a part of the social welfare system in a town in south of Sweden. The study is conducted as a qualitative study with focus groups. 11 parents have participated. The study´s theoretical framework considers solution focused theory, social constructionism and process within groups.In the study we found that participants generally perceived their participation as positive and that they received confirmation by meeting other parents in the same situation.

The pedagogista is a new professional role in Swedish preschools. Some people question the role, which originates from Italy, since it is believed to carry out a pedagogical leadership that belongs to the head of the preschool according to the curriculum and the Education Act. Consequently, there is cause for examining what pedagogical leadership means in an organization with a pedagogista. However, re- search has shown the success of distributed leadership within schools. Hence, it ?s interesting to find out whether the pedagogical leadership of the pedagogista could be understood as distributed leadership and what that would implicate.The purpose of this thesis is to explain and understand the pedagogical leadership of the pedagogista.

In this thesis we focus on the issue of crowdfunding and especially how a project relates to and embraces its community. While a lot of related research focus on what makes people give, our research instead delve into whether a creator looks upon the sponsors as something more than just a financial resource. To manage this task we used a triangular perspective consisting of a case study, a questionnaire and a netnographic study. The goal was to gain the perspectives of creators, crowdfunding platforms and sponsors on how the communication between the community and the project works and can be improved.       The three crowdfunding platforms we reviewed (Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, Rockethub) all had fairly similar models on how to attract sponsors and make them involved in the project, while the questionnaire and netnographic study demonstrated how a community could contribute in different ways.

Title: Predictions and explanation models for bankruptcy in stock-companies ? A study of three failed Swedish companies Author: Tim Svanberg Supervisor: Emil Numminen Department: School of Management, Blekinge Institute of technology Course: Bachelor?s thesis in business administration, 10 credits Purpose: The purpose of the thesis is to find explanation for bankruptcy with the help of prediction models. The purpose is also to add explanation by using Behavioral analysis Method: Quantitative research of bankruptcies using financial prediction models and qualitative study of psychological pitfalls. The study is deductive. Results: I found that it is possible to explain the bankruptcies using the prediction models. The behavioural perspective adds further explanation.

ABSTRACT The purpose of this essay has been to analyse an incident that received huge attention in the media that took place on February 24 2011 involving the famous fashion designer John Galliano. Galliano who at the time served as a creative director at French luxury fashion house Dior hurled anti-Semitic remarks during an altercation to a couple at Paris café La Perle. We intended to do a study of the material in two parts. The primary focus of our thesis was to analyse six different newspaper articles that involved the incident. We chose to analyse three articles from Great Britain and three from the United States to get a versatile image of the incident.

This master?s thesis investigates the contextualized relation between a reader and a text, in a non classroom-oriented situation. I am studying the questions of (a) in what way a persons education, personal experiences and opinions, and (b) how the text; its design (language) and message, holds a function in ? and forms ? the reader-text relation. At the same time I am testing the theoretical framework of Louise Rosenblatt, for the purpose of finding an adequate method to analyze this relation.

The aim of this study is to identify the dominating discourse in Swedish newspapers concerning perpetrators who committed sexual offence against children. The study is based on the idea that the media representation play a significant role to the public opinion and awareness of the perpetrators. The study is based upon a selection of 103 articles published between January 2003 and November 2013, taken from four of the biggest daily newspapers in Sweden; Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Expressen and Svenska Dagbladet. The methodological and theoretical approach in the study has been the one of discourse analysis through which one dominating discourse along with two subsidiary discourses could be identified. The discourse considered to be dominating is the one who presents the perpetrators through the discrepancy between the actions committed and the description of the perpetrator.

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.

AbstractIn the secondary-school program for hotel and restaurant complete courses or parts of courses are placed in workplaces so called workplace education (APU), this means that the content in the course plan must be discussed and be divided in a proper way between the school and the workplace, so that the students is gaining all the parts that is prescribed in the goals for the course.Interviews with tutors and teachers have been performed, with the purpose of investigating how the collaboration between the school and the workplaces should look like so that the APU fulfills the content and quality that are prescribed in the specifications of the education. The study shows that a better structure for collaboration between the school and the workplaces is needed. Lack of time and financial resources are the factors that according to the study reduces the possibility?s to (among other things) perform education of tutors, and for the teachers to plan and follow-up the APU-period..