The most recent couple of years the boundaries of the world have been erased and we have come to live in a more global environment. It has been even more evident since the European Union has got a more prominent role in the society. It appears as obvious for most of us that we live in a changeable time and that a new, global perspective has been developed. Companies have to focus on the effect globalization and differences in culture have, to be competitive in the market today. Because of that business managers more often can come to work in other countries than their country of origin, it becomes interesting whether these managers adapt their management style or if they continue to work the same way as they did in their native country.This thesis aims to investigate if business managers with a foreign background bring along their national culture when managing a company in Sweden.

This essay is about the burial rites in the passage graves of Falbygden, Västergötland. My questions were: Can the burial ritual be understood by comparing the material culture inside and outside the tombs? What kind of grave offerings did the dead have? Most peculiar are all these beads of amber, what kind of meaning did they have? Was the position of the body a part of the ritual? The time period is the middle Neolithic.I selected four passage graves to investigate: Hjälmars rör (Falköping 3), Rössberga (Valtorp 2), Näs sn 7:2 Kvättak 5:1 and Frälsegården (Gökhem 94).My conclusion was that there are differences between the material culture inside and outside the tombs. Outside the ritual includes fire, inside the material culture are not burned. The material culture outside is more dominant than the finds inside, although the beads of amber are only represented inside and dominates the findings inside.

The purpose of this thesis is to gain a deeper understanding about why Swedish banks choose to work and report CSR and also analyze differences and similarities between two banks.Research question: Why do Swedish companies within the financial sector choose to report and work with Corporate Social Responsibility?The major incentives to work and report CSR are because it benefits bank´s businesses, which is driven by stakeholders. Stakeholder pressure is also an important incentive, especially pressure from customers and employees. The incentives that differed between the two banks were morality of the business leader, society and the priority of stakeholders. The incentives that we could not support were guidelines and competitors-.

The report assesses the typical questions regarding Corporate Social Responsibility within the automotive industry. An attempt as to whether Corporate Social Responsibility has an impact on growth companies is demonstrated. Volkswagen Group is within the required analytical criteria, which are to be studied. Also, the fact that they recently launched ?Strategy 2018? makes it even more interesting to immerse into.

The contemporary angel-symbol is deeply rooted in our cultural history, with connotations and implications leading to that inner transitional space where all creative activity takes place. This essay investigates the history of the depiction of angels, visions of angels both ancient and modern, and includes psychological aspects of symbols as such. A closer look at surrounding symbols of angels will hopefully result in a greater understanding of the role of the angel-symbol within the context of visual culture, seen in the light of our own symbolic universe..

In this study, I intend to examine some aspects of the activities of cultural companies in the town of Arvika. The study is qualitative in nature and based on in-depth interviews with self-employed cultural workers, as well as representatives from Arvika municipality. Cultural policy documents have been studied to clarify the self-employed status in the cultural sector and thus their importance to the cultural life in Arvika overall.My hope is to get a glimpse of what it means to work as a self-employed within the cultural sector in Arvika and the conditions that exist, in order to successfully run and develop their businesses.There is a shift in cultural policy, which has led to permanent forms of employment becoming fewer and self-employment to grow ( Karlsson & Lekvall, 6 ). One can say that the cultural sector has moved in the direction from a public matter, to the more privatized ( Köping , Lantz & Stenström, 3 ). The problem with this is that the policy of self-employment has not progressed at the same rate as the amount of business.

The problem area was identified due to the fact that research within internal audit is fragmented and insufficient, simultaneously to internal audit becoming more common in the public debate. Crises and scandals in companies such as Enron in the US and Skandia in Sweden have resulted in new regulations regarding how companies should be governed. These regulations have been established in Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) in the US, and in Sweden the Swedish code for corporate governance will be implemented in 2005. The regulations imply that companies must provide sound internal control and to accomplish that, companies should have an auditing and consulting internal audit function. The Swedish code for corporate governance denotes that companies can decide to comply or explain why the code is not complied.

With the introduction of the Swedish Code for Corporate Governance in December 2004, most companies listed on the major Swedish stock exchanges were required to have a nomination committee responsible for, among other things, evaluating the incumbent board and nominating new candidates. This master thesis aims at analyzing the effects of these nomination committees on institutional investors in their corporate governance, through a qualitative study of 13 interviews. We have found that institutional investors have become more active through their participation in nomination committees and that they have gained more influence over the companies in which they own shares. We believe that in reality nomination committees have more influence over the selection of the board than was intended when the Swedish Code was written..

Syftet med denna undersökning är att finna en möjlig förklaring till hur det teoretiska området angående corporate social responsibility har utvecklats i ett tidsperspektiv. Uppsatsen undersöker hur definitionen av CSR växt fram och vad definition har påverkats utav. Det andra som studerades var hur ämnet CSR har växt fram. Ser CSR likadant ut idag som det gjorde för femtio år sedan eller hur har det utvecklats?För att göra denna studie, används följande metod.

Problem Discussion: Nissan Diesel became a part of the Volvo Group in the end of March, 2007. A year has passed and the integration process is making progress but it is perceived to lack some momentum. Our sponsor would like to understand if there are any potential barriers to the integration process. (Haspeslagh, et al., 1991) and (Pablo, 1994) presents two different sets of determinants that can be used to decide the level of integration; ?difference in organizational culture? and ?strategic task? (Pablo, 1994) and ?Need for Organizational Autonomy? and ?Need for Strategic Interdependence? (Haspeslagh, et al., 1991).

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine the view of funding and sponsorship of culture within Swedish governmental cultural policy. The main issue is to discover changes in attitude towards funding and sponsorship of culture by comparing the discourse of cultural policy in the 1970s with the discourse of cultural policy in the 1990s. The theoretical and methological starting point is Ernesto Laclaus and Chantal Mouffes discourse theory. Another theoretical starting point is Danish cultural policy reasearcher Dorte Skot-Hansens theories of the development of cultural policy in the Nordic countries, and Norman Faircloughs, of critical discourse analysis, theory of the marketization of discourse. Four governmental cultural policy documents, two from the 1970s and two from the 1990s, are analysed through a model loosely based on Laclaus and Mouffes idea of nodalpoints and elements constituting a discourse.

This paper describes and develops a trade off model of optimal capital structure by Bradley et al. (1984). The model is then tested to examine how changes in corporate tax rates affect the optimal capital structure of firms. Based on theoretical implications of the model, four hypotheses are derived stating that firms? optimal debt-to-value ratio is (1) negatively related to financial distress costs, (2) negatively related to non-debt tax shields, (3) negatively related to firm volatility and (4) positively related to the corporate tax rate.

Today, there is no uniform definition of what an ethical fund is. Fund management companies choose themselves what they believe is ethical and not. The lack of the definition makes it difficult for consumers to understand why these funds are special compared to other funds. The purpose of this study is to examine three Swedish companies; KPA Pension, Swedbank Robur and Folksam, to obtain a clearer picture of the concept ethical funds and its definition. The study describes each company's view of Ethics and how they may affect other companies to work for a more sustainable world.

This essay is a study of how teachers in social studies relate to three central curriculum concepts; cultural diversity, swedish culture and common cultural heritage.Through unstructured interviews, I have taken part of two practicing school teachers interpretations and understandings of the concepts and their practical approach for teaching about identity. An area mentioned in the core content of the courses Social studies 1a1 and Social Studies 1b.The conclusion of my study is that teachers interpret the key concepts in a transparent manner. It is believed that the main task is to problematize the concepts rather than define them. In contrast to this, the practical teaching is largely based on normative values. An open discussion and a normative practice can be said to balance right on the border between the schools values ??and the demands of the curriculum on transposition of the current culture..

The environmental situation is becoming increasingly critical. The energy sector and other industries have a big impact on our climate and the public is raising their voice for companies to admit their responsibility towards the environment and society. Companies engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and happily disclose their responsible performance in annual reports. But what messages are they conveying in their CSR-reporting, and what attitudes towards CSR can be found underneath the explicit content? The aim of this study is to discover which discourses exist in CSR-reports from Swedish energy companies, and how these discourses operate.