The aim of this master?s thesis is to examine how exchange students experience looking for information in their new life situation during a semester in Prague. A further purpose is to investigate what barriers they have faced and how this affected their information behavior. Six qualitative interviews of students constitute the empirical foundation for the study. The interviewees are from six different European Countries, were all participating in the Erasmus program, and all had social sciences/humanities/art as their main subject.

During spring 2005 I, Hanna Brogård, undertook my bachelor degree project in furniture design. The supervisors were Glenn Henningsson at Njudex in Vrigstad and Leó Jóhannson, teacher and examiner at Carl Malmsten CTD in Stockholm.The project was based on three elements:Design concept for upholstered furnitureCooperate together with a sofa producer for professional supervision and to learn more about industrial production and upholstery techniqueLearn more about furniture history of styleI contacted a sofa producer called Njudex, in the province of Småland, who became my work partner during this project. Eclecticism is the name of the furniture styles that became popular during the mid-nineteenth century. It develops from a new, rich society class arisen from industry and trade. The trend is based on the escape from reality to dreams of foreign Countries, past centuries and nature.

All companies face risk in their daily business. Internationalised companies tend to experience higher risk due to for example unfamiliar business environment than companies that act only on the national market. Estonia became independent as late as in 1991 and is therefore a new interesting market for many companies in neighbouring Countries like Sweden. Risks that are most apparent for an internationalised company are political risk, currency risk, capital and interest rate risk, business risk and credit risk. Our intention of this study was to find out how Swedish companies acting on the Estonian market faced the different risks when entering the Estonian market and how they value the risks today.

CSR, Corporate Social Responsibility, has become increasingly important in a globalised world where the responsibilities of companies and governments are somewhat blurry. The textile industry is an industry where long supply chains and raw material production in developing Countries are factors adding to the complexity and difficulties of solving ethical issues. Cotton production faces many environmental, social and financial challenges in the value chain. Therefore this case study takes a closer look at five Nordic home textile companies, Ikea, Hemtex, S Group, Moko and Finlayson, and how these companies choose their cotton related CSR tools and communicate their work on this area. These companies are of various sizes and therefore the resources for CSR work are also different, as well as the perceived values for working with CSR.

The aim of this thesis is to describe and analyse the ideology behind Sida's cultural aid by using postcolonial theory. We want to analyse the discourse on cultural aid that is found mainly in Sida's publications. The interpretation of the sources is made with a hermeneutic base and by using postcolonial theory in combination with Paul Ricoeur's theories on the function of ideology: 1. ideology as distortion, 2. ideology as legitimation, and 3.

Cultural bias in health assessment has been asserted in various scientific reports. The aim of this study was to determine whether ethnicity effects how patients are represented in such medical certificates that are needed to obtain a certain Swedish social insurance. The setting was an analysis of 18 medical certificates for patients whose parents were born in Sweden, respectively of 18 medical certificates of patients whose parents immigrated to Sweden from non European Countries. The main objective was comparison of the two groups to test for ethnical heteronormative representations of the patients and their parents. The method used is mainly based on critical discourse analysis in combination with Fowlers (1996) semantic tools used to decipher disparity in the discourse.

Thinning is the partial removal of trees in a forest stand prior to final harvest. The term can be divided in pre-commercial thinning where little if any volume is removed from the stand and commercial thinning where removals are intended to provide a positive economic result. From a silvicultural point of view, the goal of thinning is to enhance future crop tree quality by removing low-quality stems and providing sufficient space for the accelerated development of retained ones (Huuskonen & Hynynen, 2006). The goals of this study was to see if commercial thinning could positively affect the short and medium term timber supply (MTTS) in the Interior regions of British Columbia (BC), and whether or not Scandinavian forestry practices could be adopted in the BC context. The mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins) has created significant forest planning problems in BC. The annual allowable cut (AAC) was raised to capture beetle-killed timber while still merchantable.

Recent years there has been discussed how the critical situation in the housing market threatens the Stockholm region's growth. The thesis objective is to examine whether there is a scientific link between the lack of housing supply and growth. The thesis also intends to identify solutions for increased housing construction, for instance by examining the conditions for a greater regional perspective and influence on the region's housing supply. The thesis empirical study is based on semi-structured interviews with representatives from the Government, municipalities and the housing industry.In Sweden, research on the relationship between housing shortages and growth has not been conducted to that extent it can be said to exist scientific evidence regarding the growth threat. However, in Britain and the U.S, empirical studies show that a lack of housing supply has hindered growth through negative impact on Countries' gross domestic product.

The work place is becoming more flexible and an increasing number of employees report to a leader in another location or country. The borders between different Countries, work places and cultures are diminished to a greater extent than before. Working from a distance means new opportunities in terms of competence development, flexibility in working hours, tasks and resources, a larger platform for various career opportunities and an expanded network. The purpose with this study is to examine how leaders can create a successful virtual team and motivate remotely. The qualitative study is carried out through interviews with leaders and employees within Nielsen Nordic.

The aim of this study is to enhance the knowledge of target and performance management?s effects on the judiciary. In the past decades there have been a number of reforms in the general public sector of many Countries. The management philosophy often used to describe these public sector reforms is called New Public Management (NPM). One main theme has been an increased focus on the management control systems, for example a greater emphasis on target and performance management.

The fashion market is highly dynamic, and characterized complexity, abstract phenomena and creativity. Further, differences between factors such as gender, Countries and social classes pose increasing challenges to fashion companies and researchers active within this area. In light of these facts, the value of creating tools that help companies and professionals active within this industry becomes evident. Much research has been focused on creating a more thorough understanding of its underlying logics and its main drivers from a business perspective, whereas knowledge regarding fashion consumers and what drives their behavior are more limited. Through this study, insights about the Swedish fashion market and its consumers are generated.

This master of economics paper discuss that the globalization has lead to increasing internationalization among small Swedish IT- companies in the service sector. Sweden has a long history of foreign trade but in the beginning of the industrialization only large companies that produced goods answered for the foreign trade. Before, the Swedish companies begun their operations abroad in fairly nearby markets and only gradually penetrated far-flung Countries. Now this is no longer possible. When small companies nowadays seek growth in other Countries there is no time internationalize with the same approaches as before, especially when the company offers a service.

The theme of this essay is the principle of free access to the Swedish Public Libraries, and its aim is to fmd out the opinion of adult visitors of such libraries as regards the introduction of fees on the borrowing of books, already existing fees such as reservation fees, charges for interlibrary loans and charges for the late return of books.The main part of our survey comprises questionnaires that were handed out to 100 visitors at the Norrkoping City Library and 100 visitors at the Eskilstuna City and Provincial Library. In order to illustrate the fee problem from another angle, interviews with staff people from the two libraries were carried out A large part of the essay consists of material aiming to give a general picture of the subject, e.g. how the "free of charge principle" is tied to the Swedish library system, what arguments have been presented to maintain or reverse this principle, and a comparison of the relative situation in other Countries. As the conception of popular education is so basic for the "free of charge principle", we also account for the idea of popular education.The result of our questionnaire shows, among other things, that 60,9% cannot consider paying for any of the free services offer by the libraries today, 21,3% answered that they could possibly consider paying for some of the services and 17,8% answered that they didn't know. 76% would rather pay for a library card than stop borrowing books altogether..

The high debt levels experienced in European Countries have lead to academic interest in the deficit bias -the tendency for governments to run budget deficits and accumulate debt. In part one of this thesis a surveyof the economic literature on the origins and solutions to the deficit bias are conducted. The proposedinstitutional solution to the deficit bias in the form of Fiscal Policy Councils (FPC) are outlined and existingEuropean FPCs presented. Based on the works of Calmfors and Wren-Lewis (2011) the EuropeanCommission (EC) is defined as an FPC. Based on this survey, two hypothesis are formulated: (1) theforecasts of future macro-economic events and fiscal performance will differ between the national FPCs andthe national government.

Today we live in a more or less globalized society where borders do not pose the same obstacle as before. This is why it is interesting to examine whether different Countries have similar views on how to communicate with a specific audiencePurpose: The purpose of this thesis is to use the data gathered to inform businesses with information. The information can then be used to assist companies when it comes to advertising, the design of messages and the choice of media channels when communicating with people born during the 80?s. Furthermore, the investigation intends to find out if there really is a global market for people born during the 80?s.Method: The authors believe that a purely quantitative or qualitative approach is not appropriate.