Within the interconnected global markets of today; people, products, and information travel at a pace never met before. In light of the global retail markets recent integration, consumers are opened up to new products and are beginning to develop a vetted interest in the heritage of those products. Within literature this process has been coined "Country of Origin" COO, and its impacts on consumer attitudes, product value- assessment, and overall behaviors has been one of the most emphasized areas of "international business" studies, during the last three decades. Numerous studies have shown a correlation between positive or advantageous associations to a country of origin, and the actual products representing and coming out of that country. It is by this synergetic process that so-called positive COO-effects are brought forth.The goal of this thesis stems directly from the still unexplored potential for Swedish firms to differentiate their products and brands on new international markets, through a strategic and coherent communication of relevant Swedish COO-effects.

AbstractWhen immigrants move to Sweden from their native country it is not unusual that they experience some kind of identity crises. Their own experience of their cultural identity can be very problematic and they often lose a part of what they previously saw as their own identity. To handle such crises the immigrants can use different strategies. They can for example accept their disparity, deny it or emphasize it. The aim of this study is to examine how immigrants in Sweden experience that their cultural identity has changed since they moved here from a country that has a culture that is different from the Swedish culture.

In 1994 the EU directive of packaging waste was adopted. The result was that all EU member states developed different systems to manage packaging waste and recycling. This paper examines the various systems and the factors that affect the level of recycling. This is done by a cross-sectional study between countries. The results of my study suggest that take-back system generates less recycling than other systems, the mandatory deposit system can affect the recycling in a positive way.

Aim: Nation Branding has become an important phenomenon during the last couple of years. The concept talks about how to promote a product by using the features of a nation to gain profit. Among the years many countries has established a strong Nation Brand abroad. In the long run many companies have chosen to use these benefits in an efficient way by promoting their own country brand, especially in their internationalization process. The aim of this study is to see what factors that influence companies in the Swedish food industry while using the fact that they are Swedish when they enter foreign markets. Method: Data was collected through interviews with export managers and sales managers at 6 Swedish companies exporting products within the food industry.

This Master?s thesis examines different retrieval strategies used in cross-language information retrieval (CLIR). The aim was to investigate if there were any differences between baseline queries and translated queries in retrieval effectiveness; how the retrieval effectiveness was affected by query structuring and if the results differed between different languages. The languages used in this study were Swedish, English and Finnish. 30 topics from the TrecUta collection were translated into Swedish and Finnish.

Camera surveillance can provide good protection against certain types of crime, but it can also invade our privacy. The County Administrative Board monitors compliance with the rules by visiting those places to which the general public has access. They have to issue permits before general camera surveillance to those places which the general public has access. In certain cases, in stores for example, general camera surveillance is permitted only if the Country Administrative Board is notified in advance. The Data Inspection Board is a public authority and responsible for the camera surveillance for those places to which the public not has access.

Guazuigua is a small village in Bolivia, which has had too small water resources, especially for irrigation. A project started after some studies were made, to create a canal to provide the village with water from a nearby town. To make the canal work it had to cross a dried out river. There have been several attempts to cross these dried out rivers, but with poor results. The purpose of the report is to provide a solution for this problem.

Taiwan's recent democratization seem to have rallied a wider support of the notion of a national identity amongst its citizens which in the year 2000 led to the election of the pro-independence party DPP and President Chen Shui-bian. Meanwhile, China insists on the "one country, two systems" formula, regarding Taiwan as merely a Chinese province, and continues to fight any Taiwanese initiative towards sovereignty. Through a narrative perspective, this essay analyzes the self-conscious national identity-building quest embarked upon by DPP and President Chen Shui-bian. The analysis consists of three parts. Firstly, a text-analysis of President Chen Shui-bian's speeches is conducted to examine in what way he enforces and legitimizes the identity-building-process through narratives.

We were commissioned to do this study by the Red Cross Centre for victims of torture and war (RKC) in Skövde and questions was asked about how it can be to come as a refugee to a new country and start over. The purpose of this study was to search for a deeper knowledge about older immigrants experiences of their integration in the Swedish community. The conception of ?older immigrant? aimed of persons born before 1954 since these persons culturally was the older ones in the patient group at RKC. This study handled both men and women, was categorised in different themes and was analysed from theoretical points about identity and crises.

Vi strävar alltid efter att förstå det som sker i den värld vi lever i. Till vår hjälp har vi olika referenser och kunskaper som vi har lärt oss under våra liv. Dessa referenser och kunskaper förenklar och förklarar våra upplevelser och sätter in dem i ett sammanhang. Utan detta sammanhang blir enskilda händelser omöjliga att förstå och vi tvingas navigera oss fram med förbundna ögon. Kultur är ett av de verktyg vi människor använder för att förklara den verklighet vi lever i.

I denna uppsats behandlas ett nytt sätt att beräkna korrelationen mellan olika tillgångar. Me­toden, tvärsnittskorrelationen, har framarbetats av Bruno Solnik och Jacques Roulet som be­skriver den i artikeln Dispersion as Cross-sectional Correlation. Vårt syfte är att med hjälp av detta nya sätt beräkna korrelationen över en tio års period på den svenska aktiemarknaden och se om vi kan hitta tendenser i korrelationens utveckling. Korrelationens tendens har tolkats genom trendlinjer och determinationskoefficienter. De re­sultat vi får fram tyder på en ökning i korrelationsnivå inom de flesta av våra observerade sektorer på den svenska aktiemarknaden..

The aim of this study was to compare educational systems in Sweden, Czech Republic, Italy and Scotland. In the light of the Bologna Declaration signed in 1999, I was particularly interested in comparing social work educations in these four countries. Especially to clarify how far they have come to fulfill the goals of the common European educational policy.Central questions asked were: How do the educational systems look like in each of the four countries? How are the social work educations organized in each of them? In what ways do the social work educations differ? How can we explain such differences?Each country in this study represents a different welfare regime, and therefore I was challenged to find out if this has an impact on the implementation of the incentives of the Bologna Declaration. By studying various documents from the European Union, documents from each country and presentations of various social work programmes, I have come to the conclusion that the differences found mainly depends on the historical and socioeconomic traditions in the countries.

This essay constitutes a qualitative case study about democratization theory and the middle class in Russia. This is a very important case to study, especially because of the geographic position of the country as well as the economic importance Russia has as a part of the G8. In the essay the author seeks to answer the question whether the lack of a significant middle class in Russia can be a part of the explanation to the absence of a well functioning democracy in the country. Several democratization theories are presented. The most important being Ruth Berins Collier's theories about ins and outs plus the elite- or working class as the initiator of democratization processes.

In this thesis we present the procedures and outcomes of adopting two roles in a study: the role of a researcher and the role of a designer. The subject is crossmedia design. Crossmedia is a growing and changing trend for media producers of today its design is of great importance. The purpose is to create a concept from scratch that stands out from the crowd and engage people with the use of cross media as the approach. We also aim to investigate if a cross media designer can rely on previous research made within this subject or if the scene has changed.In order to test and to fully understand the process of the subject, we designed a crossmedia concept, based upon previous and related research.

I min utbildning till sa?ngpedagog sta?lls krav pa? genrebredd vilket har va?ckt mitt intresse fo?r olika sa?ngstilar och sa?ngtekniker. Denna underso?kning fokuserar pa? de grundla?ggande faktorerna i sa?ng: sto?darbete, sta?mbandsarbete och artikulationsarbete. Likheter och skillnader underso?ks i sa?ngteknikerna i genrerna country, folkmusik och opera.