The purpose of this study is to describe how expatriates at Handelsbanken in France, Hong Kong, China, Russia and Singapore have adapted to the host culture. To illustrate how well they acculturated following seven factors have been chosen: Time, previous international experience, cultural distance, language, work environment, spouse acculturation and met expectations. The study was conducted through interviews with six expatriates and surveys answered by nine expatriates. Our study shows that the expatriates have experienced different lengths for cultural adaptation. The majority of the respondents indicated that it took up to six months before they adapted culturally.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to examine the use of the concept cultural heritage in Swedish governmental cultural policy. Ten official reports, reaching over a time period of seven years (1997-2004) are examined in the following way: What is cultural heritage? What functions/ values does the cultural heritage have? Whose heritage is a cultural heritage? With some simplification you can say that there are two different views on cultural heritage in the documents. The most common way to refer to cultural heritage is a category of chosen historical objects whose preservation is motivated by their function as sources of information and knowledge about the history and development of the Swedish society.

The purpose of this study is to shine a light at the Swedish americans impressions and attitudes against the American society from the perspective of modernization and cultural attributes. This, with a reference frame of the deeply politically rooted European conception of America as a threat to the cultural well being, and as a thriving materialistic and progress bound constitution.The result shows that the attitudes against America in the descriptions were not all comparable with the conception that was conducted in Europe. However, the experiences altered whereas the study attends two different periods of time. The experiences differenced due to the growing exposure to cultural diversity and a modernization that grew faster in America than anywhere in the world. Not to mention the change of experiences and expectations that was with brought from a changing atmosphere in Sweden.

ABSTRACTTitle: Cultural dimensions? and their relevance in the interpretation of TV commercialsThe purpose of this study has been to explain the cultural dimensions masculinity versus femininityand individualism versus collectivism and see what their impacts on interpreting commercials are.We also wanted to see if there are any other important aspects to consider when looking at theinterpretation of TV-commercials. To fulfill this purpose we also used this research question:?How are the cultural dimensions relevant when it comes to interpreting TV-commercials?We used a qualitative approach when conducting this study. We found that the dimensionindividualism versus collectivism seemed the most applicable, while the respondents? answers fittedthe best to the highlighted theories.

The aim of this master?s thesis is to identify differences and similarities, regarding security, in two goods terminals in an organisation in the transport and goods sector. In this thesis we use Cultural Theory as an analytical instrument to investigate organizational culture, as seen from a security perspective. Cultural Theory is a theory seen from two perspectives, the stable perspective and the mobile perspective. These two perspectives concentrate on different research areas.

This thesis aims at; describing and creating an understanding of how Friskis&Svettis internationalization process, at the start-up in England, can be seen as entrepreneurial, to describe and analyze how various cultural factors can be identified and the impact they have on the internationalization process. The empirical data were obtained through two interviews and it appears that both the organizational culture and national cultural differences can be identified and that these affected the process. The results show that the entrepreneur is both a starting point and a key driver of the process and because of this it can be considered entrepreneurial..

The purpose of this study was to examine how some social workers in Sweden describe the social work with unaccompanied children. Emphasis was on the role of culture in social work with the unaccompanied children. I wanted to examine how the social workers describe their view on social work with unaccompanied. I also wanted to examine how the social workers describe their view at their own and the unaccompanied children?s cultural backgrounds influence on the social work with the unaccompanied.

This thesis aims to develop a theory in the under researched field of international comparative cultural policy studies. lt does so by combining theories from the fields of political scienceand cultural studies, researching how and to what extent the concepts of culture of different states have an impact on the way cultural policies are constructed.The thesis uses this theoretical development in order to research a specific problem, namely the perceived possibility that Swedish and German cultural structures are slowly converging. Two recent official policy documents from each country are the objects of study. Through comparative idea analysis and with Michiel S. D Vries theories on decentralization, the thesis explains the convergence between the countries by differing cultural views between them.

ABSTRACTTitle: Cultural dimensions? and their relevance in the interpretation of TV commercialsThe purpose of this study has been to explain the cultural dimensions masculinity versus femininityand individualism versus collectivism and see what their impacts on interpreting commercials are.We also wanted to see if there are any other important aspects to consider when looking at theinterpretation of TV-commercials. To fulfill this purpose we also used this research question:?How are the cultural dimensions relevant when it comes to interpreting TV-commercials?We used a qualitative approach when conducting this study. We found that the dimensionindividualism versus collectivism seemed the most applicable, while the respondents? answers fittedthe best to the highlighted theories.

The aim of this thesis is to map the intellectual base, and identify the general research interests, of Cultural Policy studies. In addition to this the thesis also aims to trace the uses of theoretical and conceptual approaches within the identified research interests. This is done by analysing citations from 130 articles published in the leading scientific journal International Journal of Cultural Policy between the years 2002-2007 using the bibliometric method author cocitation analysis (ACA). The results of the ACA confirm the overall notion that the research field of cultural policy studies is an ambiguous one, even when it?s studied with a quantitative method specialised in uncovering hidden structures within a given field as ACA.

The aim of this study has been to explore local cultural policy documents in some municipalities in the geographical region of Västra Götaland. Do the municipalities have these kinds of documents for their local cultural activities, and how are they designed? These are questions which the study has focused on. The study has been concentrated on the library activity in the local cultural policy documents. The research has been a comparative one.

The purpose of this study has been to examine what approach and experience pedagogues at pre-schools, with a limited amount of nationalities, have regarding cultural promoting work in pre-schools. The concept ?cultural promoting? mainly regards the children's cultural backgrounds. The first question formulation focussed on the what the concepts ?cultural promoting? and ?cultural diversity? meant to the pedagogues.

The main domain in which eating disorders are defined is medical, whereas socio-cultural perspectives are less common. Because social workers seeks to explain different problems taking societal factors into account, we asked ourselves if social workers have a way of understanding eating disorders, that is different from a medical point of view. Two focus group interviews were conducted; the one composed by social workers with experience of working with eating disorders, and the other by social workers without that experience, which enabled comparisons. The interviews were analyzed using socio-cultural and feminist perspectives. The result showed that the social workers use socio-cultural perspectives in explaining eating disorders.

This essay casts light on the quantitative aspect of the media representation of foreign news. The purpose of the essay is not only to describe the media representation of the countries of the world, but also to explain the representation out of structures that are mirrored by the mass media. Four hypotheses are stated that are operationalized in the research. These are treating four different factors that are believed to affect the representation, economy, geographical distance, cultural distance and the size of the population. A fifth hypothesis is stating that economy is the most influential of the factors.

The National Arts Council[1] has made an evaluation on obstacles and success factors for the interaction between culture and school. In the evaluation report they concluded that teachers and cultural workers have different views on culture and knowledge which creates confusion in their interaction. Thus I became interested to investigate teachers and cultural workers views on culture, aesthetics, and the knowledge that they think the students / children / young people should get from culture and aesthetics. This work is based on qualitative interviews with four teachers and four cultural workers. I compare their views with each other and link it to different research perspectives on culture and aesthetics in school to get an understanding of the similarities and differences in their approach, and what implications it can have in the school?s learning processes. In this work, from a didactic point of view, I found that when the teachers and cultural workers are talking about culture, the why-perspective differs.