Can the lack of functional cross-cultural communication among individuals within an international organization be the reason for cultural clashes to occur, and lead to conflict between two cultures within the same organization?Our aim is to try to create a potential model of how cross-cultural problems can be studied, in order to contribute to the solution of the problem. And to examine whether the theories, which form the basis of our model can be applied in reality.The research have assumed from the hermeneutical approach for a holistic view of the problem area. The deductive approach has been used in order to distinguish whether the theories can be applied to reality, and qualitative research method for collecting data.The focus lies within cross-cultural communications, which defines the various cultural factors that can affect organizational culture. Hofstede dimensions and the social structure are mentioned and cultural factors as language and religion.

Slovenia and Latvia are two examples of countries which have gone through a successful democratic transition. They were both under authoritarian rule and command economy up until their declarations of independence in the early 90s. Today they have a functional market economy and political pluralism. I have examined transition theories highlighted by Jonas Linde and Joakim Ekman and from these theories sought the explanations to what lies behind the successful transitions of these two countries. The transition in Slovenia was affected by liberalization from within the ruling communist party which then controlled much of the transition process. A relatively large civil society and the fact that Slovenia was not involved in the Balkan War also contributed to the short process.

Title: Communicate ? to provide an opportunity Authors: Ida Eriksson & Petra LindbergTutor: Johan Grinbergs, Mälardalen UniversityExaminer: Cecilia LindhSubject: Bachelor's essay, Business AdministrationKeywords: communication, internal communication, channels, communication models, communication theory, information, organizationPurposeThe idea of this study was to describe how ABB Sweden?s internal communication and information appeared in Västerås. The aim is also to see what tools and channels they use to communicate information internally and see how employees perceive them in Västerås.MethodWe have read literature in form of books and articles that discuss theories on the subject communication including internal communication, channels and tools. Interviews were conducted with employees of ABB and were to serve as the basis for our empirical work. A survey by the Communication Center was made in the spring 2010 and was also the basis for our empirical work.ConclusionsThe communication has been increasingly from one-to two-way communication. To get a functioning organization, it is required that the internal communication in the first place will work.

 The aim of this thesis is to examine men's attitudes towards literature, and how social norms affect their book reading, in order to contribute to the knowledge of why men's book reading is decreasing. This is realized through a discourse analysis of literature recommendations in men's lifestyle magazines.Two magazines, King of Sweden and Magazine Café, are examined through critical discourse analysis. Theories of discourse are combined with theories of gender to explore how gender stereotypes affect men's reading habits.The analysis shows that ideals of masculinity have a great influence on the book recommendations. Social norms, associated with gender, also seem to have significance to whether or not a book is considered suitable for men to read. These are, inter alia, norms of heterosexuality and violence.

The aim of this master thesis is to examine how female identity is formed in two novels and two short stories from the 1880?s. As a framework we rely on the method outlined by Pierre Bourdieu when he approaches the cultural and social worlds through the concept of fields. To understand the female position during that time we use Michel Foucault?s work about the history of sex, Thomas Laqueur?s theories about the rise of sexes and Karin Johannisson?s study about the exploration of the dark continent (i.e.

The object with this bachelor thesis is to illustrate if equality is present during the interaction between female and male players in the World of Warcraft with focus on the female players conception. The main question is: How does gender matter in the interaction between female and male players in WoW? This question is particularly interesting because WoW is in its own construction neutral in regards to gender in the aspect that gender does not hinder or benefit your avatar when it comes to the avatars development or possibilities. This bachelor thesis describes the views three of female WoW players and how they perceive the interaction with male players with focus on equality. The informants? personal thoughts and experiences are described.

Viral marknadsföring har på senare tid blivit allt mer uppmärksammat då många har insett fördelar med att kommunicera sitt varumärke via sociala medier. Idag kan ett budskap spridas oerhört snabbt via olika kommunikationskanaler och därmed skapa en "snackis", vilket naturligtvis är ett önskvärt läge för företagen. Det innebär dock inte att denna spridning är lätt att uppnå. För att ett innehåll ska bli viralt måste det helt enkelt förtjänas. Termen "viral marknadsföring" och därmed dess användning kan upplevas som tvetydig då några anser att det är möjligt att i förväg utforma en viral kampanj medan andra menar att det aldrig i förväg går att veta om någonting kommer att bli viralt eller ej.Idag flyter även vår fysiska yta samman med den digitala vilket skapar en dynamisk miljö som företag är verksamma inom och som vidare leder till att det krävs ett nytt förhållningssätt för att kunna möta denna dynamik.

The main purpose of this essay was to study the program "Nationellt stöd för kunskapsutveckling inom socialtjänsten" ("National support for knowledge development within the social services") from the National Board of Health and Welfare on the basis of how such a development, as represented by the program, could affect clients' possibilities to participation and influence within the social services.To respond to the purpose I used the following questions at issue:* How is client participation and client influence defined in the program?* What arguments for and/or against client participation and client influence are stated?* Which patterns and similarities/differences are possible to discern between the municipalities and universities that participated in the program when it comes to client participation and client influence?The study was conducted as a document analysis. I studied documents from the program both on a national and a local level. The essay uses empowerment theories and theories concerning client participation and client influence. The main conclusions were that on the national level the authors of the documents spoke with caution about their view on client participation and client influence and expressed that it had to be balanced against the rights of the citizens and the social workers for example.

We chose to write this essay about mobile commerce and what influences aconsumer's buying habits within mobile commerce. We also look at how acompany can implement mobile commerce. We could not find any studies thatdirectly addressed factors that affected consumers of mobile commerce prior tothis essay. This was one of the reasons that we chose to write about it.In the introductory chapter, we will discuss important issues relating to ecommerceand the use of smartphones as a tool for marketing and trade.In the methodology chapter, we explain our choice of methods for this essay. Wereported on the techniques and methods to collect data that were relevant to thiswork and then we had a discussion about the methodological choices made.

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.

The main purpose of this study was that, in the light of theories of how street level bureaucrats may affect the implementation of political decisions, examine and analyze the social workers interpretations of the child perspective's impact on the handling of social assistance, and what opportunities and/or limitations they feel that the organizational preconditions means for the application. The survey had a qualitative research approach and consisted of eight thematic interviews with a total of ten respondents operating in five different municipalities. Eight of the respondents were social workers dealing directly with social assitance and two had managerial positions. The results of the interviews were then analyzed with the help of an actor-structure approach to implementation and Michael Lipskys theory of street-level bureaucrats and their role as policy makers. The results of the survey showed that the respondents had relatively similar views on the child perspectives implications for work with social assistance.

This report describes a master thesis performed at SICS (Swedish Institute of Computer Science) and KTH (The Royal Institute of Technology) in Stockholm.Ajax stands for "Asynchronous JavaScript and XML" and it's not a programming language, but a suite of technologies used to develop web applications with more interactivity than the traditional web pages.Ajax applications can be adapted for mobile and constrained devices. This has been called Mobile Ajax. While the technique is the same, Mobile Ajax generally is considered to be a special case of Ajax, because it deals with problems specific to the mobile market.The purpose of this thesis has been to examine which possibilities and disadvantages has the Mobile Ajax from developers and users perspective. In addition we compare Mobile Ajax with Java Micro Edition (Java ME) and Flash Lite.This has been done through literature studies and development of a databased chat client (MAIM -Mobile Ajax Instant Messenger). The application sends and receives direct messages in real time between differently mobile devices.

In this essay I analyze the performative aspects relating to Marina Abramovi?'s The Artist Is Present, which took place in spring 2010 at MoMA in New York, from the context of the artist and work, institution and documentation. In this performance work, for the duration of the exhibition, Abramovi? sits completely still opposite another chair where anyone from the audience may sit. The art arises through this participation.

The purpose of this Master's thesis is to make suggestions as to how librarians can promote young reluctant readers to help them find the joy of reading. We want to show how the comprehension of these children and adolescents can be translated into action in the librarians work with reading promotion.Our main questions are:? What attitudes do the librarians find that children and adolescents, ages 9-15 with reluctance to read, have towards reading?? What do public- and school librarians do to stimulate children and adolescents, ages 9-15 that are reluctant to read, to feel the joy of reading?? What role or which roles can the public- and school librarians have in the work of reading promotion, targeting children and adolescents with a reluctance to read?We have used Beers's theories about reluctant readers and reading promotion, Chambers's model and theory ?Reading Circle? and his theories about conditions that promote a ?good reading environment?. We have also used Smidt's theories about the librarian's different roles in the work of supplying literature.The method we have used is qualitative and based on literature and interviews with 7 children- and school librarians that all of whom work or have worked with reading promotion for children and adolescents in the ages between 9-15, that are reluctant to read.Our results show that in order to gain understanding about the attitudes towards, and relationship to reading, our targeted group have, the librarian has to be aware of the inner conditions that these children and adolescents have. These inner conditions are going to affect the work and the result of the reading promotion activity.

Wood for commercial use is harvested from forests using forest machines like harvesters which folds, branches and cuts trees and forwarders which transports logs to a landing area for further transport to a processing facility. Future forest machines have to be much gentler to the machine operators and forest soil than today's machines. Hence new machine solutions must be developed and tested. A practical way is to develop a physical scale model which can be used as a test-bed to incorporate different types of solutions for suspensions, cabin damping, tires and tracks, crane and overall architecture. The aim of this project was to develop such a 1:5 scale model of a forest machine, named as ?Skogbil.A scaling strategy was employed to arrive at important scale dimensions and specifications ofSkogbil which would be comparable to the full scale model.