Abstract Title: How to source from Russia? - A multiple case study of six companies? experience of purchasing in Russia. Authors: Richard Werthén, Technology ManagementJohan Öhlén, Production Engineering and Management Supervisors: Christer Kedström, Dept of Business Administration Johan Lundin, Dept of Industrial Management and Logistics, Engineering LogisticsRolf Blomgren, Purchasing Manager SR, ScaniaLars Erik Nerback, Purchasing Director SE, Scania Issues: The issues presented are:? What characterise Russia as a supplier market?? Which sourcing experiences have been made by other Swedish companies in Russia?? How can this knowledge be utilised at Scania? Purpose: The purpose of this master thesis is to find out whether it is worthwhile for Scania to look for new suppliers in Russia, based on other Swedish companies? experiences of purchasing in the country. Method: In order to answer the purpose of our thesis the study of Scania?s purchasing organisation has to be complemented with in-depth studies of other companies? purchasing organisations.

According to the national legislation concerning discrimination within labour law, it is prohibited to discriminate on the grounds of sex, ethnic belonging, religion or other religious belief, functional disability, sexual nature and part-time work or time-limited employment. The EC-law goes further and also prohibits discrimination on the ground of age. According to an EC-directive the member states must incorporate a national provision against age discrimination by the 2nd of December 2006 and the Swedish legislator is now in the progress to implement this into Swedish law.Even though national legislation does not contain any provision on the area, the EC-law directive has a certain influence at national law. Measures that are in breach of the purpose of the directive can for example not be taken. When the time for implementation has expired, the directive has direct effect and can be referred to within the member states.

This paper examines how individual social welfare officers argue about the conditions in foreign aid. The paper is a qualitative interview study there nine social welfare officers from four local governments have been interviewed.The results are divided into two areas. First, the client's responsibility over their own lives   and self-determination. These two areas are then analyzed separately.The analysis assumes an aletisk hermeneutics where the basis for the attribution of the result is Max Weber's vocation ethics and the more recent research about foreign aid.The conclusion of the study was that social workers believe that the client's responsibility for their own self-sufficiency outweighs supply. Financial assistance must be justified in order to be paid regardless of whether this causes rejection of application for financial aid..

The study is a qualitative survey with the purpose to through interviews with Employment Office social workers examine their perception of possibilities and obstacles in the employment market for immigrants. This purpose is specified through two specific problems; how are cultural and ethnic affiliations portrayed in relation to what is perceived as Swedish in the communication with Employment Office social workers and whether they reckon that the specifications in the employment market are pragmatically or normatively motivated. The materials are presented using a social constructivist perspective and in relation to previously conducted research and our chosen theory. The results are presented and analyzed in themes. The main conclusions drawn from the interviews are that it primarily is the individual prerequisites that are central, but that structural factors also affect the entry into the employment market.

The aim of this paper was to investigate how 40 typical speakerswith Finnish accent, aged 65-84 years, performed in speech assessmentthrough Dysartribedömningen, a Swedish dysarthria assessment instrument.Their results were compared with results of a matched Swedish nativespeaking reference group. Both groups were assessed in areas offunction/structure, prosody/intelligibility and through a survey oncommunication. Results indicated that the performances of the Finnishparticipant group were estimated as more deviant than the Swedish,considering all areas. The Finnish participants were deviant in articulationand they had a significantly lower speech rate in reading. They also hadsignificantly lower scores in intelligibility compared to the reference group.The results of the survey of communication showed that the Finnishparticipants estimated their levels of activity and participation to besignificantly more limited compared to the reference group.

AbstractThis thesis analyzes the Russian Foreign Policy Doctrine from a broad theoretical perspective, with the aim of describing and explaining the doctrine using a number of theoretical approaches. Russia's foreign policy has undergone substantial changes since Vladimir Putin became president in the year 2000, involving a radical shift in foreign policy objectives and thereby moving away from the more confrontational and distrusting policies which characterized the Boris Jeltsin regime. Putins doctrine, based on pragmatism and seeking partnership and collaboration with the West, can be described as a near revolutionary re-orientation of Russia's foreign policy guidelines, meaning a transformation of the country's self image which implies a rejection of great power status and a search for a new role in the international community.Our thesis has examined explanatory variables such as the domestic political situation in Russia, the contemporary international system and President Vladimir Putins system of beliefs in order to describe and explain the doctrine. Our results show that the doctrine is largely a product of Putins personality, values and beliefs, but also to a large extent a consequence of necessities, namely the poor Russian economy and the fact that the country no longer can withstand an all out conflict with the West involving an excessive arms race.Keywords: Vladimir Putin, pragmatism, realism, domestic politics, radical change..

This essay is about boundaries between, "us and them", in the Swedish culture and immigrant culture in Sweden. The focus is to examine the political interest of the citizens to understand other ethnic cultures who lives in Sweden. One question concerns how the borderlines between different cultures has been painted partly through blogs but also by the media. Is this a result of ignorance or does it depends because of the influence of certain individuals. To find this out, I will study various electronic sources such as blogs, forums and news articles.

The aim of this master's thesis is to examine how shelving is organized among Swedish libraries that have switched from the Swedish classification system SAB to using the DDC, and what problems arise in this process. The method used is interviewing librarians at Swedish university and special libraries.The Swedish national library announced their swap to the DDC in 2008, and several libraries followed suit. The reported advantages with a switch were mainly that using an international classification system meant that Swedish libraries would no longer have to undertake a time consuming classification work, since most of the foreign literature already is Dewey classified. Disadvantages were that the DDC is not adapted to Swedish circumstances. Research on open shelving show that obtaining a browsable book collection requires a broad shelf classification.

Research has shown that immigrants in the Swedish society often, when seeking jobs, don?t get the same opportunities as the rest of the population. This thesis is a qualitative research that examines the problematic situation of unemployment among immigrants in the municipality of Finspång. The purpose of this study is to analyze how civil servants in Finspång apprehend and describe the labor market problems surrounding the immigrant groups that live in the municipality of Finspång. The empirical material is build upon seven qualitative interviews with eight civil servants working in Finspång.

Turkey has often been described as a cultural and geographical bridge between West and East. When the Islamic AKP came to power in Turkey 2002 many critics feared that the country was going to abandon its former Western allies and strengthen their relations with the Arab world instead. The criticism was intensified when the AKP increased Turkey?s bilateral relations with the Middle East and moved closer to former foe?s like Iran and Syria, at the same time as their long-time friendship with Israel experienced serious crisis. The aim and purpose of this thesis is to describe and explain the change in AKP?s foreign policy towards Israel.The research method is a combination of a qualitative text analysis of Turkey?s speeches in the UN General debate and Jakob Gustavsson?s model for explaining foreign policy change.The results show that the Turkish-Israeli relations have deteriorated after the Israeli attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in 2010, particularly regarding diplomatic relations and military agreements.

How can we plan so that smallscale industry and businesses can become an integrated part of the city? The densifying process in search of new housing areas that is going on in most swedish cities threatens to undermine the diversity and complex make up of central parts of many cities. To sustain industrial activities in central locations is critical to this diversity. This thesis discusses how to reach a sustainable city planning with Bellevue, a small industry and business area in central Gothenburg, as an example..

This essay is about the representation of orthodox Christianity in Swedish educational material. With the help of my analytical approach inspired by Michel Foucault, I have studied material used in school for the subject Religion. I have limited the educational material in two ways. First, the main reason for this is that I am only interested in material written and produced from the year 2010 until today. Secondly, the material I have chosen to focus on is written for the grades 7-9 and for high school.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine the discourses of concepts related to diversity and ethnicity in Swedish cultural policy. It focuses on how the society is presented in different contexts and how people with a different ethnic origin than the majority, are represented in the cultural policy of the Swedish State. The study is restricted to concern immigrants. Six governmental cultural policy documents, reaching over a time period of eight years 1995-2003 are examined as follows: Which key terms are used in the presentations? Which contexts and discourses can be distinguished? Have the discourses changed over the time period examined, and if so, how? The theoretical starting point in the thesis is the discourse perspective of Laclau and Mouffe.

This thesis scrutinises the material on post World War II Swedish architecture produced by the Swedish Public diplomacy organisation "Svenska institutet" ("The Swedish Institute") during the period of 1945 through 1976. The outset is the dilemma encountered by every such organisation: how can the projected narrative of the own nation relate to as many countries as possible, without becoming too general? And how can the organisation address specific countries, without excluding others?By employing a two-sided model of interpreting the material, where it on the one hand is interpreted from the universal properties projected on the narrated architecture, and on the other hand from the particular ideological notions related to the same, the thesis suggests that the Swedish Institute continously relates the architecture to a West-European and American context by consistently connecting its universal properties to particular ideological notions orientated towards the West.The results underline the malleability in regard to ideological notions connected to modernist architecture. Earlier research in the Swedish context has focussed on how modernist architecture in Sweden, under the local tag "funktionalism", was established in regard to a Swedish audience as a particular Swedish architecture by relating it to a alleged continuos Swedish tradition, as well as to notions of a a progressive welfare state. By studying a similar material, though aimed towards a foreign audience, the thesis suggests that these allegations constitue an elucidatory example of how national and ideological narratives can form within the framework of technological-ideological dynamics of modernist architecture.

The Sub-Saharan countries have for a long time struggled with poverty and conflicts which might have proven hostile for investors. The analysis aims to see if there is a significant correlation between foreign direct investments (FDI) and economic growth and which cultural and institutional factors seem to be significant in this correlation. Considered are also other variables and their influence that might explain what motivates and gives incentives for foreign direct investments (FDI) and are used in the construction of a regression analysis. This to see whether there is an effect on the economic growth in relations to FDI. The results show that FDI is of significance to the economic growth in the region and the study shows that corruption seems to be the most significant institutional factor in the correlation with effect on economic growth and the ability to attract FDI..