This thesis deals with the concept of soft balancing, traditionally defined as the diplomatic means of restraining a dominant state's ability to exercise its military power. As the dominant power in today's unipolar system, the United States, and other states? behaviour towards it, is the focus of analysis. The aim of this thesis is to explore the possibilities of developing the concept of soft balancing so as to include strategies to restrain also the political and economic capabilities of a dominant power. The thesis also considers the possibilities of soft balancing that small states ? to a large extent overlooked in existing theories on the subject - can possess.As a state with policies that aim to reduce the U.S.

This is a study of American Methodist Mission in Sweden and how this mission eventually formed the Methodist Church in Sweden 1876. The mission began as a consequence of returning Swedish emigrants and sailors who had encountered Methodism in America, mainly through the works of Swedish-American missionary Olof Gustaf Hedström on the Bethel ship in New York. During the 1850?s Methodist missionaries were sent to Scandinavia by the American Missions Society. The first to come to Sweden was Johan Peter Larsson, who spent two years in Sweden in 1854 before he was transferred to Norway.

FDI har sedan början på 80-talet växt sig allt större och blivit en av de viktigaste tillgångarna till finansiellt och fysiskt kapital i världen. FDI har enligt många studier en viktig funktion för ett lands ekonomiska utveckling, detta gäller främst för outvecklade länder men också utvecklade länder. Studiens mål var att hitta viktiga faktorer som påverkade FDI inflöde till Sub-Sahara regionen. Den empiriska analysen gjordes med hjälp av en OLS regressionsmodell och hade 42 observationer sammanlagt. Huvudvariabeln var FDI/BNP.

Introduction: Taxes result in a big cost for corporations which create an incentive for tax planning. Previous studies have demonstrated that it's the management team and the board of directors that influences to what extent the corporation is going to tax plan. We want to study underlying factors for how the composition of the groups affect the tax planning in a corporation based on four demographic traits; sex, nationality, age and duration.Purpose: The purpose with the study is to explain how the composition of the management team and the board of directors affect the corporations tax planning.Method: The study has a deductive approach where theories about the composition of the board of directors and the management team have been used to derive hypothesis. The empirical material has been collected from Nasdaq OMX Stockholm. Two different measures have been used to calculate the corporations tax planning.Results and Conclusions: The result of the study demonstrates that the composition of both the board of directors and the management team has an effect on corporations tax planning.

Our increasingly globalized world has contributed to that more Swedish companies has expanded their business to more distant areas. One of these Swedish companies that now stands before their first international expansion is the Swedish fast-food chain Max AB. Max has chosen to start their expansion in Saudi Arabia, a country far away from Sweden, not only in terms of geographical distance but also in cultural. The cultural differences that Max will encounter may affect the business and result in to various adaptations that must be done in order to establish successfully. The thesis investigates the existing circumstances for the fastfood business in Saudi Arabia and shows which adaptations international fast-food chains should or must do as a result of the cultural distances they encounter.

The Swedish retail business has been characterized by a small number of ruling distributors. These distributors have been affected negatively by the internationalization which has made it possible for international distributors to establish their stores in the Swedish market. These international distributors are focused on low price stores. Their establishment on the Swedish market has led to a decrease in market shares for the Swedish distributors, which has damaged their profitability. Another change that has affected the Swedish distributors is that the behavior and needs of the customers has changed.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka hur utlandsfödda gymnasielever ser på yrken och den egna framtiden på arbetsmarknaden. Den teoretiska utgångspunkten för att undersöka detta är Brown´s teori om kulturella värderingar och arbetsvärderingar som styr individer i deras karriärsval. Metoden som uppsatsen bygger på är kvantitativ, enkäter har delats ut till utlandsfödda gymnasielever på två olika skolor i stockholmsområdet. I resultatet framgår att yrken med hög status är de yrken som traditionellt sätt har hög status och är välkända yrken internationellt. En slutstats som kan dras är att vid en begränsad kunskap om arbetsmarknaden sker karriärutvecklingen genom en samverkan mellan värderingar och sociala faktorer.

This thesis aims to evaluate the concept of Uncovered Interest Parity. The parity states that the logarithmic difference between domestic and foreign interest rate equals the logarithmic difference between expected future spot exchange rate and the spot exchange rate, . In defining the exchange rate it is often presumed that the parity relation prevails even though several studies suggest the opposite. Numerous economists maintain that the theory?s shortcomings can be explained through the existence of a Risk Premium.

Patients in intensive care are often intubated, and therefore unable to speak, which leads to difficulties in communication. The ICU is a very stressful environment and can be experienced as foreign and frightening by both patients and their close ones. The ICU nurse?s caring responsibilities includes both the care of the critically ill patient and the support of relatives who are often in shock. This balance is not always straightforward, and acting professionally in both instances can lead to problems.

Compressed air is an energy source that is widely used in today's trucks and buses.Compressor located next to the engine supplies the pneumatic system with the compressed air and is lubricated with the engine oil. Some of the oil follows the air flow in both liquid and solid phase. The solid phase, namely the carbon particles are created due to the high temperature in the compression chamber.Oil- and particles carryover softens and destroys the rubber material in the air valves and disturbs the mechanical function of various components in the pneumatic system. In order to reduce oil- and particles carryover is an Air Processing System (APS) set downstream the compressor.No method for establishment of oil- and particles carryover from the compressor exists at the moment. Therefore the filtration efficiency of APS is currently unknown.

Mitt syfte med denna uppsats är att belysa effekterna av tvåspråkighet hos vuxna. Mina frågeställningar är om tvåspråkigheten ökat den lingvistiska medvetenheten och om informanterna ofta växlar mellan språken. Jag har även frågat om intervjupersonerna känner sig bikulturella lika mycket som de är tvåspråkiga samt om de upplevt positiva eller negativa attityder till tvåspråkighet. Som metod har jag valt att genomföra intervjuer med informanterna. Jag har intervjuat sex personer.Resultatet visar att tvåspråkigheten medför ett språkintresse och en ökad språklig medvetenhet.

On the third of August 2002, in the middle of the ongoing Swedish election campaign, Lars Leijonborg beeing the leader of Folkpartiet (the Peoples Party) presented the partys new intergration programme for foreign nationals. One of the proposals was to instigate a language test for all immigrants seeking to obtain Swedish citizenship. This thesis addresses the medial debate that followed the proposal in the daily press. Using discourse analysis and postcolonial theory this thesis looks into the fact that there were not unity in the wake that followed the language test proposal resulting in one medial and one popular discourse. The newspapers investigated were largely negative in their tone, whereas on the opinion pages, the view of the people seemed much more positively inclined.

This study examines the cultural factors which necessitated the establishment of The Music Archives of Småland in 1991 in the city of Växjö. I wanted to know the importance of the local music tradition and the role of those people who worked to create an institution such as this. In order to do this I interviewed the chief collector of early folk music, Magnus Gustafsson, and made use of literary sources to devise questions and evaluate the results of the exercise. In this study I have made use of a model of a musical culture in a society, created by Lundberg and Ternhag, based on the theory of cultural fields by Pierre Bourdieu. According to this model, the stature of a musical culture gives different forms of musical expression certain roles, but these roles can be remodelled, reflecting perhaps political or ideological influence.

This master thesis was conducted in order to investigate the effects of the browsing species Yeheb on animal tissues in Swedish landrace goats and to make a literature review in order to increase the knowledge of the importance of this plant for livestock production in Somalia. The evergreen Yeheb bush is a very important feeding source for grazing and browsing animals in Somalia during the dry period. Yeheb contains cordeauxiaquinone that stains the bones of the animals red/pink, which has been an increasing problem when exporting meat to foreign countries. In an experiment, two goats were fed dry and fresh leaves from the Yeheb bush for one and two months, respectively. The goats did not feed the intended amount of dry leaves, since the supply and palatability was not as high as estimated.

This thesis includes a description of the project flow for our projects at Semcon. The emphasis is on designing a manual for elMaster Concept.The project flow provides several minor and major elements plotting schedules for this project and the establishment of a manual. When a schedule is drawn, lists and tables with components and connections can be created. This is done to better manage drawings and make changes. These diagrams and tables are used in product manufacturing, testings, controls.