ABSTRACT Title: the Power distance star ? A study on how cultural power distance affects the business relation between Japanese and multinational companiesLevel: Final assignment for Bachelor Degree in Business AdministrationAuthor: Therese Elofsson and Anna NyströmSupervisor: Jens Eklinder Frick and Jonas MolinDate: 2015 - JanuaryAim: The purpose of this study is to compile available research regarding the cultural aspect power distance, as it is being displayed and handled in business-relations between Japanese and multicultural business contacts. The culture in Japan differs from the culture in the western world and several companies testify that the Japanese market is difficult to act and expand upon. This study aims to provide explanations to these difficulties from a power distance perspective.Method: This study has compiled the theoretical knowledge and research in a model called ?the Power distance Star? (Figure 1), which is created and designed for this purpose.

The purpose of this essay is to state a fundamental model which can describe the sounds of the city, emphasizing on its rhythm. The essay is based on a theoretical study that deals with essential elements to describe a soundscape. The theories presented are founded on R. Murray Schafer's theses about soundscapes, Bert De Coensels theses about rhythmical sound patterns and Ambjörn Hugardts view on rhythm. The model that is presented stresses the importance of a multidisciplinary perspective when one attempts to understand and describe a soundscape.

After the appointment of a new European Commission in 2004, ?communication? was made a top priority on the agenda. The Commission presented a new communication policy, which would establish a dialogue with the citizens, thereby bringing more democracy to the union and bridging the gap to the citizens. Three documents containing the policy were published, namely an internal action plan for the Commission, Plan D which establishes the framework for national debates and a whitepaper on EU communication policy. These documents were met by mistrust and criticism from many different actors such as journalists and experts.The aim of this master thesis is to examine this new communication policy from a deliberative democratic perspective.

The purpose of my study is to investigate teacher?s perceptions of their mission in the preschool class, and how they work to promote children?s written language development. What methods and working methods they use to awaken curiosity and motivate children to read and write. I am using the qualitative research method to get answers to my questions. I have made four qualitative interviews with four teachers in preschool classes from different schools.My questions are:What conceptions does teachers have about their mission in a preschool class?What different methods and approaches does teachers use to stimulate and wake children?s curiosity for reading and writing development?The theoretical basis for my study is the socio-cultural perspective, where learning occurs in interaction.

The aim with this Masters thesis is to examine the professional knowledge of the librarian. The method used is text analysis of a state public investigation, SOU 1969:37, that concerns librarian education. The theoretical starting point is a theory of knowledge thats descended from Aristotle. Three different forms of knowledge are central concepts in the theory: the theoretical, the practical and the ethical. The main issue in this thesis is: In what ways did the investigators look at the librarians knowledge? Was it in a changeable period of time? In that case, what reasons could there be? The conclusion shows that educational political changes were affecting the whole educational sphere at the late 1960:s, and in the beginning of the 1970:s, including library education.

The purpose with this work is to describe the language that is built around the chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) in Sweden. Our questions are: What does the professional field look like; who writes, about what and for which kind of readers? How do they describe the expressions and the upcoming of CFS? For which reasons can CFS be considered as a medical diagnosis/illness? How can CFS be understood from a social perspective? Our theoretical starting point is a social constructive theory and also Karin Johannisson's theory about medicalization and Foucault?s theory about power. We have from a literature-exposition of Swedish articles from 1989 to 2006, done a social constructive discourse analysis with help from Laclau & Mouffe's discourse theory, and Fairclough's model of social practices. In our textual analysis we found three dominating discourses: A medical discourse, a social/cultural discourse and a general/popular discourse.

In this essay I examine how the norm-critical material ?BRYT! ett metodmaterial om normer i allmänhet och heteronormen i synnerhet? is used by Hyresgästföreningen in Stockholm in their education of personnel in the perspective of equalisation. I?ve mostly been interested in how the personnel who takes part in workshops about the material react and reflect in relation to the purpose of the material. How do they discuss about norms and the connection to discrimination and how do they look upon the power and responsibility that comes with power in relation to norms?  Earlier research in norm critical pedagogy and the critic of tolerans pedagogy perspective helps me to analyse how critical pedagogy stands above non-critical pedagogy in many perspectives.By observing workshops and by interviewing personnels taking part in these workshops I?ve examined how they react on both the practical and theoretical parts of the material.To summarise my examination I find the personnel who is educated in working with the material discover new experiences in knowledge and on how norms and discrimination functions.

The right touch is a project investigating the necessity of the graphic designer in relation to prose text.The project is partly theoretical and partly practical. A series of interviews with graphic designers, publishers and writers has been conducted to discuss the relationship between content and form in prose. In addition to these interviews, I have done theoretical research on the historical, political and economical context of the designed prose. Based on the findings during the theoretical research, a series of practical experiments was also executed. This project has had several outcomes but one of the more noteworthy is two methods for challenging the references in the act of designing prose (choosing a typeface, for example) using algorithms.

Poverty among children has received a great deal of attention in the media the past few years. The group in which poverty among children has increased most is among single parents; therefore we have chosen to examine this group in this study. The purpose of this study is to take part in single parents and their children?s experiences of living within a very tight budget and the strategies they use. We found it interesting to put this information in relationship to the consumer society we live in today.

This work is about leisure educators' views on educational quality in large groups of children. School centers will contribute to children's development and learning through meaningful leisure and leisure educators' contribution with a high educational quality. There are a lot of discussions and writings about growing groups of children. How are the leisure education and its quality affected by increasing children's groups? It sparked my interest and therefore I wanted to examine this more closely how it might look in the leisure activities.The aim of this work was to examine leisure educators' perspective on how the educational quality is affected by large groups of children and what is considered of leisure educators' as a high educational quality.To answer my purpose five interviews was made with leisure educators' in different parts of Sweden and also by studying the theoretical foundations and literature for school centers and leisure education.The results of the interviews reveal, among other things, that leisure educators' feel that the large groups of children affects the quality of teaching at many levels.

The purpose with our thesis is to understand and explain the advantages and disadvantages there is with the self scanning system. The advantages and disadvantages we will highlight from three different angels; the store management perspective, the staff perspective and the customer perspective. These three perspectives will together form an overall perspective over the advantages and disadvantages as the self scanning system has contributed with. Finally we will highlight the differences and resemblances we have found between the perspectives.Through a qualitative approach we have gathered data to our thesis. Furthermore we have based our theory chapter and our empirical chapter on the base of Grounded Theory.

This survey is a theoretical analysis concerning didactics of literature, in which I problematize what Martha C. Nussbaum describes as ?narrative imagination?. By using postcolonial theory, more specific: Gayatri Spivaks essay ?Can the Subaltern Speak?? and her theoretical formula ?a leap into the other?s sea?, I try to answer the following question: Can ?narrative imagination? be understood as a manifistation or concretisation of ?a leap into the other?s sea??The answer that is given concerning my general question is simply: No.

This study investigates whether teachers working with children ages 6 ? 9 are including an LGBTQ perspective in their teaching methods. The purpose is to critically examine sexuality and gender as part of the teaching methods in Swedish schools; whether teachers are working with LGBTQ questions in their classes, and if so, how. The following research questions are answered: Are the teachers incorporating an LGBTQ perspective in their classes, and if so, in what sense?Are LGBTQ questions relevant and of interest in the education?Do teachers feel like they have gained the right tools in their pedagogical education and/or in their workplace to work with LGBTQ questions in their class room? And if so, in what way? The method used is qualitative research in the form of interviews and observations.

In scientific investigations on how organizations can learn from their mistakes the perspective is usually that of the social engineer; the object is to prevent human errors through modeling the system in a certain way. The aim of this paper is to explore the learning process from a different standpoint than those usually applied in organizational learning and error theory. By studying the learning process in Swedish health care I seek to discover how theoretical presumptions affect the outcome in terms of what we actually learn. The theoretical framework draws on two major discussions in contemporary political science; the question of structure and agency and the question of whether to focus on formal or informal structures when explaining organizational behavior.The investigation shows that Swedish health care tend to understand human errors as a result of formal organizational structure. Such a view leads to insufficient explanations to why errors occur but is useful in producing preventative measures.

 Abstract The purpose with this study is to study the individual setting of salary rates among branch heads. We have chosen to look deeper into which criteria that are the base for the branch heads? individual setting of wage rates within geriatric care and the care of disabled people. One other aspect we have looked into is how the setting of salary rates appears from a gender perspective. The empirical material in our thesis consists of both qualitative and quantitative methods in the shape of a questionnaire study and three open interviews.