During 2008 we experienced an expansion of large scale investments in foreign farmland. This increasing trend has become a political hot-spot, but there is not much research available within the field. Due to a lack of research it remains a vital task to outline the potential effects of this trend. Drawing on existing ideas from some of the main actors within the field, The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), The World Bank, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the latest G8 summit on agriculture, four main purposes are set out for this paper. First, to outline some of the underlying mechanisms behind the trend is considered crucial for the understanding of the nature of these investments.

Service quality occurs in service encounters where both customers and employees come together in an interaction. It is therefore important that the staff give their best because the interaction usually takes place in real time, which is referred to as the moment of truth.The aim of this study was to find out how luxury hotels are working to ensure good service quality, and how the staff are motivated to deliver this service. We wanted to examine this from a management perspective, and an employee perspective. Information was gathered through various interviews, where the staff at the Hotel Kämp in Helsinki and at the Sheraton Hotel Stockholm participated.Survey results show that employee motivation, training and empowerment have a significant impact to provide service in high quality. The results also show that the surveyed hotel, to certain level work in the same way, but it reveals some differences even when both hotels are part of the same concern..

Globaliseringen har bidragit till nya möjligheter men också hot för företag. Västvärldens företag kan lägga produktionen i delar av världen där kostnaden för att tillverka en vara är lägre än i hemlandet. I dessa leverantörsled kan missförhållanden uppstå såsom kränkningar av mänskliga rättigheter. Intressenter av olika slag fordrar mer transparens av företagen, det vill säga de kräver information utöver den finansiella i företagens rapporter.Hållbarhetsredovisning är en form av redovisning som har blivit allt vanligare och anses generellt innehålla information om företagets ekonomiska, miljömässiga och sociala prestanda. I jämförelse med den finansiella redovisningen existerar det ännu inga standarder för denna form av rapportering.

The interest in providing a post 9/11 image of Islam to contrast the media?s frequent focus on its practitioners? alleged tendencies toward hostility and violence has in Sweden manifested itself (among other things) in an increased range of courses on Islam given by denominational Muslim organizations. In this paper I examine the construction of Islam by two Muslim organizations that offer education in Islam to non-Muslims in the context of the management?s stated goals of the education. My aim is to illustrate how discourses within these organizations are a result of the combination of local and global conditions..

The essay deals with hierarchies that occurs between inmates in prison. It deals with a theory that these hierarchies, when seen through a gender perspective, can be understood as a hierarchy where you are valued based on traditional male characteristics. Empirically, the paper consists of interviews with five inmates, or former inmates, who during a period in his life, has served a prison sentence at a closed institution. Based on the informants' statements, conclusions are drawn about which properties are valued low in the hierarchy. This becomes clear when the informants speak humiliating about sexually deviant groups, snitches, or sex offenders.

Abstract Titel: Budget development ? a study of multinational industrial companies Date: 2011-05-27 Authors: Daniel Claesson & Tobias Kronvall Supervisor: Fredrik Karlsson Examiner: Lars-Göran Aidemark Purpose: The main purpose of this study is to follow up and to do a comparison                of a study of Arwidi & Samuelson (1991) where we describe and explain budget change, from the traditional budget to today´s modern business management, in some of the leading listed Swedish industrial companies. We will also examine which objectives of the budget are highlighted in the companies. Further, we examine the relationship between                         organization, strategies and budgeting and how it affects the company            management. Method: In this study we used a qualitative approach. We used a multiple case                  study to examine corporate approach to budgeting.

Uppsatsen, Kriskommunikation i ett förändrat medielandskap, är en fallstudie på webbplatsen www.krisinformation.se. Utgångspunkten för uppsatsen är det förändrade medielandskapet och vad det innebär för kommunikation i kris. Uppsatsen berör flera olika hörnstenar som är viktiga för framgångsrik kriskommunikation. Hörnstenarna rör bland annat vilken tillit och vilket förtroende användarna har för Krisinformation.se, dess innehåll samt Internet som medium i den förändring som skett i medielandskapet när det gäller kriskommunikation.Fallstudien undersöker även om det är privatpersoner eller yrkesverksamma som besöker Krisinformation.se. Den undersöker även vad användarna anser är viktigast när de ska ta del av information i en krissituation gällande om informationen är snabb, kortfattad, relevant eller tydlig.

The aim of this paper is to elucidate and analyze history teacher's didactic choices in the conflict between unequal educational materials and the requirements of equality in the curriculum of Swedish secondary school. The empirical data consists of interviews with five secondary school history teachers, observations of their lessons as well as analysis of their tests. The starting point was to investigate teachers' didactic work in the role as a bridge between the non-equal historiography presented in textbooks in history and the curriculum?s demands for equality. Three different approaches have been observed in the teachers' didactic work when considering gender perspective into their teaching: that women become extensions in a male-dominated historiography; that another part of the story is presented when a gender perspective is considered; and that the gender perspective is included in history teaching and becomes an integral part of all the content of the subject.Several of the teachers acknowledged that gender equality is less prioritized than the courses core content and related assessment criteria.

Syftet med föreliggande studie var att undersöka sambandet mellan självkänsla, perfektionism, tävlingsängslan och självförtroende. Dessa fenomen samspelar och ger antingen positiva eller negativa utfall för atletens prestation och känslor inför tävling. Vidare var syftet att undersöka eventuella skillnader i ovan nämnda variabler mellan individuella idrottare och lagidrottare samt ta reda på om det finns några skillnader mellan könen. En enkätundersökning genomfördes med 101 deltagare från totalt sex olika sporter. Resultaten av PSPP-R visade att individuella idrottare hade högre fysiskt självvärde och global självkänsla än lagidrottarna.

The purpose of this essay is to develop knowledge about how learning among employees is perceived to occur practically in a pre-school unit seen as a learning organization. From an employee perspective the intention was to gain an understanding of how they perceive the organization regarding employee learning in the workplace when it comes to in which contexts and what conditions that enable collaborative learning. Because learning organization is mostly a vision from a management perspective thereby it should in this case mostly be viewed as the context in which the employees work in.The essay is based on a qualitative research approach with eight semi-structured interviews. It was based on hermeneutics as method of analysis with the intention to gain an understanding of the employees' subjective perception. It is a case study on a selected pre-school unit in Stockholm.

Fo?rfattarna till detta examensarbete har intresserat sig o?ver hur innovationer kan sprida sig till olika nationer genom exempelvis sma? innovativa verksamheter. I denna forskningsstudie underso?ker fo?rfattarna hur innovationer sprider sig till andra nationer och om innovationsspridningen kan relateras till en internationaliseringsmodell, delforskningsfra?gan grundar sig i Rothwells femte generationens innovationsprocess. Fo?rfattarna har valt att anva?nda sig av en kvalitativ metod, med en deduktiv ansats da?r underso?kningen har sin utga?ngspunkt fra?n teorin.

Syftet med vår studie var att att se vilka diskurser som finns kring barnperspektivet bland socionomer verksamma inom barn- och ungdomsenheter. Genom att identifiera diskurser kring detta begrepp var även målet att kunna bidra med ny kunskap kring hur barnperspektivet kommer till utryck och tolkas av utredarna. Vi har använt oss av kvalitativa enkäter med öppna frågor. Enkäterna delades ut till socionomer verksamma inom barn- och ungdomsenheter i åtta kommuner i Sverige. Resultatet har sedan tagits fram med hjälp av diskursanalys.

The purpose of this study is to describe and analyze how companies offering tailor made products on the internet, can work with their marketing and their customer relationships. The study will answer the purpose from a service management perspective and there will also be presented theories from an Electronic Commerce perspective.The starting point for this study was the qualitative method. The essay builds its empirical material from interviews with knowledgeable persons in the subject and the owner of the company whose products are tailor made and sold on the internet. It was conducted seven interviews, four of which were face-to-face, two conducted by mail and finally there was made a telephone interview.Conclusions have been drawn based on the empirical material and theory. The study has been able to identify three concepts that are central to this type of product: Site-building, customer involvement and promotion & relationship management..

SammandragSyftet med uppsatsen är att studera vilken syn fyra lärare, verksamma inom olika skolområden, i och utanför Sverige har kring kulturarv och kulturell identitet i ett internationaliserat samhälle. Mina frågeställningar riktar sig till gymnasielärare som är inbegripna i distansutbildning i utlandet på ett eller annat sätt och behandlar frågorna: vad innefattar det kulturarvsbegrepp som står omnämnt i Lpf 94? Påverkas det skönlitterära kulturarv som förmedlas till utlandsstuderande distanselever av den utländska kontext eleverna befinner sig i samt hur stärker fyra lärare i och utanför Sverige elevers kulturella identitet i svenska skolan?Utifrån en enkätundersökning med de fyra lärarna visar det sig att kulturarvet är ett mångtydigt begrepp som kan innefatta allt från estetiska konstarter till en mer antropologisk syn där kultur är allt vi gör och tänker. Det skönlitterära kulturarv som de fyra lärarna presenterar är nationellt/traditionellt och nationellt/samtidsbundet. Lärarna har olika uppfattningar om huruvida hänsyn skall tas till den utländska kontext som svenska elever som studerar på distans i utlandet befinner sig i, men i praktiken är den internationaliserade skolmiljön främst märkbar i svenska skolan i utlandet.

The thesis aims to increase our understanding about parents reasoning about the elementary school choice by studying which factors parents perceive as important during the decision making process and also by giving meaning to Pierre Bourdieu?s concept of capital through the parents perspective. The empirical material comes from seven BNIM-interviews made with parents, which has been analyzed according to the thematic field analysis.The results show that the parents are not especially concerned about making an active school choice. Stability, closeness, friends, rumors, development and adaptability to the reality are the factors that are perceived as the most important in the decision making process. The school choice has a limited meaning as an investment in social capital, from Bourdieu?s perspective.