This study examines a case of cooperation between banks, commerce, police and the municipality of Skövde, which in a project has the target to reduce the use of cash by 15 % in the city during 2011. The purpose of this study is to increase the understanding of the importance of cooperation in which different actors come together to reach a common goal, such as speed or interfere with an ongoing change, while they must meet their own interests. In this study the case of cooperation has been studied by using a qualitative approach. The methods used in this study are participant observation and a group interview as well as personal interviews. The theories underlying the study revolve around the concepts of collaboration between organizations with similar interests, changes in society, conflict and resistance to change..

?During the past few years cooperation between the EU member states has expanded considerably in areas such as justice and homeland affairs. International cooperation in criminal justice has become more important as borders between EU countries has been lifted and because of this, various criminal groups have also had more opportunities to commit crimes cross borders. The Italian mafia groups in particularly have been operating in almost every country in Europe and have exploited the possibilities offered by the EU. The increase of organized crime in Europe has created a demand for EU to step up their actions against the organized crime.The purpose of this essay is to investigate exactly how the significant EU is has been in battling organized crime in Italy.

Many organizations strive to be transnational. This means that individuals with different cultural background will work together. Countries around the world have their own culture, which mark the way individual?s think and act. Different values between leaders and their subordinates are often a key factor to misunderstandings and conflicts in transnational organisations.

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 thesis seeks to investigate how an agreed written form requirement is met in an electronic environment. Swedish Contract law is applied since Sweden lack specific regulation for electronically closed agreements. Since contractual freedom prevails in Swedish law, it is up to the parties themselves to decide if the formal requirements to be applied.In order to assess whether the written requirement is fulfilled in the electronic environment, a purpose-oriented analysis should be made. When the purpose of why a written form requirement applies has been clarified, the analysis continues to assess whether the objective can be achieved with the modern form of communication. The method is called functional equivalence and means that when an electronic media fulfill the same functions as the paper medium so will the electronic medium as a starting point to give the same legal effect as if it were the case of a written paper document.

The purpose of this essay is to examine and compare the news covering of Swedens three biggest cities (the metropolitan areas) and their surrounding areas with the covering of the rest of the country (the provincial areas) in two daily national newspapers, Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter. The aim has been to answer the following questions:- What amount of the news coverage in Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter concern the metropolitan areas compared to the provincial areas, and how do these two newspapers differ in the news covering of these areas?- Is there a difference in the news articles size and content, depending on weather they concern the metropolitan or the provincial areas?- How has the balance between news concerning metropolitan and provincial areas changed over the recent 20 years?The theories used in this study are News values, the media commercialization and Popular Journalism, and The Agenda Setting Theory. The method that has been used is a Quantitative Content Analysis.Despite the essays hypothesis, that the news coverage in the two newspapers would be dominated by material from the metropolitan areas, the result showed that a majority of the examined articles concern the provincial areas. It also showed that Aftonbladet has a bigger percentage of provincial news than Dagens Nyheter.

Infringement of intellectual property rights often causes significant economic damage. The problem with illegal activity concerning counterfeiting is constantly increasing. The development has lead to constitute an extensive international activity which is harmful for intellectual propery owners, consumers and the society in general. Competing products tend to be increasingly similar to each other, with rather similar marketing-, sales-, and pricingstrategies. As a result, the trademark strongly affects consumers? selection-process during purchase.

This paper develops a theory for understanding negotiation situations involving states and indigenous peoples. Using relevant constructivist theory as a starting point, the paper develops a theory about understanding the relationship between power and culture implicit in the concept of the state. This relationship is examined in negotiations situations involving states and indigenous peoples. States are constituted by social structure and are representatives of the national culture. At the same time states are actors within the international system and a part of the culture of Westphalia.

The theory of ?security communities? is generally understood as ?dependable expectations of peaceful change? between groups and whether or not the African Union can be said to meet that criteria has been contested in the research community. One of the central disagreements lie in the nature of the region?s conflicts, of which a majority are intrastate but with tendencies of transnational involvement. This paper seeks to understand how extensive this involvement is and how it affects the possibility of classifying the African Union as a security community.

The purpose of this thesis was to study Holmen?s possible future ownership, concerning their forestland in Sweden. We have compared the strategy of the present owning of forests with three different alternatives. These three alternatives are: 1) selling all the forestland, 2) establish a new company which owns the forest where Holmen is the major stockholder and finally 3) an alternative were the two northerly regions are sold. We used Holmen?s annual account from the year 2002 as a bare year and made a reconstruction of the annual account in the three different alternatives.

I media har internationella kunskapsmätningar uppmärktsamamts och visat att Sveriges elever har presterat sämre över tid i specifikt en internationell kunskapsmätning, Programme for International Student Assessment, PISA. I och med att resultaten har fått en negativ inverkan på skolan är det intressant att studera internationella undersökningar. Syftet med studien är att synliggöra varför internationella undersökningar genomförs, motivering till ämnesval och orsaker till elevers resultat i främst två undersökningar, PISA och International Civic and Citizenship Education Study, ICCS. Följande frågeställningar genomsyrar undersökningen:Vad är motiveringen till att internationella undersökningar ska genomföras?Hur motiveras ämnesvalet som testas i dem internationella undersökningarna?Vilka orsaker tar rapporterna upp till elevernas resultat i PISA och ICCS?För att besvara ovanstående frågeställningar används en litteraturstudie för att analysera fyra av skolverkets rapporter.

This is a field study based on participant observations and interviews, describing the cooking teacher's complex everyday life. The school's restaurant is a unique arena, freely hovering between two worlds: The school world and the restaurant reality. Here, the students are confronted with real situations and problems, similar to the ones occurring in a restaurant, still having the school's safety net beneath them. It is for real, but still not, a bit like a flight simulator.It is on that arena the cooking teacher works, combining the two roles of the teacher and the chef. Two roles built on their own traditions and values.

The intention of this essay is to study the Swedish General Staff as a learning organisation during the period of 1914-1918 based on the theoretical work developed by the philosopher Bertil Rolf. Previous international research on the Prussian/German General Staff has shown that it is considered to be the first learning organisation in history. The Swedish General Staff was based on the German General Staff model and the focus of this study is to compare the development the tactics in Germany and Sweden regarding defence and attack in trench warfare. The questions are: How were the possibilities for gathering and analysing informa-tion affected by the war? Which conclusions were made for trench warfare in Swedish conditions? What experiences from the war and exercises in Swedish army were implemented in manuals and training?The conclusion of the study is that the Swedish General Staff was functioning as a learning organisation during the WWI through the ability to follow the international development, mainly in the Central Powers, and by modifying the experiences to the prevailing Swedish strategic and tactical conditions.

The aim of this essay was to investigate how religious topics and events are presented in five coursebooks in social studies. To do this the following questions were answered: In which context do discussions about religion take place? Are religions brought up in different contexts? To which extent do discussions about religion occur? The method consisted of a both quantitative and qualitative content analysis. The results of this essay showed that discussion regarding religion in social studies coursebooks mainly focuses on wars, conflicts, terrorism and to some degree the human rights. Islam was the religion that occurred most frequently in the coursebooks.

The purpose of this thesis was to investigate the implications and challenges of intercultural communication. An in-depth study was performed of the perspectives from people who work within an international organization. How they experience cultural differences and how they handle them, in particular when it comes to communication. Also, their perceptions of communicative competence were explored. The study was carried out at Svalorna India Bangladesh, at the Swedish office in Lund.