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.

The world is getting smaller. Global markets, political processes and communication technology bring people together. Even though many of these processes are dynamic and constructive, they have also resulted in a need for better and more effective ways of international conflict resolution. This thesis investigates central issues connected to the concept of humanitarian interventions in relation to current and future legislation of the European Union. The overall question is whether the rapid globalization process has resulted in a change of international law towards more liberal view where authorization of the security council is not always needed? And, if there has actually been such a liberalization, how does that affect the legal possibilities for the European Union to carry out armed operations without the consent of the global community? The conclusion of the thesis is that international law has been modified mainly in two aspects: First, the concept of sovereignty is no longer seen merely as a right of the nation, but also as a responsibility.

The purpose of this thesis is to study to what extent the UN millennium development goals have influenced Sweden?s development policy. The research method that I have used is a qualitative text analysis and I have studied the ideas in governmental texts and millennium development goals reports from 1995-2008.My hypothesis is that the basic ideas that has symbolized Sweden?s development policy has not changed much since the adoption of the millennium development goals in year 2000. This hypothesis is based on different ideas that the basic perspectives in international development policy are rather constant.My conclusion is that many of the areas that are affected by the millennium development goals already are prioritized areas within Swedish development policy, for example poverty reduction and gender equality.

This master thesis presents a Model for Evaluating and Managing Interruption Risks in connection with Business Continuity Planning (BCP), developed for Swedwood International. The model consists of a template with instructions. The model should be easily understood and useful for establishing a plan for BCP. This is achieved by including the contents and procedure of BCP and the main supplychain risks in the model. The purpose of a BCP plan is to describe how an enterprise will return to business as usual after an interruption, e.g.

Syftet med denna studie har varit att undersöka hur väl informerade och förberedda svenska gymnasieelever blir när det gäller internationella studier, jobb eller praktik. Resultatet visar att 85 procent av de elever som svarat på enkäten inte anser att de får tillräcklig information när det gäller utlandsstudier, jobb eller praktik. Detta kan sättas i perspektiv till att 79 procent av eleverna själva är intresserade av internationell erfarenhet. Alltså finns det ett behov av information som inte är tillfredsställt..

AbstractThis study is about describing the pre- internationalization phase and to studycompanies that are in this phase. We are trying to capture characteristics of decisionmakersin the pre- internationalization phase, to then compare the theoretical materialwith empirical material from case companies. Then in the final stages of the thesis, wewant to account for if we managed to answer our research questions. In the method, wegive a description of the approach selected in conjunction with the study. The study isqualitative and we used both primary and secondary data, with a deductive approach.The theory chapter will consider the most relevant theories that are related to the topic,which is internationalization, pre-internationalization, international entrepreneurship,and the psychology behind personalities, attitudes, and how these can affect theorganization's strategic decisions.

This paper studies the Swedish Alien?s Act regulations regarding individuals in need of international protection. The purpose of the essay is to examine the differences between the three grounds of protection that are found in the Swedish Alien?s Act. Central questions have been whether the origins of protection statuses granted in this act are national or international, as the UN convention relating to the status of refugees and also the progress of the European Union?s Common European Asylum System both are affecting the Swedish legislation.

In Sweden the work of reducing acidification and its prime cause; emission and deposition of sulphur dioxide, has been going on for decades. Despite of all the work that has been done the positive progress in the acidified areas is slow. This is partly due to a long recovery time for the acidified areas but also because the reductions of emission and deposition of sulphur dioxide have not been large enough. Emissions of sulphur dioxide from land based source in Sweden are estimated to 34 000 tons in the year of 2010. During the same year, approximately 182 000 tons of sulphur dioxide will be deposited over the Swedish territory.

We have made a suggestion for a map based search tool used with a database containinginformation on natural disasters. The database is being developed by NCO (SwedishCentre for Lessons Learned from Incidents & Accidents).We examined both Swedish and international examples of databases on naturaldisasters. The examples that we found were often hard to get the hang of, due to poorcompilation. The problem, that is typical of the international examples, is that the processof data collection is not standardized, as it is performed by different organizations andcompanies with diverse demands on and needs for the database. Therefore, to keep itsymmetrical, there ought to be only one department with the overall responsibility for anational database on natural disasters in Sweden.The natural disaster we based our study on was the flooding in Arvika in the year 2000.We inspected the availability of data about the flooding, and found it to be satisfying.Through contact with the municipality of Arvika, by mail and telephone, and a visit at theArvika municipality office, we acquired reports on the flooding and the joint rescueoperation that followed, and also GIS layers showing the extension of the flooding..

The aim of this study is to understand the situation on the Swedish Market for Drugstores and a creation of a new approach to marketing research, based on the thesis? methodological proceeding. With the help of different methodological approaches and different theories the study's purpose will be solved in an uncommon, untraditional way..

In the profession of architects there is an element called architectural competitions, where several architects compete in submitting the best solution for a certain task. In this master?s thesis I am studying the competitor?s perspective of an international architectural competition, while at the same time gaining experiences for my future career as a landscape architect. The aim of this thesis is to through an introspection of my own process examine a competitors view of the international architectural competition and how to approach the difficulties concerning international competitions. Through that I hope obtain experience about the international competition as part of the profession of landscape architects and other involved professions. To examine a competitor?s reflection of an international competition, I entered and competed in LE:NOTRE Student Competition, a competition for students where the task was to develop 25 kilometers of complex urban periphery along a chain of natural and artificial lakes in Bucharest, Romania.

Today, we live in a consumption society. We buy products to soothe our needs and desires. Thru material things we can express our own personal identity and shopping is seen more as a pleasure than a need to survive. With the background media- and communication studies, the reason of this study was to explore how blogs as a social medium can influence the consumption ideal in society. With dialogical analysis and semiotic analysis we wanted to see if we could find a specific consumption culture in the content of six blogs we did our studies on. We found that the blogs showed us that there is normal to have everyday luxury and spoil oneself with expensive things.

The purpose of this study is to describe how expatriates at Handelsbanken in France, Hong Kong, China, Russia and Singapore have adapted to the host culture. To illustrate how well they acculturated following seven factors have been chosen: Time, previous international experience, cultural distance, language, work environment, spouse acculturation and met expectations. The study was conducted through interviews with six expatriates and surveys answered by nine expatriates. Our study shows that the expatriates have experienced different lengths for cultural adaptation. The majority of the respondents indicated that it took up to six months before they adapted culturally.

Abstract   The actions of Sweden during the second world war has been richly discussed over the years. Sweden declared itself neutral in the war between the great powers but did not manage to maintain its neutrality. The nature of neutrality has often been discussed; whether it is of a idealistic or more pragmatic nature. Realism, a theory of international relations, would argue that it is of a more pragmatic nature, hence these two are in opposition. Realism also takes credit in claiming to explain how and why a state chooses to act in a situation. The aim of this essay was to, by examining specific decisions made by the swedish government during the Second World War, come to a conclusion whether or not Sweden?s proclaimed neutrality was of idealistic or pragmatic nature, and thereby possibly coming to a conclusion about neutrality in large.It was also to examine the worth of realism as an explanatory theory by applying it to this specific case; to examine its validity.The study was conducted using a qualitative method; presenting empiric facts and then by using a decision model interpreting the actions and results from a realist perspective. The study concludes that realism has explanatory power, although not a complete one.

There is an increased pressure for firms to provide the financial market with additional information. Such disclosure is attached with different kinds of costs. In spite of these costs, and in spite of increased mandatory disclosures, firms choose to voluntary disclosure financial information to analysts and others. This indicates that firms also benefit from providing additional information. The subjects of this study is 431 annual reports from firms listed at the Stockholm Stock Exchange for 2002 and 2005 and the objective is to survey factors that can explain variations in firms? voluntary disclosure.