Abstract The growth of supra-national organizations, such as the European Union, has been a recent trend in today?s global environment, which has challenged traditional marketing concepts and product cues. One such cue that is significantly challenged is the 'origin cue'. An origin cue is conceived to be a socially constructed notion that consumers use to discern where goods come from and to accordingly evaluate products with. The origin cue is often predominantly materialized in the public sphere by a 'made in' labelling scheme.

Total amount of words: 15 269.In this essay, the purpose is to examine the personalization of Swedish national coaches during international championships in the Swedish tabloids. Research shows that a leader nowadays is representative for her organization. Therefore it could be assumed that the way the national coach is portrayed can have some kind of effect on the public opinion about the team as a unit and their sport federation in total. This essay is a quantitative study of the sport tabloids Sportbladet och SPORT-Expressen during three international championships: Euro 2012 in football, WC 2013 in ice hockey and Euro 2014 in handball. We have studied the coverage of the national coaches Erik Hamrén, Pär Mårts and Ola Lindgren/Staffan Olsson in contrast to the coverage of their teams in total.The main results are that the national coaches are mentioned in every second article that is written about the national teams during the championships. They are mainly portrayed in a neutral way, even though the coverage of them is affected by the results in the matches.

Since the beginning of 1940 there have been externally developed tests in Sweden. Their appearances have changed over the years together with the cognitive approach. Nowadays, this kind of tests is going by the name of the national tests, which was introduced in the year of 1994. When the Swedish National Agency for Education received the assignment to develop new purposes and national tests to the third grade students, debate took a bounce. The matter was well discussed; national tests in third grade or not?The national tests thus far carried out four rounds in the third grade and the purpose of my study was to find out how teachers are reasoning about the tests.

In September 2003 the Swedish minister of foreign affairs Anna Lindh was murdered. The murder shocked Sweden and the picture of a safe homeland was challenged. The Swedish people joined together in different manifestations and rituals to show their appreciation for the minister and to mourn together. A few days later the nation was going to vote on whether Sweden should join the euro and the minister was involved in the campaign. The aim for this thesis is to understand how this national crisis was handled in Sweden.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the possibilities for creating a national interlibraryloan system in Sweden and to see how it could be integrated into an international network .The methods used are both qualitative and quantitative. We have sent inquiries to a numberof libraries and we have interviewed keypersons in the interlibrary loan field in Sweden.We have reached the conclusion that in spite of several impediments there is a lot that speaksfor a Swedish national interlibrary loan system in the near future. A national bibliographicdatabase is already evolving..

This essay aims to study how national tests in the ninth grade are being viewed upon in the Swedish school system. What are the affected people?s thoughts regarding its field of application? For further information about this matter, three different sub studies have taken place. In the first sub study, literature from The Swedish National Agency for Education (SNAE) has been studied and compared to other researches. In the second sub study, pupils who took part in the national tests during the previous year answered a survey about their experiences working with the tests.

Being a successful global business player depends on firm?s ability to mobilize its resources worldwide. For this reason getting the right people with the right skills, at the right time, at the right place is crucial and makes expatriation one of the most important issues of today?s business world agenda. In terms of expatriation; national culture provides the context for the whole process.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the significance of the national assessment in highschool education, including what the teachers express about the new instructions currently coming from the Swedish National Agency of Education, concerning a more central control of grading the national assessments. This study also covers the teachers individual responsibility when it comes to grading the national assessments. The purpose of the national assessment is to secure that grading and the education level in the country is equal. This is a qualitative study useing the method of a group discussion intervju (focusgroup intervju). Five highschool teachers took part in the discussion with questions that had been decided beforehand.

This thesis examines the possible beneficial effects of a temporary cooperation between a national brand and a private brand. The main hypothesis suggests that if a national brand wants to make a category extension to a remote product category, it should be able to decrease its risk by affiliating itself with a private brand. The national brand should through such a brand alliance be able to borrow some of the flexible characteristics that a private brand possesses to increase its associations with the new category. The survey consisted of 800 questionnaires with different cooperations between a private brand (ICA) and two national brands (Tropicana and Bravo). These were handed out to students in the universities of Stockholm.

AbstractIn this essay I discuss narrative in the reconstruction of national identity. I discuss exclusion as a side effect in thick identities. That means that thick national identities always exclude another part. From this I´ve discussed the Swedish identity and its effects in the European co-operation. Identity is a discourse that reconstructs linguistically.

Title: Diversities of diversity - fluctuating talk, meaning and practice of diversitySeminar date: 06.02.08 Course: Masters thesis in Business Administration, Programme for Managing People, Knowledge and Change, 15 University Credit Points (15 ECTS). Authors: Björt Ólafsdóttir & Clarissa Sia Choon YenAdvisors: Mats Alvesson & Susanne LundholmFive key words: Diversity, Discourses, Hypocrisy, Comparison, National contextPurpose: To identify and compare discourses around diversity within two companies operating in two distinct national contexts. One originated from and still situated in Iceland, while the other is a subsidiary for Asia-Pacific market in Singapore with American values from its headquarters in United States. We wish to explore what are the meanings and implications of diversity for the employees of each company, how their discourses on diversity reflect hypocrisy in the organizations and if and how national context has an impact on discourse on diversity.Methodology: Interviews were conducted, transcribed and codified. Comparison and evaluation of the different discourses were examined around diversity and in the talk of interviewees within the two companies.

This essay examines upper secondary school pupils as well as the Swedish National Agency for Educations views on the education in subject of religion. How they describe its purpose, what content the topic should address, how the education should be implemented and what influence the pupils should have over their own studies. This to examine how the views of pupils and the Swedish National Agency of Education correlate and to analyze how it possibly can affect the pupil?s motivation. The survey is conducted by semi-forging tured interviews and text analysis in order to ascertain the pupils and the Swedish National Agency of Educations opinions on the issues.

This work studied the information flow and information handling among different parties. The study focused on how educational materials on national tests from The Swedish National Agency for Education is managed by school principals and teachers and how the information is passed on to students. The data material was based on observations and interviews at two different high schools. Six teachers and their classes and principals participated in the study. The Agency was also interviewed.

The aim of this thesis is to illustrate the principal problem of the study of national self-images and by questioning the congruent existence of one in the case of Sweden. Through the use of qualitative method and semi-structured interviews the ambition of the study is to compare and to understand the national self-images portrayed in a major Swedish town, Stockholm and to that of a smaller town on the countryside, Sjöbo. A social constructionist approach in co-operation with key temporal and spasial dimensions are used to penetrate the interviews at hand. The main conclusions drawn from this study highlights the difficulties in addressing the concept of a congruent national self-image. Several major discrepancies appear in the analysed material, mainly in the past and the external dimensions, both from a regional approach, but also very much within the local entities themselves..

AbstractThe purpose of this thesis is to analyse the basis of Russian diplomacy, and by doing that develop the analytical instruments available, in order to improve the comprehension between the parties in negotiations. Descriptions of the national characteristics of Soviet and Russian diplomacy are made by an analysis of memoairs and other examinations of their negotiating behaviour. To ensure the result of the characteristics two case studies of the non-nuclear proliferation negotiations are made, followed by a comparation between the Soviet and Russian diplomacy. From these results, I analyse the groundworks of russian diplomacy, using three theories about how ideology, national identity and prevailing self-image can affect the national negotiating behaviour. The results show that there have been changes in only some parts of the negotiating behaviour and that there is a need for all three theories to explain different parts of the complex system of Russian diplomacy which is based on the plurality of culture, ideology, language, ideology and history..