The global market is becoming increasingly integrated and to keep up with growing competition and to achieve even greater success, companies expand to foreign markets. Previous studies have shown that the concept of psychic distance has an important impact on international performance regarding small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). The aim of our study is to provide the reader with a deeper understanding of how psychic distance influences export performance regarding Swedish SMEs. Through a single case study of a Swedish SME, we chose to research three different markets in three different continents. Our findings show that psychic distance influences export performance through export marketing strategy and active learning.

This paper examines family owned tourism businesses with a special focus on succession. In Nordic countries tourism has been widely promoted and used in rural development as a replacement economy for ?traditional? livelihoods based on rural production. Because the tourism and hospitality industry, especially in rural areas, is dominated by family enterprises, the topic of succession is of great relevance for tourism and tourism destinations. This paper looks at family businesses? special characteristics, challenges and advantages in terms of ownership structure, lifestyle, motivations, employees and destination impact.

This report is the final result of the master thesis that have been done at  Sharpman Engineering. Sharpman Engineering is a small development and manufacturing company that produces and make drawings for everything from heavy duty log raft to aids for disabled people. The purpose have been to make one concept that make it easy for elderly and people having problem with knee- and back problem to stand up from a sitting position. The final result will the company have for further investigations and use for a pre-serial production with the goal to produce a new working product.To get an overview of what is on the market have a comprehensive survey has been done, followed by a survey on patent. This patent survey are for no intrusion on existing patents should occur and give new ideas.

Örebro UniversityDepartment of Social SciencesSociology and social psychology, Continuation course, 61-90 p.Essay 15 p, Spring -08.Title: ?Youth (work)seekers?Author: Karolina LindellAbstractThis essay focuses on young people?s social background when they apply for their first job. I have interviewed four young people from a small town in Sweden, to see how social background and identity affects their vital conditions in general. I?m interested understanding the relationship between structure and agency.

Cambodia is located in Southeast Asia with a tropical monsoon climate and distinctive wet and dry seasons. Poverty is a widespread problem in Cambodia and 30 percent of the population were classified as poor in 2009. About 80 percent of the populations live in rural areas where poverty is an even greater problem. In agriculture, rice cultivation is dominating and the crop is cultivated on 85 percent of the arable land. Livestock keeping is also a traditional part of Cambodian agriculture.

The aim with this report is to investigate what influence the way playgrounds are used throw the case study in Vänersborg, and also to find methods for municipalities to collect information about how playgrounds are used. The methods were observations, interviews with parents and children, a questionary with questions about what playgrounds they used, how often and why they used them and what the children used to do there. There was also a demographic investigation and documentary research. The most popular playground, Skräcklan, gets visitors from all parts of the municipality. It is located in a park with a view over the lake Vänern, there is a parking place and a café and it has furthermore a large area and many play equipments. Many of the families make shorter trips and picnics to this place. In exception of this playground, the families almost always go to the playground in their neighborhood and their part of the town.

This essay is focused on the marketing phenomenon buzz marketing. Buzz marketing is all about making the consumers to talk about your product. In the world we are living in with all the marketing messages, companies tries to find new ways to reach the consumers with their marketing message. The essay consists of 6 interviews with a low level of structure and standardisation. The material from these interviews has been analyzed with the help from the theories of buzz marketing, word of mouth, marketing communication, consumer behaviour, relationship marketing, one-to-one marketing and marketing ethics.

The purpose of this study was to examine divergences in assessments of social assistance in one big and one small social welfare office in the municipalities of Malmö. To examine this we used a qualitative method. We held interviews with social workers and their superiors. At the end of the interviews with the social workers we presented two vignettes, describing different cases of first time applications of social assistance. The social workers was asked to assess whether the application should be granted or not, and motivate their decisions.

In this essay there will be four text books from grade 1 studied, the first one are from the year 1976 and it will be going forward to the year 2012. The aim of this study is to see how the genders are depicted and represented, as well as what roles the genders are given. I do also want to see if there is a notable change in this over time. I will be doing a study based on the quantity of the contents, and I will also be doing a critical discourse analysis.The result of the study showed that there were more gender-based constructions that referred to women in all of the four books, which indicates that women are represented more often in these reading books. It is most common to portray the genders in their stereotypical roles, which again are present in society, but sometimes these roles are depart from what?s present in society.

The field of the social economy and of the work integration social enterprises (WISE) in particular, is for many a more or less unknown area. Unlike ordinary enterprises the WISE's are different due to their aim of integrating disadvantaged people through work. In comparison with other small enterprises earlier research has shown that the WISE's are dealing with challenges regarding recruitment, participation, leadership, sustainable business ideas but above all, the access to funding. The purpose of this essay has therefore been to examine and analyze the financial situation of eight WISE's located in the Stockholm County. The results indicate that half of the enterprises perceive their economic situation as very unstable and as an obstacle to their further development.

Modern forestry requires a high degree of machine traffic for clear felling and scarification operations. The machines most frequently used are big and the traffic often results in tracks on the forest ground. There are many small streams running through a forest, in connection to logging operations, machines might cross these frequently. These crossings could result in the erosion of fine particulate inorganic matter, which ends up in the stream. The aim of this thesis was to give a general description of small forest streams of order-one in the county of Värmland and to determine the frequency of machine tracks in small streams.

All over the world the urbanisation increases at the expense of green areas. Many plants and animals are endangered today because their habitats gets smaller or disappear. The green areas that are left in city centres and suburbs are often small and surrounded by roads and buildings. Despite this, several studies have shown that these small green areas may house large biological diversity.This project aims to study the biological diversity in small green patches in residential areas. The study has been carried out in Råsunda in Solna municipality (Stockholm county) during the period May?July 2006.Three equivalent areas (5000?10 000 m2) with quite many old oaks were chosen for the study and inventoried for birds and saproxylic insects.

All over the world the urbanisation increases at the expense of green areas. Many plants and animals are endangered today because their habitats gets smaller or disappear. The green areas that are left in city centres and suburbs are often small and surrounded by roads and buildings. Despite this, several studies have shown that these small green areas may house large biological diversity.This project aims to study the biological diversity in small green patches in residential areas. The study has been carried out in Råsunda in Solna municipality (Stockholm county) during the period May?July 2006.Three equivalent areas (5000?10 000 m2) with quite many old oaks were chosen for the study and inventoried for birds and saproxylic insects.

Homework is and has always been a part of school work. It may take a lot of time from the pupils? leisure. Despite this, you cannot find anything written about homework in the curriculum. How can this be? Is homework necessary and what is its function?The purpose of this study is to find out how a few teachers in primary school reason about homework.  What are their attitudes towards homework and what functions do they see?To get an answer to this I studied literature and research reports, and did four qualitative interviews with teachers who teach grades 1-6.The results show that all the teachers give homework to their pupils, but their opinions about homework differ.

African elephants (Loxodonta Africana) are kept all over the world in different kinds of enclosures. The enclosures are however often unsuitable for the elephants. Research has shown that elephants are nocturnal animals. Therefore it is important to keep elephants occupied, for instance by using enrichments, also at the night. Five elephants were studied at Borås djurpark, four elephants in one room and one elephant, named Nyoka, in one room.