During the recent financial crisis there has been an intense debate regarding small enterprise?s possibilities to borrow money. Statements from interest groups and results from surveys among Swedish non-financial companies indicate that their situation has worsened. Credit worthy enterprises that under normal circumstances would not have any problems getting financing are now facing financial difficulties. In contrast, an economic report from the Bank of Sweden concludes that Sweden does not suffer from a severe credit rationing due to the financial crisis.

Fokus på hållbarhet i företag ökat kraftigt på senare år. Ett resultat av denna hållbarhetsutveckling är GRI (Global Reporting Initiative), en organisation som utvecklar ramverk och ger vägledning för innehållet i företagens hållbarhetsredovisningar. Svenska Regeringen på initiativ av Maud Olofsson var först i världen med att kräva att alla svenska statliga företag, från och med räkenskapsåret 2008, ska upprätta en externt granskad hållbarhetsredovisning i enighet med GRI:s riktlinjer G3.  Den här studien syftar till att undersöka hur de svenska statliga företagen har påverkats av regeringens nya krav. Studien innefattar en undersökning av sju statliga företag som idag redovisar hållbarhet i enighet med GRI:s riktlinjer. En kvalitativ fallstudie har använts för undersökningen. Efter intervjuer med företagen kan det fastslås att det nya regeringskravet till viss del är en kostsam process.

This thesis intended to examine how small enterprises within the retail industry work with brand building of their corporate name. More specifically it intended to examine how they do to choose corporate name and corporate logotype, and how they work to create a desired corporate image. A case-study was performed with three case-companies from different industries. The method was deductive as the empirics were brought in with starting-point in the theoretical frame of reference. The study showed that there are differences in the way small enterprises within the retail industry work with the brand-building of their corporate name.

This essay concerns the notion of how immigration politics, defined as a political discursive structure that explains and justifies how and why the movement of people into a state's territory is restricted and controlled, has come to present its purpose not as solidarity with the 'immigrants' wanting to enter the state but as a protective measure for the state's citizens. By using discourse theory combined with theories from the International Relations field I attempt to explain why and how such a discourse positions 'immigrants' as a threat to the state.First, I concentrate on why an immigration politics discourse would position 'immigrants' as a threat. I argue that in order for people to construct their identity, the 'outside' what they "are not" has to be repressed. In the same way, the state has to dislocate the "outside" and create threats to uphold its supremacy. These boundaries are set to create a feeling of predictability and security, and ultimately they are a way of making peoples' "world" coherent.

The intention with this study is to investigate how schools are affected by state and municipal documents when they organize the education for children with special needs. The study is based on following questions.How do decisions on state and municipal level of politics affect the decisions that the principals make concerning organization, and do the school leaders think that the decisions are made on the right level of liability?What is the relationship between economic decisions and pedagogical decisions?What decides whether the schools have children with special needs integrated in their ordinary classes, or if they receive segregated remedial courses, and what are the views on an equivalent education?The study is conducted through interviews with principals of three schools, one politician on municipal level and one special education teacher. The interviews are linked to an historic background as well as current studies and discourses. The study shows that there are contradictions between state, municipality and school goals.

Today there is a keen competition between regions in the world for companies and inhabitants in order to improve regional development and economic growth. In many regions there is an active effort to create a good home base for companies and inhabitants. Since 2003 municipalities in nine counties in Sweden have come together in co-operative agencies in order to work towards more efficient regional development.This essay focuses on the relation between the state and the co-operative agencies in the regional development policy and which possibilities the state gives the co-operative agencies to pursue an efficient regional development policy, both legally and financially. I have researched and analysed this through models and ideas on how the state governs the administration and through the translation theory. The result of my study is that the co-operative agencies have a relatively large amount of freedom to make there own priorities, but the ability to act efficiently within regional development is limited..

Partnering is a collaboration method where the contractor and the client work together, based on a mutual trust towards each other and with a common goal for the project. The method originates from the United States where it was early adapted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It later spread internationally where the United Kingdom and Denmark were early in Europe to see the potential with partnering, to help aid with the issues they were having where construction projects kept running late, going over budget and lacked in quality. By using partnering you can achieve a shorter building time, improved work relationships and enhanced efficiency and cost effectiveness.

The present study is embedded in the research field of Personal Information Management (PIM) and its goal is to contribute to this research area by showing information management aspects in untraditional contexts, as in the social networking site Twitter. The aim and purpose of this two year's master thesis was to investigate the beha-viour of librarians within the context of Twitter. The objectives of this thesis focus on the query of the informa-tion management aspect of Twitter, and on the investigation into whether Twitter offers the possibility to reach a state of flow while using it, as well as inquiring into the relationship between Mihaly Csikszentmihalyis flow theory and PIM. The theoretical framework of this thesis is centred upon the flow theory and the conditions that are necessary to reach a state of flow. To fulfill the purpose of this thesis a directed content analysis is applied as an investigative method, where its in-depth research aspects will be applied upon the empirical material, which contains 429 tweets.

This thesis discusses South Scandinavian cup marks in general, and cup marks in Kronobergs County in particular. The question is whether the cup mark phenomena can be viewed as an ordinary family-based cult for a kind of everyday use, or more likely as a community passage ritual. The thesis also suggests that cup marks were made by ritual participants in, or in the process of trying to reach, an altered state of consciousness..

The aim of this paper is to map and analyze what role Swede's played in King Leopold II's colony in the former Congo Free State. Letters and messages that arrived at the Congo Consulate in Sweden between 1895 and 1906 have been used as the paper's primary sources. Application letters from 32 different Swedes, seeking to join the Congo Free State Army, to the General Consul of the Congo Consulate, Hans Hugold von Schwerin, have been used as primary sources, and constitute the basis of the paper's analysis. The letters arrived at the Congo Consulate in Sweden between 1895 and 1906. The applicants were all men of different social classes, and were between the ages of 20 and 30 years old. Their chief reasons for applying were primarily for own financial gain or because they did not get a chance to serve in the Swedish army.

The freedom of establishment is a fundamental right on the internal market which enables companies to take up and pursue activity in other member states, ?host states?, in a non discriminatory way. In situations where a company wishes to use the right to establish in a host state, complications will be discovered since the member states are applying different principles for deciding the nationality of a company. Since the Treaty of the Function of the European Union recognize both principles, and both of the legal areas company law and European international private law lack harmonization regarding companies wishing to perform such a transaction, the situation today brings the possibility that such a company could be covered by the legal system of several member states, or maybe no legal system at all.The Court of Justice of the European Union has through case law contributed to make the scope of the freedom of establishment a little bit clearer but there are still difficulties regarding situations when a company wishes to transfer its seat to another member state with a change of nationality. Today?s measures, for example the SE-company, is not enough to satisfy the companies wishing to transfer their seat to another member state.

The female labour is still a rather unexploited resource in many parts of the world. Unleashing women?s potential, giving them the possibility to start their own enterprises would increase the economic growth. Not only does women's entrepreneurship foster greater equality in the world but it also creates a more versatile economy. Sweden is considered to be one of the most equal countries in the world; still, entrepreneurship is an area with sharp gender differences, especially in some industries.

This essay deals with Swedish unemployment politics during the period 1918-1932, and can be seen as a contribution to earlier research of how the policies, established by the State Unemployment Commission, was carried out at a local level. This study bears upon  Uddevalla municipality, a town in the southwestern part of Sweden, which had about 13,700 inhabitants in 1920.The research was conducted in Uddevalla municipality archives, and the sources used are above all municipal records and documents from the local unemployment committee. The measures taken by the local committee to reduce the effects of unemployment have then been compared with the directives of the State Unemployment Commission.The survey shows that the local unemployment committee, at least during the first half of the 1920s, was very keen to follow the directives of the State Unemployment Commission, and they also tried to charge the municipality's economy as little as possible. The local policy was often even more restrictive than the demands from the State Unemployment Commission. During a few years in the middle of the 1920s, when the unemployment was relatively low, most of the unemployed did not recieve any help at all.The restrictive policy, however, led to an increasing distress among the unemployed, and the poor relief had to give financial help to a lot of unemployed and their families.

This essay is aimed at exploring how governments inclination to adhere to international human rights law develops in the wake of interstate conflicts. It examines how human rights in Eritrea and Ethiopia has developed after the war in 1998-2000 by examining the historical background to the war, and reviewing country reports from United States State Department and Amnesty International between 2001-2005.The result of the paper shows that Eritrea's adherence to human rights suffered setbacks, and that some of these happened due to the aftermath of the war. Ethiopia also had some lesser setback primarily due to internal turmoil. The essay concludes that states adherence to human rights in postconflict situations depend on if the war severely weakened the state, in which case the state becomes more repressive in order to cling to power..

Introduction: Public health researchers have long been focusing on investigating health inpopulations through determinants such as income inequalities. Nevertheless, incomeinequalities can be considered an effect of the organization of welfare regimes. The publichealth status is largely affected by the organization of welfare regimes and consequently thereare large differences in health within and between welfare regimes. How are these differencesdistributed and how can they be explained?Aim: To compare health between welfare state regimes with the use of Esping-Andersen?swelfare regime typology and to investigate the relationship between welfare statedeterminants and health.Methods: A literary review based on 12 scientific articles.