The most recent couple of years the boundaries of the world have been erased and we have come to live in a more global environment. It has been even more evident since the European Union has got a more prominent role in the society. It appears as obvious for most of us that we live in a changeable time and that a new, global perspective has been developed. Companies have to focus on the effect globalization and differences in culture have, to be competitive in the market today. Because of that business managers more often can come to work in other countries than their country of origin, it becomes interesting whether these managers adapt their management style or if they continue to work the same way as they did in their native country.This thesis aims to investigate if business managers with a foreign background bring along their national culture when managing a company in Sweden.

ABSTRACT Within migration and globalization the concept of ethnic identity, religious identity and belonging have come to play a significant role in both immigrants? lives and as well in social context. Sweden, as a multicultural society has been dealing with different ethnic groups of immigrants and the way these minority groups perceive themselves to be and how they are perceived by others in the society has also come to be of high importance. By migrating people also change their position. They often occupy inferior positions in the society when they settle down in the new country.

The main purpose of this C-essay is to answer the question: What have been the consequences and effects of the merit point system on language studies and the parties concerned (teachers, students and principals) during the school year of 2010/11?The merit point system is the result of a political decision and was implicated for the first time in the Swedish upper secondary school during the school year 2010/2011. Being a completely new phenomenon it is of great interest and importance to study its effects.The study in this essay also aims to verify, falsify or nullify two hypotheses very often referred to in the political discussions regarding the merit point system:The merit point system will replace affection and interest as main reasons for language studies in upper secondary school and cause a rectification amongst the students choices of additional courses.The merit point system will have a segregating effect upon society and make it harder for people to rise in society through education in the future.A verification of these hypotheses would imply the appearance of an increased rectification amongst students as well as an orientation towards an in the future more segregated society.The empiric material has been collected and examined with qualitative as well as quantitative methods (questionnaires and interviews) and belongs epistemologically to the phenomenological and hermeneutical traditions..

 Prostitution has been intensely debated in Sweden for nearly four decades. Two major investigations have so far been initiated by the government and numerous propositions have been put forward in the Swedish parliament resulting in the sexköpslag from 1999 that criminalizes purchase of sexual services. The law aims at punishing the buyer and protecting the women in prostitution, thus making it possible for women to be helped by various social interventions rather than punished. Swedish society has undergone major changes in these decades. Globalization, the internet and the membership in the EU have changed the Swedish society and influenced the discourse on prostitution.This paper has a twofold aim, on the one hand investigating if and how these changes have had an impact on the prostitution discourse in texts produced by the government and analyze how female and male sexuality in connection to prostitution is constructed.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate how large Swedish corporations within the same industry protect themselves against foreign exchange risks and to determine if there is a general practice for how the protection is done. What is the responsibility structure at these corporations regarding the handling of exposure to foreign exchange?.

The aim of this bachelor thesis was to examine attitudes among social workers, particularly their attitudes toward their clients? poverty and towards economic counseling as a method. A further aim was to study the relationship between attitudes towards poverty and economic counseling. Primary data used for the study was assembled among social workers (n = 111) with the use of an electronic questionnaire that was sent out to social welfare offices in 34 city districts in Stockholm,Gothenburg and Malmö. The findings showed that a majority of the social workers had a structural understanding of poverty and a positive attitude towards economic counseling.

This essay points at the importance of public libraries as arenas of meetings between refugees and the local population, and by this - creating social kapital in the society as a whole. The researchers Aabø, Audunson and Vårheim have created theories about low-intensive meeting places, that means ? neutral, public places where accidential meetings with different strangers can happen, which can create social capital and trust among each other. To complement these theories I also use Vårheim who have implementet social capital-theories to the sphere of public libraries. These two theories complement each other and can help me investigate two public libraries in a rural area in Sweden.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the democratization process in Kurdistan on the basis of consolidation democracy with focus on arenas defined by Linz and Stepan (1997), namely economic, political, legal, civil society and arenas of state bureaucracy. Furthermore, I intend to explain Kurdistan?s road toward democratization in Kurdistan from 1991 until today, with a focus on the years 2003-2012. The main results are that Kurdistan has developed conditions that support a future consolidation of democracy. However, there are weaknesses in the economic situation, rule of law and the arena of bureaucracy.

The purpose of our study is to interpret and understand the collaborative process around a regional model that is based on state developed guidelines for people with dementia. We have chosen to focus on the importance of interaction and have therefore interviewed participants in the project's steering committee. This group participates in efforts to develop a model for dementia care in Halland.The project work in Halland, to develop a joint model for people with dementia and their families was initiated in the spring of 2011 and is due to finish at the end of 2012. The Halland model has been named ?Annas led? and is about Anna and her husband Lars and living with dementia.

There was a silence surrounding homosexuality in the People's Republic of Poland. One can almost get the impression that same sex love, and same sex relationships, did not even exist there; that the communists had successfully removed homosexuality from society. The roots of this silence can be found in the Communist Party´s disdain for anything deemed individualist and deviant, and also in the conservatism and religiosity of the Polish society.In my thesis I study when and how gays and lesbians found a way out of the silence that surrounded their sexuality. Gay men did so by creating subcultures, which found refuge in parks, public bathrooms and a few bars in larger Polish cities, and offered a sense of belonging for them. Lesbians, on the other hand, lacked this access to semi-public spheres, which made it even harder for them to find each other and create a space for their sexuality.

How capital structure influences corporate performance and value has been in the interest of researchers and scholars for more than half a century, but an answer is yet to be found. The main objective of the present paper is to contribute with data for this cause and hopefully help to clarify this mystery. The method that was used was by analyzing the impact of debt on profitability and market valuation through linear regression. The study examined 17 Swedish property companies listed on Nasdaq OMX Large Mid and Small Cap over a 6 year period (2007-2012). The authors found a slightly negative relationship between debt-to-equity and profitability measured by return on equity (ROE) as well as by return on assets (ROA).

During the past twenty years, the Swedish school systems have slowly changed to becomemore and more performance-driven. Private schools have been growing in general and, likeindependent schools and schools managed by municipalities, they profile themselves. Schoolsare becoming more performance and result-oriented, which has changed the roles of teachersin a dramatic way and is in general, still changing.By profiling students based on theirindividual performance, schools are able to help students identify themselves and their owngoals. The process of profiling is a slow one in which some teachers adapt more quickly thanothers, and one that is critical for other teachers to learn in order to keep up with the demandsof society.Schools, like ordinary businesses, are in constant competition with each other to keep up withthe newest and greatest models of teaching and to rank among the best in high achievements.Perhaps the downside of this modern school structure is that it is often difficult to have aschool where both school management and teachers see eye to eye. School management must heavily focus on the school?s results as a whole.

This paper investigates decision-making under uncertainty and complexity. The focus point of the study was to investigate how organizations in Stockholm has come to a decisions on how to manage the trial implementation of a congestion tax in terms of their company cars. The study was conducted as a survey with complementary interviews with the decision makers in change of congestion tax problem. The aim of the study was to gain an understanding for the decision making processes, and how and why the companies decided as they did. The theory on which we based our study emanated from both systems theory and business economic theory on decision making.

AbstractPurpose/Aim: In my essay I study the use of Internet with information overload as my perspective. I compare two age groups in order to find out whether there is a difference between generations in how they use the Internet and experience the vast amount of information that is found on the net.Material/Method: I gather information from six frequent World Wide Web users to find out whether they are experiencing information overload when using the Internet in their spare time and how they structure and make sense of the vast amount of information that is found on the net. I use semi-structured interviews to gather qualitative, not quantitative, material for my study. I have also used literature and websites on information overload, the Internet, and connected themes in order to get a broader picture of the subject and help me analyse the material.Main results: The main results of my study are that frequent Internet users do not feel that they suffer from the vast amount of information found on the World Wide Web. They rather enjoy it and if they have heard the term information overload they assume that it does not apply to their use of the Internet.

The purpose of this essay ("Gateway to the Past. An archaeological quality controlled subject gateway as a resource for higher education in Lund") is to examine how a quality controlled subject gateway could increase the quality of the information supply for the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at Lund University. The essay gives a brief background to subject gateways and also describes the Department and its subjects (prehistoric archaeology, medieval archaeology, osteology and classical studies) . The essay consists of a questionnaire distributed to parts of the target group as well as an investigation of three particular subject gateways: NordArk, ARGE and The Labyrinth. The essay also contains an exposition of how archaeologists seek information, of the structure of the archaeological subjects and of classification systems for quality controlled subject gateways.