With the starting point in UN peacekeeping operations, this essay investigates the participation of the Swedish armed forces and how the Swedish soldiers perceive their role in those operations. The aim of the study was to explore different perceptions about the Swedish soldiers in international operations. Partly from the Swedish soldiers perspective and how they perceived their own role as soldiers. Partly from the perspective of civilians, like Swedish aid workers, and how they perceive the Swedish soldiers. The third perspective was from a person with mixed experiences from both the military and the civilian work.

A growing number of companies realise that to achieve their environmental goals and satisfy stakeholder expectations, they need to look beyond their own facilities and to involve their suppliers in environmental initiatives. A life cycle approach means that the production system should be optimised as whole, across national boarders and individual organisations taking part all the way from extraction to disposal. This study is a Life Cycle Inventory of resources used when producing a piece of cotton garment and the method is based on the standardisation series of ISO 14040-43. The area of study, Tamil Nadu the most southern state of India, accounts for more than 90% of India?s knitwear exports to Western Europe.

Bakgrund och Problem: Det har visat sig att en gemensam nämnare bland de bakomliggande orsakerna till den senaste finanskrisen var bristande intern kontroll. Det var även en av orsakerna till att en svensk bank i augusti år 2010 gick i konkurs och det kan ses som högst oväntat med tanke på de utvecklade regler, ramverk och granskningar som finns för de svenska bankerna idag. För att den interna kontrollen i ett företag ska fungera väl måste den integreras i hela verksamheten. I dagsläget finns det tecken på att det råder en lucka mellan den interna kontroll som styrelse vill uppnå och den som når fram till medarbetarna i banken.Syfte: Uppsatsens syfte är att studera hur de fyra svenska storbankerna arbetar med intern kontroll idag samt analysera kommunikationen och integrationen av den interna kontrollen i verksamheten. Vidare vill vi bidra till en insikt om hur intern kontroll integreras och blir en del av det dagliga arbetet i banken.Metod/Empiri: Då studien undersöker hur kommunikationen och integrationen av intern kontroll ser ut i de svenska storbankerna, ansågs en enbart kvalitativ metod med intervjuer av personer som aktivt arbetar med intern kontroll inte vara tillräckligt.

Businesses role in society is changing. Corporations are expected to take responsibility, not only for their traditional business conduct, but also for social and political issues. A rise in globalization and international trade has led to an increased interest in the concept of CSR. Accordingly, stakeholders are expecting multinational companies to be accountable for existing issues in developing countries. New business models are needed to meet increased expectations of responsibility and shared value creation. Based on an understanding of the need for new business models a multinational corporation is studied in a local context, where a radically new way of doing business is developed.

Aim: The purpose of this paper is to see if there has been a change over time in the performance and in the spoken word of the Swedish cooking programs. By testing the theory of intimization on the cooking programs I get the opportunity to see if the border between the private and the public have become clearer or more difficult to notice, and if the new language, the informal language as intimization entails, has been used in Swedish cooking programs since the 70s until today, or if there´s ever been a formal language in Swedish programs? Method/Material: I'm using a rhetorical approach that includes a three-step analysis. Analysing the context, means to persuade and performance. The empirical material I intend to analyze is Swedish cooking programs from the 70s until today, 2010.

Although women express a desire to be managers and although they constitute the majority of Sweden's newly graduated academics, they are still heavily underrepresented on senior management level in the Swedish private sector, where men hold as much as 95 % of the top positions. Considering the massive waste of resources that this implies, this thesis sets out to investigate the underlying reasons for the skewed gender distribution on senior management level in two Swedish professional services companies - an industry where the described problem has been palpable. Additionally, the thesis explores the effects of actively working for increased gender equality. With a basis in gender and organization theory, a broad theoretical framework has been compiled and applied to a qualitative case study design. The thesis reveals seven distinct impediments, which together create a parable of an obstacles course, that prevent women from advancing the corporate ladder in the same manner as their male colleagues.

Background Svenska Spel is a regulated company run by the state and government, where CSR, community and social responsibility is in focus. The highly regulated Swedish gaming market has in recent years become more exposed to competition by foreign unregulated betting companies thru Internet.Problem discussion There are two views regarding CSR and how they are affecting competitive advantage and profitability. On one hand, it suggests that companies foremost shall focus profits and act in the best interest of the shareholders. On the other hand, it connects CSR to be a contributor to competitive advantage that increases the company?s profitability.Problem formulation Svenska Spel is competing with other betting companies who doesn´t act under the same conditions, betting companies that don´t have a responsibility to the state.

Authors: Maria Bergholtz, Alexander WestessonTutor: Daniel EricssonTitle: Performance Measurement of Creative work ? a culture study at PS CommunicationKeywords: Key Performance Indicators, Organizational Culture, Macro-culture, Subculture,Micro-culture, Art, Business, Creativity, PS CommunicationIn the paper?s introductory chapter, the chosen problem area regarding art and business willbe presented. The paper?s studied empirical case will also be introduced here. This then leadsto the reports chosen research questions:How do the company management and the companies? creative personnel approach differ inthe discussion regarding performance measurement on PS Communication?-What causes these differences?What impact does the corporate culture have in the discussion about performancemeasurement of PS Communication?-Is the corporate culture weak or strong?The purpose of this paper is to resolve the stand still in the discussion regarding performancemanagement by creating an understanding of different people active in the organization?sapproach to performance measurement.

The background to the work bases on the consumers view around Swedish and foreign meat products, and how the attitude around the meat products is pursued in the shops. The consumers request high meat quality and security . Many consumers value local produced and ecological meat products but the price is too high. We have done verbal interviews with consumers on three different shops, where we asked questions and had dialogues around Swedish meat products where the consumers have told us their arguments and opinions about Swedish and foreign meat. The result shows that the majority of consumers consider that it is important to know that meat is produce in Sweden.

The aim of the study was to examine how Swedish tabloid journalism presented the contestants in the Swedish version of the reality show Idol 2009. We wanted to see which approaches tabloid news papers use when constructing the public identities of them. We have used text analysis to examine 37 articles and nine front pages with focus on the words, propositions, comparisons and parables that describe four of the contestants. In addition we have looked at myths and connotations shown in the pictures by using a semiotic analysis. The results show that the Swedish tabloids tend to describe the contestants in relation to their performances and personalities.

The purpose of our essay is to find out if there are any strategies for profit transactions in a group. To realise our purpose we conducted two case studies with interviews. But we can not draw any general conclusions.To conduct the research we had to build a theory. In this theory we found motives to do profit transactions and how to do it. We also thought that there had to be some conflicts between the motives and the manager´s interests.In our analysis we found that financing the dividend was a strong reason to make profit transactions between companies in the group.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka hur företag använder celebrity endorsers i sina marknadsföringsstrategier. Vi valde att studera detta genom att välja tre svenska idrottsstjärnor i form av Susanna Kallur, Carolina Klüft och Kajsa Bergqvist. Vidare undersöker vi strategierna med hjälp av följande företag; AXA, HTH och V6. Valet av företag gjorde vi utifrån att de tre företagen med respektive atlet, är verksamma inom helt skilda branscher. För att få en ökad förståelse för användningen av celebriteter i marknadsföringsstrategier är uppsatsen utformad som en kvalitativ studie.

I dagens samhälle ställs det allt fler krav på att företag ska ta ett socialt ansvar och idén corporate social responsibility (CSR) påverkar företag och deras verksamhet. Ett totalt socialt ansvar innefattar att företag ska gå med ekonomisk vinst, följa lagar och förordningar som råder på marknaden samt en etisk skyldighet i form av agerande i enlighet med intressenters normer och förväntningar på företaget. Utöver detta ska företag agera som goda samhällsmedborgare. För företag i en bransch där verksamheten grundas på skadliga produkter blir det diskutabelt huruvida de lever upp till ett etiskt ansvar eller inte. Företag i tobaksbranschen är exempel på sådana och syftet med den här undersökningen är att analysera och jämföra fyra tobaksbolags respektive presentation av CSR.

In game development, performance is everything and the Playstation 3 provides a unique platform for utilizing parallelization of code to achieve extremely high performance. In this master?s thesis the issue of animation with smooth skinning is migrated from being a GPU process to becoming a parallelized and 358% faster process. This method is incorporated in an existing commercial game engine and integrated in a currently in development title for the Playstation 3. An in-depth study covers parallel processors, the CELL processor, used in the Playstation 3, and how contemporary industry leading game developers are utilizing the same unique architecture to increase their own games? performance..

Prior research on the ability of financial ratios to predict bankruptcies has shown a significant difference between the companies that went into bankruptcy and those that survived. This paper investigates whether there is a difference in the prediction ability of financial ratios during the last financial crisis compared to relatively normal macroeconomic environments in which most previous studies have been conducted. We use univariate analysis to compare companies that went into bankruptcy during 2010 and 2011 with companies that remained active. Our dataset consists of 51 failed companies that are matched with 102 companies that remained active. All companies were Swedish limited companies with more than 50 employees and the comparison is made with 26 financial ratios.