This is an examination of how interdependence affects the behaviour of politicians and their ability to govern the way they want to. I analyze the memoirs of two Swedish prime ministers, Tage Erlander and Ingvar Carlsson to explore their experiences. I focus on how the increasing interdependence affects the politicians with regards to security, welfare, and financial policies. Sweden had a special position between Soviet and NATO during the cold war. This meant Sweden gave priority to it's neutrality policy during the cold war, compared to increased trade cooperation.

High housing- and construction costs is a fact in Sweden today. Prices on building materials more rapidly than producer price index for industrial goods. Prices tend to rise during market boom but does not adapt during diminishing demand. The effects of fading demand can rather be deduced through discounts and quotations. During 1992-1998 when the Swedish construction sector found it self in severe crisis the prices of construction materials kept rising more rapidly than PPI for industrial merchandise.

The discussion about organic and fair trade products has been a big issue during the last few years. Despite an extensive knowledge about the environmental problems and a willingness to do something about it, the consumers are not always acting that way. Children do imitate their parents and other adults at an early age, so if the role models do not begin to act, think and dress ethically correct, neither will the children. Three problems have been identified out of the discussion. They relate to the questions of how older school children and parents of younger school children are taking sides regarding the organic/fair trade clothes and how existing trends in the society as well as those in fashion contexts influence their attitudes and consumer behaviour.

The aim with this independent degree project of master thesis is to find what the user opinions of the intranet in a county council is. The paper seeks how the question about how the culture in the organisation was affected by the use of the intranet. An important part is to explore the expectations and acceptance of the intranet and get a picture of which functions and services support day-to-day work with good quality. One goal is to find out how the intranet users feel that the communication, information and usability can be developed.The focus group interview is a qualitative method that has been applied for gathering data from the respondents, who participate in the investigation from the county council. The used method is unstructured focus groups containing the three dominating categories of staff in the county council.

This essay examines the environmental ideological direction of the Swedish parliamentary parties through the private members motions directed to the committee of industry and trade and the committee of environment and agriculture during the governmental time from 2002 to 2006.The environmental ideologies explained is anthropocentrism, ecocentrism and biocentrism. Based on the ideas of these three ideologies main points the private members motions directed to the committee of industry and trade and the committee of environment and agriculture, also matching the search words environment and energy, was compared and analysed.What has emerged is that all parliamentary parties express a desire to create an energy production and producing guide lines which are stringent environmentally and matches the safety requirements. Although the approach to environmental and safety standards differ significantly between them. Basically all Swedish parliamentary parties are more or less anthropocentric in its arguments, which in short terms means that they estimate natures and animals value through their usability for humans or based on their contribution to human feelings of wellbeing.The Centre Party and the Green Party shows hints of weak ecocentrism because in many cases they put animal intrinsic value high, but the human value higher. Moderates are predominantly anthropocentric but they also express some hint of biocentrism in one statement concerning research in order to reduce and rebuild environmentally destroyed areas.

The Arctic region is rich in natural resources such as oil, gas, minerals and fish. Climate change causes the Arctic ice melt, making resource extraction possible as well as opening up new transport routes through the Northwest Passage and the Northeast Passage. This has led to competition and cross-border strife among the Arctic States. The two largest states in the Arctic are Russia and Canada, which are also members of the Arctic Council. Russia and Canada are at the moment involved in several disputes regarding the Arctic territory where the ownership of the North Pole is one example.

This essay concerns the visual trade grading of pine and spruce.In the 1800s developed rules for sorting of wood. The rules used to facilitate the export trade.The terms of the regulatory sorting systems developed in the 1900s. While it still used some of the older terms.The essay deals with how the grading rules affect the use of wood and how the rule work and how the terminology works.Some of the terms used for sorting are O/S, Kvinta, Utskott and A,B,C,D.You sorting by counting the numbers of knots, cracks and other characteristics of each piece of wood.The sawmills have much influence in how the rules developed.Today it is often already determined in the sawmills which uses each piece of wood most have..

The forest is characterized by many different values such as those related to forest productivity which are of a big importance for Swedish economy. History has proved that forest resources had helped the country in the transition from the agricultural to the industrial society. Today Swedish forest industry is among the strongest in Europe and significantly contributing to the Swedish export. The industry provides many direct and indirect job opportunities and is one of the biggest employers in the industry sector. It is also worth to notice that the forest can also generate an additional income for the owners, even if the forestry isn?t their primary income source.

Authorities, municipalities and county councils have great opportunities to pave the way to a sustainable society. In the public sector, the tax revenue is used and therefore it is important that both employees and societal stakeholders feel that they participate in the sector?s decisions and fields of application. Municipalities and county councils are primarily service organisations. The employees? commitment is necessary to be able to reach set goals, to develop procedures and policies that support the overall political goals, in other words, to be successful in the environmental work.

The present study discusses the political integration of immigrants in local government in the muncipality of Växjö from 1971 to 1991 in the form of representation. The main data source consists of lists of people holding local commissions of trust in the various boards and committés appointed by the municipality council, as well as in the council itself. These data are then compared to population statistics from Statistics Sweden. Main findings of the study are that immigrants are insufficiently represented in relation to their proportion of the population. It is suggested that this is a result of structural discrimination and possibly insufficient socialisation..

Globalization has stimulated the free markets and has made possible for Swedish companiesto expand internationally. Some markets have been deemed attractive and companies havechosen to enter them. The decisions concerning internationalization and marketing havedetermined the success of the companies on the new market. Therefore, several elementsbecome important: the motives behind the new market entry, the local marketcharacteristics and the adaptation of the four components of the marketing mix ? product,price, place and promotion.The purpose of this thesis is to study how three Swedish companies adapt their marketingmix to the local conditions in Australia and identifies success factors in order to help othercompanies considering a market entry.

Background: It has been a common perception in the media in recent years that external shopping malls extinguish the trade in Swedish downtown areas. Factors that promote external shopping malls are that customers become more and more indolent and more people buy cars. Despite this fact, downtown areas have a great deal to offer when it comes to creating a pleasant atmosphere. Furthermore, customers are becoming more demanding and want something extra while doing their shopping. More and more shopkeepers therefore realize the importance of events as an instrument to offer experiences to the customers.Purpose: To investigate whether shopkeepers in downtown Linköping consider the external shopping mall in Tornby a competitor or not and, if so, in what ways the trade in the downtown area has been affected by Tornby.

I denna studie testas tio hypoteser som relaterar till finansiell teori för att se hur väl teorin kan förklara skuldsättningsgraden i små börsnoterade bolag. De teorier som testas är avvägningsteorin (trade-off theory), hackordningsteorin (pecking order theory) samt teorier relaterade till asymmetrisk information och agentkostnader. Testen genomförs med multipel linjär regressionsanalys och de undersökta bolagen är samtliga bolag med färre än 200 anställda på tre av de mindre börslistorna i Sverige. Resultatet visar stöd för åtta av de tio undersökta hypoteserna och är i flera avseenden tydligare än i tidigare studier som testar onoterade små bolag eller ett bredare urval av bolag..

This thesis focuses on the perception of immigration and refugees in the commonEuropean refugee and immigration policy. It identifies different discourses andstudies their development and interrelated power structures.Using the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe, documents from theEuropean Council, the Commission, the Justice and Home Affairs Council andParliament debates are analysed. The study is defined in the time span of 1999-2006, i.e. from the European Council's first agreement on developing a commonEuropean asylum system, following the period up till today.Four discourses are distinguished, focusing respectively on rights, security,European Union's needs, and cultural identity. I use Sandra Lavenex theory ofrealism and idealism to analyse one of the main points in the thesis: There is afundamental schism between the one rights-based discourse, focusing on universalhuman rights, and the three sharing a particularistic focus on immigration as asecurity concern.

The EU Council adopted in 2007, environmental and energy goals with the aim of them must be met by 2050. This, in combination with those of the Swedish government 15 enacted environmental goals is supposed to lead the way for the Swedish environmental work.This report has examined measures in properties in the Swedish Cooperative Housing Society (SKB) stocks.The report discusses a range of measures that might be appropriate to apply on the properties to make them more energy efficient.One of the measures discussed, the vent whose primary purpose is to create a good indoor environment for the residents but is also where the most energy is lost.Another measure discussed is insulation of the building envelope on the estate to make it more energy efficient. To put extra insulation on the building envelope is important because of the large amount of energy that is lost through the walls, ceilings and floors.Future actions that may be implemented is individual billing of heating and hot water. This system has been used in European countries since the 70's and today the EU wants to increase the own individuals control over their electricity costs. This has led to a discussion whether to implement the system in Sweden or not.However, there are a number of equitable measures to be sorted out before the system can be used in any great scale.Finally, it is important to remember that environmental measures should be the primary and the pursuit of cost reductions the secondary otherwise you risk the environmental work to be counterproductive..