The purpose with this master thesis is to analyze how the Swedish County Administrative Board (Länsstyrelsen) acts in an environment that changes fast with more regional actors than ever before. There are also proposals regarding new public authorities and eventually a reduction of the Swedish County Administrative Board.By studying a report issued by the Board in December 2005 the aim is to find their intentions and actions for the future. By using three diverse theoretical concepts - the public organisation, the instrumental perspective and two separate perspectives from new institutionalism - the expectation is that I will have the possibility to analyze the intentions of the organisation in many different ways.In this case study I also want to take into consideration the central discourses in the regional debate, shall we decentralize or shall we keep on having a strong state even in the future? What kind of regional policy does the Swedish County Administrative Board prefer?The result shows that the Swedish County Administrative Board struggles for a strong state even in the future, but it does not propose any huge changes. In many ways it seems like they act as they are supposed to - as an instrument for the government - but despite that it is obvious that the Swedish County Administrative Board tries to show that it has the traditions and knowledge.

The purpose of this thesis was to investigate thephenomenon language café, an activity that is held in public libraries into which anyone is welcome who wants to practice their skills in Swedish, and see how this can be put in relation to integration. To reach the purpose we developed two research-questions; What does the language café fulfill for its participants? and How can the language café contribute to the promotion of integration? The study is based on semi-structured interviews with seven participants from language cafés. The theory used to analyze the results from the interviews is the Swedish sociologist José Alberto Diaz theory about the integration process which can be divided into seven dimensions. The findings of the thesis were that the language café can fill the function as a place to Speak Swedish, for Community-information, a place to meet and a place for trust and self-confidence.

Sweden became a member of the European Union in 1995. Consequently Sweden became obligated to implement the Working Time Directive 2003/88/EC (formerly termed 93/104/EC). At that time Sweden considered that their legislation already gave their employees as high level of protection as the directive prescribed. Instead they decided upon an adjustment of the collective agreements concerning working time. A particular EC-restriction was incorporated in the Working Hours Act (SFS 1982:673).

Our essay is about the grammar structure that the participants in A- and B- level of a school in the middle of Sweden, in the subject, Swedish as a second language, process. We have collected written productions from an A-level group and a B-level group and made a comparison between them morphologically and syntactically according to the processability theory by Pienemann.Processability theory was applied to Swedish by Pienemann & Håkansson (1999), with five steps in syntax and four steps in morphology. It turned out that the B-level group had much higher processing level of grammar than the A level group and one of the reasons for this can be that grammar is explicitly taught during the first year of studying Swedish as a second language in the school we have chosen to study..

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, is described in Swedish mass media. The research question of the paper is "How was president Hugo Chávez portrayed in Swedish newspapers in the 2004 Venezuelan referendum?". The answer of this question provides information about how the mass media form the image of current political events which is an important aspect of power. The applied method and theory in the study is the critical discourse analysis.

With the introduction of the Swedish Code for Corporate Governance in December 2004, most companies listed on the major Swedish stock exchanges were required to have a nomination committee responsible for, among other things, evaluating the incumbent board and nominating new candidates. This master thesis aims at analyzing the effects of these nomination committees on institutional investors in their corporate governance, through a qualitative study of 13 interviews. We have found that institutional investors have become more active through their participation in nomination committees and that they have gained more influence over the companies in which they own shares. We believe that in reality nomination committees have more influence over the selection of the board than was intended when the Swedish Code was written..

The EU- citizenship was established in the Maastricht Treaty in 1993. This citizenship involves rights to free movement, election rights to the European Parliament, diplomatic protection and the right to petition to the Ombudsman. In my analysis I discuss the implications of the EU- citizenship for the individual. The development and legal status of the union citizenship is examined in order to give a general understanding of the implications. In addition, I conduct a case study concerning the EU- citizenship's impact on workers rights.

This thesis scrutinises the material on post World War II Swedish architecture produced by the Swedish Public diplomacy organisation "Svenska institutet" ("The Swedish Institute") during the period of 1945 through 1976. The outset is the dilemma encountered by every such organisation: how can the projected narrative of the own nation relate to as many countries as possible, without becoming too general? And how can the organisation address specific countries, without excluding others?By employing a two-sided model of interpreting the material, where it on the one hand is interpreted from the universal properties projected on the narrated architecture, and on the other hand from the particular ideological notions related to the same, the thesis suggests that the Swedish Institute continously relates the architecture to a West-European and American context by consistently connecting its universal properties to particular ideological notions orientated towards the West.The results underline the malleability in regard to ideological notions connected to modernist architecture. Earlier research in the Swedish context has focussed on how modernist architecture in Sweden, under the local tag "funktionalism", was established in regard to a Swedish audience as a particular Swedish architecture by relating it to a alleged continuos Swedish tradition, as well as to notions of a a progressive welfare state. By studying a similar material, though aimed towards a foreign audience, the thesis suggests that these allegations constitue an elucidatory example of how national and ideological narratives can form within the framework of technological-ideological dynamics of modernist architecture.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how Islam and Muslims are portrayed a) in results from studies on Swedish teaching materials, and b) in articles in Swedish media newspapers. The study was conducted through two separate studies. In the first study, five previous research reports on how Islam and Muslims are portrayed in Swedish teaching materials were analysed in order to discern the main results regarding the portrayal of Islam and Muslims. In the second study, newspaper articles from 11 Swedish newspapers were analysed in order to discern which central themes emerge in the description of Muslims and Islam in said newspaper articles, as well as which properties and features are attributed to Muslims and Islam in the articles studied. In both studies, the data was analysed inductively through a qualitative content analysis.

This work deals with the introductory course for immigrants (Introduktionskurs för invandrare ? IVIK) in the Swedish municipalities. I have studied how the participants in this education are brought into a Swedish understanding of religion, both in the formal SO (social studies) and when it comes to informal transferring of values.I have interviewed teachers and school leaders, interviews which I have then analysed.To understand the educational environment, I have used Antonio Gramsci´s theory of hegemony, as I perceive it, as well as Michel Foucault´s ideas of power and knowledge.I have found that fostering into a ?Swedish? view on religion appears in the education, implicitly as well as explicitly, though the informants tend to have an ambivalent opinion as to how this should be carried out, and to which extent..

The intention of this essay is to study the Swedish General Staff as a learning organisation during the period of 1914-1918 based on the theoretical work developed by the philosopher Bertil Rolf. Previous international research on the Prussian/German General Staff has shown that it is considered to be the first learning organisation in history. The Swedish General Staff was based on the German General Staff model and the focus of this study is to compare the development the tactics in Germany and Sweden regarding defence and attack in trench warfare. The questions are: How were the possibilities for gathering and analysing informa-tion affected by the war? Which conclusions were made for trench warfare in Swedish conditions? What experiences from the war and exercises in Swedish army were implemented in manuals and training?The conclusion of the study is that the Swedish General Staff was functioning as a learning organisation during the WWI through the ability to follow the international development, mainly in the Central Powers, and by modifying the experiences to the prevailing Swedish strategic and tactical conditions.

This thesis analyzes contemporary Swedish discourse on Russia, i.e. the ways Russia and Russians are perceived in Sweden today. After a summary of historical Western and Swedish perceptions of Russia, and a discussion about the treatment of these tensions within modern research, contemporary Swedish discourse is reconstructed based upon analytical articles in three major newspapers during the period 1992-2007. It is argued that the prevailing image of Russia contains the reproduction of old stereotypes and prejudices. The five major representations of Russia in contemporary Swedish discourse are: non-Western, unreliable, authoritarian, threatening and eternal, with the last one being a meta-representation functioning both as a representation of its own and a mechanism for the reification of the others.

Under sommaren 2010 drabbades Chaniaregionen på Kreta av vattenbrist. Denna studie undersöker vad som har orsakat och bidragit till vattenbristen i Chania. Det har gjorts genom att bearbeta kvantitativa data och intervjua sex representanter för myndigheter och institutioner som är medvetna om regionens vattenproblematik. Nederbördens ojämna fördelning i tiden i kombination med sommarsäsongens ökade efterfrågan på vatten, på grund av turismen och odlingen, samt en ineffektiv förvaltning av vattenresurser verkar ha medverkat till regionens vattenbrist. Klimatförhållanden i Chania har inte uppvisat någon markant förändring över tiden.

This study focuses on the social medium Facebook. Its intention is to examine the contents of the Facebook statuses the Swedish parliament parties chose to publish in the final two weeks before the parliamentary elections in 2010. The key concepts used in the analysis are interactivity and multimodality. Aspects to be explored are interactivity of their status updates and how the parties used various multimodal objects. A comparison of the parties' usage also follows.

Background: With an increased global market, where companies seek capital abroad, the demand for a more uniform accounting standard has been raised. This uniform accounting standard is not yet available, differences between accounting standards still exists. Several Swedish companies seek risk capital in the USA and some are part of a concern that is listed on the American stock exchange. This means that the Securities and Exchange Commission requires the companies to do a reconciliation to US GAAP on those items that are considered material. This can be an extensive work for the companies if the knowledge about the differences between Swedish GAAP and US GAAP does not exist.