It is important that organizations today focus on continuous improvements in order to face the growing competition in the world. A company needs a corporate culture that supports and encourages the employees to be creative and innovative in their work. This is necessary for the company if they are striving towards continuous learning and development within their organization.The main purpose of this paper is to investigate how the culture differences between Sweden and China affect Sandvik AB. We will also study how the company manages continuous improvements and what consequences culture differences have on their work.Our paper is a single case study at Sandvik AB in Sweden and China. We have visited Sandvik in Sandviken to conduct a series of interviews with employees of different position within the company and with dissimilar work tasks.

Fire has historically been of great ecological importance in the boreal forests of Sweden. The forest fire regime has, however, varied between different parts of the country. The objective of this thesis is therefore to investigate the fire history in Fulufjället National Park and, on this basis, give suggestions for future fire management. The reconstruction of fire history was done by cross-dating fire scars in samples taken from living and dead Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris). Local fire chronologies were established at 17 points in the forests in and around Fulufjället National Park by cross-dating fire scars on 54 samples. The oldest year-ring dated from year 968.

Background: Recently, the Swedish food culture has expanded by leaps and bounds. Interest in food and cooking has taken more space in the Swedish welfare state. Products and icons, such as organic free range chicken or Per Moberg have had greater impact on the way we consume food. Consumers have become increasingly aware of what they should and should not be eating. With an increased interest in food, supply and distribution channels have become increasingly important for the major grocery retailers (Board of Agriculture 2011).

Background: Various follow-up studies show that there are deficiencies in the care of patients affected by stroke. In order to provide good care according to the National Board of health and welfare and national guidelines for stroke care systematic quality audits need to be carried out.Purpose: To investigate if the local guidelines for stroke care in Örebro County are followed and to explore how people with stroke experience care and rehabilitation in hospital, primary care and community.Method: Primary health care records were reviewed using quality indicators in the local stroke guidelines. Samples of patients were obtained from the County´s three hospitals. Differences between men and women, younger and older, were analysed with chi-squared test. Eleven people were interviewed about their experiences of care, rehabilitation, support and participation.

In May 2005 the Swedish cinema chain Astoria Cinemas is founded and in July two years later the company goes bankrupt. In this thesis Astoria Cinemas is used as an example to illustrate the conditions for a culture-producing company in a commercial market. The purpose of the thesis is to discuss the strategies for cultural production that has been used by the actors involved in the Swedish cinema market, and also to discuss the structural environment on that market. It is a qualitative study based on interviews and documentation. A few conclusions are possible to draw from the empirical material, one is that Astoria Cinemas? management did not agree on the company?s business strategy and therefore might have acted strategically inconsistent.

This Master's Thesis describes the design of a new system where a digital signal processor has been added to an existing imaging system consisting of field programmable gate arrays. The new system will offer a higher degree of flexibility by considerably shortening the design time and make it possible to implement more complex algorithms than the existing ones. The choice of system architecture and a test implementation are discussed. The test implementation consists of a program for the digital signal processor and VHDL code for one of the field programmable gate arrays. The code for the digital signal processor was designed for testing on an evaluation board from Texas Instruments.

The purpose of this work, has been to examine how different actors in the Swedish eco movement and the Swedish forest industry looks at Sweden?s forest policy statement, which claims that environmental goals and production goals should be equal in Swedish forestry. By assembling focusgroups with participants from the Swedish eco movement and the Swedish forest industry, we look at if these participants consider the Swedish forest policy goals equal or not. Conflicts do occur between the two forest policy goals, but also between those and others of Sweden?s environmental goals.

The city?s public environments are meant to be perceived as safe and inviting areas to visit any time of the day. In recent decades the number of vandalism complaints has doubled and graffiti has become so common that it received a separate category in the crime statistics. With this type of impacts in the public environments the experience are precarious and a boring sight. It?s difficult to put a price tag on these types of crimes, the number of unreported cases suspected to be large.

AbstractThis thesis explores how secondary schoolteachers in Swedish, prioritise from the Swedish language history materials. The study includes interviews with two Swedish teachers and inquiries with students in two classes at the social science programme (third year). The student literature that is used has been analysed and the teaching is compared with the Swedish central teaching plan. The results show that the students are weak in placing language at different historical time periods and make conclusions of this. The results from both the inquiries and teaching contents disclose a general weakness as it comes to Swedish language history.

In this study, some aspects of communication that are creating problems in a chosen forest conservation case are explored. Focus is on how the manager of a forest experience how he is treated during a formal decision of conservation. The paper also gives introduction to communication theory as well as to present forest policies in Sweden. Explanations of the most common concepts and terms in forest conservation is presented and such a understanding is necessary if the reader is to acquire enlightment from the material and the following discussion. This paper focus on a conflict between the county administrative board, a Swedish regional authority, and a private forest-manager. This is a case where the manager feels that the authority is forcing a sale of land, because the forest is being turned into a conservation area. The problems are not just economical, the manager feels mistreated and left out of the discussion, and the negotiation is long and problematic as shown in the interview and the case study. In the study, an in-depth interview is made with the manager of the forest, and a case study has been made based on the documents in the case attained from the county administrative board.

The world is increasingly coalescing, ecologically, economically and culturally. Many problems can no longer be solved within the own state borders and the limitation of the territorial state is obvious. Jürgen Habermas means that a world domestic politic without a world government is what this progress need. Therefore it is important that national interests become less central and the solidarity between people is given priority in international relations. The focus of this thesis is therefore a critical discourse analysis of the current position of the internationalisation of Swedish security and defence policy.

Background: Municipalities are organizations facing a turbulent environment characterized by social, economical and political changes. It is the responsibility of the topleaders of the municipality (the municipal manager and the chairman of the local government board) to manage the situation and to make sure that the organization continuously develops. Purpose: To explain, from a leadership perspective, how the municipal topleaders'duties have developed during the past 25 years. Results: The municipal topleaders have nowadays got more issues to handle. Cooperation, networks and projects have increased, like international issues.

The aim of this paper was to study incoming complaints to The County Administrative Board in Västra Götaland during 2011 and examine if it was possible to see a connection between warranted and unwarranted complaints and informer, animal species and type of inadequate. In Västra Götaland, a complaint is classified as warranted if the inspection leads to a reprimand, whether it regards what was reported or not. Data were collected during three weeks through The County Administrative Board´s record system Platina and a total of 456 complaints were studied. The parameter ?complainant? was categorized into four groups according to The County Administrative Boards own division; public with the subgroups anonymous and non-anonymous, animal health staff and others.

With theories of creativity and aesthetic learning processes as a basis, this study explores the usage of the concept of creativity in the curriculum for the Swedish compulsory school (Lgr11) and in the various syllabi?s commentaries and the assessment guidelines for the subject of Sloyd produced by the Swedish National Agency for Education. The purpose of the study is, to examine to which extent an education and assessment that is directed towards the development of creativity among pupils in the subject of Sloyd, is underpinned and supported for in these texts, and furthermore how these wordings relate to the various other subjects? wordings about creativity. Creativity is a concept around which there is no proper consensus.

AbstractThe intension with this paper was to describe the understanding students in third grade had about mathematics and how these students, based on their previous mathematics experiences, apprehend the coming national tests in mathematics. After the test period the student was interviewed on how they experienced their participation in the test. The choice of method was the qualitative case study where the data was collected from interviews and observations. In the result that was found, the interviewed students described mathematics as counting. Students preferred easy math work and to solve routine tasks in math books instead of more demanding work.