During 2008 we experienced an expansion of large scale investments in foreign farmland. This increasing trend has become a political hot-spot, but there is not much research available within the field. Due to a lack of research it remains a vital task to outline the potential effects of this trend. Drawing on existing ideas from some of the main actors within the field, The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), The World Bank, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the latest G8 summit on agriculture, four main purposes are set out for this paper. First, to outline some of the underlying mechanisms behind the trend is considered crucial for the understanding of the nature of these investments.

Export is a top priority for Sweden's economy but for Swedish companies it may involve uncomfortable risks of exporting without sincere consideration. When the United Nations Security Council puts an embargo against a country, this often mean an import and export restriction. The thought is to push undemocratic regimes into respecting human rights. When the embargo is in force, however, the parties are not able to fulfill their contractual obligations, which practically means that the agreement will be suspended. The problem is what happens when an embargo is in force for a longer period of time.

The purpose of the study is to contribute knowledge about the representation of fiction authors who have written in languages other than Swedish in educational school books within the Swedish subject. This is done in relation to the school's promotion of cultural diversity, a globalized world and to the Swedish curriculum. The study is a combination of a qualitative and a quantitative analysis that takes its starting point in six educational books for the courses Swedish 1 and 2. The analysis shows that all study materials include a broad representation of authorships from Europe and the USA. The selection of authors from other parts of the world is, however, limited.

In this paper we have looked closer on a car-retailer in the middle of Sweden. We have chosen to dig deeper in the different problems that can occur, related to the supply. Soon we realized that that the problems weren?t related to stock management. Through studying the whole of the company, we have identified reasons to why details aren?t in the stock.

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: The world of sports possesses a lot of knowledge when it comes to leadarship and coaching. Coaching as a term is relatively new to the business industry and something that is up and coming among alot of companies. Leadership and coaching are two terms that can be combined with each other both in sports and in the business industry.Objectives: This study aims to compare leadership in sports and in the business industry. The purpose is to see if they can learn from each other and how they define the term leadership.Method: Interviews were chosen as a method in this study. Six individual interviews were performed and there were three leaders from the business industry and three leaders from the world of sport participating in the study.

Many companies are currently working to optimize and streamline their processes and production lines to achieve higher profitability. In increasingly competitive markets, companies are working to find solutions to increase the value of their production with such a small use of resources as possible. A tool used to accomplish this is the Lean management system. Lean comes from the production system that Toyota has been developing since the early 1900's, The Toyota Production System (TPS). The Lean philosophy helps companies, by working towards continuous improvement in its operations, to achieve higher customer satisfaction, more efficient production and ultimately higher profitability. Many companies are working to implement Lean in their organization. But there are many who fail to implement a complete change towards Lean.

The subject of this essay in archaeology is the economy at the mining village of Saladuringthe 16th and early 17th century. The silvermine in Sala was once the foremost producer of silver in Sweden, and the mine as well as the mining village had had a long and rich history. This history can be seen in historical documents as well as in archaeological findings. The lure of silver attracted many different people to the mining village. This in turn madetrade an important part of the mining village.

Having an intranet as a source for information and communication is common in most contemporary organizations. Research shows that the intranet in itself does not have an explicit area of use, and that leaves every organization to make decisions of the associated functionality on their own. At the same time the strategic opportunities that the intranet could bring get lost somewhere along the way. This means that problems regarding the strategic use of an intranet becomes apparent and may result in loss of investments for the organization. The purpose of this thesis is to identify central choices that can be used as points of discussion and help organizations to work with their intranets on a more strategic level.

This paper describes and develops a trade off model of optimal capital structure by Bradley et al. (1984). The model is then tested to examine how changes in corporate tax rates affect the optimal capital structure of firms. Based on theoretical implications of the model, four hypotheses are derived stating that firms? optimal debt-to-value ratio is (1) negatively related to financial distress costs, (2) negatively related to non-debt tax shields, (3) negatively related to firm volatility and (4) positively related to the corporate tax rate.

Background and Problem: Human Resources are considered one of the most important assets when competing with other companies. There are a lot of studies made in general on the subject while studies considering a specific context are missing. To consider the context when adapting a HR-strategy is interesting as the structure of the organization and the environment affects both the organization and the individuals within it. To study how the controversial context affects an organization is particularly interesting as the context is subject for discussion in the society.Aim: The study's purpose is to investigate how Human Resources are handled in a controversial business and to identify success factors when adapting the strategy to the controversial context.Methodology: The study started out by collecting theories connected to the subject with Fombrun, Devanna & Tichys HR-cycle. Interview questions where made based on the theories and answered by three of the case company's employees, whom all are well familiar with the case company's HR-strategy.Conclusion: We have come to the conclusion that there are no remarkable differences when handling Human Resources in a controversial context then in earlier published theories.

Ever since Thomas More?s book Utopia was published in 1516, theutopian idea has not lost its topicality and has been strongly rootedin literature, art, film and architecture. Utopia can be seen as a statein which utopia allows a space for wishes, dreams and a desire forsomething better. In my degree project I have chosen to explore thehistorical utopian ideas to create a content that treats utopia on asubjective level. With visual communication as a starting point I havetried to fixate this state in a book.

Relations between the Central Organisation of the Workers of Sweden and the Swedish Trade Union Confederation, 1910-1930:The Unification Debate The purpose of this study is to depict the hostile relations between the two unions, the Central Organisation of the Workers of Sweden (SAC), and the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO), between the years 1910 and 1930, the proposal of and following debate about unification being especially focused on. The questions are the following:1. What ideological differences where there between SAC and LO? 2. What ideas were common in the debate? 3.

Is it possible to conduct a joint organizational change despite different circumstances and different starting points, and still talk about the same organizational change? Can all the work that leads to more efficient operations fall into the same category? How can such concept gain legitimacy? The result shows that by talking about a concept, in this case, Lean, as something that leads to a better and more efficient organization, without for that matter have to set a defined content of the concept you still can present the process as one concept. Tough the concept will be practically blank. But there is still a rhetorical value in the concept of Lean. The organization institutionalizes the concept and obtains in this way legitimacy from its surroundings.

Organizational culture is subject of a great debate nowadays and there is especially three schools which affairs its nature of reality; modernism, symbolism and postmodernism. This thesis is built upon a case study about the organization Idé & KunskapsCentrum, which experience various cultural issues. Observations made during visits in the organization environment forms the ground on which discussions about different perspectives are made regarding organizational culture.The thesis describes and investigates the subject of organizational culture and its relationship to human behavior in organizations. Furthermore, I discuss and analyze organizational culture from the three different perspectives, in order to present a critical view on the subject for the reader.The thesis is based upon a case study about the organization Idé & KunskapsCentrum. A qualitative research method has been conducted with data collected especially from an ethnographic study, but also via semi-structured interviews.