Uppsatsens syfte var att undersöka de anställdas upplevda orsaker till lågt antal medarbetare med utländsk bakgrund på företaget BYGGET. Företaget är ett av Sveriges större byggföretag och för säkerställandet av anonymitet har de i uppsatsen fått det fiktiva namnet BYGGET. Informationsbrevet skickades ut till ett målinriktat urval av medarbetare med chefspositioner i den lokala verksamheten där slutligen sju (n=7) personer valde att delta. Insamlandet av data gjordes med hjälp av semistrukturerade intervjuer och via en tematisk analys framkom tre huvudsakliga teman med tillhörande underkategorier, vilka ligger till grund för uppsatsens resultatdel. Resultatet visade att företagskultur och utbildning ansågs vara de grundläggande upplevda orsakerna till varför det är ett lågt antal anställda med utländsk bakgrund. Vidare framkom även temat kvotering, som diskuterades i sammanhanget om förändring och hur detta skulle kunna ske. För vidare utveckling av mångfalden på arbetsplatsen måste dels den traditionella påverkan av facket minskas samt att utländska utbildningar på ett enklare sätt måste kunna kvalitetssäkras för att de ska kunna anses valida på svenska byggplatser. / The purpose of this study was to investigate the employees’ experienced reasons of why there are so few workers with other ethnic backgrounds in the organization BYGGET. The organization is one of the largest construction firms in Sweden and to ensure the company’s anonymity they have been given the fictitious name BYGGET. An information letter was sent to a targeted selection of managers within the local office and seven (n=7) people agreed to participate in the study. Data was collected with semi structured interviews which were then analyzed with a thematic method. The analysis revealed three main themes with associated subcategories, which became the foundation of the study’s final results. The results showed that organizational culture and education were the experienced reasons of why there were so few employees with other ethnic background. Further the results showed that quotation also was a theme that was discussed in the event of change and how that could happen. To increase the diversity in the organization the company must decrease the traditional influence of the trade union. Also it must be easier to ensure the quality of educations from other countries so that they will be valid for Swedish construction jobs.

With the increasing emergence of multinational companies and the increased popularity of these companies, the question of the organization of their activities becomes interesting for the HR community worldwide. These companies are renowned for deliberate management structure of human resources and their effective use. For effective use of employees’ skills and knowledge the company has to constantly motivate them by intrinsic and extrinsic motivational tools. Motivational tools which use a company may be different depending on specific features of the country that the office is located. The purpose of this research is the study of how multinational companies organize the motivational system in different countries taking into account cultural characteristics and needs of the personnel in the offices of a particular country. On the basis of data derived from interviews with 12 representatives of 6 companies (4 of them Swedish companies, Oriflame, SCA, Volvo, IKEA, and two American companies, IBM and Deloitte, that have representative offices in Sweden and in Russia) it was revealed that modern multinational companies use similar motivational tools that partly standardized to keep the specifics of the company, and partly adapted to the local requirements.

Notre travail porte sur l’enseignement/apprentissage de la culture dans l’enseignement de la langue française et celui de la compétence interculturelle dans les départements de français des universités chinoises. Des incompréhensions et des malentendus apparaissent dans la communication entre les Chinois et les Français. Les étudiants chinois manifestent dans ce contexte d’enseignement / apprentissage du français des difficultés, autant d’ordre culturel que linguistique. A l’issue des entretiens réalisés en Chine et en France, nous nous sommes intéressée aux différences culturelles et aux dysfonctionnements relevés par les étudiants ainsi qu’à leurs attitudes et stratégies vis-à-vis de ces différences culturelles. Nous avons ensuite conduit une enquête auprès de l’équipe pédagogique en Chine et une analyse du manuel utilisé afin d’expliquer l’importance des différences constatées dans la méthode et les démarches d’enseignement. Nos deux hypothèses ont ainsi pu être validées : Les représentations des différences et des dysfonctionnements entre les étudiants chinois qui ont seulement un vécu scolaire du français (en Chine) et ceux qui ont vécu en France sont très différentes; l’importance de ces différences et l’intensité de ce décalage peuvent s’expliquer par le contenu et les démarches d’enseignement du français comme spécialité en milieu universitaire chinois qui préparent fort peu à la rencontre du milieu endolingue. Nous avons enfin proposé des pistes pédagogiques pour développer cette conscience interculturelle. / Our research concerns the education / learning of the culture in the teaching of the French language and that of the intercultural competence in the departments of French of the Chinese universities. Incomprehensions and misunderstandings appear in the communication between the Chinese and the French people. The Chinese students show in this context of education different kinds of difficulties, so much of cultural order as of linguistics. At the end of the surveys realized before in China and in France, we were interested in the cultural differences and in the dysfunctions found by the students as well as in their attitudes and the strategies towards these cultural differences.We then led an investigation with the teaching staff in China and an analysis of the manual worker used to explain the importance of the differences noticed in the method and the steps of teaching. Our two hypotheses were so able to be validated: the representations of the differences and the dysfunctions between the Chinese students who have only a school real-life experience of French (in China) and those who lived in France are very different; the importance of these differences and the intensity of this gap can be understandable by the contents and the methods of teaching French as speciality in chinese universities which prepare hardly for the meeting of the real environment. We finally proposed educational tracks to develop this consciousness.

The aim of this thesis is to introduce the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as an important potential partner for the Czech business entities based on a comprehensive and objective analysis of factors that could affect the cooperation between these two countries. The thesis is divided into four chapters. The first one deals with the general characteristics of Saudi Arabia, particularly with demographic and geographic data, administrative structure, history and political-legal environment. The second chapter is about the economic characteristics of the country and it concentrates on the development of macroeconomic indicators, the various sectors of economy, finance, foreign trade and investment climate. The third section focuses on business cooperation between the Czech Republic and Saudi Arabia, with an emphasis on the development of mutual relations, trade balance and the specifics of the entry of Czech subjects on the Saudi market, including SWOT and PESTLE analysis and information about companies that have been already successful on the Saudi market. The last chapter is about cultural differences and I mention Hofstede's cultural dimensions, gender issues, values in society and the impact of cultural differences on the business negotiations.

The study examines the relationship betwen innovation,culture and innovative behaviour support in organizational environments.The theoretical section view cultural differences and authors'varying approaches to the evaluation of cultural dimensions,declared value and attitude characteristic of the cultura and their impact on actual behavioural demonstrations.

The diploma thesis describes business and cultural environment in Saudi Arabia by PEST analysis. The second part of the thesis reflects my own research of experience of exporters to Saudi Arabia.

Abstract Background: In the context of increasing globalization, more and more software engineers/managers work in foreign companies, and they are exposed to the culture of different countries. According to Hofstede's five cultural dimensions, culture can be divided into Individualism and Collectivism, Power Distance, Masculinity, Uncertainty avoidance, and Long-term orientation and short-term orientation. From extensive empirical research performed by Hofstede and his colleagues, we found that the cultural dimension scores of different countries are different, which shows that different countries have different cultures. Through study related papers, we find that cultural differences can affect the behavior of software engineers/managers, causing differences in the behavior of software engineers/managers, and some behavioral differences can make influences/misunderstandings between software engineers/managers. These influences/misunderstandings may have an impact on project progress and personal work during software development. Objectives: In this thesis, we want to understand the concrete behavioral differences in how software engineers/managers work caused by cultural differences. After getting these behavioral differences, we want to understand which influence or misunderstandings arise from the software engineers/managers' behavioral differences. Finally, we want to get some suggestions from software engineers/managers on how to prevent/solve these misunderstandings or influences, we summarized these suggestions to help them face people from Chinese or Scandinavian culture.   Methods: In this research, we used qualitative research. We chose a systematic literature review (SLR) to helped us answer which behavioral differences will be caused by cultural differences. Then we used questionnaire and interview the two survey methods to collect which influence or misunderstandings arise from the software engineers/managers' behavioral differences and some suggestions to help software engineers/managers to solve/prevent negative influence or misunderstandings. Results: Through systematic literature review, we have collected 26 papers, and classified the results from these 26 papers according to five cultural dimensions, summarizing and analyzing the behavioral differences between Chinese and Scandinavian software engineers/managers. Through questionnaires and interviews, we got 37 responses. For these responses, we use coding to classify the data, finally, we analyzed and list the influences/misunderstandings and suggestions. Finally we have collected 64 behavioral differences, 7 influences or misunderstandings, 15 preventive measures and 8 solutions to prevent or resolve these influence/misunderstanding. Conclusions: Our research has achieved research goals and answered research questions. Comparing the behavioral differences collected by SLR and survey, we found that survey responses can confirm that most of the behavioral differences in SLR studies experienced by Chinese and Scandinavian software engineers/managers. But there are some behavioral differences that don't appear in both the Survey and SLR data, this should be caused by the sample of our research is not large enough. For these behavioral differences, we found that respondents knew that there were cultural differences between Chinese and Scandinavian software engineers/managers. But not all respondents have been exposed to these behavioral differences. There are also individual differences in the impact of behavioral differences on software engineers/managers. We also found that the best way to solve/prevent these effects is to communicate more.

Problem: Even though many types of research were conducted on generic brands, literature about Swedish and Lithuanian students on this perspective is almost nonexistent. Research questions: Which essential factors that shape the intention to purchase or not to purchase generic store brands differ between Lithuanian and Swedish students? What are the differences in the shopping behavior and perceptions of Swedish and Lithuanian students as consumers of generic brands? Does the packaging design highlight any differences between Lithuanian and Swedish students as consumers of generic brands? Methodology: We conducted an anonymous quantitative study. Lithuanian and Swedish students were the only respondents who were applicable for this research. All other respondents were filtered out. Conclusions: Lithuanians and Swedish students are somewhat similar in their intention to purchase generics. We noticed minor differences in their preferences for packaging. Furthermore, students differ in some aspects of shopping behavior and generic products preferences.

A gestão de equipes virtuais de projetos globais passa pelas áreas de conhecimento da gestão de projetos tradicional e, por outro lado, demanda maior atenção em alguns aspectos, como a comunicação, Em equipes virtuais, o processo de comunicação torna-se bastante crítico, à medida que alguns dos recursos tradicionais de comunicação em projetos (reuniões face-aface, comunicação não-verbal, visualização do trabalho in loco, dentre outros) passam a ser limitados e substituídos por outros baseados em tecnologia (teleconferências, e-mails, chats, etc.), Além disso, é freqüente que em projetos globais a composição das equipes não seja homogênea e contemple membros provenientes de diferentes culturas. Esse trabalho estuda o processo de comunicação como uma variável crítica de sucesso em equipes virtuais de projetos globais, analisando como esse processo é afetado por diferenças culturais entre os membros das equipes. Um survey sobre percepção de ferramentas de comunicação virtual e suas características é respondido por um grupo de americanos e um grupo de brasileiros e as diferenças encontradas são analisado à luz das diferenças de cultura nacional. Constata-se através dos resultados do survey que diferenças significativas estão presentes na percepção que os dois grupos apresentam quanto às ferramentas de comunicação virtual, de forma coerente com seus traços culturais. / The management of global projects\' virtual teams comprehends the knowledge areas of the traditional project management but, on the other hand, demands closer attention to some aspects like communication. In virtual teams, the communication process becomes even more critical as some of the traditional resources of communication in projects such as face-theface meetings , non-verbal communication, visualization of the work in place and others, become limited and need to be replaced by other methods based on technology (teleconference, e-mail, chat, etc.), Moreover, it is frequent that in global projects the composition of the teams is not homogeneous and encompasses members from different cultures. This research studies the communication process as a critical success factor in global projects virtual teams, analyzing how this process is affected by cultural differences between the members of the teams. One survey about the perception of virtual communication tools and its characteristics is answered by a group of Americans and a group of Brazilians and the differences found are analyzed from the point of view of differences in the national cultures. From the surveys results it can be seen that there are significant differences between the perceptions of the groups about the virtual communication tools, according to

The aim of this thesis is to define basic theoretical background of employee job satisfaction with regard to cultural diversity, carry out an employee satisfaction survey and then compare the level of satisfaction between local and foreign employees. Based on survey results I will suggest corrective actions, which should increase the level of satisfaction of all employees in the company.