Arbetsmarknadsläget är idag hårdare än det tidigare varit för nyutexaminerade akademiker. Vägen till drömyrket är krokig och kantas av flera val som måste göras, i fråga om strategier och mobilitet. Denna uppsats belyser yngre akademikers rumsliga mobilitet och nuvarande situation på arbetsmarknaden samt strategier under etableringsprocessen i förhållande till olika aspekter såsom ålder och familjebildning. En kvalitativ metod i form av intervjuer användes. Uppsatsens teoretiska referensram präglas av Becks individualiseringsteori samt andra teorier av Bourdieu, Giddens och Bäck-Wiklund. Tidigare forskning visar bland annat att individualiseringen och kravet på flexibilitet leder till ökade svårigheter att både förvärva och behålla en anställning. Undersökningens resultat och analys genomfördes på 6 respondenter som alla tagit examen från Mälardalens högskola under hösten 2004. Studiens resultat präglas av de val som respondenterna gjort, både före, under och efter utbildningstiden. Alla respondenter i studien har arbete men några anser att de är överkvalificerade för de tjänster de nu har. De upplevde sig också vara osäkra i sina anställningar men hade en hög mobil vilja under förutsättning att flytt eller pendling leder till en anställning. Gemensamt för alla var dock att de anser att de i och med sin unga ålder saknar erfarenhet vilket ökar svårigheterna på arbetsmarknaden. Respondenterna hade i flera fall haft en stor hjälp av det nätverk som de förvärvat på sina arbetsplatser då de sökte andra jobb. I diskussionen resoneras kring undersökningens resultat som bland annat rörde respondenternas mobila vilja, hur olika val påverkat arbetslivet och etableringsprocessen, betydelsen av det personliga nätverket och attityder till den egna åldern. / Uppsatsen ingår som en del av MOBIL-projektet.

Philosophers who show interest in authenticity tend to narrowly focus on its capacity to help people evade conformity and affirm individuality, a simplistic reduction that neglects authenticity’s moral potential and gives credence to the many critics who dismiss it as a euphemism for excessive individualism. Yet when conceived ethically, authenticity can also allow for worthy human flourishing without falling prey to conformity’s opposite extreme—egoism. This thesis proposes a relational conception of authenticity that can help prevent the often destructive excess of egoism while also offsetting the undesirable deficiency of heteronomy, concertedly moving agents towards socially responsible living. It demonstrates how authenticity necessarily has ethical dimensions when rooted in existentialist and dialogical frameworks. It also defines egoism as a form of self-deception rooted in flawed logic that cannot be considered “authentic” by relational standards. Relational authenticity recognizes the interpersonal relationships and social engagements that imbue meaning into agents’ lives, fostering a balance between personal ambitions and social obligations, and enabling more consistently moral lifestyles.

In this thesis I compare Pierre Leroux, a French utopian socialist (1797 – 1871), with Feodor Dostoevsky, the well-known Orthodox Russian novelist (1821 – 1881). I argue that both authors reacted against what they considered to be the dissolution of the social order, brought about by the increasing nineteenth-century bourgeois individualism. On the other hand, they reacted as well against the opposite phenomenon, the idea of a universal socialist state, which was, in fact, according to them, the outcome of bourgeois individualism. My purpose is to bring close and to compare Leroux’s republican socialism with Dostoevsky’s Christian socialism, and to explore to what extent the two authors give similar answers to a common problem. In order to better explain their thought, I divide my thesis into three chapters. The first analyzes and compares Leroux’s and Dostoevsky’s critiques of individualism. If Leroux reaches the conclusion that the ultimate expression of individualism is Malthusianism, Dostoevsky argues that individualism ends in nihilism. The second chapter analyzes the type of socialism against which Leroux and Dostoevsky reacted, as well as the critiques of the two authors. I argue here that Saint-Simonian socialism – the main object of Leroux’s critique – and the socialism of the Grand Inquisitor – a Dostoevskyan character – are the expression of a certain utopian thought which considers the requirement for freedom incompatible with the requirement for unity. In the last chapter, I analyze the ideas of community of Leroux and of Dostoevsky, which are centered on philia, in the case of the former, and on agape, in the case of the latter. Philia and respectively agape are the expression of organic social relations, through which the two requirements, of freedom and unity, are made compatible, and which create unity in multiplicity. Their ideas of community appear as active utopias, grounded on the life of relation in a spontaneous, organic community.

Philosophers who show interest in authenticity tend to narrowly focus on its capacity to help people evade conformity and affirm individuality, a simplistic reduction that neglects authenticity’s moral potential and gives credence to the many critics who dismiss it as a euphemism for excessive individualism. Yet when conceived ethically, authenticity can also allow for worthy human flourishing without falling prey to conformity’s opposite extreme—egoism. This thesis proposes a relational conception of authenticity that can help prevent the often destructive excess of egoism while also offsetting the undesirable deficiency of heteronomy, concertedly moving agents towards socially responsible living. It demonstrates how authenticity necessarily has ethical dimensions when rooted in existentialist and dialogical frameworks. It also defines egoism as a form of self-deception rooted in flawed logic that cannot be considered “authentic” by relational standards. Relational authenticity recognizes the interpersonal relationships and social engagements that imbue meaning into agents’ lives, fostering a balance between personal ambitions and social obligations, and enabling more consistently moral lifestyles.

This research explores feelings of obligation to volunteer, which lie at the interface of volunteering as simultaneously individual and collective and challenge traditional understandings of volunteering as leisure. The study examined volunteering within the context of communitarianism, particularly how collective outcomes of volunteering are related to feelings of obligation to volunteer. Phase one of this research focused on scale creation of a measure assessing feelings of obligation in the context of volunteerism. Using exploratory factor analyses of data from a student sample, this first phase yielded two measures: an 18-item Obligation to Volunteer as Commitment measure (OVC), encompassing dimensions of reward, affective attachment, flexibility, and side bets; and a 14-item Obligation to Volunteer as Duty measure (OVD), encompassing the dimensions of expectation, burden, and constraint. In phase two, survey research was conducted with 300 volunteers at ten community organizations. These new measures were used to examine relationships between obligation to volunteer and the value orientations of individualism and collectivism, the experience of volunteering as serious leisure, and the community characteristics of sense of community and social cohesion. Both individualism and collectivism were associated with the commitment but not the duty dimension of feelings of obligation, and both value orientations, but particularly individualism, was linked to serious leisure. Serious leisure very closely aligned with the commitment aspect of obligation as well as sense of community and social cohesion, thus emerging as a possible pathway for nurturing sense of community in a culture of individualism. Correlation and hierarchical regression analyses link the commitment aspect of obligation to sense of community and social cohesion. Feelings of duty to volunteer, in contrast, were inversely related to sense of community. Thus, the nature of feelings of obligation related to volunteering as commitment or duty have significant implications for the collective outcomes of volunteering, particularly sense of community. Also notable are the strong theoretical and empirical relationships between the OVC scale and serious leisure, which suggest that the newly-developed commitment scale could be considered a measure of the agreeable obligation that accompanies serious leisure pursuits.

UNIVERSITY Mälardalen University (Mälardalens högskola) School of Sustainable Development of Society and Technology COURSE Master Thesis in Business Studies with Specialization in International Marketing COURSE CODE EFO705 TITLE Cultural influences on the social network marketing effectiveness: A case study in Thailand. RESEARCH QUESTIONS How does collectivism influence the effectiveness of social network marketing? PURPOSE OF THE STUDY The purpose of this thesis is to investigate and analyze whether the cultural dimension of collectivism among Thais has an influential impact on the effectiveness of social network marketing implementation on clothing retailing companies toward online customers or not. METHODOLOGY This thesis has employed both primary and secondary data to operationalize the conceptual framework. A questionnaire given to 160 respondents and the interview of 2 Thai expert marketers has been carried out to operationalize this research question. CONCLUSION The collectivistic behaviors among Thais show a slightly positive relationship which supports the effectiveness of social network marketing implementation. The other influential factors, apart from collectivism, are detergency in educational levels, knowledge of using social network, smart phone trends, and internet facility readiness.

Realityshower och dokusåpor tar allt större plats i våra tv-tablåer och är under ständig debatt. Programmen sänds numera på prime time och finns hela tiden tillgängliga via internet. Just nu är dokusåpan Paradise Hotel mest aktuell och har fått utstå mycket kritik. Detta på grund av de stora mängder alkohol som deltagarna dricker samt programmets inslag av sexuell karaktär.     Genrens namn, reality-tv, ger sken av att det är verkligheten som speglas i programmen, men hur verkligt är egentligen det vi får se? Hur stor makt har produktionsbolaget över deltagarna och hur redigeras det filmade materialet för att locka tittarna? Det är frågor som den här uppsatsen syftar till att försöka besvara. Vi ville, utifrån deltagarnas synvinkel, undersöka hur verklig reality-tv verkligen är.     För att göra detta har vi valt att göra semistrukturerade intervjuer med sex deltagare från dokusåpan Paradise Hotel. Dessa har vi sedan analyserat med hjälp av en hermeneutisk analysmetod. De teoretiska perspektiv vi främst använt oss av är individualism, voyeurism och narcissism.     Det är svårt att ge några exakta svar på de frågeställningar som ligger till grund för studien då deltagarnas åsikter ofta går isär. Vi har dock kunnat konstatera att de flesta av dem vi intervjuat inte sökte till programmet själva, utan blev handplockade av produktionsbolaget. Det är också tydligt att deltagarna tilldelas roller i efterhand när det filmade materialet redigeras. Dessa roller är vissa av deltagarna nöjda med, medan andra är upprörda över hur de framställts i tv. / Realityshows and docusoaps gets more and more space in our TV-guides and are under constant debate. It is more usual nowadays that the shows are being aired on prime time than before, and the shows are constantly available on internet. Right now the show Paradise Hotel is most current and has endured a lot of criticism because of the amount of alcohol and sex it contains.     The name of the genre, reality-TV, makes it sound like it is the reality that is reflected in the shows, but how real is actually reality-TV? How much power does the production company have over the participants and how much is the filmed material edited afterwards to attract the audience? It is questions like this we will try to give answers to in this study. Our purpose is to examine how real reality-TV is, from the participants' point of view.     To do this we have chosen to do semi structured interviews with six participants from the reality show Paradise Hotel. This has been analyzed through a hermeneutic point of view.     It's hard to give any exact answers to the questions that the study is based on because of the different opinions of the participants. Though, we found that most of the persons that we have interviewed did not apply for the show themselves, they got handpicked from the production company. Also, it is obvious that the participants have been assigned characters afterwards when the shot material has been edited. It is also clear that some of the participants are pleased with the character they have been assigned, while others are upset with how they have been changed into someone they are not.

Introduction People want to believe that they make their own choices and have freedom of thought even if social constructionists say that the self is created by power relations and discourses which are also created by power. The regime of truth serves power interest and pervades discourses.  Since our thoughts are managed by discourse, the regime of truth is ascribing us our life goals. It is pronounced that capitalism is our current regime of truth and thus permeates our society in all kinds of areas. Since it is taken-for-granted people is unaware of it; it is normalized to the further most possible extent.  We want to increase understandings of how Swedish students of business and economics are influenced by capitalism as the current regime of truth. Theory Base of the thesis is the concept of regime of truth, its control of discourses and the inseparable relation of power and knowledge. We define capitalism trough classical writers as Milton Friedman and John Maynard Keynes. We follow up with a presentation of the Swedish model and education in order to get the socialistic background of Sweden together with the impact of education system. Method As starting point we use social constructionism when conducting a discourse analysis on the accounts gathered from fourteen interviews of business students from Växjö University, Sweden. Result When taking our findings into account, the complex mixture of discourses dominated by capitalism, together with the importance of income, revenue and costs in all kinds of areas in our civilization, we must pronounce that capitalism, perhaps together with individualism and socialism, are permeating our society to that extent that we perhaps speak of it as a regime of truth.

Chinese-American adolescents were compared with the major group in the United States (European-American adolescents) in negotiating self-concepts related with autonomy and connectedness. Senses of autonomy and connectedness were evaluated by examining adolescents' cultural value orientations (individualism and collectivism), parent-adolescent relationships (decision-making styles and power perception), and relations between the two constructs. Participants included 56 first- or second-generation Chinese-American adolescents (18.5% of first-generation and 81.5% of secondgeneration) and 45 European-American adolescents, accompanied with their mothers (47 Chinese-American mothers and 42 European-American mothers). In terms of cultural value orientations, Chinese- and European-Americans' selfconcepts were consistently oriented towards collectivism more than individualism in adolescents and mothers. With regard to parent-adolescent relationships, Chinese- American adolescents have identified with the dominant culture to show similar desires of being autonomous as European-American adolescents. However, Chinese-American mothers adopted more authoritarian, conservative, and inflexible parenting styles than European-American mothers. With regard to the relations between variables of cultural value orientations and variables of parent-adolescent relationships, the pattern of findings was consistent with the notion that Chinese-American adolescents who internalize highly collectivistic cultural values displayed more collectivistic communication styles in parent-adolescent relationships than European-American adolescents.

This thesis analyzes the coming out action of individuals through perception of political identity. Instead of considering coming out as an individual experience, it is discussed as a political action that effects the others around the individual. This political action is examined from the Queer Theory&rsquo / s perspective of subverting the gender norms. The coming out experience of lesbians, gays and bisexuals not only has an impact of their personal environment, but also effects their relation to the LGBT movement. The importance of coming out in LGBT movement is explained through the interviews with lesbians, gays and bisexuals. Where they place themselves politically in their socialization process is analyzed. LGBT movement&rsquo / s historical background is introduced and compared with the movement in Turkey. The issues originate from Turkish society&rsquo / s social structure is indicated through interviews.