The impact that economic crises have on firms is profound. Such events affect the extent to which firms invest in innovation. This exploratory study aims to investigate to what extentfirms emphasize exploratory and exploitative innovation as a result of economic crises. The study further aims to examine the presence of a rigid or risk-seeking response, in terms of innovation, as a result of the crisis. Through analysis of the contents of the CEOs’ letters to theshareholders, I captured the firms’ emphasis on exploratory and exploitative innovation in a sample of 14 large Swedish firms, three years before and after the crisis and examined the presence of a rigid or risk-seeking response, by comparing both periods. The findings indicate a short-term rigid response as well as no indication of a risk-seeking response. The study contributes to the body of knowledge about how economic crises impact the firms’ emphasis on investing in innovation, a field lacking a consensus among authors.

This inquiry used an ecojustice education framework and the transformative inquiry methodology to better understand the cultural and linguistic roots of global socioecological crises and to distinguish where ecologically unsustainable root metaphors show up in curricular and educator discourse. I first examined the British Columbia K–7 Science and Social Studies curriculum-as-plan[ned] to identify iterations of three ecologically unsustainable root metaphors of Western industrial culture—anthropocentrism, individualism, and reductionism. Then, 11 inquiry partners responded to written interview questions about how these metaphors appear in their teaching practices; three educators participated in follow-up semistructured interviews. In addition to these contributions, self-study reflections provide another layer to the connections I made among the literature, curriculum, and educator responses. The curriculum made no links between Western culture-language-thought patterns and socioecological crises. Several inquiry partners, however, did identify a relationship between these root metaphors and how the Western world treats the “environment.” Finally, the self-study portion revealed that despite understanding the power of root metaphors to shape our thinking and a deep desire to change, these taken-for-granted assumptions still arise in my teaching. Weaving together these findings, I recommend that future curriculum and teacher education include (a) the teaching of different worldviews to counteract the hegemony of Western industrial culture, (b) the power of language to shape thinking and actions, and (c) strategies to undertake the inner work needed to shift away from these culture-language-thought processes. / Graduate

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This thesis investigates the impact of national crises on globally distributed scrum teams in the automotive industry. The study involves several scrum team members from different nations with their day-to-day challenges, and additional obstacles arise when there is a crisis in any of the countries, for example, war or natural disasters. The study focuses on the impact of the war in Ukraine on a globally distributed team in an automotive industry. Therefore, the research question is, “How does a national crisis affect the productivity of a globally distributed scrum team?” To answer this question, we employed a case study strategy, the data was collected by interviewing the senior managers, project managers, and team members of the company using semi-structured but predetermined specific questions, some of which was sent via emails while the analysis was done through qualitative thematic analysis method. Our findings suggest that the impact of such national crisis on the overall performance or productivity of these scrum teams is insignificant but comes with a high cost on the company’s part. This cost came from relocation for affected team members, recruitment of additional employees and procurement of new technological tools. There was also an initial setback at the beginning of the war. Nevertheless, some of the direct negative impact of the war includes – team members residing in Ukraine being forced to relocate, there was an initial delay in some features delivery, and some team members changing jobs due to the crisis. Surprisingly, the war impacted the scrum team positively as follow - the team became stronger, more persistent, and resilient; decisionmaking and routines processes were shifted more to the scrum team members (which is a strength of agile methodology); and new tool and technology were introduced for ease of communication and collaboration. In conclusion, it can be said that understanding how globally distributed scrum teams are affected by local or national crises may help companies plan for better risk mitigation strategies before investing into certain markets thus increasing chances for successful outcomes when faced with such challenges, leading ultimately towards achieving desired goals set out prior within timeframe and budget.

This research project investigates the adaptability of travel consumption in Sweden to global crises, with a focus on families. Tourism is a major contributor to the global economy, but it is also highly sensitive to global crises such as natural disasters, political instability, economic recessions, and health pandemics. These crises can disrupt travel and have significant impacts on the tourism industry and destination communities. In response to these crises, tourists may alter their travel plans and behaviour, including choosing alternative destinations and engaging in budget travel. This study aims to compare the adaptability of tourists under global crises by reviewing relevant literature and examining interviews of how Swedish families and their tourism behaviours have responded to specific global crises.

The European Single Market (SM) has typically been a symbol of economic integration and multilateralism within the European Union (EU). It operates within a robust regulatory framework aimed at ensuring the free movement of goods, services, people, and capital. However, with the steady onslaught of crises seen in the union in recent years, the SM governance appears to be changing by giving privilege to the safeguarding of strategic interests and ensuring stability. Similar changes have been noted in other sectors, where it has been dubbed a crisisification of policy-making in the EU. This is expressed by the agenda-setting, decision-making, participation, and legitimising narratives of ordinary governance becoming similar to those employed during crises. The thesis seeks to understand the changing governance of the SM by using the theoretical framework of crisisification. The framework is adapted by considering elements of time, active secrecy, and Council coordination dynamics. Crisisification shows that changes to SM governance challenges democratic processes and community building. Insights from critical security studies also contributes to assessing the implications on policy-makers, citizens, and democracy of crisisification. The study explores these goals through semi-structured interviews and reflexive thematic analysis with civil servants from the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the European Commission, and the Swedish National Board of Trade. Findings revealed the multifaceted impacts of crisisification on privileging sectors deemed vulnerable or threatened over others and changing interinstitutional power dynamics resulting in challenges towards democratic values. The study underscores the need for further exploration into the effects of crisisification through systematic review across European policy sectors.

Genocide is conventionally seen through the mutually exclusive characterisations of perpetrators and victims. Attempts to understand this phenomenon in the 1990s postcolonial African Great Lakes region suffer from this same limitation. This dissertation critiques the limiting binary of perpetrator and victim identities. By examining the messy formation of identities in genocide, this research demonstrates that the latter are layered and fluid. Using relational sociology, identities are examined through the narrative analysis of interviews with Banyamulenge soldiers who participated in the early 1990s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), and the short-lived Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo (AFDL). These soldiers witnessed first-hand the violence and devastation of the Rwandan civil war and 1994 genocide. The AFDL, under Rwandan leadership, went on to obliterate 233,000 Rwandan refugees spread across Zaïre form 1996 to 1997. A heuristic device of a vortex is used to conceptualise a process of identity formation framed by three features of genocide, namely narratives of insecurity, destructive crises, and intermediate space. RPF and Banyamulenge narratives, power relations, and relational journeys are traced through an exploration of the networks and histories of these features. Banyamulenge soldier identities are formed in movements through this vortex with each experience of genocide. Such movements resulted in violence against the refugees. A specific relation to the idea of the enemy as a guilty genocidaire was constructed through the deployment of multiple narratives. The genocidaire was essential to Banyamulenge identities as they went on to perpetrate genocide against the Rwandan refugees. / The full text will be available at the end of the embargo: 1st Dec 2027

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This master's thesis explores the discourse in Swedish media concerning humanitarian crises resulting from war, with a focus on the crises in Ukraine and Gaza. The focus of the thesis is to analyze how the Swedish media writes about these humanitarian crises, as well as highlighting differences in their portrayal. The method and theory used in the study is critical discourse analysis, and the three-dimensional model developed by Norman Fairclough. According to Fairclough, an interdisciplinary perspective that combines textual and social analysis is needed when analyzing discourse. The model consists of three levels of analysis: textual level, discursive practice, and social practice. This study primarily focuses on the textual level, with brief discussions of the other two levels in terms of trends and tendencies. The findings suggest that there are differences in how the humanitarian crises in Ukraine and Gaza are portrayed, particularly in terms of responsibility attribution. The crisis in Ukraine is depicted as a consequence of Russia's actions, while the crisis in Gaza is portrayed more as a natural phenomenon or as a result of Hamas attack on Israel on the 7th of October 2023.