This thesis is a comparative sociolinguistic study which describes and compares language choice among people with Hungarian background in Sweden and Finland and studies their views on the importance of the Hungarian language and Hungarian cultural heritage for identity. The future prospects of language maintenance and language shift and differences between the Swedish-Hungarians and the Finnish-Hungarians are discussed. A survey was completed among 50 Swedish-Hungarian informants and 38 Finnish-Hungarian informants during 2006. The survey was supplemented by in-depth interviews with 15 informants during 2007. The majority language, either Swedish or Finnish, is much more active in the second-generation Hungarians’ lives than Hungarian is. Hungarian is mostly used in the domain of family relations. The language choices made today are dependent on the informant’s situation during childhood, particularly the parents’ usage of the language and the ability to learn and use Hungarian, chiefly gained through contact with the parents’ mother country and other Hungarian speakers. For some informants, having Hungarian roots forms the sole foundation for belonging, while for others it is this heritage combined with the culture, the ability to use the language or specific character traits. The Hungarian background is most often seen as a treasure offering diversity in life. Finnish-Hungarians are generally more positive about their Hungarian background, have better competence in the language and a greater awareness of the culture than Swedish-Hungarians. The Hungarian language plays a central though often symbolic role. The most important conditions for minority language preservation are language competence together with the desire and opportunity to use it; whereof the largest deficit among second-generation Hungarians is knowledge of the Hungarian language. Only one-fourth of the informants have all of the conditions necessary to be able to maintain the language, which means that Hungarian is an endangered minority language in Sweden and Finland.

During the Cold War, Norway was a member of NATO, Sweden was neutral but depended on Western support in the event of a crisis, while Finland's foreign policy priority was to win and retain the Soviet Union's confidence. The purpose of the thesis is to study whether the three small states' different foreign policy choices had consequences for the ways in which the Soviet Union and the USA were depicted in school textbooks for history, geography, and social sciences in the period 1930 to 2004. To this end, a theory derived from small states' strategies to maintain their independence was applied to textbook production. The study demonstrates that there was a link between small state foreign policy and textbooks' accounts of the USA and Soviet Union. Swedish and Norwegian textbooks portray international conflicts from a legalistic perspective, taking the part of small states exposed to superpower aggression such as Vietnam and Afghanistan. In Finnish textbooks, however, an interest in defending small state's rights yielded to the need to demonstrate their goodwill towards the Soviet Union, which was described in far less critical terms than in Swedish and Norwegian textbooks. In time, in the name of neutrality, depictions of the USA also became increasingly uncritical. All three Nordic states had government authorities charged with inspecting and approving school textbooks. Foreign policy's chief influence on textbooks was not effected by direct oversight, however; instead, it was established indirectly by means of the social climate, which determined what was considered politically correct in the three countries, and it was to this that the textbooks' authors adapted their work. Textbooks are often said to be conservative and slow to change, but the thesis shows that in parts they were politically sensitive, rapidly adapting to changes in what society held to be politically correct.

This dissertation investigates what the early modern donation system in Sweden reveals about the Crown’s expectations of the social group that served the state, and what these individuals expected from the Crown. The author shows how the Crown used donations of land rents to remunerate and reward individuals in its service. In 1680 the donation system was abolished and the Crown reclaimed everything that had been alienated. It was not until 1723 that the proprietors could address a specially appointed parliamentary commission (which ended in 1748) and challenge the Crown’s repossession. The deeds of donation and ratification, most issued during the period 1604 to 1680, as well as petitions submitted to the commission constitute the sources used in the investigation. A petition from the recipient usually preceded remunerations and the deeds drawn up by the Crown often refer to these letters. Petitioners accordingly referred to arguments used by the administration in Stockholm. This makes it possible, by direct and indirect methods, to study how both parties sought to change and influence the imagined compact between Crown and families in its service. The negotiation between the parties, studied over such a lengthy period, helps identify tendencies in the way the relation between state and its servants was changing. The thesis shows that there was a clear gender aspect to the process through which state formation happened. Even though most recipients were male, the deeds included his wife and children. Service and fidelity to the Crown was expected also from the descendants of the recipient. Accordingly, the Crown had both liabilities and duties to fulfil to the recipients family. We could say that in the eye of the Crown its servants were a family. The author also argues that the Crown used the donations to create and favour an informal fifth estate and how this policy influenced the shared ideas in society on merits versus ancestry. In the end of the period, however, the imagined compact was changing. The emerging state came with new claims to authority and the need to separate the Crown from its subjects at various levels (legal, political). As the compact became less personal family members were no longer included and women could no longer negotiate from their position within the family.

High-resolution records of early Holocene deposits are rare, and as a consequence reconstruction of terrestrial environments very soon after the deglaciation has often been difficult. In this study the palaeoenvironmental conditions of early Holocene (c. 10600-7500 cal. yr BP) are reconstructed in the Värriötunturit area of northeastern Finland, using evidence from plant macrofossils and pollen preserved in a lake sediment sequence retrieved from the small lake Kuutsjärvi. Special emphasis is put on the environment immediately following the deglaciation as the base of the sediment sequence is rich in minerogenic material interpreted to have been deposited by meltwater pulses from the retreating ice sheet. The abundance and variety of fossil remains in these early meltwater deposits provide evidence for a very productive ice-marginal environment in the area between the lake and the ice sheet, and the presence of tree-type Betula macro remains as well as high percentage values of tree-type Betula pollen suggests that a subarctic birch forest established just a few years after the deglaciation. In the following centuries the birch forest around the lake became rich in an under growth of ferns, and at c. 9400 cal. yr BP a transition into a mixed pine and birch forest took place. Due to absence of indicator plant taxa in the sediment it was not possible to reconstruct temperature conditions for any parts of the sequence in this study. However, the rapid colonisation of birch forests suggests that the climate was warm already during deglaciation, which is also in accordance with climatic conditions reconstructed for the early Holocene in the nearby Sokli area just 10 km away, as well as in other parts of Fennoscandia and Russia.

Au milieu du XIXe siècle, la zone baltique est considérée par les Britanniques comme une périphérie lointaine et sous-développée, malgré l’existence de relations privilégiées liées à l’aura romantique de la Scandinavie, à l’importance économique de la région en tant que fournisseur de matières premières essentielles, et à sa position géographique, proche du rival russe du Grand Jeu. Au vu de ce lien particulier, du potentiel socioéconomique des pays nordiques, et de la nécessité de multiplier les débouchés commerciaux, les différents acteurs britanniques espèrent, après l’avènement du libéralisme, participer au développement de la région, et même en bénéficier sur le plan économique. Cependant, si la deuxième moitié du XIXe siècle voit effectivement de nombreux Britanniques, marchands, entrepreneurs, capitalistes, ou ingénieurs, contribuer activement à l’essor et à la modernisation des régions baltiques, les évolutions diplomatiques et économiques, marquées essentiellement par la montée en puissance de l’Allemagne, une stabilisation des relations avec la Russie et une balance commerciale obstinément déficitaire, conduisent la Grande-Bretagne à repenser son rôle régional en permanence jusqu’aux tensions internationales du début du XXe siècle. / By the middle of the 19th century, the Baltic area is regarded by the British as a far-off, underdeveloped periphery, although there exist privileged relationships linked to the romantic attraction of Scandinavia, the economic importance of the region as supplier of essential raw materials and its geographical location in the vicinity of the Russian rival of the Great Game. Considering this special link, the socio-economic potential of the Nordic countries, and the necessity to multiply Britain’s commercial outlets, the various British actors hope, after the advent of liberalism, to participate in the region’s development, and even benefit from it at economic level. Yet, if, during the second half of the nineteenth century, many British merchants, entrepreneurs, capitalists or engineers do take an active part in the takeoff and modernisation of the Baltic regions, diplomatic and economic developments, whose main features are a rising Germany, more stable relations with Russia, and a stubbornly negative trade balance, lead Britain to continually reconsider its regional role until the international tensions of the early twentieth century.

Abstract The affinity between mobile devices and electronic commerce is strong, and mobile commerce is a large potential market, as an offshoot of electronic commerce. The margin between electronic commerce and mobile commerce is becoming gradually thinner. The mobile device is more than a transaction tool; it plays a central role in the whole of online shopping as a connector between retailers, online platforms and online shoppers, with a rich experience of noticeable heterogeneity in online retailing. The study concentrates on the use of the tablet for online shopping, how it correlates to general online shopping and how it differs from other mobile devices regarding online shopping. The study utilised an integration of different research domains (marketing, psychology and a technological approach). This integration gives a broader perspective and deepens the understanding of the research topic. The study adopts a quantitative methodology and utilises survey research, because of the online specific behaviour of tablet users, with structural equation modelling techniques. The study contributes theoretically in four parts. First, the study is interdisciplinary and combines insights from marketing, psychology and information systems literature with an integrated model of tablet commerce to identify the antecedents of customer loyalty and contribute to marketing literature. Second, the study is a comparative study and discovers the impact of security, technology, utilitarian and eminent factors related to customer loyalty to the online retailer, which is a growing trend in two cultures. Third, the study reveals the mediating role of trust in explaining the interaction between reputation and loyalty across borders and the mediation between online shopping experience and reputation, trust, self-efficacy and privacy to predict customer loyalty to an online retailer in a developed nation. Fourth, the study discovered variation by gender in tablet commerce, based on the integrated model. The gender divergence is more significant on one antecedent of loyalty than the others. Managers should also target online customers with promotional offers based on gender differences. The study’s managerial implication has been recommended and future research opportunities have been expanded. / Tiivistelmä Yhteys mobiililaitteiden ja verkkokaupan välillä on voimakas, ja mobiilikaupankäynti on suuri potentiaalinen markkina verkkokaupan sivujuonteena. Marginaali verkkokaupan ja mobiilikaupankäynnin välillä pienenee koko ajan. Mobiililaite on enemmän kuin vain kaupanteossa käytetty väline; se näyttelee keskeistä roolia verkkokaupankäynnissä ja toimii myyjien, verkkoalustojen ja verkkoasiakkaiden yhdistäjänä, ja verkkokauppojen heterogeenisyydestä on kertynyt runsaasti kokemusta. Tutkimuksessa käytetään kvantitatiivista metodologiaa ja hyödynnetään survey-tutkimuksia sekä rakenneyhtälömalleja tablettitietokoneiden käyttäjien käyttäessä nimenomaan verkkopalveluja. Tutkimus lisää teoreettista tietämystä aihepiiristä. Ensinnäkin väitöstutkimus laajentaa olemassa olevaa tietämystä mobiilikaupankäynnistä ja tablettikaupankäynti-ilmiöstä ja selittää uutta suhdetta, joka vallitsee helppokäyttöisyyden, yksityisyyden, maineen ja omiin kykyihin luottamisen sekä väliin tulevien korrelaattien luottamus ja kokemus välillä yhdistelemällä niitä sukupuoli-moderaattorimuuttujan kanssa ja keskittymällä tablettitietokoneiden verkkokauppasegmenttiin, jossa tavaroita ja palveluja ostetaan, joten tutkimus tarjoaa yleisen kehikon verkkokauppakuluttajien päätöksenteolle ollen merkittävä panos alan markkinointikirjallisuuteen. Toiseksi, tutkimus on tärkeä lisä myös siksi, että se vahvistaa kuvatun kaltaisen integroidun mallin toimivuuden ja sen sovellukset eri maissa. Kolmanneksi, tutkimus paljastaa luottamuksen välittäjän roolin maineen ja lojaliteetin rajat ylittävän vuorovaikutuksen selittäjänä sekä yhdyssiteen verkkokauppakokemuksen ja maineen, luottamuksen, omiin kykyihin luottamisen ja yksityisyyden välillä, kun on tarve ennustaa verkkokauppoja koskevaa asiakasuskollisuutta kehittyneillä markkinoilla. Neljänneksi, tutkimus edistää ostouskollisuutta käsittelevää kirjallisuutta verratessaan tablettikaupankäyntiä koskevia kuluttajahavaintoja niin Suomen kuin Nigerian kansallisilla markkinoilla. Kahden maan konteksti tarjoaa ainutlaatuisen mahdollisuuden ymmärtää sitä, kuinka asiakkaat eroavat toisistaan kansalliset rajat ylittävillä markkinoilla käytetyn datan käsittäessä kuluttajia epäsuhtaisilla kansalliset rajat ylittävillä markkinoilla, jotka edustavat kehittyneitä ja kehittyviä markkinoita sekä väestömäärältään pieniä ja suuria markkinoita ja jotka ovat lisäksi kulttuurillisesti heterogeenisia. Tutkimus esittää paranneltua ja räätälöityä päätöksentekoa tukevaa järjestelmää johdon avuksi ja asiakkaiden päätöksenteko-ongelmien ratkaisemiseksi. Tutkimuksen liikkeenjohdolliset johtopäätökset ovat selviä, ja niihin liittyviä tulevaisuuden tutkimusmahdollisuuksia on korostettu.

The aim of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of the internal communication, as a dimension of internal marketing, in a global multicultural company. The study was based on a conceptual model that is a miscellany of theoretical concepts of how to create effective internal marketing communication for global organizations. Through the investigation of the company referred to as Alpha, a quantitative study across six countries was conducted to further the knowledge on how to address the needs of internal customers and adjust the internal marketing strategy thereafter. A questionnaire was sent to a random sample, with a response rate of 215 employees that together reflected the total population of 2831. Through the usage of ANOVAs, the findings displayed significant differences of how the employees in all countries perceived the internal communication at Alpha. The study also compared differences within two countries where there was enough data to investigate differences between categories of employees, these results were not significant. In general, it can be said that the results were grouped by the differences of the three European countries against the three non-European countries. Another prominent finding was that China was separated from the other countries, this was also the instance collectively shown for Sweden and Finland as they were often grouped together. The implications are that possible differences in business culture may have affected these results, which further studies need to investigate. The results jointly report that the internal customers are not satisfied with the internal communication. The conclusion is that the needs of the employees at Alpha should be addressed much further, as a part of the company internal marketing communication strategy.

Cette recherche porte sur l'exécution de 138 arrêts condamnatoires rendus par la Cour européenne des droits de l'homme contre la Finlande jusqu'à présent. La recherche montre que la procédure finlandaise d'exécution n'est pas bureaucratique et qu'elle fonctionne bien, l'efficacité globale étant donc à un niveau très avancé. Quant au paiement de la satisfaction équitable et la prise des mesures individuelles, la recherche démontre que l'exécution est assez efficace en Finlande, sauf en cas de réouverture des procédures nationales. La recherche montre également que même si la prise des mesures générales est efficace du point de vue temporel et matériel, il y a parfois une réticence de prendre des mesures. Néanmoins, la plupart des mesures générales sont prises d'une manière efficace, l'un des meilleurs exemples étant les affaires ne bis in idem. Par contre, les affaires concernant la durée excessive des procédures judiciaires ne font pas preuve ni d'efficacité temporelle ni matérielle. / This study focuses on the execution of the 138 condemnatory judgments delivered so far against Finland by the European Court of Human Rights. The study showed that the Finnish execution procedure was not bureaucratic and it worked well, the overall procedural effectiveness thus being at a very advanced level. As to the payment of just satisfaction and the taking of individual measures, the study showed that the execution was fairly effective in Finland both in the temporal and material sense, the only exception being reopening of domestic proceedings. The study also revealed that although the taking of general measures in Finland was mostly effective, there was also some reluctance to take execution measures. Still most of the general measures were taken effectively in Finland, one of the best examples being the ne bis in idem cases. On the other hand, the length of proceedings cases represented a group of cases in which the temporal and material effectiveness was at its lowest.

Alors que la période qui suit la fin de la guerre froide est caractérisée par une restructuration profonde des industries de la défense au niveau mondial, la plupart des études portent sur les mutations à l’œuvre au sein des principaux pays producteurs et de quelques grands pays émergents. Face à cette situation, ce travail doctoral s’intéresse plus spécifiquement au cas des « petits Etats ». La littérature spécialisée tend en effet généralement à considérer qu’après la fin de la course aux armements qui caractérise la période de l’affrontement bipolaire, seules les principales puissances conserveraient la maîtrise de la conception d’armements sophistiqués alors que les Etats aux budgets militaires significativement plus faibles n’auraient d’autre possibilité que d’accepter un rôle de plus grande subordination à travers une modalité principale : l’intégration au sein des chaînes de valeur des principaux producteurs mondiaux en tant que fournisseurs de systèmes, sous-systèmes et composants. Dans ce cadre, la capacité à concevoir des plateformes (véhicule, navire, sous-marin, avion, hélicoptère…) échapperait définitivement aux « petits Etats » et serait le seul apanage des grandes puissances. Partant du constat du maintien de capacités au niveau de la construction de plateformes dans plusieurs « petits Etats » européens, ce travail s’interroge sur les conditions dans lesquelles ces derniers sont parvenus à conserver un tel niveau de compétence industrielle. Organisé autour de quatre études de cas (Suisse, Finlande, Pays-Bas et Suède) dans trois secteurs distincts (terrestre, naval et aéronautique militaire), il cherche à comprendre si ces capacités constituent un héritage du passé tôt ou tard condamné à disparaître, ou si elles s’insèrent dans des stratégies viables et potentiellement transposables à d’autres trajectoires nationales. Pour ce faire, ce travail commence par revenir sur les apports des principales recherches françaises dans le champ de l’économie de la défense, puis il mobilise les travaux de Michael Porter sur le positionnement concurrentiel et sur les déterminants de l’avantage concurrentiel national afin de les appliquer à l’étude des industries militaires des « petits Etats ». / While the period that follows the end of the cold war is still characterized by a deep restructuring of the world defense industries, most of the studies focus on the changes at work within the main producing nations and a few large developing countries. By contrast, this doctoral dissertation focuses more specifically on the situation of the “small states”. Specialized literature tends to suggest that following the arms race that prevailed during the years of bipolar confrontation, only the largest powers would dominate the research and development of sophisticated armaments, while the weaker nations with significantly lower defense budgets would be reduced to playing a minor role through a core modality – their integration within the value chains of the main world producers as suppliers of systems, subsystems and components. In this framework, the ability to design and build platforms (i.e. vehicle, ship, submarine, aircraft, helicopter...) would definitively elude the “small states” and would remain the sole prerogative of the biggest powers. On the basis of the fact that several “small” European states still do have some platform-building capabilities in the military area, this dissertation investigates how the latter succeeded in retaining such a level of industrial competence. Based upon four case studies (Switzerland, Finland, Netherlands and Sweden) in three different sectors (military land, naval and aeronautics), its aim is to understand whether these industrial capabilities do constitute a legacy that will inevitably disappear in the long run, or whether they are integrated within viable strategies that might be succesfully implemented in other national trajectories. To do so, this doctoral work starts by investigating the findings of the main French researches conducted in the field of defense economics, and it subsequently uses the contributions of Michael Porter on competitive positioning and the determinants of the competitive advantage of nations in order to apply them to the study of the military industries of the “small states”.

在全球化時代下，勞動力的跨國流動成為一個顯著現象。 2005年起，芬蘭食品加工公司開始引進外籍野莓採集工，其中以泰國東北方的農民占最多數。他們持3個月的旅遊簽證，並引用芬蘭 everyman’s right 這個傳統權利在芬蘭的森林裡採集野莓。 這些泰國野莓採集工被視為自僱自營者/企業家而非受雇者，因此他們必需支付其到芬蘭的所有開銷，這些開銷基本上遠超過一個農民家庭的一年所得。農民先行支付了這些高額開銷並不意味著其享有任何收入保證，相反的，其收入完全取決於他們採收了多少野莓。如果他們碰到了乾旱的夏季或野莓作物收成物不佳，此意味者他們在極辛苦的工作之後，不僅沒賺到任何錢，反而背負更多的債務，換句話說，泰籍野莓採集工自行承擔芬蘭採莓之行的所有風險。 泰籍野莓採集工在芬蘭填補了當地人不願從事的次級勞動市場職缺。他們既不享有芬蘭政府的相關勞動法令保障，也不適用芬蘭工會的團體協約。其處於芬蘭勞動市場的灰色地帶。 外籍野莓採集工在芬蘭屬於新的社會現象，目前僅見極少數的文獻聚焦探討此議題。此研究的目的主要是為了瞭解泰籍野莓採集工在芬蘭的勞動處境，並解釋造成其處於不利處境的結構性因素。 / The flow of labour force between countries has become a significant phenomenon in globalization age. Since 2005, the Finnish food processing companies started to introduce migrant wild-berries pickers with a tourist visa up to 3 months in order to harvest wild berries in Finnish forest, and the majority is from the northeastern area of Thailand. They went to Finland with tourist visa and pick up wild berries in the forest according to ‘Everyman’s Right’. They do not be regarded as employees but self-employment or entrepreneurs, and therefore they and their income totally depend on how much berries they pick up. Thai berry pickers paid every cost that far more then one year income of normal farm-family in Thailand by themselves. However, those high costs do not engage any income guarantee. If they meet dry summer or corps is not good enough, they would not get any compensation from Finnish companies. In other words, they will simply work for free and get even deeper debts after extremely hard working. Thai berry pickers in Finland fill in the vacancies in Finnish secondary labour market. They neither entitle to enjoy the protection from Finnish labour regulations nor collective agreements. They are in gray areas in Finnish labour market. Migrant berry picker is a new appearance in Finland, and hence there are only a few literatures focus on the issue. The aim of this research is to understand the situation and explore the structure determinates of Thai berry pickers.