This essay will explain some of the key concepts of my theoretical interests in my artistic practice and point out how these are adapted in my recent work, the Satumaa triology. The trilogy consists of films concerning my own status as a Swedish speaking Finn and the history of processes of exclusion in a national community, in this particular case Finland. These processes are in my home country working both outside and within the national borders and are parallel to the French structuralist Michel Foucault’s investigations of a discourse.

During the past few decades service quality has become a major area of attention topractitioners, managers and researchers. It has strong impact on business performance,lower costs, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and profitability. This study aimedat analysis of retail service quality dimensions at clothing stores. The purpose of thisthesis was to find out how customers perceive the overall retail service quality in a sportstore. We chose Stadium in Helsinki, Finland as our case company.A survey of 300 shoppers in various Stadium sport stores in Helsinki has evaluatedretail service quality according to Retail Service Quality Scale (RSQS) which composesof 5 dimensions namely physical aspects, reliability, personal interaction, problemsolvingand policy.The analysis part includes descriptive and statistics analysis. The descriptive analysiswas mainly presenting the statistical results in order to summarize data for the generalconclusions. The statistical analysis presented the differences in perception. The gapanalysis model examined the evidence about how consumers perceive service quality inretail stores and try to identify which dimensions and more specifically sub-dimensionsof RSQS they are satisfied or not-satisfied with.The finding result is that consumers are not satisfied with any dimension of servicequality. Consumer’s perception of service quality is poor in all dimensions, whichmeans that their perceptions are lower than expected level and what makes theirexperience in retail stores less enjoyable. The retail stores need to make improvementsin all dimensions in order to close gaps that could lead to increasing customersatisfaction.

No description available.

Aim: The aim of this study is to describe which messages and by which rhetorical means were communicated in political TV-advertisement in Finland and Sweden. The study also aims to analyze how the rhetorical choices were influenced by the political and social context in these countries. Material: Two TV-commercials from the latest parliamentary elections in each country were chosen. The leading left-wing and right-wing parties were chosen from each country. Theoretical perspective: This study is based on theories on political parties’ vote maximization and the development of the modern electoral campaign. Methodology: The method used in this study is rhetorical analysis. Results: All commercials had similar themes and were characterized by a low level of conflict. This is related to the common Nordic context in the two countries. At the same time, there were three major differences between the two countries. First, the two Swedish ads were much more alike than the two Finnish ads. This could be related to the differences in the party systems. Second, the use of argumentation based on ethos was more important in Finland, which relates to the personal voting method. Third, the Finnish ads were to a greater extent based on language, which relates to the history and culture of the country.

J.O. Mallander’s Extended Play (1968) is a sound recording, a readymade, of the counting of votes in two presidential elections in Finland, during 1962 and 1968. A voice repeats monotonously: “Kekkonen, Kekkonen, Kekkonen, Kekkonen, Kekkonen…” Although the Finnish president Urho Kekkonen represents, almost personifies, the politics of the post World War II period in Finland, Extended Play does not explicitly address the political. Rather, as this essay argues, it engages in the discourses of power and politics by providing a temporalization of its fixedness, or what Jacques Derrida terms the proper. Extended Play is, in parallel with Derrida’s critique of western metaphysics, a deconstruction in sound that challenges the state ideologies conveyed in the process of the counting of votes, where the presuppositions of the presence of the voice characterizes the ambiguities of power that Kekkonen’s politics of neutrality represent. Mallander’s readymade emerges as a double of the game theory strategies of the Cold War, a mimetic surplus of the administrative control mechanisms of sound recording. Through overturning the dialectics of the original and the copy, where repetition of sound also temporalizes the representation of the proper, it does not unequivocally reproduce its content. As an aural document, repeated and mass-produced as a record, it devalues, therefore, presumptions of origin. Derrida’s idea of “sous rature” initiates, in the discussion of Extended Play as a specific form of conceptual sound art, the notion of sound under erasure, which is not reducible to an auditory or medium-specific practice.

Undersökningen i arbetet syftar på att jämföra de gällande styrdokument som skall efterföljas i förundervisningen i Finland och på Åland och motsvarande i Sveriges förskoleklass. Vidare vill jag genom e-intervjuer till personer med yrkeskompetens undersöka olikheter som finns gällande hur länderna arbetar inom verksamheterna där sexåringarna befinner sig i, faktorer som skiljer länderna åt inom daghemmets och förskolekassens värld samt få ta del av deras synpunkter och funderingar kring ländernas vision om vad just deras sexåringar skall befinna sig i för miljö året innan de börjar årskurs ett.   Jag har studerat styrdokumenten för länderna i fråga och jämfört de ämnen som jag anser vara relevanta i en jämförelse, värdegrund, uppdrag och mål, pedagogens roll och specialundervisning. Styrdokumenten har klara och tydliga mål, men hur mycket skiljer det sig mellan länderna för vad som exempelvis skall uppnås när barnet är sex år. Jag skulle önska att detta ämne var lite mer kontroversiellt, men tiden kanske hinner ikapp och vi får läsa mer om detta i framtiden. Vidare har PISAs undersökningar granskats, syftet med projektet PISA är att undersöka i vilken grad respektive lands utbildningssystem bidrar till att elever som snart skall avsluta den obligatoriska skolan är mogna och har de kunskaper som behövs för att möta framtiden.   Elektronisk intervju per e-post och en diskussion av styrdokumenten användes som datainsamlingsmetod för denna undersökning och frågorna utformades så att respondenten fritt kunde resonera i ämnet så ingående som hon eller han ville. Jag fick svar av 10 barnträdgårdslärare/daghemsföreståndare och tre svar av personer med en högre position som besitter kunskap i de frågor som jag bestämde mig för att fråga.   Resultaten visade på att respondenterna upplever att de har det väldigt bra som det är och att de anser att barnen har det bäst om de får gå kvar på daghemmet till det att de skall in i skolvärlden.

<p>The essay aims to compare Swedish and Finnish decisions regarding refugee policies by tracing them back to the critical junctures when the policies were established, in order to explain why there are big differences prevalent today. The questions asked involve the motivations of the refugee policies and how they have changed over time.</p><p>The theoretical framework employed is based on historical institutionalism and path dependency. By using a most similar system design and process tracing, material in the form of government declarations and government bills are studied and summed up in two analytical models. The results show that there might be a weak path dependency in the case of Finland. However it is more apparent in the case of Sweden, with frequent statements of a generous refugee policy that is characterised by humanity. The conclusions drawn are that the differences between the refugee policies might be due to the fact that the refugee policies are motivated in different ways in the two countries. Furthermore, Sweden has had an established policy for a long time whereas Finland has only just started developing this program.</p>

<p>When the Tsunami occurred on Boxing Day 2004 it caused a major stress upon the governmental agencies in not only the affected areas but also in states that had a large number of citizens in the affected area. The governmental agencies were not prepared for the demands from the citizenry in these countries to deal with rescue and crisis management in areas situated halfway around the globe. This thesis main purpose is to research what the causal mechanisms of Sweden’s and Finland’s crisis management were through the method of process tracing. Taking its theoretical stance in Allison’s & Zelikow’s three models of decision making, the thesis compares the course of events of the first two critical days in Sweden and Finland to establish what mistakes were made during this critical period. The main findings of the essay show that none of the theories is on its own capable of explaining the chain of events, but a combination of the organisational model and the governmental politics model do prove the necessity of trained crisis personnel as decision-makers early on in crisis management as well as the need for an organisational structure with a linear and clear chain of command.</p>

Die Geographie kann im Vergleich mit anderen Disziplinen getrost als ein auffallend breit facettenreiches Fach mit zahlreichen Schnittstellen zu Nachbarwissenschaften charakterisiert werden. „Der Geograph“ schlechthin – so er denn angesichts des soeben erwähnten großen Spektrums in Reinform überhaupt existiert – zeichnet sich daher oftmals durch die ausgeprägte Fähigkeit zum interdisziplinären Arbeiten und vernetzten Denken sowie der Fertigkeit des sinnvollen Zusammenfügens vieler Einzelteile zum „großen Ganzen“ aus. Der Blick für’s Ganze und der Blick über den Tellerrand, also das positive Interesse am „Anderen“ und „Neuen“ sind diesbezüglich besonders wichtig. In Kombination mit angewandten – d.h. gesellschaftlich relevanten, konkret nachgefragten Untersuchungen - wird daher bisweilen auch „Geographie im weitesten Sinne“ betrieben. Geographie kennt nur wenige Grenzen, zumindest, wenn sie von Peter Jurczek betrieben wird. Peter Jurczek, dessen 60. Geburtstag der Anlass für Freunde, Weggefährten, ehemalige und aktive Mitarbeiter ist, ihn mit dieser Publikation zu ehren, verkörpert vielleicht nicht den oben genannten Typus des Universalgeographen, der erwähnte Blick für’s Ganze, die Freude am interdisziplinären Arbeiten, das Überschreiten der Grenzen ist ihm aber doch zu eigen. Der Blick über den Tellerrand – in räumlicher und fachlicher Hinsicht – ist es wohl auch, der ihm stets neue Perspektiven und Horizonte eröffnete, an denen er immer auch andere teilhaben lässt. Denn die Überwindung des Trennenden dort, wo es ausgrenzt oder gar diskriminiert ist im Rückblick eine wichtige Maxime seines Handelns: Ob es sich um die innerdeutsche urbane Vernetzung von „Ost“ und „West“ handelt oder die Europäische Integration, die durch konkrete Projekte insbesondere in Hinblick auf Deutschlands Nachbarn in Mitteleuropa vorangetrieben wird. Die Themenvielfalt und Interdisziplinarität der Beiträge dieses Sammelbandes wiederum ist letztendlich ein Beleg des regen wissenschaftlichen Austausches von Peter Jurczek und somit auch ein thematisches wie räumliches Abbild seines Wirkens. Sie reichen von Europa über Afrika bis nach Asien, von der Geographie, der Soziologie, der Politikwissenschaft bis hin zu Germanistik und Kulturwissenschaft.

Ph.d.-afhandling. University of Helsinki, 2005. / Også elektronisk adgang via Internetttet.