Welche Vorraussetzungen sind nötig, um das europäische Einigungsprojekt auf Dauer zu tragen? Erstens bleibt die Herausbildung einer europäischen kollektiven Identität für die Überlebensfähigkeit der Union unverzichtbar. Zweitens bleibt die EU auf demokratische Institutionen angewiesen. Drittens kommt dem Vertrauen der Europäer eine zentrale Rolle im weiteren europäischen Integrationsprozess zu. / The article deals with the fundamental question: What does a European political system need in order to persist? Three claims are justified. First, the emergence of a shared sense of European community is crucial for the Union’s future character as legitimate and democratic. Second, European institutions should correspond to democratic standards in order to facilitate trust among strangers. Third, trust plays an important role for fostering further integration.

Wie werden Fremde zu Bürgern? Unsere Autoren erweitern die oft polemisch geführte Integrationsdebatte. Dies gilt sowohl geografisch als auch kulturell. Von Australien über Bahrain bis nach Kanada reichen die Beispiele. Die Renaissance des Bürgers und urbane Toleranz bilden den gedanklichen Rahmen. Der Aufstand ist nun doch gekommen; und zwar in Nordafrika. Die panarabischen Proteste markieren eine Zeitenwende im Nahen Osten. Wir analysieren Auslöser und mögliche Konsequenzen - regional wie global.

This research is about how the educators view the best way to help multilingual students develop their understanding for mathematics. The aim of the study is to identify the different aspects from the teacher’s point of view of this new approach of teaching: what are the limitations versus the opportunities? The study is limited to a multicultural school in Stockholm and to the experience of a few class teachers and mother tongue teachers. A qualitative approach was used and the interview was selected as the method to collect the data. Three class teachers as well as three mother tongue teachers were interviewed about their experiences. The interviews were recorded and transcribed word by word. There have been discussions about the skills in mathematics in multilingual speaking students, and that their greatest obstacle of understanding mathematics is that they are being taught in another language than their own mother tongue. The National Agency for Education have stated that multilingual students who gets high grades in the mother tongue education tend to get higher grades in mathematics as well (Skolverket 2008). The result shows that the staff, the class teachers and mother tongue teachers, have been able to build a bridge between mathematics and their student’s mother tongue. The results also indicate that one’s mother tongue is a key component in student’s understanding and management of mathematics. This also benefits the student’s development of their self-esteem: mathematics taught in the student’s mother tongue helps the student to develop both their first and second language side by side.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate what cultural changes can be observed in an acquired company’s corporate culture in one unit that is integrated in the acquiring company’s routines - but not physically integrated. This research aims to contribute to the understanding of post-acquisition situations in the long-term. To fulfill this purpose, the following questions were to be answered: how do the employees at the acquired (but not physically integrated) company unit experience the corporate culture seven years after the acquisition, and how do they feel knowing their unit will be transferred to the same location as the acquirer company? Answering these questions, an exploratory qualitative case study of GEHC in Uppsala was implemented with fourteen employees interviewed at GEHC Boländerna and the unit in Fyrislund. The results revealed that the culture at the acquired unit today is partly changed and the core values are no longer prominent to the same extent, despite being deliberately maintained by the employees. There is also a partly negative attitude towards the physical integration, as the last parts of the acquired company´s culture will entirely disappear as the employees will be divided into different departments once they move to Boländerna.

This Master thesis has been made for Volvo Group Trucks Operations, Logistics Services (VGLS) in Gothenburg. Other companies within the Volvo Group and Volvo Car Corporation (VCC) have been involved during the process, including Volvo Trucks Umeå (VTU), Volvo Trucks Tuve (VTT) and Volvo Cars Body Components (VCBC) in Olofström. The thesis has examined activities within the supply chain process between three factories, VCBC – VTU – VTT. The different companies at each location serve different purposes in the supply chain, ultimately leading to a finished truck. To get a complete truck it takes different types of resources and thus an effective and well-functioning infrastructure to cope with the transportation of resources in an efficient way. VGLS is the provider of logistics services between the factories, meaning VGLS is in charge of the transportation process between the locations and take care of related transportation issues. A few years ago a project was started with the participation of VGLS with the aim to identify different types of objects better, via Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), aiming to create a more efficient supply chain. VGLS now wants to further exploit this technology as future implementation of RFID is soon ahead of them. According to the possibilities and opportunities related to RFID this thesis has critically examined activities in the supply chain process and its underlying problems, trying to create the right conditions for VGLS in order for them to better cope and utilize a near future RFID implementation. The main result of this study indicates that the problems of the transportation flow don’t derive from the physical transportation of material, but rather in the information flow between the actors. The results indicate that more emphasis should be placed on creating new ways to achieve more efficient information sharing, which in some cases can be facilitated through the use of RFID.

This work presents a new hybrid symbolic-numeric method for fast and accurate evaluation of multiple integrals, effective both in high dimensions and with high accuracy. In two dimensions, the thesis presents an adaptive two-phase algorithm for double integration of continuous functions over general regions using Frederick W. Chapman's recently developed Geddes series expansions to approximate the integrand. These results are extended to higher dimensions using a novel Deconstruction/Approximation/Reconstruction Technique (DART), which facilitates the dimensional reduction of families of integrands with special structure over hyperrectangular regions. The thesis describes a Maple implementation of these new methods and presents empirical results and conclusions from extensive testing. Various alternatives for implementation are discussed, and the new methods are compared with existing numerical and symbolic methods for multiple integration. The thesis concludes that for some frequently encountered families of integrands, DART breaks the curse of dimensionality that afflicts numerical integration.

Business Administration, Business Process & Supply Chain Management, Degree Project (Master), 30 higher education credits, 5FE02E, Spring 2012   Authors: Kateryna Zubova and Olga Arikainen   Tutor: Åsa Gustavsson Title: Procurement Process Integration in Swedish and Ukrainian Companies Producing Machinery and Equipment Background: Although the science of economics and logistics comprises a great amount of literature on supply chain integration, there is a lack of information on procurement process integration. Procurement process is one the supply chain processes and is one of the most important processes for manufacturing companies. Purpose: To describe the level of procurement process integration (PPI), tools of PPI and barriers to PPI from buyers’ perspective in Swedish and Ukrainian companies producing machinery and equipment, and then to test if there is a significant difference in them between respondents of two countries. Method: Web-based questionnaire was created and sent out to 500 companies producing machinery and equipment in Sweden and to 500 companies in Ukraine.  73 responses were received from Swedish companies and 49 responses from Ukrainian companies. T-test was performed in order to test the differences in procurement process integration between Swedish and Ukrainian companies in terms of levels of integration, tools of integration and barriers to integration. Results, conclusions: There is no significant difference in the level of integration between Swedish and Ukrainian companies. In both countries the average level of integration is medium that means long-term relationships which are reviewed periodically. However, significant differences were found in the tools and barriers to procurement process integration between Swedish and Ukrainian companies.

The aim of this study is to describe and analyse the cooperation between the public employment service and the refugee reception in a medium-sized municipality in southern Sweden on basis of the establishment reform. The study examines how the collaborative process is regarded when it comes to implementation of the reform, and when it comes to the directives and resource allocation between the employment services and the refugee reception. The study also focuses on the deficiencies and the benefits that can be discerned with the establishment reform at local level. A qualitative data collection method has been used. It is semi-structured interviews with workers from the public employment service and the refugee reception. Information materials and evaluations that various authorities have made have also been investigated. The study concludes that it is important that the directives are clarified and that a new local and regional agreement will be established on paper. The study also concludes that because of the strong working line policy and the national workfare regime more responsibility is focused on the individual. This can discourage the establishment and integration process of the newly arrived when the concept of inclusion comes to be regarded as synonymous with employability.

This work presents a new hybrid symbolic-numeric method for fast and accurate evaluation of multiple integrals, effective both in high dimensions and with high accuracy. In two dimensions, the thesis presents an adaptive two-phase algorithm for double integration of continuous functions over general regions using Frederick W. Chapman's recently developed Geddes series expansions to approximate the integrand. These results are extended to higher dimensions using a novel Deconstruction/Approximation/Reconstruction Technique (DART), which facilitates the dimensional reduction of families of integrands with special structure over hyperrectangular regions. The thesis describes a Maple implementation of these new methods and presents empirical results and conclusions from extensive testing. Various alternatives for implementation are discussed, and the new methods are compared with existing numerical and symbolic methods for multiple integration. The thesis concludes that for some frequently encountered families of integrands, DART breaks the curse of dimensionality that afflicts numerical integration.

This report highlights the complexity of engaging in a post-acquisition integration process of a relatively large knowledge-intensive firm. Findings from a case study is analyzed in relation to previous theory, resulting in four propositions aiming at creating a foundation for further theory development, as well as increased understanding among practitioners in relation to the emphasized problem. It is argued by the authors that increased relative acquisition size of knowledge-intensive firms will: 1) increase demand for a centralized organizational structure, 2) decrease benefits of introducing a new top management, 3) decrease communicative attention towards lower levels, and 4) decrease attention towards subcultures. These factors will ultimately increase the risk for integration failure.