This thesis treats the phenomenon of Singing Experience. Its purpose is to reveal the content that constitutes the phenomenon of singing from the sing- ers’ point of view. Singing should be understood as a unique vocal expres- sion carried by tones in a form that is sonorous, alive and fluid. The singing is in the context of singing with others. In order to perform a study that aims to reveal content within a phenomenon, the study uses a phenomenological approach from a first-person perspective, which is also my own perspective as the singer as well as the researcher. The interest in the field has arisen from the experience of singing with people who do not seem to notice that they sing out of tune. This has led to the thoughts that the phenomenon of singing includes different contents for different people in different situations. The phenomenological methods provide cogitations to stretch the particular situated momentary experience into the sphere of the possible experience. In the thesis the result of this eidetic study is described with its general essence a “musical vocal confirmation of my existence in the world” as well as a description of the constitution of the phenomenon of singing. The descrip- tion of the phenomenon is a description of the essences of the lived-body, as well as the immanence of emotion and cogito. The description also includes the surrounding world, which harbours the dimension of the real as well as inter-subjective transcendence concerning time and space, humanity, music and the divine. All of the essences have shown to be essential essences of the experience of singing. This, however, is dependent on how the phenomenon of existence is regarded: to exist in a wide or a narrow sense, including or excluding the transcendent aspects of the phenomenon of singing.

Background: Inter-organisational ways of working have become more and more common during the last decades. In order to attain efficiency and productivity, such inter-organisational relationships need to be governed and controlled. However, studies have shown that inadequate control is one of the main reasons for why inter-organisational relationships fail. One of the means that can be used for governing and controlling a business is management control. The use of management control in inter-organisational contexts is a quite unexplored area of research at the present time, which might seem somewhat surprising considering the fact that inadequate control is a common explanation for why inter-organisational relationships fail. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to describe management control in horizontal inter-organisational relationships, as well as to analyse the design of inter-organisational management control systems, using relation specific characteristics as a starting point. Delimitation: The possible influence that trust might have on inter- organisational management control will not be discussed in this thesis. Realisation: A case study of a network consisting of three companies that jointly develop a fuel cell air supply system for vehicle applications. The empirical data was gathered through visits at each of the three companies, including an interview with each company’s general manager. Conclusions: The character of inter-organisational relationships can change over time, which might make it necessary to change inter-organisational management control systems. Some aspects that should be kept in mind when designing an inter-organisational management control system are: the match between the relationship and the control system, the openness within the relationship, the balance between control and commitment, as well as the trade- off between the costs and the benefits of a certain system. The possible effect that external factors might have on inter-organisational management control is yet another aspect that should be considered.

Intercultural negotiations are playing an increasing role in the globalisation nowadays. Business negotiators are now facing negotiations in which they have to meet people from all over the world because of the development of different market places. Sweden is particular case of this internationalization. Swedish negotiators have to use their skills with new collaborators. Their particularities are of relevance for any international negotiator who will have to negotiate with them.

Bakgrund: Traditionellt sett har man i projektlitteraturen betraktat projektet som fenomen som en unik engångsföreteelse som aldrig kommer att upprepas. Enligt ett sådant resonemang skulle möjligheterna till lärande mellan projekt vara kraftigt begränsade, om ens existerande. Denna syn på projekt har dock kommit att förändras, varvid ett lärande mellan projekt inte bara skulle vara möjligt utan även kunna ses som en förutsättning för överlevnad på en alltmer konkurrensutsatt marknad eftersom projekten bland annat lägger grund för konkurrensfördelar. Syfte: Syftet med denna undersökning är att beskriva vad man kan lära sig mellan projekt, samt att komma med förslag på hur man kan arbeta för att främja lärande mellan dem. Genomförande: Undersökningen genomfördes i form av en fallstudie och den empiriska informationen samlades in genom tre intervjuer på lika många företag som arbetar med utvecklingsprojekt inom elektronik- och telekombranschen. Resultat: Vi har identifierat fem områden inom projektverksamhet som vi bedömer som centrala samt tack vare deras generella karaktär möjliga att lära sig inom och sedan applicera lärdomarna på andra projekt.. Eftersom utvecklingsprojekt på grund av deras höga unicitet bör vara de projekt som är svårast att lära sig mellan, bör våra slutsatser och den modell för utvärdering vi utvecklar även gälla för andra typer av projekt.

The aim is to study representation of order and otherness in the late 1930's Swedish press. That is, who are envisioned as "us" and who are the "Others"? The theoretical frame is based on Foucault’s concepts of pastoral power, the reason of state and biopolitics. The Good Shepherd is an excellent metaphor for the Nordic-style welfare state and the Foucauldian approach fits well with the social Darwinist and race biological metaphors of the time. Furthermore, news, myths and law articulate public morality and belong to disciplining, naturalizing and normalizing discourses. The symbolic boundaries between “We” and “Them” are outlined and modes of thinking, acceptable ways of behavior, and possible solutions for existing problems are provided. The material examined consists of four Stockholm-based newspapers Dagens Nyheter, Stockholms-Tidningen, Svenska Dagbladet and Social-Demokraten. The years studied are 1935 and 1938. The quantitative content analysis is based on a selection of four months from each year. The articles are coded according to a theme and the characteristics of the actors. Gripsrud’s version of Propp’s actant model is used to examine the narrative structure of the stories. Linguistic tools, such as ideational and interpersonal functions, are used to analyze the individual texts. The groups depicted as deviant include religious sects, ethnic minorities, foreigners, criminals and political activists on the extreme right and extreme left. A number of articles discuss various social problems in more general terms. Quantitatively more than eighty percent of the material consists of crime news. Approximately five percent of the articles are about ethnic minorities and foreigners. Religious sects and political extremists constitute about one percent each and roughly ten percent of the material is about social problems.

Temporary Work Agencies (TWAs) are an example of a trend towards flexibility in the labour market. By hiring staff from TWAs organisations can keep their staff numbers down. This however, refers to the client companies´ use or temps, and omits the intermediary, the TWA, which also needs various flexibility strategies in its activities. The main purpose of this thesis is to study the organising of TWAs supply of manpower to different clients companies, and how managers and temps experience their terms of employment, working conditions and relationships with regular employees at the client companies. Two qualitative case studies were conducted. In study one, interviews have been carried out with managers and temps in a TWA and a client company in Jämtland. In the second study, managers and temps in an international TWA in Sweden were interviewed. The results show that both managers and temps work under complex conditions and demands on flexibility. The managers shall, by flexible prioritising, satisfy demands from the TWA on profitability, demands from client companies´ for an adaptable workforce and temps need of employment and community. The results also indicate that temps have to balance between a position as stranger and outsider, and handle insecurity of the assignments duration and spatial location. They have to be able to manoeuvre between the power inequalities, stigmatisation and exclusion they encounter in working conditions and social interactions in client companies. To handle such situations the ideal temp and manager have to be able to vary between distance and nearness in spatiality and indifference and involvement in social relations.

Background International transfer pricing has been a highlighted issue during the last decades as country after country has revised and introduced new transfer pricing laws as a respond to the expanded globalization. Several countries are adopting similar approaches and the prime guiding principles are provided by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation (OECD). The international law as well as the laws of all 30 member countries is based on the OECD Guidelines. Purpose The purpose of this master’s thesis is to describe differences and similarities regarding the transfer pricing regulations in China and Sweden and to explain how a Swedish multinational enterprise (MNE) have to utilize and adjust their transfer pricing strategy when trading with group companies in China. The results then conclude into a step model for strategic transfer pricing. Result The differences between the regulations are mainly uncovered in the definition of associated parties and associated interest. The differences in the regulations are thus of minor importance and does not affect a Swedish MNE to any major extent. The challenging area is instead the conflict between the tax authority and the customs service. To enable this study, three Swedish MNEs are used as a case study. We discovered that all had very different transfer pricing strategies even though they are within the same industry and two of them even within same range of products. Out of this we made the conclusion that the strategy chosen is not just depending on what product or service you trade with but also the aim and purpose, the range of products and the structure of the company. International transfer pricing is a very complex issue that goes into nearly all business operations. The concept of transfer pricing can thus be broken down and simplified if the demands from the company is minor.

Recently, many identity-based two-party and three-party key agreement schemes were proposed based on pairing cryptosystems. Multi-party (including more than three parties) key agreement protocols, which are called conference key schemes, can be applied to distributed systems and wireless environments such as Ad hoc networks. However, it is not easy to extend two or three-party schemes to multi-party ones with the guarantee of efficiency and security. In addition to the above two properties, inter-domain environments should also be considered in identity-based key agreement systems. However, only few identity-based multi-party conference key agreement schemes in single domain were proposed in the literature and they did not satisfy all of the security attributes such as forward secrecy and withstanding impersonation. In this thesis, we will propose a novel efficient single-domain identity-based multi-party conference key scheme and extend it to an inter-domain version. Finally, we will prove that the proposed schemes satisfy the required security attributes via formal methods.

La technologie MIMO est une solution intéressante pour répondre à l'augmentation des débits liée au développement des services multimédia dans les systèmes de communications sans fil. Elle promet une augmentation linéaire des débits en fonction du nombre d'antennes à l'émission et à la réception en exploitant la diversité du réseau d'antennes et en tirant parti de la propagation multi-trajets. Cette technologie, déjà utilisée dans les réseaux WLAN, rencontre quelques problèmes en téléphonie<br />mobile. En effet, il n'est pas évident d'implanter plusieurs capteurs sur un terminal de taille compatible avec un téléphone mobile tout en conservant de bonnes performances. La proximité des éléments engendre des couplages provoquant des pertes de puissance émise et des déformations de diagramme.<br /><br />Cette thèse présente la conception d'une antenne à deux éléments rayonnants pour téléphone portable suivie d'une étude sur les performances des systèmes MIMO pour la téléphonie mobile dans des conditions réalistes. La conception d'un simulateur de capacité basé sur un modèle de propagation complet a permis de comparer les antennes et leurs caractéristiques en environnement cellulaire urbain dans la bande UMTS.

This thesis is dealing with the integration of Japanese and German project workers in automobile inter‐corporate research/pre‐development projects. The focus is on better understanding the respective decision making process. As cultural differences play a big role in the way that people behave an extra focus was put on investigating this. The methods chosen for this study were quantitative research in the form of a questionnaire and qualitative research in the form of an interview series. For the quantitative research, literature in the cross‐cultural field was studied and from different cultural dimensions suggested by various authors, a synthesis was derived. This was then used as the base for a questionnaire. The data both enabled a quantitative research study and supported the qualitative study. A number of questions with a more straightforward approach to decision making in projects were also a part of the questionnaire. The data was processed using the statistical software SPSS and the results were analyzed using factor analysis and ANOVA. The factor analysis of the quantitative data had only one factor which had a significant difference between the German and the Japanese sample. The dimension was called individuality reward and describes to which degree a society reward competent group behavior versus competent individual behavior. The German sample showed a strong tendency towards favoring competent individual behavior whereas the Japanese sample leaned towards favoring competent group behavior. The questionnaire questions directly linked to decision making showed no significant differences between the samples showing that individual attitudes within the German and Japanese sample varies more than the cultural differences between the two groups. This shows that you cannot expect a Japanese or German person to act in a certain way in a certain decision making situation just judging on their cultural background. In order to get a deep understanding of the decision making process a qualitative series of interviews were conducted. All interviews with Japanese and other people on location in Japan were conducted in‐person at different locations around the Tokyo area. Interviews with people situated in Europe were made over the phone. The interviews were recorded and later transcribed and interpreted to gain a thorough understanding of the decision making process. From the qualitative material several differences in how German and Japanese people work and make decisions were found. More time is put into sharing information and getting consensus before a decision in Japan than in Germany were discussions and arguing in meetings are more tolerated. The reason for this behavior in Japan is to not lose face and as well as making it possible to make a decision fast once brought up in a meeting. Germans remain more flexible to revisions after a decision has been made because of the shorter preparation phase. There is big overlap of members between different inter‐corporate research projects in the automobile industry. Japanese project members tends to be older than their German counterparts which makes them more stable as younger people might disappear from a project as they move up the corporate ladder. In Japan there is a greater emphasis put into after‐work activities compared to Germany where it is seen as beneficial but not as often used as a way to gain a personal relationship. The thesis concludes that by relatively small measures common decision making between Japanese and German project workers can become smooth and with few misunderstandings. Introductions to respective cultures as well as keeping an open mindset and non assertive attitude should help avoid some of the worst case scenarios. A kick‐off in the beginning of a project in order to build a personal relationship and trust would surely help the project come off to a good start. Setting common goals for the project and confirming data with people involved in a decision process will facilitate common consensus decision making. Also confirming decisions as simply as paraphrasing what has been said or by informal one‐on‐one discussions in a break or after a meeting can keep misunderstandings due to the language barrier to a minimum.