Fire is a natural ecological process in the boreal forest, but also a threat to human lives, properties and other values at risk. The challenge is to find a way to manage fire where both the positive and negative aspects of fire are effectively balanced. This is especially important since more frequent and intense wildfires are predicted in the future due to climate change. There is also a need for increased cooperation across jurisdictions to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of Canadian fire management. To address the current and future challenges of fire management, this thesis argues that an effective and adaptive governance approach is needed.<p> The purpose of the study was to develop principles, criteria and indicators of adaptive governance and to apply this framework to fire management planning in Prince Albert National Park (PANP), Saskatchewan. Because of the need to include other agencies with fire responsibilities, the study also focused on the interagency cooperation with Saskatchewan Environment (SE), the provincial ministry responsible for wildfires.<p> Principles, criteria and indicators of adaptive governance were identified based on literature on good governance, adaptive management, adaptive governance, and wildfire specific literature. A qualitative research approach was then used to collect data mainly through semi-structured interviews with representatives from Parks Canada (both from PANP and at the national level) and SE, and document analysis of fire plans and strategies.<p> This study shows that many aspects of adaptive governance have already been implemented in PANP, so that principles and criteria of inclusiveness, legitimacy, foresight, leadership, and many aspects of performance-oriented and adaptiveness have been at least partially met. Yet, there is a need to improve information-sharing and communication, especially across jurisdictions. In terms of the interagency cooperation between PANP and SE, having different mandates is the biggest challenge, but it does not prevent cooperation. Throughout the years both agencies have worked out ways to deal with differences in their mandate and fire management strategies. Having a dialogue to try to understand each other�s mandate and respect each other has been and continues to be a key factor in the cooperation. Finally, maintaining and retaining social capital may be crucial to future success in fire management planning, both from an intra- and from an interagency perspective.

Guanxi plays an important role in Chinese entrepreneurial networking activities, especially for micro entrepreneurial firms in China. Due to limited information and resources available to micro firms, micro firms are more dependent on entrepreneurs’ guanxi networks to get access to the necessary resources. Previous literatures have particularly discussed the impacts of guanxi networks for foreigners successfully doing business in China. Nevertheless, there are scant literatures that study on the role of the guanxi in Chinese entrepreneurship. The purpose of this study is to provide a better understanding of the role of guanxi in Chinese entrepreneurship. This study employs the relevant guanxi concepts, Western social capital theory, and network-based entrepreneurship as the main conceptual framework to examine how Chinese entrepreneurs utilize their guanxi networks during the development of micro firms. Furthermore, this study is based on ten case studies in China. Empirical Data are collected from semi-structured interviews with ten Chinese entrepreneurs in micro firms. The results show that guanxi networks are highly important for Chinese entrepreneurs to develop their business. Firstly, Chinese entrepreneurs make use of different guanxi governance mechanisms--qinqing, renqing and jiaoqing to acquire different information and resources for the development of their firms. The obtained information and resources constitute the social capital, which can be used to complement insufficient capital within the firms. Secondly, Chinese entrepreneurs intentionally enlarge their guanxi network size to obtain more resources. Moreover, Chinese entrepreneurs benefit from strong guanxi ties and closure network structures to obtain the cohesive social capital. While Chinese entrepreneurs gain greater benefits from weak guanxi ties and spare network structures for acquiring additional information, resources and business opportunities. Thirdly, guanxi-networking activities are different from Western social networking activities, as guanxi-networking activities put more emphasize on keeping harmony and mutual reciprocity. Furthermore, Chinese entrepreneurs are proactive to build and maintain guanxi networks through various approaches for their business development. Lastly, even though guanxi networks play important roles in the development of micro entrepreneurial firms, they cannot be sustainable competitive advantage in the long term. Indeed, the core competences such as high quality of products and services, advanced technologies and marketing channels could be sustainable competitive advantages for the entrepreneurial firms in today’s increasingly fierce competitive market.

This thesis explores the effects of return migration on development through the case of returnees from Sweden to Bosnia and Herzegovina. Based on thirteen in-depth interviews and observation, it examines returnees’ ‘social remittances’, which consist of ideas, practices, and social capital (or social connections) that migrants bring to their countries of origin. The thesis adopts a transnational perspective highlighting returnees’ simultaneous connections in their host and home countries. It identifies various types of social remittance transfers such as ideas and practices in the areas of health, the environment and work, as well as social connections with investors, business partners, and political and academic actors in Sweden. One major finding is that returnees’ knowledge of the Swedish language, the market, work and business culture contribute to building trust with actors in Sweden, which facilitates trade and investment between the countries. The thesis also highlights a number of economic, political and personal constraints faced by returnees in their return process which, in turn, affect their capacity to transfer social remittances. It concludes that returnees can potentially contribute to development, but their contributions are largely conditioned by the existing social, economic, legal and political environment.

The rate of economic growth varies extensively between different countries. The underlying reasons to the differences are dissimilarities in productivity and efficiency, which in turn seem to be affected by factors such as the institutional setup, the rate of economic freedom, the level of human and social capital, corruption and interpersonal trust.This thesis investigates the relationship between economic growth and the level of democracy in developing countries, as a well-functioning democracy to a large extent corresponds to an inclusive institutional setup. The empirical investigation is conducted with a regression analysis. Using secondary data from acknowledged organizations and institutes, possible factors that may affect average GDP per capita growth are examined. The estimations included in the regression are democracy, foreign direct investment, education expectancy, initial GDP per capita, population growth rate, life expectancy, corruption, Rule of Law and Internet users. The empirical result shows that democracy has no significant effect on growth, but suggests that the effect might be indirect since factors such as good maintenance of Rule of Law, low level of corruption, high interpersonal trust, a high level of economic freedom and enhanced property rights are empirically proven to correspond to well functioning institutions. This result is in accordance with previous research and seems to support the idea that a good institutional setup is important for economic growth.

Syftet med denna kvalitativa intervjustudie var att med hjälp av sociologiska teorier undersöka orsakerna till att maskrosbarn trots en destruktiv uppväxtmiljö kan utvecklas till socialt fungerande människor. Maskrosbarnen i denna studie har vuxit upp med missbruk och/eller psykisk sjukdom hos föräldrar i barndomen. Data samlades in via semistrukturerade intervjuer med fyra olika teman: det sociala arvet, skola och arbete, socialt nätverk samt hälsa och välmående. Vilket vi sedan analyserade med hjälp av de teoretiska tolkningsramarna, Antonovskys teori KASAM och Bourdieus teori om Klassreproduktion. Resultaten visade att förekomsten av trygghetspersoner i barndomen samt möjligheten att uppleva en annan familjedynamik och miljö än deras egen hemmiljö har påverkat dem positivt. Även deras avhållsamma inställning till alkohol och droger samt deras starka ansvarskänsla har påverkat deras totala sociala kapital positivt. / The purpose of this qualitative interview study was to research with the help of sociological theories the reasons why resilient children despite a destructive childhood can evolve to social functioning humans. Resilient children in this study have grown up with addiction and/or mental illness among parents in childhood. Data was collected by semi structured interviews with four different themes: the social heritage, education and work, social network and health and well-being. Which we analyzed with the help of the theoreticalframeworks, Antonovskys theory Salutogenesis and Bourdieus Reproduction theory. The results showed that the presence of safety figures in childhood as well as the opportunity to experience a different family dynamic and another environment than their own home environment has affected them positively. Even their abstinence approach to alcohol and drugs, and that they have a strong sense of responsibility has affected their overall social capital positively.

Sweden currently has no legislated regulation of lobbying, but the professional lobbyist can voluntarily subscribe to, among others, the professional code of standars created by the trade association of Public Relations, Precis. There is an ongoing discussion in Sweden to regulate lobbying, both in mass media and in politics. This study examines this debate and focus on which arguments there are for and against lobbying regulation in Sweden. It also attempts to identify the differences, if there are any, between left and rights parties with regards to their views on regulation of lobbying. Tha main method used was document analysis of parliamentary bills which have been raised concerning a lobbying regulation in Sweden. In the theory section, I include four different types of requirements placed on democratic lobbying (se for example Jaatinen 1998, Kitchen 1999, Larsson 2005, Möller 2009 and Naurin 2001). The research showed the need for transparency to be the most prominent, followed by requirement of equal acces to diffrent social groups to lobby. The document analysis focus on the arguments that are given to regulate lobbying in Sweden. The arguments for regulating lobbying presented of the parliamentary bills include measures taken to prevent covert lobbying, to create more equal opportunities to lobby, to that the kind of self-regulation practiced by the proffesional lobbyists by Precis proffesional standars has shortcomings, to that the PR industry will expand and that lobbying is at least commom in Sweden as in other parlaments. Therefore, there is a need to review how other countries have regulated lobbying. The study shows that among the parliamentary bills, The European Parliament regulatory system is the largest role model of other parliaments regulating lobbying. Furtheremore it shows that a registration system is the type of regulation advocated by the most of the politicians behind the researched parliamentary bills. The counter-arguments to a lobbyng regulation in Sweden, identified trough the document analysis and interviews in this study, are that ethics and morality of the individual are more important than rules and laws and a skepticism that a registration system can record people's lifes, which from a democratic point of view is not desirable. Other counter-arguments are that the community allready has so many rules and laws and that a regulatory system can discriminate less economically affluent groups in society. The study has shown that one can devise some differences between left- and right-wing views concerning policies for regulating lobbying in Sweden. This because no parliamentary bills has brought on a lobbying regulation by any of the so- called red parties and the majority of the bills are raised by politicians from the right-wing Moderate Party. One can also see diffrences in the arguments of regulating lobbying by politicians. The bourgeous side seems tho think that the most important requirement of lobbying from a democratic perspective is transparency while the Swedish Green Party is focusing on the lack of equal access between different social groups to lobby.

Aim: The first customer is important because that it’s in many cases the only objective evidence that your product or service works in real life and that someone is willing to pay for it. The first customer is your first reference.   The aim of this study is to: Investigate how 7 start-up companies in the ICT-business developed reference. Establishing recommendations on what to focus on when creating reference customers. Present complementary recommendations for start-up companies regarding important factors, besides those investigated against the theory, which have been discovered to be important when building a successful company.   Method: The method in this study is a combination of a case study and cross-sectional study with qualitative data. The questions in the interviews were predefined and complemented with open ended questions according to the answers on the pre-defined questions. The data collected, the answers, were written down, summarized and analyzed regarding whether they did or did not support the theoretical statements investigated. A theoretical statement could be supported or not supported, partially or strongly   Result &amp; Conclusions: The access to a professional network and good social skills are most important when establishing the first reference. Business skills can be developed during the process but the recommendation is to acquire or secure them as soon as possible. How to achieve the desired states has also been concluded.   Suggestions for future research: The largest limitation is the sample size of the data. Less than 10 companies were interviewed and some of the suggested statements can’t be significantly either confirmed or deferred. The study was also limited to one round of interviews. A study, with two rounds of interviews and a larger set of companies interviewed is suggested for further research. An extended study could also cover companies that didn’t survive the IT crash of 2000 and investigate if the suggested parameters and strategies were present and deployed or implemented.       Contribution of the thesis: The investigation has verified the importance of networks, customer type (brand name) and social capital when establishing a reference. It has also showed that the skills needed to develop a business doesn’t need to be present when company is established since it can be acquired and secured during the development of the first reference. It has also contributed with a set of recommendation for entrepreneurs in general not only regarding the establishment of reference customers where the most important recommendation is to build and maintain the personal and professional networks.

Previous entrepreneurship research has shown that networks are of great importance when discovering and exploiting business opportunities, i.e. in the start up process of new venture (e.g. Davidsson and Honig 2003; Evald, Klyver, and Svendsen 2006; Klyver, Hindle, and Meyer forthcoming). The value of a network is referred to as social capital, which refers to the amount of resources, both tangible and intangible, that an entrepreneur or entrepreneuse might have access to through the members of their network (Nahapiet and Ghoshal 1998). Social capital is the product of social interactions (Anderson et al. 2007), implying that a person’s social abilities, i.e. social competence, can influence the creation of social capital (Baron and Markman 2000, 2003). Social capital the factor that helps the entrepreneur “get through the door”, while the entrepreneur’s social abilities determine the outcome of that interaction (Baron and Markman 2000:107). The focus of this study is, thus, to explore whether entrepreneurs and entrepreneuses utilize different types of the social capital in the process of starting a new venture and whether they perceive social competence to have an influential role in this process. The theoretical framework consist of three main theoretical areas; social capital, social competence, and psychological gender. The first part is based on Nahapiet and Ghoshal’s (1998) model of social capital and describes theories explaining factors influence social capital embedded within a person’s network relationships. The second part covers social competence and the abilities that constitute this concept. Further, five dimensions are identified as comprising social competence, i.e. social astuteness, interpersonal influence, networking ability, apparent sincerity, and social manipulation (Baron and Markman 2000, 2003; Hoehn-Weiss et al. 2004; Ferris et al. 2005, 2007; Riggio 1986). The last part discusses whether there might exist differences between entrepreneurs and entrepreneuses regarding their behaviours and their psychological gender (Bem 1974, 1975, 1977; Spence et al. 1975). The research design show similarities with both an inductive and a deductive approach, with a focus on the induction since little research within the entrepreneurship field has combined the different topics comprising the scope of this study. Further, this implies qualitative research methods and the empirical data was collect through conducting 14 semi structured interviews with entrepreneurs and entrepreneuses as well as through a questionnaire aiming at determine the respondents’ psychological gender. The results of the present study indicate that entrepreneurs and entrepreneuses utilize different the types of social capital in the stages of the start up phase. Further, the study show that social competence plays and important role in the start up process and that there is a circular relation between social capital and social competence. Moreover, the results of the study indicate that male and female entrepreneurs behave differently in the start up phase and that their perceptions about and usage of their social competence might differ.

The aim of this study was to investigate how four families in the Stockholm area reason, what kind of preconception they have and what their horizon of expectations is when they make the choice between sending their children to the profile class of municipal/free schools and sending them to the general classes in those schools. The main research questions asked were: What kind of preconception do the parents have about profile classes? What reasons do the interviewed parents have to send their children to a profile class? What are the interviewed parent’s expectations of the profile class choice? The study is built on qualitative interviews with the parents of the families. The empirical data has been analyzed using a framework of theories drawing on the theory of reproduction, the forms of social capital, the ideas created from the word profile and elite and the horizon of expectations. The results show that the parents of the families have a similar degree of preconception about profile classes. They presumed they were better than the general classes and had better teachers. The reasons they voice about the choice of classes are that they would like the children to have better way of life than themselves and that profile classes improve and nurture further studies through discipline and concentration improving assignments and activities. Their expectations were better conditions for further studies, reaching a higher social status through acquiring better tools and a better technique of studying.

This study deals with immigrants’ political participation in Sweden and the Netherlands. Scholars have recognized low level of political participation of immigrants in Sweden compared to the Netherlands. The main goal of this study is to analyze the institutional influence, mainly from political parties over immigrants’ motivation for active electoral participation. The modified actor-context model uses here as the main theoretical framework. In addition, social capital theory employs to analyze immigrants’ voluntary organizational membership. This study confirms that, Swedish immigrants have the lower participation rate in the political sphere, at lest to a certain extent, than its counterparts the Dutch immigrants. This study also confirms the argument that contextual factors can influence actor’s motivations in integration-oriented action, and similarly it validates the necessity of enlargement of the actor-context model.