Abstract: The aim of this study has been to investigate (theoretically as well as empirically) the problematic notions of state neutrality and political perfectionism and, in particular, the potentially vast continuum existing between these concepts both in theory and in actual political practice. In order to accomplish this, a conceptual analysis has examined (some of) the arguments for and against state neutrality and political perfectionism, different aspects of neutralism and perfectionism as well as the exact definition of the concepts of “neutrality of justification” and “conceptions of the good”. Using a specific (though not entirely uncontested) definition of these concepts, an empirical analysis was made of Swedish parliamentary parties and their cultural policies. The empirical part of the study seemed to confirm one of the basic premises of this study; that state neutrality and perfectionism are often (as has indeed been recognized by critics of state neutrality) intertwined in the business of everyday politics.

In this thesis, the“NewModerates” communications strategy used by The Moderate Party and the representation of social practices and social conditions by Alliance for Sweden-coalition in the 2006 and 2010 Swedish election campaigns are analyzed.The campaigns are placed in the context of current research on modern political communication and analyzed through Fairclough´s Critical Discourse Analysis framework.The results indicate that The Moderate Party wanted to encourage voters to reassess their opinion of the party through the “NewModerates”-strategy, by indicating considerable changes in their policies.Official guidelines for which discursive and social practices should be utilized in party communication to achieve these goals were issued.The Moderate Party positioned themselves against The Social Democratic Party, partially by referring to themselves as the “new worker’s party” of Sweden.

Knowledge and technology has in recent decades become a driving force of economic growth and national productivity (Goldfarb & Henrekson, 2003). This recognition has had an impact of the universities’ core mission. Traditionally, the core mission of uni-versities has been teaching and researching, but nowadays the universities are also ex-pected to take on an active role in commercialization of the research result as a part of their mission. The Swedish government invests heavily in R&D and perceives the in-vestment as vital for the innovation system. However, the high investment have caused a lot of controversy and debates due to the perception of low innovation output in rela-tion to the investment, a phenomenon which is generally known as “The Swedish para-dox”. The Swedish paradox is influenced by several factors, one of them is that the high expenditures in university R&D generates poor outcome in relation to the investments (Henrekson & Rosenberg, 2001; Goldfarb and Henrekson, 2003). The purpose of this thesis was to explore how Swedish universities’ influence the Swedish paradox through their commercialization activities and support structures. Commercialization activities refer to the various activities which universities may choose in order to commercialize its research, including patenting, licensing, spin-offs and human capital activities. The support structure refers to the structure which the universities use to facilitate commer-cialization. In order to fulfill the purpose a multiple case-study approach was chosen in which semi-structured interviews were conducted. The chosen universities in the study were Halmstad University, Jönköping University, Linnaeus University and Lund Uni-versity. The underlying reason for the chosen approach was that the material needed to answer the purpose was to be found in a qualitative approach. The main finding of the study is that there exists insufficiencies in university commer-cialization activities and support structures which may explain why research results tend to remain at the universities, hence influencing the Swedish paradox. The results gave indications of; the tendency of too complex commercialization systems, lack of encour-agement of researchers’ involvement in commercialization, the modest use of collabora-tive agreements for collective efforts in commercialization and low prioritizing of li-censing and patenting, and finally, the necessity of a culture which advocates commer-cialization and senior management support who places commercialization as a central issue. This study leverages an insight into universities commercialization and its influ-ence on the Swedish paradox, the result of this study is valuable for both universities, in order to improve their commercialization performance and for the region and nation for a possibility to increase the output of university commercialization.

The focus of this paper is on university webpages and the translation of these. With the help of existing translation strategies, it aims to map out the strategies used in Swedish web pages in English with a focus on names and words/expressions for which there are no direct equivalents in English. The study shows that the most common strategies regarding the translation of names were translating word for word and using the nearest equivalent. Regarding language-specific expressions, the most common strategies were using cultural equivalents and reduction. Not surprisingly, additions in the text were most often matters of importance to an international audience, and the most common omissions were matters that only had a local interest.

This paper examines the efficiency of the Swedish stock market, by testing if it is possible to create an excess return by the use of technical trading rules. According to the efficient market hypothesis and the random walk theory, in an efficient market it is not possible to predict the future stock prices by analyzing historical stock prices. The profitability of tech-nical analysis and technical trading rules has been researched and debated extensively, but economists have yet to reach a consensus. Because of this we find it useful to continue to study technical trading rules, and in our case we will focus exclusively on the Swedish stock market. We have done this by applying the trading technique moving average on the Swe-dish stock exchange. We have used the OMX Stockholm 30 Index, OMXS30, the 30 most traded stocks on the Stockholm stock exchange. From Nasdaq OMX we have obtained the daily closing prices from 1986-09-30 - 2012-01-27. Our test shows support for technical trading rules. The best performing moving average is the (1,50,0), which substantially beats the buy-and-hold strategy while being statistically confident to 99%. We have also tested our data set for a unit root, if a unit root exists it implies that the data set is following a random walk. We cannot reject that there is a unit root with α = 0.10 in our data set, alt-hough it would be rejected with α = 0.11. Our result forces us to reject that the Swedish stock market is efficient which is consistent with previous research made one the Swedish stock market.

The organic food market in Sweden has grown continuously in the last decades. This led many retailers and small stores to start selling organic food as well as extending their organic food assortment and variety extensively. In this thesis our purpose was to analyse the Swedish organic food market in terms of competition and business level strategy. The two main players in the market (ICA and Coop) were chosen to be analysed in more detail as well as a local store (Bikupan). The results of the local store were generalized for other small and local stores in Sweden. This was done to get a better picture of the market and about how the companies in the Swedish organic food market compete with each other. Our data was collected by doing three semi-structured interviews, two with Coop and one with Bikupan. Furthermore, we sent out one questionnaire to ICA. In the case of Coop, we interviewed the manager for sustainable development and one specific Coop store due its interesting concept “Green Room” where almost only organic food is sold. The answers were then linked with our general findings about the market as well as our theoretical framework and the following findings were made: ICA and Coop are the main competitors followed by Axfood there are not many differences between ICA and Coop competition is to some extent based on price increasing pressure on small, local stores due to the main players’ ever increasing market coverage ICA is closest to be the cost-leader, whereas Coop is somewhat more focusing on differentiation. Small, local stores are truly differentiated compared to Coop and ICA.

This paper examines if European integration has had an impact on national political parties by looking at the stances of the Swedish Green Party and the Left Party on the issue of the European Community and the European Union over time. With the development of the European Community and the European Union, national political parties face the challenge of an emerging political arena. European integration research has recently become more involved with what is called europeanization and political integration within the member states them self, this paper aims to provide further leverage to the thesis that national political actors undergo some degree of europeanization and are politically integrated in the EU, by examining manifestos of two historically eurosceptic Swedish political parties. The theoretical framework provided by neo-functional integration theory as well as europeanization is used to examine the empirical material in order to see if the political parties at the focal point of this study can be said to have undergone a change in political policy regarding the EC and EU, both in quantity and content. The analysis show that indeed both parties has undergone a change and what might be considered a europeanization, considering that the presence of the EU as a political issue seem to have risen in prominence and importance in the examined manifestos. The parties also show tendencies towards viewing the EU as an arena in which political goals can be achieved for specific issues.

The paper deals with the issue of the export problems of Latvian food producers to Sweden. Theory on trading houses and the problems and obstacles that Latvian food producers have in exporting to Sweden are analyzed. Subsequently, the attitude of the Swedish gatekeepers towards the country of origin is studied. By validating Peng and Ilinich propositions in this context, paper contributes to the theory of trading houses as a way of overcoming trading obstacles in exporting.

Title: Different countries – different cultures Level: Thesis for Bachelor Degree in Business Administration Authors: Cecilia Jensen and Changiz Saadat Behesthi Supervisor: Lars Ekstrand Date: 2011 – 12  Our study is based on two countries, Sweden and Germany, and is aiming to find out if the cultural differences between the two countries have a major impact when doing business together or not.Cross-cultural management is a modern topic and can help transnational companies deal with problems that occur due to different cultures in the organization, but is it really necessary to spend huge amount on intercultural training? We used a qualitative method and did a survey through a convenience sampling among six managers in the two countries. We analyzed the answers sorted by country and then compared them to each other. The result of the survey was that Swedish managers inform and include their staff in decisions to a bigger extend than German managers. Other than the preferences of a more democratic leadership the differences were, according to us, insignificant to perform any cultural training between the two countries. For further studies we suggest a deeper research method with a field study at every workplace, to conclude that the manager’s answers concurred to the actual outcome. We also think that interviewing more managers, and within the same branch, would increase the creditability of the study. The result indicates that the money spent on intercultural training between Sweden and Germany is quite unnecessary and that the differences are smoothing out.

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