Depuis le 20 janvier 2002, la République du Congo s'est dotée d'une nouvelle Constitution. Ce quatrième texte fondamental depuis l'avènement de la démocratie en 1990 avait un double objectif : rompre avec le modèle constitutionnel français consacré par la Constitution de mars 1992 qui instaurait un régime semi-présidentiel et restaurer l'autorité de l'Etat affaiblie par les années de guerre civile. C’est donc finalement un régime de type présidentiel qui est mis en place. À cet égard, l'article 114 de la Constitution de 2002 déclare : « le Président de la République ne peut dissoudre l'Assemblée nationale. L’Assemblée nationale ne peut démettre le Président de la République ». Mais la comparaison avec le régime américain s'arrête là. Car le Président, au Congo, dispose d'une suprématie non conforme au principe d'équilibre des pouvoirs connu aux Etats-Unis et, surtout, n'encourt aucun risque de destitution. En définitive, le dispositif mis en place est plus proche d'une architecture des pouvoirs issue de la Constitution russe de 1993 et au présidentialisme latino-américain. Trois facteurs expliquent cette convergence : d'abord, l’objectif du texte fondamental adopté en 2002 était bien la consécration constitutionnelle de la victoire militaire de 1997. Cette réalité rapproche la Constitution congolaise de la Constitution russe adoptée à la suite de la « décommunisation » lors de la chute du Mur de Berlin. Ensuite, les constituants entendaient reproduire la culture bantoue dans le marbre juridique, en consacrant la suprématie du chef. Une telle approche est similaire à l’influence culturelle bolivar dans le présidentialisme latino-américain. Enfin, la nécessité de contenter la communauté internationale a conduit à l’adoption d’un texte fondamentalement libéral avec une pratique foncièrement autoritaire. Finalement, seule une instrumentalisation de la Communauté internationale peut expliquer le paradoxe du régime constitutionnel congolais. / Since the 20th of January 2002, the Republic of Congo has adopted a new constitution. This fourth fundamental text since the advent of democracy in 1990 has two objectives : to depart from the French constitutional model enshrined in the constitution of March 1992 which established a semi- presidential system and to restore the authority of the state that had be shaken and weakened by years of civil war. The new constitution opted for a presidential system. In this regard , Article 114 of the 2002 constitution states that " the President of the Republic may dissolve the National Assembly. The National Assembly cannot impeach the President of the Republic. " This is the only commun feature the system has with that of the United States. In the Republic of Congo, the President is not subject to the principle of checks and balances as in the case of United States and, especially, runs no risk of impeachment. In the end, the system in place is closer to the Russian architecture of powers and the Latin American presidentialism. Three factors explain this convergence : firstly, the fundamental objective of the text adopted in 2002 was indeed the constitutional enshrinement of the military victory of 1997. This reality takes the Congolese Constitution a step towards the Russian Constitution adopted after the " decommunisation " following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Then, the constituent Assembly had the intention to reproduce the Bantu culture in the legal marble, establishing the supremacy of the leader. Such an approach is similar to the bolivian cultural influence in the Latin American presidentialism. Secondly, the need to satisfy the international community led to the adoption of a fundamentally liberal text with inherent authoritarian practice. Finally, manipulation by the international community is the only plausible explanation to the paradox of the Congolese constitutional regime.

Today Sweden is facing a significant shortage of highly educated labour force, which is recognized by various companies and which can have adverse consequences on the firms as well as the country as a whole. One of the solutions to this problem is identified to be highly skilled migrants (HSMs). Thus the purpose of this thesis is to research the impact that HSMs have on Swedish companies. By carrying out a qualitative research approach, a deeper understanding of the influences of HSMs on the internationalisation and the organisational innovation is gained, while the chosen abductive method allows exploring the subject by taking into consideration the real life issue as well as the related theories at the same time. The theoretical framework aids to build a foundation for this thesis regarding the relevant theories, including the bottom-up organisational design, the brain gain, RBV theory, internationalisation models and organisational innovation processes. This helps to construct a theoretical model which presents a theoretical answer to the research questions of the thesis. Thus the theoretical model helps to analyse the empirical data gathered from the interviews with five representatives of different Swedish companies. The cross-referencing of the cases helps to find the similarities and differences of the impact of HSMs in these companies. This is followed by the conclusions based on the analysis chapter. The main theoretical implications include the findings that the market and cultural knowledge seem to be the most important assets that HSMs bring, which, together with different educational backgrounds, technological competencies and networks, aid the internationalisation of the companies that can be understood through the Network and Born Global models. Furthermore, it is found that the new perspectives of HSMs encourage the organisational innovation through the increased tacit knowledge inside the organisations. Moreover, the managerial implications include recognising of the importance of HSMs for the Swedish companies and thus seeking a more international workforce, empowering the employees and being able to exploit the resources that they bring, while at the same time managing the cultural clashes that might occur. Therefore, this thesis helps to build a foundation for viewing HSMs a solution to Sweden’s problem of the lack of highly skilled workers.

Switzerland has, despite being a rather small country, a big start-up scene which develops rapidly and puts forth many entrepreneurs. Currently, it is certain that any opportunity for competitive advantage must be exploited and emerging markets like India prove to be full of them. This research aims to investigate the cultural and institutional problems Swiss start-ups faced and how they overcame them when internationalising to India, using a qualitative research approach. Relevant theories regarding the topic were gathered and collated in a deductive manner with the empirical findings of five interviews conducted with Swiss Born Global start-ups, which internationalised either down- or upstream activities of their value chain to India. The findings show that institutional problems are largely dependent on the industry a company is working in. Cultural problems on the other hand occur in a more general manner and entrepreneurs internationalising to this market should be aware of the cultural differences to facilitate their internationalisation process. Further findings display the importance of an own network in the country and the indispensability of partners that help the companies navigate the Indian space.

The thesis is submitted under the alternative format, comprising three papers. The key theoretical contribution of the thesis can be found in each of these papers. First, the thesis explores the relationship between national and sectoral systems of innovation, and emphasises the need for governmental policies at each level to be both coordinated and complementary. Second, it offers an examination of the emerging role of universities in innovation systems, which far exceeds the traditional perspective of universities as ‘knowledge suppliers’ and the more recent notion of the ‘entrepreneurial university’. Finally, it offers insight into the strategies of foreign MNEs under the context of industry clusters. The thesis discusses the development of the Brazilian petroleum innovation system following one of the largest oil and gas discoveries in the Americas for decades. The pre-salt oil reserves were discovered in 2007 and are estimated to amount to at least the 60 billion barrels of oil in the North Sea. They are located off the south-eastern coast of Brazil in ultra-deep water (i.e. depths greater than 1500m) and are named as such because they reside under a thick layer of salt (up to two kilometres in depth). The location of the reserves adds great complexity to the challenge of their extraction. It also offers opportunities for competitive advantage to those actors within the innovation system who successfully innovate in addressing this challenge. The study draws upon an empirical investigation that included forty-two in-depth interviews, conducted in 2014 and 2015, and is supplemented by documentary analysis. These interviews were largely held with governmental agencies, public universities and petroleum-focussed enterprises (both domestic SMEs and global MNEs). Each group of actors are discussed in a different empirical paper: the efforts of governmental regulatory agencies in creating innovation in Brazil’s national petroleum industry; the evolving role of public universities in pursuit of technology transfer and academic entrepreneurship; and the R&D strategies of several global oil and gas MNEs that have taken residence in the recently-established industry cluster in Rio de Janeiro. The thesis also offers much to practitioners: guidance for the enactors of innovation policy following a large natural resource discovery; a model for universities wishing to develop a portfolio of entrepreneurial support, which has been shown to greatly support a university’s own technology transfer objectives; and direction for foreign MNEs in how to adapt to changes in industry clusters. The need for and challenge of achieving cooperation between diverse actors in an innovation system are apparent throughout the thesis. This cooperation is even more important in emerging economies such of Brazil, which often suffer from a lack of coordination between actors.

In the last decades it has been argued whether psychic distances have lost their importance on the world markets. The access to information through the internet may have reduced them and made them more understandable, but it has also increased the overall world trades leading to more diversity and therefore to more different market segments that have to be considered. This contrary statements are investigated in this master thesis and further evaluates the current importance of psychic distances in relation to the perception of the managers towards it. Therefore it gives an insight into how psychic distances affect the management of a web- based companies called Compare AG. The progress of this work mirrors this discussion along with the development process of the company. It will show how it went from a unexperienced firm, which merely copied their concept to another market expecting it to work, to a company that adapts to the foreign markets and has specialists for every country to cope with any kind of market changes illustrating both opinions on how important psychic distances still are today especially for internet-operating companies.

The topic of this thesis is "New confixes in French". This thesis is divided into two main parts: theoretical and analytical. The first part is theoretical and describes the historical development of "confixation" (learned compounding) as well as different theories and approaches to the word formation process. This part also defines "confixation" to other word formation processes (derivation and composition) and the structural component of "confixation" - a "confix". The second part is analytical and deals with specific learned stems (confixes) and learned compounding. The study material for this part of the thesis has been gained by the data excerption from the corpus Sketch Engine. The sample excerpted from the corpus is the subject of the analysis. The analysis focuses on the classic and modern confixes and their typology: classification of confixes according to the position in the learned compounding, or according to the origin, etc. The analysis also treats the morphological categories of learned compounding and their internal structure. The main focus is drawn to modern confixes that were created mostly by the change of meaning of the classic confix. This part deals with the newly created confixes in French that do not have the direct Greek or Latin base. These are mostly loanwords from English. The main aim of present thesis is to identify newly created confix compounds in comtemporary French.

This study provides a theoretical and methodological contribution to ongoing debates relating to the purpose and nature of international higher education. It does so by examining globalisation, lifelong learning and postgraduate international study through the voice of the individual student. The voice of the student is under represented in the literature and this research contributes by providing an in-depth, longitudinal study focusing on the student voice. The experiences of international postgraduate students within one English university from 2009-2014 provide the research context. Their experience is explored through a number of integrated and interactive narrative based research methods: written narratives, interview narratives and narratives as conversations in action. There is a dearth of empirical research which integrates these methods. It is not an intention of this study to make generalisation claims or to claim universal applicability. However, the findings do add to knowledge relating to internationalisation, globalisation, lifelong learning and identity construction within higher education programmes. The neoliberal economic view of motivation to become an international student is contested. This study suggests that motivation to take on a period of international study may be more complex and more heavily weighted towards passion, rather than towards an economic or employment based rationale. Participants do demonstrate many of the qualities identified for the international or globalised learner. However, international experience and international learning is largely brought about the agency of the international student, often in spite of, rather than as an outcome of their formal university programme of study. The study confirms that culture and identity are permeable and are influenced by the postgraduate student experience. However, nationality rather than being reduced is reinforced during the period of international study. The findings confirm that narrative research approaches such as those used in this research, can provide a rich learning experience for both participant and researcher. Such approaches may be of particular importance to individuals in transition stages, such as the international student.

Background -Today's international business environment has facilitated the internationalisation process for firms all around the world by the reduced barriers to international trade (Efrat and Shoham, 2012). An expansion across borders is desirable since it offers the possibility of future business activities and it can aid a company to reach superior performance (Cotae, 2013). There are numerous strategies to an internationalisation process and the decisions made by the top management demonstrates the relationship between leadership behaviour and internationalisation (Cotae, 2013; Schweizer, Vahlne and Johanson, 2010). Therefore, this study will investigate leaders in multiple firms during the various stages of the internationalisation process in order to discover both how and to what degree they influence the internationalisation within their organisations.   Purpose- The purpose of this study is to explore what types of leadership behaviour influence the internationalisation process in MNCs and to examine specifically influential types of leadership behaviours in order to analyse the relationship between the behavioural and strategic differences in MNCs throughout the internationalisation process.   Method- This study will use an exploratory approach by combining existing theoretical frameworks and empirical data. Empirical data was collected through a qualitative research method consisting of nine semi-structured interviews, then qualitative content analysis was applied. Conclusion– The results show that a medium influence through authentic leadership can be demonstrated and can also be revealed as successful based on the MNCs current international activities.

Because defence industry companies today act in a market characterized by international cooperation and export, higher demands on cultural competence and diversity is placed in the organization. Due to this, cross-cultural demands on leaders in defence industry companies increase. However, it is difficult to build the paper on previously established theory as the scenario is new for the industry. Therefore, the purpose of the survey is to through a grounded theoretical approach investigate the leadership challenges facing Swedish defence industry companies as they move towards a more international market. As a research object, SAAB was chosen. The result showed that five themes could be identified. These are motivation, change in organizational focus, diversification, communication and planning, as well as the complexity of the defence industry. A core variable was identified as fragmentation of leadership challenges in internationalization. This means that leadership issues change focus, change or in other ways are challenged when the company is on the international market. Analysis of the interviews indicate that the most pressing leadership issues with moving abroad is motivation, gender equality, trust, communication and accountability. These five parameters are all inherent in the business and are based on the way in which the business has been identified previously and the surrounding characteristics that affect the organization. / Eftersom försvarsindustriföretag idag agerar på en marknad som kännetecknas av internationellt samarbete och export ställer detta större krav på kulturell kompetens och mångfald i organisationen. Detta innebär att korskulturella kraven på ledare i försvarsindustriella företag ökar. Det är dock svårt att bygga uppsatsen på tidigare etablerad teori då detta är ett nytt scenario för branschen. Därför blir syftet med undersökningen att genom en grundad teoretisk ansats undersöka vilka ledarskapsutmaningar svenska försvarsindustriföretag står inför när de rör sig mot en mer internationell marknad. Som forskningsobjekt valdes SAAB. Detta då företaget kan ses som ett lämpligt objekt för att undersöka syftet. Resultatet visade att fem teman kunde identifieras. Dessa är motivation, förändring i organisationsfokus, diversifiering, kommunikation och planering samt försvarsindustrins komplexitet. En kärnvariabel identifierades som fragmentering av ledarskapsutmaningar vid internationalisering. Detta innebär att ledarskapsproblematik skiftar fokus från nationell till internationell marknad, förändras eller på något annat sätt utmanas när företaget globaliseras. Analyser av resultatet visar på att det den största ledarskapsproblematiken med att ha verksamhet utomlands är motivation, jämställdhet, tillit, kommunikation och resultatansvar. Dessa fem parametrar är alla inneboende i verksamheten och grundar sig i hur verksamheten sett ut tidigare samt omgivningskarakteristika som påverkar organisationen.

La reprise des opérations de rapprochements entre des groupes bancaires européens a suscité un questionnement quant aux justifications d’un mouvement vers une consolidation bancaire paneuropéenne. Cette recherche s’inscrit dans le cadre des essais d’analyse des logiques des fusions et acquisitions (F&A) bancaires paneuropéennes en examinant la pertinence des arguments de l’analyse traditionnelle de ce processus. Dans une perspective de renouvellement des concepts d’analyse de ces stratégies bancaires, les sources classiques de création de valeur sont remises en cause, particulièrement, dans le cas des fusions et des acquisitions bancaires paneuropéennes. Cette critique est au cœur de notre problématique. Nous cherchons, dès lors, à mieux appréhender la logique des fusions bancaires transfrontalières dans l’UE en prenant en considération les spécificités de ces opérations et l’évolution du cadre conceptuel des approches d’analyse des métiers de la banque. Nous proposons une grille d’analyse des déterminants de F&A transfrontalières dans l’UE qui permet de focaliser les analyses sur deux principaux critères en faisant référence à leurs cadres théoriques respectifs. Le premier critère d’analyse de ces stratégies bancaires concerne l’aspect géographique relatif aux marchés d’expansion transnationale. Le deuxième critère est lié à la nature des métiers bancaires des parties engagées dans une opération de F&A transfrontalière. L’idée est d’évaluer la pertinence des stratégies de diversification des activités bancaires et de type géographique dans le cas européen. L’apport de notre étude est de valider cette grille en adoptant trois approches différentes. Dans un premier lieu, nous proposons d’appliquer cette grille au cas européen dans le cadre d’une approche analytique des deux critères à la fois. Ensuite, nous voudrions évaluer empiriquement le cadre théorique de chaque critère d’analyse des raisons des F&A transfrontalières des banques de l’UE, séparément, en envisageant deux essais empiriques. Dans un premier essai, nous analysons les déterminants d’une activité de consolidation bancaire paneuropéenne selon une approche macroéconomique. L’idée principale est d'identifier certains pays et leurs caractéristiques qui affecteront la tendance des F&A transfrontalières bancaires dans l’UE. Cette identification nous permet de vérifier les hypothèses d’internationalisation dans le cas européen. Dans le second essai, nous évaluons empiriquement la pertinence des arguments de performance en envisageant une analyse microéconomique des logiques stratégiques des F&A transfrontalières sur un échantillon des principales banques de l’UE. Nos essais empiriques permettent de mettre en évidence les deux critères d’analyse des raisons des F&A transfrontalières et paneuropéennes tout en prenant en considération leurs logiques stratégiques de diversification. / Considering the acceleration in the process of European banking integration, an important concern arises about the driving forces behind the current banking consolidation wave in Europe in the context of international banking expansion. This dissertation spans the fields of the literature on banking internationalisation and cross-border M&A to consider the specific features of these strategies considering the explanations provided by the traditional analysis of banking consolidation. In prospect of proposing new concepts to analyse the patterns of cross-border banking activities in European Union, we identify other vectors in international banking business that create value for shareholders besides economies of scale, with regard to the difficulties to generate cost cuttings in the case of transnational deals. We suggest focusing the analyses of the determinants of cross-border banking mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in the European Union that will allow focusing the analyses on two main criteria regarding their respective theoretical framework. The first criterion of analyzing cross-border banking M&As is related to characteristics of market expansion. The second criterion is linked to the features of cross-border banking activities. These criteria are identified as the variables that affect the banking internationalization. The purpose is to assess the validity of strategic arguments of diversification as the determinants of cross-border banking M&As in Europe. This approach allows us to validate our proposal criteria using three different approaches. First, we provide empirical evidence about both criteria by considering analyses banking structures and characteristics of banking activities in Europe. Then we examine macroeconomic determinants of cross-border banking activities in European countries. We identify receiving and investing countries of cross-border banking investments in Europe, considering the characteristics of countries. Our results allow us to test if the arguments of banking internationalization theories will be sufficient to explain the pan European consolidation. On the other hand, we analyze the strategic motivations of cross-border banking M&As and performance arguments of these transactions by considering a microeconomic analysis on a sample of major banks in the European Union. We provide empirical evidence on theoretical framework of each analysis criterion of cross-border banking M&A in the EU considering their strategic motivations.