<p>Date: May 29, 2009</p><p>Course: Master thesis, EFO705</p><p>Authors: Uliana Kovaleva, 830906, Karolina Turbak, 850710</p><p>Tutor: Tobias Eltebrandt</p><p>Title: The Influence of Culture and the Level of Acculturation on the Perceptions of Service Quality among the Customers with Swedish, Polish and Russian Backgrounds.</p><p>Strategic question: How important is the customers’ ethnic background, culture and level of acculturation when choosing a provider of financial services?</p><p>Research questions: If customers with Polish and Russian origin differ in their perceptions of the service quality attributes from Swedish customers, what kind of influence do culture and the level of acculturation have on their perceptions of service quality?</p><p>Method: Apart from secondary data, the questionnaire results were collected as a source of the primary data. The study was conducted using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The questionnaire results were analysed in SPSS by applying T-tests, and the answers for the open-ended questions were analysed additionally.</p><p>Theoretical Framework: The theories which were used include service quality dimensions, Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and the level of acculturation. The results of previous studies addressing the cultural influences on the service quality were applied extensively. The theories were chosen according to the purpose of the study and used in analysis in a comprehensive way.</p><p>Conclusions: According to the study culture and the level of acculturation have influence on the perceptions of service quality. The Polish and Russian customers with the low and medium levels of acculturation have lower overall service quality perceptions compared to the highly acculturated customers with foreign background and Swedish. In particular, the perceptions of assurance and empathy dimensions are significantly different between the studied groups.</p><p> </p> / “The impact of cultural recognition on service‐consumtions among customers in Sweden with foreign background.”

<p><h2>Problem</h2><p>The problem of the paper is the structure and characteristics of the interior door market in Sweden.</p><h2>Purpose</h2><p>The purpose of the paper is to provide the possibly deepest research of the Swedish market of interior door.</p><h2>Method</h2><p>The research constitutes of several parts. The theoretical framework derives from dependable literature, namely books, articles and journals. The data about the focal company is mostly of the primary type, gathered through series of interviews with Classen Pol's vice-chairman and a questionnaire filled in by the marketing manager of the company.</p><h2>Result</h2><p>The result of this paper is a description of the interior doors market in Sweden. Existing producers, distributors, sellers and importers are presented. Moreover, the author presents the optimal distribution for Classen Pol to pursue while entering Sweden.</p></p>

<p>Title: Female entrepreneurs in Sweden and Thailand – differences and similarities in motivation.</p><p>Problem: Female entrepreneur is an interesting topic in the entrepreneurship field of study since there are a few numbers of researches that show that female-owned businesses are gradually becoming an important factor to contribute growth in the global economy. The study of ‘how’ to start business and ‘how’ to keep the business successful and sustainable in global business world is the focus in most of the research. Still, what motivates an entrepreneur to start business is one interesting topic for further and deeper study in the field of entrepreneurship and especially female entrepreneurship. In addition to the motivation of becoming an entrepreneur, other factors that could have possibility in influencing the motivation as well as similarities and differences on motivation when comparing in nationalities are interesting to focus on in the study.</p><p>Aim: To describe the motivational factors for entrepreneurs, with focus on female entrepreneurs, and compare these factors with female entrepreneurs in Sweden and Thailand.</p><p>Method: Relevant literature review and conceptual framework were selected from entrepreneurship field, including male and female entrepreneurs, motivation and entrepreneurial motivation. Interview, both personal interview and e-mail interview, and questionnaire were used in data collection for the empirical data part. With application of literature review, conceptual framework, and empirical data, the analysis and conclusion parts are concluded and lead to the answer of the research question.</p><p>Result: Swedish and Thai female entrepreneurs are similar in motivation of starting the business in term of pull factors, such as need for independence, want to be one’s own boss, need for autonomy, and want for self-achievement. While we have no evidence that education background and career experience had an influence on the motivation of an entrepreneur to start the business, we did find however, that family background showed a result with some weight in influencing motivation from a majority of the respondents in the study.</p>

<p>This project is a comparative study of three elementary schools in India and two elementary schools in Sweden. The purpose of this project is to study if Indian and Swedish students have the possibility to have influence on their English lessons. The research involves values conveyed in the socialisation and their consequences for student influence, democracy and society in the two countries.</p><p>National and international research and literature concerning socialisation, language didactics, democracy and student influence were used as a foundation of this study. Furthermore, the study investigates the Swedish and the Indian curricula, and makes use of observations of English lessons, questionnaires and interviews with teachers in both countries. The method for this research is qualitative with some features of quantitative research and based in the method of Grounded theory.</p><p>The results of this project is that the teachers in both countries controlled the students in different ways during the lessons and practiced student influence only when letting the students choose between preselected materials. Exclusion, inclusion and the hidden curriculum were aspects that appeared, which are likely to teach the students about their individual values in society. The lack of student influence consequently leads to the students being discouraged to be partaking citizens. Instead, the students will learn to follow the rules of society, be loyal to authorities and to carry established values with them and thus reproduce the society in each country and make it remain the same.</p>

<p>Mass movement of people over national borders constitutes the major feature of the today's world. Immigration and its implications are widely debated, whereby the term 'immigration', whenever appeared in a text, hardly ever refers to some unambigously defined concept. To deal with the question of immigration is, therefore, to be faced with a variety of definitions and connotations. The thesis constitutes an attempt to understand how the phenomenon of immigration is conceptualized in Swedish mass media debate, and explore the dynamics of the discourse over the last decade. To do so, the study develops a theoretical framework that takes a form of classification of different approaches to immigration, as formulated by major paradigms of international relations (liberal communitarianism, realism, idealism) and as developed within modern economic and cultural studies. Social construction of immigration and its implications for the nation-states serves as the organizing principle for the emerging classification, as social constructivism is adopted as the ontological standpoint of the thesis. The thesis then analyzes over 180 articles that deal with immigration and are published in the major Swedish daily newspapers, Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet in the years 1993 and 2002. The aim is to discover common patterns of the debate and link them to the concepts constituting the theoretical framework. The analysis shows that almost all concepts described in the theoretical section can be identified in the mass media discourse, which allows to conclude that the developed classification has proved appropriate for the analysis of the empirical material. The research concludes that, while concepts pointing towards self-interests as determining factors for formulating immigration policies are present in the studied mass media discourse, which is especially clear in 1993, the debate in general is strongly influenced by adherence to international solidarity and humanistic values as the basis for Swedish traditional foreign policy. Additionally, the study highlights the essential changes occured within the debate over the last decade, among which a shift from connecting immigration exclusively to refugee policies towards a more braod understanding of immigration as a consequence of globalization and as a realization of individual right to free movement can be considered the most central.</p>

<p>Information and communication technology already has a long history of influence in basically all areas of an enterprise. In recent years though, a major discussion emerged whether information and communication technologies (ICT) offer an additional strategic value for a business.</p><p>The different positions maintain reasonable arguments on both sides. One position is that ICT basically has become a commodity, obtainable by everyone. There would be no strategical nor competitive gain, so extra efforts in ICT would be in vain. Another position is that, although, nowadays ICT is easy to acquire, the organisational skills necessary to manage the change and to profit from a good system are a scarce resource and difficult to reproduce.</p><p>As much as this discussion has been the subject of many academic articles, as little has the research on the views of practitioners emerged. What is their opinion on the strategic relevance of information and communication technology? Do they consider it as merely a necessary commodity, only used to stay competitive, or do they think that there is a competitive advantage to gain in a sophisticated and possibly leading-edge system? Also, a third view is conceivable, in which practitioners regard ICT as just a tool, which serves best by reconsidering the intensity of its use in every new venture.</p><p>In order to get answers to these questions, semi-structured telephone interviews with leading ICT officers were conducted. The outcome gives a broad overview on what practitioners consider as strategically important in ICT systems and what the current view of the academic guild on this question looks like. An analysis on where, how and why the academic- and the business-views overlap or differ from each other, together with an interpretation of the interview results, concludes the work.</p>

<p>Under våren 1995 fattade Norrköpings och Linköpings kommuner beslut om att etablera ett regionkontor i Bryssel. Enligt beslutet skulle kontoret vara verksamhet i tre år, efter det andra verksamhetsåret skulle kontoret utvärderas. Detta innebär att kontoret var en treårig försöksverksamhet och först efter utvärderingen var gjord skulle huvudmännen fatta besluta om kontoret skulle övergå till att bli en</p><p>permanent verksamhet. Under våren 1998 gjorde undertecknad en utvärdering av East Sweden Brysselkontoret på uppdrag av huvudmännen. Den kvalitativa intervjuundersökning som gjordes i samband med utvärderingen har varit ett viktigt empiriskt bidrag för denna uppsats.</p><p>I uppsatsen studeras bland annat hur klara målsättningarna var med kommunernas etableringar av EU-kontor och hur hög medvetenhet som fanns. Syftet är att studera implementeringen av Norrköpings och Linköpings kommuns beslut att inrätta ett gemensamt representationskontor i Bryssel Den teoretiska utgångspunkten i uppsatsen är teorier som i olika grad bygger på ett rationellt</p><p>beslutsfattande, till exempel rationalistiskt teori och inkrementalistisk teori samt olika perspektiv på styrning vid implementering, bottom-up och top-down. En central teoretisk slutsats av denna fallstudie är att inte bara implementeringsprocessen</p><p>utan hela policyprocessen har varit starkt inkrementalistisk. Det är inte ovanligt att kommunala policyprocesser är inkrementalistiska till sin karaktär.</p><p>Kontoret har sitt ursprung i att näringslivet i början av 1990-talet uttryckte ett behov av en kanal i Bryssel, på grund av det kommande medlemskapet i EG. Det intressanta med detta är att kontoret inte alls har utvecklats till ett näringslivskontor, utan framförallt som ett kontor för utveckling av kommunala</p><p>verksamheter. Tanken med brysselverksamheten var framförallt att den skulle öka regionens möjligheter att hämta hem finansiella medel till regionen, bland annat genom att tjänstemännen skulle vara ett stöd vid de projektansökningar som lämnades in. Under den period som har studerats har brysselverksamheten emellertid inte nyttjats av hemregionen i den omfattning som huvudmännen hade trott. Detta beror bland annat på att flera kommuner i regionen inte har kommit</p><p>igång med EU-projekt och att verksamheten endast hade varit verksamt i två år då utvärderingen gjordes. Kontoret kan istället karaktäriseras som ett rent informationskontor, i den mening att tjänstemännen i Bryssel i huvudsak hämtar in, strukturerar och förmedlar information till hemregionen.</p><p>Ett annat huvudresultat är att det har saknats ett tydligt mål med verksamheten. Huvudmännen har förklarat detta med att de inte riktigt viste vad de skulle använda</p><p>kontoret till eller hur de skulle arbeta. De valde istället att starta en försöksverksamhet och pröva sig fram under en treårsperiod. Avsaknaden av ett tydligt mål har även avspeglats styrningen av kontoret, som har varit svag. Den tjänsteman som engagerades för uppdraget i Bryssel fick inga tydliga riktlinjer hur verksamheten skulle drivas. Detta har varit symptomatiskt för hela den period som</p><p>har studerats, det vill säga de två första verksamhetsåren.</p>

<p>The number of people with another culture is</p><p>increasing in Sweden. This change in society brings</p><p>consequences in health care that has not any methods</p><p>to manage. The Muslim woman’s meeting with the</p><p>health care is one of those areas. The aim with this</p><p>study was to describe the nurses meeting with female</p><p>Muslim patient. The study carried out as a literature</p><p>study and the results which based on 9 articles</p><p>showed the lack of knowledge about culture and</p><p>religion among health care staff. The authors further</p><p>believed that to achieve an adequate result with</p><p>meeting between staff and patient requires</p><p>knowledge about different culture and religion. The</p><p>study shows furthermore a necessity for nurses</p><p>training individually to create instinct in how their</p><p>own cultural opinion affects the nurse in her/his</p><p>profession. The patients felt like nurses had a</p><p>stereotype to doing their job and got very difficult to</p><p>satisfy patients with the needs. In view of the</p><p>circumstances it notifies proposals to improvement in</p><p>the existing health care through curses and seminars</p><p>about culture and religion but even concrete</p><p>information about Islam and Muslim female patient’s</p><p>needed in an institutional care. Madeleine</p><p>Leininger’s theory of culture care was used as the</p><p>conceptual framework and support for the study.</p>

No description available.

<p>The aim of this study is to investigate whether culture is perceived and taught in similar ways in regard to the study of English during the final year of compulsory schooling in Sweden and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. In order to achieve this, relevant parts of policy documents and teaching materials from both school systems are analyzed – based on a framework which was devised using Claire Kramsch’s definition of culture as a foundation – and discussed. Our findings indicate that culture is not perceived and taught similarly in regard to the study of English during the final year of compulsory schooling in the two school systems we examine. In Sweden, based upon that which is expressed in the policy documents, it appears that learning about culture is seen as a natural component of language learning. On the hand, this does not appear to be the case in regard to the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. While representations of culture are present in the teaching materials examined from each region, the ways in which it is portrayed reflect that which is set forth in the policy documents, i.e., culture is more fully integrated in the textbook used in Sweden than it is in the one used in Macedonian classrooms. Our study is of interest to those active within the field of education because an increasingly globalized world means that classes are being comprised of increasingly heterogeneous groups of students. Having insight into differences that exist between school systems may lead to a greater understanding of the situation that exists in one’s own corner of the world.</p>