It is a commonly held belief that people from collectivistic, large power distance or high-context cultures, such as China, tend to be less confrontational, which could be counter-productive in organizations. Contrary to this traditional view, this study posits that conflict avoidance can be constructive depending on the specific actions protagonists take. It adopts Deutsch’s (1973) theory of cooperation and competition to understand conflict avoiding behavior between employees and their supervisors, indicating that people’s perceptions of goal interdependence significantly influence their behavioral intentions that in turn predict their overt actions to avoid conflict. Specifically, it proposes that goal interdependence greatly affects employee behavioral intentions that lead to different avoiding behaviors that affect the important outcomes of productivity, relationship, and social respect within organizations. A total of 110 participants from Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Shenzhen were interviewed from June 2011 to September 2011 by critical incident technique. Interviewees were first required to recall a concrete incident in which they avoided direct discussions with their supervisors when they had a disagreement. They then rated specific questions on the recalled incident using 7-point Likert-type scales. Results of the structural equation modeling and other analyses support the hypotheses and proposed theoretical model that goal interdependence affects the behavioral intentions of employees, which significantly influence employees‟ specific actions to avoid conflict, and finally determine outcomes. Research findings contribute to the literature of conflict management and also provide crucial implications for dealing with conflict avoidance in Chinese enterprises and perhaps in organizations in other countries.

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For over four decades, the EU has been an active external actor in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. However, the role that the EU has in the conflict, have many times been questioned. This thesis aims therefore to examine the role of the EU in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by using three international relations theories; realism, liberalism and constructivism. With the research question of how the role of the EU can be understood and explained, a qualitative case study is being done. The theories are being approached in a theory consuming way focusing on following concepts; collective EU interests, security and military resources, democracy promotion, international law, and identity and norms. Following the results and analysis of the concepts, the EU does have an important, yet laid back role in the conflict. The EU has been an influential actor in many ways, however, the role has mostly been diplomatic and economic rather that political. This indicates that, for the EU to become a stronger political actor, the Union needs to take on more effective measures when acting and also handle the occurring changes within the Union.

The thesis seeks to examine the development of the US-Japan, US-South Korea, and US- Australia alliances, during the implementation of the rebalance to Asia policy under the Obama administration. It discusses the application of three major international relations theories, realism, liberalism, and constructivism, in studying the causes and effects that resulted in different outcomes across the three dyads, from security, economic, and cultural perspectives. To establish a causal relationship, the thesis employs a qualitative case study method, controlled comparison, to test the theories and identify the factors that play a decisive role in determining the differences. It then concludes that between the three alliances, it was the rational choice of policymakers, focused on state survival and economic interests, that influenced state behaviour in cross-border relationships. The US alliances in Asia-Pacific have been operating mainly on pragmatic foundations and principles, to serve strategic purposes, and have little to do with normative, ideational factors. Keywords Asia-Pacific, alliance, economic interdependence, foreign policy, hegemony, national identity, rebalance, security threat

Denna studie har fokuserat kooperativt lärande, hur elevers betyg påverkas av ett arbetssätt som kooperativt lärande och vilken inverkan metoden har på pedagogernas arbetssätt inom planering och undervisning. Studien är inspirerad av aktionsforskning i samarbete med två undervisande pedagoger för åk 8 i ämnena religion och biologi. Pedagogerna har i sin undervisning testat metoden kooperativt lärande där eleverna har samarbetat indelade i små heterogena grupper. Studien består av en metodkombination innefattande en kvalitativ del med intervjuer med de två pedagogerna och en kvantitativ del bestående av individuellt sluttest för eleverna. I studien ingår även två kontrollklasser i vilka eleverna undervisades utan planerade samarbeten mellan eleverna. Studien utgår från teorin om socialt ömsesidigt beroende. Resultaten från studien visar att pedagogerna har fått syn på elevernas kunskaper genom hela arbetsperioden med kooperativt lärande, vilket har gjort att pedagogerna har kunnat sätta in rätt stöd genom följdfrågor till eleverna tidigt i arbetsprocessen. Dessutom visar studien att pedagogerna fått bra underlag för betygsättning redan innan sluttestet. I det kooperativa arbetssättet beskriver pedagogerna att de inte har behövt sätta in extra anpassningar som till exempel muntligt prov vid det individuella sluttestet. Elevernas betygsresultat på sluttestet och terminsbetyget efter studien visar att i interventionsklasserna har fler elever fått betyget A i jämförelse med kontrollklasserna.

How the EU frames Russia before and after the Crimean annexation betters our understanding of the motives and incentives behind a securitized unanimity in EU energy policy and decarbonization given previous internal dissensus. Europe’s energy transition and security policy is contingent upon Russian relations, considering its gas dependency. Given the 2022 Ukrainian invasion, studying past rhetorical change instigated within the EU is relevant, using the 2014 annexation as a potential catalyst. Russian energy flows reaching the EU are decreasingly predictable since they pass through key transit states like Ukraine. An overview of recent EU-Russian normative trajectories becomes appropriate as the EU tackles an energy crisis and is interconnected with an unreliable energy provider. Complex interdependence is used to explain the EU’s framing of Russia in energy relations, where mutual dependence, vulnerability and sensitivity to policy change define the states’ well-being, as postulated by Keohane and Nye. Marco Siddi’s conflict-cooperation dichotomy on the Russian Other supplements the framing analysis. An abductive coding approach forms the methodology, where the chosen material may inform the codes, alongside conceptual themes generated beforehand. The frames are applied to EU-parliamentary policy briefings, commission frameworks and bilateral EU-Russian roadmaps spanning between 2011-2016 with three yielded frames: ‘Commercial ties and sunk costs’, ‘Jeopardized security order’, and ‘Fossil-bound authoritarianism’. These frames are divided into pre-and post-annexation sections. The outcome points to attitude shifts in the EU, from perceiving Russia as a Cooperative Other to an Antagonistic Other. This manifests itself within energy security realms and partly in decarbonization. All three frames imply an EU-Russian bilateral relationship entrenched with sunk costs and commitments—with ideological rifts widening in energy security where the EU frames Russia as a normative and contractual violator. The changed framing of Russia may thus help explain how EU energy policy experienced recent change.

In recent decades the EU has become more dependent on Russia for gas. At the same time, there were several geopolitical conflicts in Ukraine that disrupted gas relations and thus put dependence under pressure. This research aimed to analyse the relationship between geopolitical conflicts and dependency. By placing the relationship in the light of the theory of interdependency and the asymmetry theory, a new view was given to this exciting relationship. This problem was approached using an abductive research method, the singular case study. As a result of this, the geopolitical conflicts of Ukraine are used to interpret the relationship between geopolitical conflict and dependency. Trade, dependency and sanctions were the main variables analysed. The analysis shows a crucial link between actors’ economic and political interests and their influence on dependency. In addition, the change of dependency after the geopolitical conflicts in Ukraine was remarkable. Moreover, these changed in a negative sense. It can be concluded that there is indeed a link between the geopolitical conflicts in Ukraine and the gas dependency of the EU on Russia. More research has to be done to generalise this connection to other cases, and more

Recent literature in couple therapy has demonstrated the effects of physical health on some common presenting problems; however, few studies have considered progress as a construct on its own, irrespective of client-identified presenting problem. The current study used an Actor-Partner Interdependence Mediated Model to determine the connection between each partner's physical health and their own and their partner's self-reported progress in couple therapy, mediated by each partner's emotional regulation. Physical health was measured every four sessions using the Health-Related Quality of Life scale, and progress was measured by the Presenting Problem Progress Questionnaire given each time a couple attended therapy. Emotional regulation was measured by the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation scale. The research questions asked whether healthier people and/or their partners would be more emotionally regulated and therefore experience more progress. Results indicated a significant predictive relationship between individual health and presenting problem progress for males and females; however, neither association was mediated by emotional regulation. Additional results suggested that health may predict emotional regulation for both male and female clients, with female health also predicting variation in male emotional regulation. Clinicians are encouraged to consider client health as a predictor of emotional regulation and create treatment goals that facilitate improvements to client health.

Pornography has increasingly become a hot topic of discussion in the United States, likely due to its increasing rate of consumption. Recent scholarship has indicated the need to account for factors such as masturbation and sexual desire discrepancy when conducting pornography research. The current study isolated the influence pornography use had on those in heterosexual romantic relationships (N=713 couples) by parsing out the effects of sexual desire discrepancy and masturbation. This was done by using a series of nested actor-partner interdependence models (APIM) to see how the relationships between pornography use and sexual satisfaction changed in each model. Masturbation and sexual desire discrepancy were also investigated as potential moderators for the APIMs to explore the effects the levels of these variables had on that relationship. Results from these analyses demonstrated that the best-fitting model included measures of masturbation, sexual desire discrepancy, and sexual engagement (i.e., controls for the values making up sexual desire discrepancy), and that adding each of these variables to the model significantly changed pornography use's actor and partner effects. Masturbation and sexual desire discrepancy were not found to moderate these relationships. A discussion of the research implications of these findings, the limitations of this study, future directions for research, and clinical implications of this study are also presented.

The essay Let us be the second body is a written pensive and companion in the process of creating a performance with the same title performed in January 2021 at SKH in Stockholm. It describes the main task of the project which was about realizing interdependencies, in a search for political movement towards a non-violent way of relating with and within the world. In the essay, it is described how this can be imagined like crawling through a compost pile. What you find digesting in the pile are conversations and encounters with strangers on the street such as Blurry-Believes/ Pretend-Poems/ Slippery-Statements, and composed fragments of thoughts from thinkers like Maria Lugones, Judith Butler, Ta-Nehsi Coates, and Michael Ende. Composing those fragments within this essay is forming the sentence: “I cannot be out of violence until the system that I am living in is, even though I am not the target of that violence. The essay is longing to get into the muddy work of investigating the concepts of ‘transformation’ and ‘change’. A work that is meant to be, as the structure of the text, mirrored, messed up and ambiguous.  (And through being honest in that ambiguity the essay regains a response-ability.) Concretely, the essay reflects on how I use this ambiguity as a tool for creating the performance Let us be the second body, in which textile art, scenography, sound design and dancing linger in interdependence with the realm of transformation. I will and I will not change the world with this essay. So, I guess you will and you will not be changed by this essay. / <p>This master work includes both a performing and a written part.</p>