This study is a bachelor thesis for the Human Recourse program at Umeå University. It is an interview study with section leaders at the Swedish Government Offices about their view on diversity and an inclusive approach. The objective is to identify their interpretation and perception of diversity and an inclusive approach, further, how it influences their work and their sections. The objective is reached by interviewing six section leaders and discussing how they perceive their work with diversity at The Government Offices, their section, additionally, how they pensive the meaning of the words diversity and inclusion. The results have been divided in to three parts; Relationship and definition, Work and Future. The most important part is the data that came from the six interviews. Interesting points in the discussion is also the Swedish laws about government employment and discrimination, the Government Offices  ‘Plan for equal rights and opportunities’ and The Department of Integration model for working with diversity. The tendencies are that they have problems in regards to defining diversity and inclusive approach but yet there are similarities in the descriptions both with each other and the official definition. What the section leaders experience as problems are mostly the timeframe, recruitment and how much working with these questions is valued. The report ends with a discussion and analysis where the results and arguments are debated.

Published Article / The central regions of South Africa experienced an abnormally high precipitation during the first quarter of 2009, thus resulting in an unusually high probability of veld fires due to the excessive amounts of fuel / grass available. In South Africa the process of land redistribution was recently drastically accelerated. This implies that many newly settled black farmers are fanning but still need to be trained in various aspects of farm management. Unfortunately, in most cases this training did not include environmental management, which among others, implies managing and preparing for veld fires. The Department of Water Affairs and Forestry also does not have sufficient funding to cover all these aspects and a regional collaborative plan must therefore be developed. In addition to this, in an attempt to alleviate poverty, many other previously disadvantaged people in South Africa must be assisted in establishing small business enterprises. This paper will highlight a process to be followed to train and coordinate all farmers and simultaneously establish business opportunities that will remove some of the fuel (grasses and shrubs) in order to reduce the risk and intensity of winter and spring veld fires.

This thesis comprehends a notable research gap through its exploration of risk and opportunity perception for Swedish firms’ internationalizing to Cuba, by conducting a multiple-case study of three Swedish firms’. A qualitative research method has been used in accordance with an abductive approach. The conceptual framework illustrates the correlation between the theories, which has been applied to the empirical findings. Conclusions derived throughout the analysis and the significant theoretical implications demonstrate answers to the dominance of arbitrage opportunities. Empirical implications illustrate why risks and opportunities might be acknowledged differently due to industry, whereas managerial implications emphasize the importance for Swedish firms’ to understand the complexity impregnating the business environment.

<p>The internationalization process is usually viewed from an outward- perspective ininternational business literature. In this thesis the focus is put on an outward-inwardinterrelationship perspective. An extensive literature review from literature in internationalbusiness literature, entrepreneurial literature as well as international marketing literature wasconducted in order to extract key variables that affect the process of internationalization of thefirm. The key variables that were examined were: Business Contacts, InternationalExperience, Perceived International Opportunity and Perceived International Uncertainty.A qualitative interview with semi-structured questions was conducted in order to construct amodel that should be used as the basis for a quantitative study of an inward-driveninternationalization process, in order to generalize. The results were in line with thepropositions based on the relationships between the variables. In other words, the constructedmodel and the developed questionnaire were of use when examining the relationship betweenthe variables and seem to be of value when applied to an inward oriented context. Thevariable International Experience received the highest score and seemed to reflect animportant contribution for the internationalization process. Nevertheless, further quantitativeresearch is asked for, in order to support the results and be able to generalize.</p>

Government policies have emphasised the importance of patient and client involvement in all aspects of health and social care delivery, with a corresponding impetus for their involvement in the education of practitioners. Professional education programmes adopt andragogical, student-centred approaches and incorporate both academic and practice based learning and assessments. Practice experience is recognised as a crucial aspect of student learning and has become a major focus of quality reviews in health and social care education. Whilst it might seem self-evident that students on practice placements will learn from their interactions with patients and clients, this is a relatively neglected area for formal modeling, evaluation and research. This study, therefore, explores pre-qualifying nursing, midwifery and social work students’ experiences of learning from patients and clients during practice placements. The research project is underpinned by a descriptive phenomenological approach and the extensive data are analysed using phenomenological reduction (Giorgi, 1989a; 1989b). Two key themes and six categories emerged from the data. The first theme is presented as the ‘Ways of Learning’ and this comprises the categories of: facilitation of learning; critical incidents/patient stories; and role modeling. The second theme is presented as the ‘Nature of Learning’ and comprises three categories: professional ideals; professional relationships; and understanding patients’ and clients’ perspectives. It is evident that contemporary theories, including andragogy, social learning, experiential, reflective and transformative learning theories, remain relevant to professional education. The new knowledge obtained in this research is that the most powerful learning opportunities result from unplanned, informal learning opportunities involving interactions with patients and clients. However, this is not fully explained by these contemporary learning theories. This thesis will, therefore, argue that complexity theory is relevant to the requirements of professional education programmes. It will present an overarching framework to explain the data from this study and will propose strategies to harness the complexity inherent in this important aspect of student learning.

Working, communicating, socialising and proceeding in multicultural environments are not always easily put into practice. The contrary is the case, it poses various challenges. These challenges will be investigated within this work with a specific focus on the research issues: Which changes leadership needs to face in terms of adapting to new multicultural circumstances? And if so, how to do it? As well as the question about how to strengthen the cultural competences of respective leaders or future-leaders in order to facilitate working and social corporate processes in a company or an organisation. The approximation with Grounded Theory will be conducted as the methodology approach in this thesis. It allows us, as the creator of knowledge, to break the collected data which is gathered within several interviews in order to create thematically concepts out of them and afterwards to relate the respective concepts to each other.  As a result, potential challenges occurring in multicultural environments regarding the collaboration with each other will be identified as well as suggestions of solution in terms of how a leader should face these challenges in order to create chances out of them. Concretely, a guide will point out the most important research insights, based on the experiences by seven interviewees who perceived working in cultural diverse surroundings out of the leadership perspective. The guide´s main target is to evince a way of direction for leaders and/or future-leaders who want to turn potential daily challenges into opportunities. It is a quick checklist that can be used in order to ensure cultural differences as valuable resources instead of barriers for the achievement of the companies’ success whatsoever.  “A leader is someone who helps improve the lives of other people or improve the system they live under.” – Sam Houston.

Literature on firm internationalization has pointed out knowledge and learning as central components in the internationalization process. While much research has emphasized the development of experience in the firm as the main source of new knowledge, this notion has also been challenged. Furthermore, in internationalization literature, most attention has been paid to market entry and far less to growth in the market thereafter. This research addresses how internationalizing firms capture growth opportunities by acquiring new knowledge in foreign markets. The purpose is to describe and explain how internationalizing firms learn about foreign markets by combining various knowledge sources in order to realize growth opportunities in these markets. To address this purpose, data from two steps of data collection is analyzed. The first step contains qualitative focus-group data from seven Swedish firms and aims to describe learning from a combination of knowledge sources, which leads to the development of a typology of learning strategies. The tentative results from the first step are established in the second step, which contains survey data from 144 internationalizing Swedish firms. In addition to validating the typology, data from the second step explains heterogeneous knowledge outcomes based on differences in learning strategies, suggesting that a diversified strategy has the greatest potential for learning. These results indicate that external knowledge matters more than what has been previously recognized. Furthermore, the results show curvilinear effects of knowledge of the local network and international spread on the realization of international growth opportunities. By integrating components from international entrepreneurship, this research may contribute to internationalization-process literature by (1) describing the typology of how internationalizing firms learn in foreign markets, (2) establishing the described types and explaining the knowledge consequences for internationalizing firms, and (3) explaining how this knowledge impacts the ability to realize international opportunities. This chain of components provides the links between learning and growth of the internationalizing firm beyond the initial market entry.

The thesis is devoted to discrimination in the labor market with the stress on the gender pay gap. The aim of the thesis is to assess the status of women in the Czech labor market with respect to different social categories and the analysis of wage differences in different job categories and types of jobs. The main focus of the text is a summary of various theoretical assumptions and concepts that are used to explain discrimination against women and finding the links with the recent demographic data. The text results in analysis of the above mentioned models it terms of their application to explain gender discrimination in the Czech Republic. The thesis results in the answer to the question whether discrimination in the labor market represents major social problem in the Czech Republic. At the end of this text various measures that, in my opinion, could lead to solution of discrimination against women in the labor market are described.

The main goal of the theses is to analyze economic cooperation of Czech republic and Canada. There is a particular information about Canadian economical and political setting as well as local business environment. The theses places emphasis on how to help Czech exporters trading with Canada, and gives complete overview of opportunities for export, entrance to the market and helps to understand local business customs.

The goal of this work is to outline the problems of equal opportunities in the Czech republic and to judge sex discrimination in the labour market and its factors.