The subject of this study is the business activities of an industrialist from county of Jämtland, Sven O Persson (S P), from the end of the 1910's to the end of the 1980's. The economic development of Jämtland during the last one hundred years has also been depicted and placed in relation to the national one, during periods of directional change and/or expansion. Of primary interest is the interplay between S P's business operations and the surrounding world.This research looks at S P's business activities both from a structural-analytical perspective and an entrepreneurial. Sven Persson's operations commenced in Jämtland at the end of the 1910's with horse dealing, and the first woodland properties were acquired in 1926. Early on (1932) he linked his operations to the development of the motor vehicle. Up until the middle of the I960's the transport sector was the foremost driving force behind his business expansion. Sven Persson's widespread net of personal contacts provided him with information of important sections of the county's economy, which made it easier for him to discover and capitalize on the business opportunities opened by the breakthrough of the trucking industry the timber boom and the regulated economy of the W W II. It is worth mentioning that his operations integrated Östersund's advantages with those of the countryside and business activity was thus largely independent of the geographical location of this agrarian county and the long distances to populated, affluent markets. After the founding of Persson Invest (PI) in 1968 business operations grew rapidly and principally outside the county, and the main product was then chipboard. The hardening competition in the economy had enabled the concern to acquire insolvent companies and/or firms whose assets were too small to meet future investment costs. In the first year of business of this concern the number of employees was around 500 and in 1976 it had risen to almost 1,750. The new areas included the manufacture of agricultural and forest machinery and snowmobiles and three breweries. By 1980, however, the number of employees had decreased to about 1,100. During the following ten-year period the downswing was broken and employment increased to some 1,300 by 1990. The downswing was mainly due to rationalizations, profitability problems and the sale of Pi's agricultural machinery division. The 1980's upturn was mainly due to new acquisitions within the chipboard industry and the purchase of a large Volvo dealership in Norway. With the sale of the breweries in 1989 the sphere of business was thus nearly the same as in 1968. In a structural-analytic context the concern's acquisitions 1968-1976 were not successful. Rationalization was already far advanced in several of the firms when the takeovers took place, and their operations were centered in stagnating and/or shrinking markets. Using Erik Dahmén's terminology, it was a matter of companies whose production was on the negative side of the developmental fence. The concern's manu­facture of chipboard, however, had great success. A central role in that development can be ascribed to low capital costs. Profits from the car dealerships, regional development grants and the acquisition of chipboard firms explain the low cost. Sven Persson's entrepreneurial talent was to discover opportunities offered by the market at an early stage and to capitalize them, as in the case of the car dealership and the chipboard manufacturing. Other charac­teristic traits was to make decisions based on informal conversations, intuition and personal evaluation, instead of formal decision-making, economic analyses and market research. / digitalisering@umu

Swedish political parties are characterized by their markedly different support across geographical space. In most cases, the sources of these regional variations date back to the time of the founding of the parties. Moreover, the regional strongholds and the areas of weak support for the parties have survived major societal changes such as the transition from the agrarian to the industrial society, emigration, and urbanization. Why is it that a certain area evolves a political tradition that sets it apart from neighboring areas? This study addresses itself to this and similar topics with empirical emphasis on the Swedish Social Democratic Party (the SAP).The study is based on the conviction that the regional imbalance in the SAP vote originates in the interaction/competition between various social and political movements in the local environment. The initial model used to explain these imbalances comprises three different factors that influence the party's vote: the socio-economic structure, the local organizational environment and the effect of local party organizational efforts.In order to test the importance of these factors three different areas were selected; one strong, one weak, and one unstable in terms of the Social Democratic vote.The findings show that no single factor alone accounts for the variance in the regional support of the SAP. Rather, what is decisive are the interactions within the structural and social properties of a context.By way of conclusion, this study lends support to the following conclusions of the prospects for the SAP to mobilize the electorate: to establish itself in the local setting the party needs an organizational culture, a local party organization and the absence of strong local opinion against the party's activities and organizational efforts. The party also seems to be favored by a high level of political mobilization (participation), whereas there is nothing to suggest that the SAP's prospects of becoming successful are hampered by competition from the left-wing parties. / digitalisering@umu

In this study, crisis management has been studied primarily from the perspective of small business owners and lifestyle entrepreneurs. Over time, a need was also discovered to interview and study the relationship of public support organizationswith small businesses in crisis contexts. This is because in the theoretical research framework we experienced a lack of how private small businesses can act in a crisis. This is how our subject has been developed, and curiosity about practical crisis management versus theoretical crisis management has played a central role. Following the work, the niche of small entrepreneurs became in nature tourism, partly due to the fact that Värmland as a county has many entrepreneurs in this category. It is also inevitable that Värmland and the entrepreneurs here have had a strong international market before COVID-19 and therefore the interest has also been to study and analyze how they have acted and proceeded during the crisis. The question of adjustment is therefore very essential to study for future possible crises. To discern these similarities and differences, the private has been set against the regional and public, but also against each other. It has been conducted thanks to semi-structured interviews that highlight the same themes. The themes then follow a consistent structure for both method, empirical data and analysis, where it relates to the study's purpose and issues. Overall, the study has generated striking similarities and differences, but also a dimension in the exclusion of small business owners. The lastpart of the conclusion shows why it is still important to study the subject, as COVID-19 has affected the tourism industry in a very unique and global way, which has not previously been discernible. It highlights the importance of contributing to and continuing research in the future, where both public actors together with regional and private actors can find a way to deal with future crises together. / I denna studie har krishantering studerats utifrån framförallt småföretagares- och livsstilsföretagares perspektiv. Under tidens gång upptäcktes även ett behov av att intervjua och studera offentliga stödorganisationers förhållande till småföretagare i krissammanhang. Det på grund av att det i de teoretiska forskningsramarna upplevdes en brist för hur privata småföretagare kan agera vid kris. Det är genom den vägen ämnet har arbetats fram, och nyfikenheten kring praktisk krishantering versus teoretisk krishantering har spelat en central roll. Utefter arbetets gång kom nischen av småföretagare att bli inom naturturism, bland annat på grund av att Värmland som län innehar många företagare inom den kategorin. Det går heller inte att undkomma att Värmland och företagarna här har haft en stark internationell marknad innan COVID-19 och därför har intresset likaså varit att studera och analysera hur företagarna har agerat och gått tillväga under krisens gång för att ställa om. Omställningsfrågan är därför essentiell att studera för framtida eventuella kriser. För att skönja dessa likheter och skillnader har det privata ställts emot de regionala och offentliga, men även mot varandra. Det har utförts tack vare semistrukturerade intervjuer som lyft samma teman. Temana följer sedan en genomgående struktur för både metod, empiri och analys, där de förhåller sig till studiens syfte och frågeställningar. Studien har totalt sett genererat påvisande likheter och skillnader, men även en dimension i exkludering av småföretagare. I slutsatsens sista del framkommer det varför det är fortsatt viktigt att studera ämnet, eftersom COVID-19 har påverkat besöksnäringen på ett väldigt unikt och globalt sätt, som tidigare inte har kunnat skönjas. Det belyser vikten av att bidra med samt fortsätta forskning framöver där både offentliga aktörer tillsammans med regionala- och privata aktörer kan hitta ett sätt att tillsammans hantera kommande kriser / <p>C-uppsats </p>