This work analyzes the political instrumentalization of culture. Specifically, it studies how this is done through cultural policy within Western democracies. The analysis takes, as an example, official Nordic cultural cooperation in the post-war period. During this time, cultural exchange among Nordic countries became the subject of political attention establishing itself as part of the Nordic inter-governmental cooperation framework. This work focuses on three key moments in the history of official Nordic cultural cooperation: (i) the failure of the NORDEK plan (a plan which envisaged extensive economic cooperation between the Nordic countries) and the establishment of the Nordic Council of Ministers in 1971; (ii) the collapse of the Soviet system at the end of the 1980s - beginning of the 1990s; and (iii) the movement towards promoting the Nordic region on the global market in the first decade of the 2000s. The analysis traces the lack of convergence between the official arm’s length principle in cultural policy and how cultural cooperation actually worked. The results of the research both demonstrate the various ways culture was instrumentalized and also prove that the politically defined concept of culture can receive different interpretations in the official discourse depending on current political goals.

<p>This study investigates the capital structure pattern on the Nordic Banking sector, and analyzes if the macroeconomics conditions have an impact on it. The topic is timely and relevant as the credit crises, which has reached the real economy strongly, appears to lead to a restructure of the capital structure of the firms. To achieve my objective I have observed the debt-to-equity ratio in the period 2003-2008. I conducted correlation analysis and further regression analysis to search for a relationship between the variables and then a cause-effect relation between the macroeconomic measures and the capital structure. In order to understand and select the macroeconomics measures to this investigation I have reviewed well known theories and studies about the subject.</p><p> </p><p>I have found a stable debt-to-equity ratio on the book value; however to the market value the figures indicate a decrease in equity value, especially in the last year. In order to search for a macroeconomic relationship, I have developed hypotheses and examined them to select the most suitable variables to a regression analysis. The choice was the change in the GDP, the interest rate and tax rate.</p><p> </p><p>The results revealed that the book value is better explained by these measures than the market value. They demonstrate statistical significantly, highlighting the change in GDP. Even if the findings suggest that there is a correlation between the macroeconomic condition and the capital structure, the analyses suggest only moderate relationship, that should be further investigate.</p>

This study investigates the capital structure pattern on the Nordic Banking sector, and analyzes if the macroeconomics conditions have an impact on it. The topic is timely and relevant as the credit crises, which has reached the real economy strongly, appears to lead to a restructure of the capital structure of the firms. To achieve my objective I have observed the debt-to-equity ratio in the period 2003-2008. I conducted correlation analysis and further regression analysis to search for a relationship between the variables and then a cause-effect relation between the macroeconomic measures and the capital structure. In order to understand and select the macroeconomics measures to this investigation I have reviewed well known theories and studies about the subject.   I have found a stable debt-to-equity ratio on the book value; however to the market value the figures indicate a decrease in equity value, especially in the last year. In order to search for a macroeconomic relationship, I have developed hypotheses and examined them to select the most suitable variables to a regression analysis. The choice was the change in the GDP, the interest rate and tax rate.   The results revealed that the book value is better explained by these measures than the market value. They demonstrate statistical significantly, highlighting the change in GDP. Even if the findings suggest that there is a correlation between the macroeconomic condition and the capital structure, the analyses suggest only moderate relationship, that should be further investigate.

Much of the existing body of literature analyzes the relationship between eco-innovations and financial performance. Our study differentiates from this literature, by focusing on the scarcely investigated Nordic context, by providing a holistic view on eco-innovations and finally by analyzing also the effects eco-innovations have on marker performance. This research focuses on three types of eco-innovations (eco-product, eco-process, and eco-organizational), and additionally brings standard innovations into the perspective. To measure the impact eco-innovations in general and its categorized types have on financial performance, a sample of 50 Nordic listed firms, spread from the year 2003-2019, was employed. Financial performance was measured with profitability accounting measures (return on equity, return on assets, and operating margin), while market performance was measured with the change in firms’ market value. Our results indicate that eco-innovations were generally associated with lower profitability returns, except in the case of eco-process innovations. Moreover, our findings interestingly showed, that market performance is positively affected by standard innovations and eco-organizational innovations. The findings suggest, that even when these types of innovations have no significant effect on profitability, investors still believe these innovations will increase the long-term real value of firms. Overall this study extends the discussion of eco-innovations to their effects on firm performance, based from an investor/shareholder perspective.

Abstract Background: Prevalence of sleep disturbances, latency, and limited sleeping duration are highest during the adolescence phase. The possible cause is adoption of sedentary behavior that involves excessive screen time due to exposure to digital and electronic devices among adolescents. When the sleep quality is compromised it contributes to adverse health outcomes. Aim: The aim of this thesis is to explore the relationship between screen time and sleep quality among adolescents in Nordic countries Methods: The systematic literature review approach was considered in this research and a narrative synthesis was performed to determine whether there was a connection between screen time and sleep quality through the assessment of qualitative (n=4), quantitative (n=14), cross- sectional (n=9), and cohort (n=1) studies. A sample size of 28 articles was considered after the articles fulfilled the inclusion criterion standards. The population of the study comprised adolescents within the age bracket of 10 and 20 years in primary, high school, and university. The sleep quality outcomes that were measured include duration, latency, efficiency, and disturbances. Besides, the screen time outcomes that were measures are timing, type, and duration. Results: There is a significant association between sleep timing including daytime and nighttime use of digital and electronic devices with the sleep quality outcomes. Also, there is a positive relationship between duration of screen time and sleep quality outcomes among adolescents in Nordic countries. However, there was an insignificant relationship between type of digital devices either smartphone, tablet, computer, or television with the sleep quality outcomes of adolescents. 2Conclusions: The research outcomes showed that high screen time in regards to timing such as daytime and nighttime contributes to low quality sleep outcomes among adolescents in Nordic countries, but the type of devices is not important. There was significant evidence on prolonged screen time duration and low sleep quality. Insignificant relationships were found between the type of screen and screen time with sleep quality. Future researchers need to take a specific approach in regards to the topic by focusing on effects of high screen time on the sleep quality of adolescents. These findings might have positive implications in the public health context in consideration of increased digital devices across Nordic countries and the increased prevalence on low quality sleep among adolescents that is likely to increase their health risks. Keywords: Adolescents, screen time, sleep quality, Nordic region, Behavior, Health. / <p>This thesis uses a comprehensive literature review of 28 studies to investigate how screen time affects the quality of sleep that teenagers in Nordic countries get. Teenagers who use digital devices more often tend to have higher screen times, which contributes to their frequent sleep disruptions and poorer quality of sleep. In order to measure sleep length, latency, efficiency, and disruptions in connection to the timing, type, and duration of screen time, the study analysed qualitative, quantitative, cross-sectional, and cohort studies concentrating on teenagers aged 10 to 20. The results suggest that while the type of device used had no discernible effect, there are substantial connections between screen time—both during the day and at night—and poor sleep quality. These findings highlight the necessity for additional study on the relationship between screen time length and teenage sleep, which has significant ramifications for public health.</p>

Over the last couple of decades, sustainability has gained importance in the business world, and a concept that has often been used as a prime example of how to deal with today’s environmental problems is circular economy. Even though the topic is relatively new, there has already been quite some debate about its actual advantages and disadvantages, and while there is as of yet no consensus, the majority argues that the application of circular economy practices will be beneficial for the environment. Which is exactly what this research has attempted to ascertain by looking at 78 firms from a wide range of industries yet all from the Nordic region, since this geographical area has been hailed repeatedly for their sustainability. This was done by performing a hierarchical regression analysis on the data in order to explore a possible relationship between the score of a firm on the benchmark of circular economy practices and its corresponding environmental performance, specifically energy consumption, water usage and greenhouse gas emissions. The hierarchical regression analysis showed a significantly positive relationship between a firm’s score on the benchmark of circular economy practices and its energy consumption, while controlling for firm size, industry, debt ratio,slack resources and country of origin, which was contrary to expectations. No such relationship was found between a firm’s benchmark score and their water usage, the same goes for greenhouse gas emissions. Nevertheless, this research has taken an important step in understanding the relationship between circular economy practices and a firm’s environmental performance, and in doing so has opened up new avenues to explore in terms of future research. While the Nordic region is on the right track, there is still a long road ahead.

Abstract Sustainability has been one of the most discussed topics among the business world and society for the last decade. The globally growing concern about sustainability related issues has led to businesses and non-businesses meet the demand of their stakeholders by producing a sustainability report to demonstrate their work and development in sustainability and how they have measured it. There has been a fast-growing trend of sustainability reporting in few years and there are a number of different initiatives and requirements that define what kind of sustainability reports are produced. From the different sustainability initiatives, the largest principle-based initiative is the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) with almost 13 000 signatories and the largest reporting-based initiative is the Global reporting initiative (GRI). These two initiatives entered in to a partnership in 2010 with the aim of the GRI providing guidance for the signatories on how to disclose information from different areas in sustainability in their sustainability reports. There has been previous research that criticized the UNGC to be too broad and the principles difficult to translate in to sustainability reporting despite the existing partnership with the GRI. These previous studies expressed the lack of qualitative studies about the subject especially from the signatories’ perspective and the importance of approaching the topic from a practical point of view. The purpose of our research study was to create an understanding of the practicalities in UNGC signatories’ sustainability reporting, the challenges they face in the progress and how are they approaching those challenges. The thesis focuses on the Nordic region and the two research questions are:   How are the UNGC signatories practically translating the 10 principles into their sustainability reporting? What challenges do UNGC signatories find in sustainability reporting in general and how have they approached these challenges?   To answer these research questions the authors conducted a qualitative study by semi-structured interviews with company representatives from different Nordic UNGC signatories. The research study identified how do they practically identify what to report about the principles which is determined by materiality assessment provided by the GRI framework. This determines what is material for the company and its industry and focus on those areas in their sustainability report. Legal requirements, internal regulations and other commitments were also identified guiding sustainability reporting. The main challenges related to the sustainability reporting were mainly about data related issues, satisfying the stakeholders and the high number of different frameworks and regulations that are not necessarily interrelated. Majority of the participants approached these challenges by carrying out the materiality assessment as accurate and clear as possible in order to avoid data related difficulties. Some participants offer their different stakeholders with sustainability related information by different forms in order to make the sustainability reporting easier to read and understand. For the high number of frameworks and regulations, the participants have expectations for alignment among them in the future in order to make the reporting easier for everyone involved with sustainability reporting. The results of our findings were supported by theories and concepts such as the stakeholder’s theory, signalling theory and the CSR concept. Previous studies about sustainability reporting and UNGC were also compared to our findings in the analysis.

This thesis contributes to the literature on status seeking and transboundary crises by studying the dynamics of a group of states’ collective status seeking during times of crisis. The implications of the covid-19 pandemic for the common status seeking of the Nordic countries are explored through a study of the collective Nordic identity. A narrative analysis of the views on Sweden in the two Nordic countries Norway and Denmark is carried out using news media articles during first three months of the pandemic. The results show a rift in the collective Nordic identity during the covid-19 pandemic. The main conclusion is that a transboundary crisis can undermine states’ collective status seeking if the cooperative status seeking processesare not backed up by collaboration in times of crisis.

The aim of this thesis is to compare the consecutive years of degree of happiness between the Nordic region and Japan. The second aim is to seek for the detrimental factor contributing to happiness before and during the pandemic, based on the measurement by the World Happiness Report. Yearly based datasets of 'life ladder score', 'log GDP per capita', 'social support', 'healthy life expectancy', 'freedom to make life choices', 'generosity', and 'perception of corruption' from 2008 to 2021 were used for the aim and goal. The results of this study showed there were no significant changes in the trend of happiness from 2008 to 2021 between the Nordic region and Japan. Also, there were not any significant differences in terms of subjective well-being before and during the pandemic. Besides, as a result of multiple regression analysis, the study revealed that 'freedom to make life choices' was the detrimental factor that contributed to the subjective well-being before the pandemic. On the other hand, during the pandemic, 'social support' was the detrimental factor between the Nordic region and Japan. This study implied the connectedness between the subjective well-being and self-determination theory in terms of relatedness, and autonomy. For further investigation, it was concluded that creating a more inclusive measurement of happiness which adjusts diverse psychological definitions of happiness, investigating the relationship between the subcategories of population and happiness, and reviewing more comprehensive detrimental factors that explain well-being between the Nordic region and Japan should be needed.

<p>This interdisciplinary study shows that because of the changing demands from consumer caused by the growing influence of the internet and file-sharing the Nordic Gaming industry is going through an economic evolution. This result was derived by using qualitative questionnaires directed towards Gaming industry decision makers in the Nordic region combined with critical discourse analysis based on the methodology of Norman Fairclough, using theories of different characters to understand the field.</p><p>In this thesis the case of the Nordic Gaming industry is used to assert that because of changing demands of consumers and an ever growing piracy movement, societies are evolving into transitional economies where it is increasingly harder to sell products consisting of pure information.</p>