Understanding Foreign Masters : the examples of Rabindranath Tagore and Fyodor Dostoyevskiy

The Indian author Rabindranath Tagore was received like royalty during his visits to the West after winning the Nobel Prize in 1913. Dreams of foreign cultures offered a retreat from a complicated age. In a time when the West appeared to be living under threat of disintegration and when industrialism seemed like a cul-de-sac, he appeared to offer the promise of a return to a lost paradise, a spiritual abode that is superior to the restless Western culture. However, Tagore’s popularity faded rapidly, most notably in England, the main target of his criticism. Soon after Tagore had won the Nobel Prize, the English became indignant at Tagore’s anti-colonial attitude.Tagore visited Sweden in 1921 and 1926 and was given a warm reception. His visits to Sweden can be seen as an episode in a longer chain of events. It brought to life old conceptions of India as the abode of spirituality on earth. Nevertheless, interest in him was a relatively short-lived phenomenon in Sweden. Only a few of his admirers in Sweden appreciated the complexity of Tagore’s achievements. His “anathema of mammonism”, as a Swedish newspaper called it, was not properly received. After a steady stream of translations his popularity flagged towards the end of the 1920s and then almost disappeared entirely. Tagores visits in Sweden gave an indication that India was on the way to liberate itself from its colonial legacy, which consequently contributed to the waning of his popularity in the West. In the long run, his criticism of the drawbacks in the western world became too obvious to maintain permanent interest. The Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevskiy’s Crime and Punishment (1866) has enticed numerous interpretations such as the purely biographical approach. In the nervous main character of the novel, the young student Raskolnikov, one easily recognizes Dostoyevskiy himself. The novel can also be seen as a masterpiece of realistic fiction. It gives a broad picture of Saint Petersburg, a metropolis in decay. Crime and Punishment can also be seen as one of the first examples of a modern psychological novel, since it is focused on the inner drama of its main character, the young student Raskolnikov. His actions seem to be governed by mere coincidences, dreams and the spur of the moment. it seems fruitful to study the novel from a psychoanalytical approach. In his book Raskolnikov: the way of the divided towards unity in Crime and Punishment (1982), a Swedish scholar, Owe Wikström, has followed this line of interpretation all the way to Freud’s disciple C G Jung. In addition to this, the novel functions as an exciting crime story. To a large extent it is Viktor Sjklovskij and other Russian formalists from the 1920s and onwards who have taught the western audience to understand the specific nature of the crime story. The novel could be seen as a story about religious conversion. Like Lasarus in the Bible (whose story attracts a lot of attention in the novel) Raskolnikov is awakened from the dead, and together with Sonja he starts a completely new life. The theme of conversion has a special meaning for Dostoyevskiy. For him the conversion meant an acknowledgement of the specific nature of Russia itself. Crime and punishment mirrors the conflict between traditional Russian values and western influences that has been obvious in Russia throughout the history of the country. The novel reflects a dialogue that still continues in Russian society. The Russian literary historian Mikhail Bakhtin, who is probably the most famous interpreter of the works of Dostoyevskiy, has become famous precisely by emphasizing the importance of dialogues in novels like Crime and Punishment. According to Bakhtin, this novel is characterized by its multitude of voices. Various ideas are confronted with each other, and each one of them is personified by one of the characters in the novel. The author has resigned from his position as the superior monitor of the text, and he leaves it to the reader to decide what interpretation is the correct one..The aim of the present study is thus to analyze the complex reactions in the west to Tagore’s visits in Sweden and to Fyodor Dostoyevskiys novel Crime and Punishment.. This leads to more general conclusions on communication between cultures.

Entry, re-location and growth in the Swedish wholesale trade industry

Wholesale trade has an intermediate position between manufacturing and retail in the distributional channel. In modern economies, consumers buy few, if any, products directly from manufacture or producer. Instead, it is a wholesaler, who is in direct contact with producers, buying goods in larger quantities and selling them in smaller quantities to retailers. Traditionally, the main function of a wholesaler has been to push goods along the distributional channel from producer to retailer, or other nonend user. However, the function of wholesalers usually goes beyond the process of the physical distribution of goods. Wholesalers also arrange storage, perform market analyses, promote trade or provide technical support to consumers (Riemers 1998). The existence of wholesalers (and other intermediaries) in the distributional channel is based on the effective and efficient performance of distribution services, that are needed by producers and other members of the supply chain. Producers usually do not enjoy the economies of scale that they have in production, when it comes to providing distributional services (Rosenbloom 2007) and this creates a space for wholesalers or other intermediaries. Even though recent developments in the distributional channel indicate that traditional wholesaling activities now also compete with other supply chain organizations, wholesaling still remains an important activity in many economies (Quinn and Sparks, 2007). In 2010, the Swedish wholesale trade sector consisted of approximately 46.000 firms and generated an annual turnover of 1 300 billion SEK (Företagsstatistiken, Statistics Sweden). In terms of turnover, wholesaling accounts for 20% of the gross domestic product and is thereby the third largest industry. This is behind manufacturing and a composite group of firms in other sectors of the service industry but ahead of retailing. This indicates that the wholesale trade sector is an important part of the Swedish economy. The position of wholesaling is further reinforced when measuring productivity growth. Measured in terms of value added per employee, wholesaling experienced the largest productivity growth of all industries in the Swedish economy during the years 2000 through 2010. The fact that wholesale trade is one of the important parts of a modern economy, and the positive development of the Swedish wholesale trade sector in recent decades, leads to several questions related to industry dynamics. The three topics that will be examined in this thesis are firm entry, firm relocation and firm growth. The main question to be answered by this thesis is what factors influence new firm formation, firm relocation and firm growth in the Swedish wholesale trade sector?

Sports and mediatization : a case of women´s ski-jumping

Ski jumping was the only sport included in the Winter Olympics, where women were not allowed to take part until the first week of April 2011, when IOC decided to let them in to the Olympic family, a major victory for women´s ski-jumping. Since 2004 the Norwegian media had women ski jumping as one important topic in their media coverage. The third of March 2010 the new Holmenkollen ski-jumping hill was inaugurated. It had been rebuilt for the World Championships 2011. The first jump on the hill was surrounded by an intense debate. Annette Sagen was decided to be the first jumper on the hill after a poll on the social media channel Facebook that gave Annette Sagen over 40 000 votes.  However Tuesday the second of March Björn Einar Romören, a world cup jumper, did the first jump during a training session. This act started a significant chain of events. The biggest Norwegian web – magazines Verldens Gang and Aftenposten made this the head story and they invited the readers to interaction. Within 24 hours 11 000 comments were written, most of them in favor of Sagen and against Romören´s behavior. The Norwegian Ski Association excluded Romören from two World Cup competitions. What did happen during these days in the media?  I want to present the activities, which went on in two web-magazines, and analyze the articles written on the topic. Main issues are to show what an impact a social media network had on the sport in this specific case and how different actors appeared in the media and discuss if Romörens exclusion was a result of the mediatization.

Consumer reactions to different forms of CSR communication

Aim Companies around the world are making sizeable investments into CSR initiatives, but ensuring appropriate returns on these investments remains challenging. Therefore, it is of value to study the communication of corporate CSR efforts. The purpose of this study is to investigate how consumers react to rational versus emotional message strategies in CSR communication. Two categories of consumer reactions were considered: trust and purchase intention. Methods Qualitative research with four focus groups was conducted. Participants discussed three texts regarding a CSR project, utilising a rational, emotional and a hybrid rational-emotional message strategy respectively. The conversations focused on trust towards the communication and purchase intention. Results Trust - All of the respondents viewed the rational text over the emotional text as more trustworthy, but they most positively reacted to the combined strategy. Rational information was viewed as more reliable by many participants, with emotional cues adding value by better holding their attention. Purchase intention – Participants more positively reacted to the rational CSR communication strategy, compared to an emotional strategy. For approximately half of respondents, the hybrid strategy targeting both rational and emotional cues was the most successful in terms of purchase intention. Upon further analysis, it was identified that this division in respondents’ opinions may reflect a gender difference, where men portrayed the more task oriented and women the socially sensitive consumers. Conclusions The findings support previous research championing the use of rational strategies over emotional strategies in CSR communication. A number of managerial implications that can be used by companies in order to better communicate their CSR activities and increase returns on CSR-related investments are provided.