The aim of this study is to discuss the implementation of Swedish integration policy from the perspective that public officials, so called front-line bureaucrats, are the real creators of this policy. The concept of integration is far from unambigous; it can have different meanings depending on the theoretical perspective applied. This give topical interest to the question of how the concept is conceived on the national level versus the implementation level. I also aim to uncover how these front-line bureaucrats look upon their role as creators of integration policy. My material consists mainly of interviews with front-line bureauctrats.

AbstractThis study examines how knowledge transfer works within the student nations of Uppsala. The purpose is to describe and analyze how the knowledge is transferred when the officials are being exchanged within the student nation. Furthermore the purpose is to explore if the student nations work active to preserve the knowledge and how it is done in such case. Eight out of Uppsalas thirteen nations are part of the study and the survey was conducted by qualitative interview. The study mainly assumes from Argotes theories on the organizational memory, Davenport and Prusaks theories on knowledge transfer and Nonaka and Konnos SECI-model. The study reveals that the student nations work in different ways and more and less active with knowledge transfer.

The aim of the study was to investigate whether the phenomenon of internet drugs should be considered as a moral panic or as a real danger. We have mainly focused on how society perceives young people's use of these drugs. The study is based on a qualitative approach and we have used structured interviews. The interviews were conducted with three different categories of professionals who in different ways have contact with parts of our study in their professional capacity. These are: officials, commentators, and researchers.

The aim of this thesis is to study why Swedish authorities do organizational changes. Two organizations are analyzed; The Swedish Tax Agency (Skatteverket) and the National Statistics Office of Sweden (Statistiska centralbyrån). A qualitative method, consisting mainly of interviews with key officials, is employed to study two aspects of organizational change: first, the main reasons for changing the organization and, second, how the process that preceded the actual change was carried out. Furthermore, two different theoretical perspectives are used to construct a basis for the analysis. One of the perspectives assumes a social constructivist approach, while the other is rationalistic inspired.

In this thesis an explorative study was undertaken with the aim to study how a number of private care providers, as well as politicians and officials from councils in and around the Stockholm and Uppsala counties, think about the future of the Swedish elderly care from a property perspective, i.e. homes for the elderly. The analysis shows that there is a demand for capacity in 6 out of 16 municipalities, and that the property is an important part of this capacity, and the fulfillment of it. This was mainly due to the cost of capital, but also because of several other factors such as lack of land, a wish to guide the design, ideology, and in many cases a wish to use the property as an instrument of domination to control private health care providers.Also, the property was show to be connected to economic competition, to freedom of choice, and to quality. The problems related to the property in the market for elderly care still remains to be solved.

Nature conservation agreement (NCA) is a way to voluntarily protect and manage nature for limited time-periods. The agreement is settled between the government and a landowner. All public authorities can represent the government but it is only the Swedish Forest Administration who does that regularly (because it is the only authority with economic resources for that purpose). Therefore, NCAs are almost only used to protect forested nature. The government agencies have experienced NCAs for about ten years and it is now time to examine how they are applied in the forests. This study is based on a computerized questionnaire to the persons responsible for the LEKO-projekt.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the construction of consensus in commune-collaborations. By a review of written material combined with elite interviews we have been able to follow the decision-making and the forming of consensus, in a commune-collaboration called NOSAM, in which they have decided to use consensus as a decision method. The thesis is based on a case study and we have decided to follow a specific issue that has been discussed for some time.We have created an instrument based on the ideal of deliberative democracy, through which we have been able to examine whether the decision-making in NOSAM can be described as a deliberative process or if consensus is formed by other incentives.The study shows that the decision-making in NOSAM cannot be described as a deliberative process, although there are some elements of deliberation. Consensus is formed in a proposition drawn up by the officials for the commune-representatives to agree on. Afterwards, the decision has to be brought up in each commune before reaching a final decision in NOSAM.Our opinion is that having consensus as the decision method leads to difficulties when deciding on bigger issues..

There are around 855 000 on-site sewage systems in Sweden and some 1 800 of these are located in the municipality of Sigtuna. The Sigtuna local authority has set the goal that all sewage systems with insufficient function should be improved before the end of year 2010. A malfunctioning on-site sewage system may cause three main problems: spreading of diseases, discharge of eutrophicating compounds and wastage of resources. The municipality strives to reduce these problems already at the stage of granting permits for installation of on site sanitation systems. The municipality has recently adopted new guidelines, which demands certain minimum reductions for different compounds. The guidelines also state that it is preferred that neighboring house-owners cooperate in jointly built and operated sewage systems and that the system should be able to recycle plant nutrients.

Today all private corporations are obligated by statutory audit. The government of Sweden appointed an investigation to conclude if the audit should be statutory or not. The investigator presented on the third of April 2008 a report (SOU 2008:32) that suggests abolishment of the statutory audit for approximately 97 % of all private corporations in Sweden. This will result in certain effects on the banks credit rating because of the fact that the banks trust the audited accounts to have been audited by an independent audit.The most important in the banks credit rating are: personal judgement, business concept, business plan and repayment ability. The banks also use the private corporations audited accounts in its credit rating.We conducted a case study by interviewing four bank officials in different banks in Skövde and Tibro.

This thesis examines information seeking and information needs at the Swedish Government Offices. The Government Offices comprise the Prime Ministers Office, the Government Ministries and the Office for Administrative Affairs. Approximately 4 500 members of staff are employed, of whom around 120 are political appointees. For this study, interviews have been conducted with 15 senior officials and political appointees at the Government Ministries and the Prime Ministers Office. The interviews have been supplemented with literature studies based on user studies research in library and information science.

Within the next ten years, the largest generationchange ever will take place in the Swedish constructionsector. The purpose of my study is to examine themajor differences between "Generation Y" and previousgenerations. This is done in order to find out how theNCC will attract the employees of the next generation,manage them at work and finally be able to keep theemployees that has been trained internally over alonger period of time.Previous research has been based on theories ofGeneration Y in general. It investigates the distinctivecharacteristics and qualities of the generation, andalso how their upbringing may have shaped them intowhat they are. Three respondent groups wereinterviewed: Engineer students of "Generation Y",officials at NCC belonging to "Generation Y" andmanagers at NCC.The results of the study show that "Generation Y"differs from previousgenerations, and how they differ.

Today there are over 100 000 stray cats in Sweden and of these 10 000 are found in Gothenburg. There are several instances that try to reduce the number of stray cats. The problem for stray cats is primarily the suffering they may face in hunger, cold, predators, diseases, parasites, accidents, etc. The cats receive no veterinary care and may die from a simple infection that easily can be cured with antibiotics. Stray cats also can spread diseases to domestic cats, be a sanitary problem and compete with other small predators on prey. Authorities working with stray cats are the Country Administrative Board and the police authority.

Citizen participation is fundamental in place analysis, where the aim is to define the sites specific character and identity. The local citizens know the village better than anyone else since they lead their daily life in the environment. I have in cooperation with Sala municipality suggested guidelines on how to involve the local people in dialogue during place analysis. The target was to involve and enthuse as many people as possible with relatively small resources in time and money. The suggested methodology was tried out in a place analysis of Västerfärnebo, a community with about 3 000 inhabitants of which 500 live in the main village.

Although being recognized as holding great cultural-historical significance by local officials, numerous parts of the functionalistic development along Friggagatan became demolished in 2008.This bachelor thesis have surveyed how the planning process proceeded through various municipal committees, and moreover, how different interest groups gathered around certain discursive attitudes. As a consequence of various paradigm shifts in society, e.g. that local government gradually are depending on private economic initiatives, there are to some extent a fear among politicians that cultural-historical demands can risk economic growth.Nevertheless, a building or a development are in fact bearing different value-perspectives, such as economic, functional and cultural-historical. Due to the fact that the heritage-sector has limited resources, in combination with sometimes vaguely and obsolete conservation documents, the sector have difficulties of responding common economic arguments, which leads that the real estate-owner gets total interpretative prerogative.However, despite a sometimes suspicious political attitude towards an improved conservation document, e.g. with continuously updates concerning a building?s technical and economic status, there are some political initiatives working towards it..

The cadastral index map is a great benefit to the surveying and governments. The map's main purpose is to show how the overall cadastral division looks in Sweden. The lack of quality of the cadastral index map dose not allows property-owners to know where to draw the boundary between their and others' property. In order to know where to find the boundaries between two properties, is it up to the property-owners themselves (self or in company by the other property-owner) to construct various usucaption at the boundaries. The main objective of the study is to verify the existence and extent of usucaption on forest properties in Bodan, a village outside Skellefteå.