Background: Municipalities are organizations facing a turbulent environment characterized by social, economical and political changes. It is the responsibility of the topleaders of the municipality (the municipal manager and the chairman of the local government board) to manage the situation and to make sure that the organization continuously develops. Purpose: To explain, from a leadership perspective, how the municipal topleaders'duties have developed during the past 25 years. Results: The municipal topleaders have nowadays got more issues to handle. Cooperation, networks and projects have increased, like international issues.

The subject for this paper is the Class Action against Skandia Association, a civil organization formed in 2003 with the aim of claiming compensation for some 1.2 million life insurance customers. The background to its formation was one of the largest financial scandals in Sweden in recent times, involving a number of questionable affairs within the insurance corporation Skandia and its subsidiaries, most notably the life insurance company Skandia Liv. The interests of both the stake- and stockholders of the company seem, in certain ways, to have been grossly misrepresented. The scandal, as well as the reaction it spawned, pose a number of questions. In this study, we focus on two: a possible, and in many ways apparent crisis in the representation of interests in Swedish society, and the role of civil society in upholding the balance between these interests.We argue that what is often held to be the ?greed? or ?immorality? of individuals in scandals such as Skandia is, to a great extent, a mere reflection of the ?rational? underpinnings of modern-day capitalism.We find that trust has been a key mechanism of control in the relationships between consumers and agents in pension and life insurance markets, and that ?the Swedish model? that distinguished post-WWII Swedish society was a model heavily based on trust towards existing models of bureaucratic governance.

Erfarenheter från de senaste årens komplexa konflikter har bidragit till insikten att separata militära insatser ofta är otillräckliga för att skapa fred. Comprehensive Approach ses av många som ett koncept med målsättningen att skapa en integrerad civil-militär ansats för konfliktlösning. Konceptets innebörd är emellertid oklar. Dessutom är det problematiskt att empiriskt belägga att användandet av konceptet leder till framgång, vilket medför svårigheter att granska dess värde.Uppsatsen utnyttjar Michael Howards teori om strategins dimensioner för att analysera Storbritanniens syn på Comprehensive Approach som strategiskt koncept. Som metod används en kvalitativ textanalys av systematiserande typ.

The aim of this essay is to examine whether democracy in St Petersburg isconsolidated or not. Since studies of democratic transition have been rarelyconducted on post-communist cities, this study seems fruitful. Using the Linz andStepan theory, where democracy is considered consolidated when it has become?the only game in town? and Orttung's three criteria legitimacy, politicalpolarisation and policy effectiveness; this essay analyzes people's attitudes,political behaviour, the rule of law and civil society in St Petersburg. Theory isused to interpret the material mainly consisting of two interviews and newspaperarticles.

AbstractThe purpose of this study was to identify problems that may occur in the execution of a civil engineering project and suggest measures to reduce the risk of errors. The study was conducted in cooperation with a civil engineering company in the Gothenburg area. During two weeks in February 2012, a field study took place on two construction sites where disruption and problems that took more than 15 minutes to correct were noted. During the field study we identified 39 such occurrences in the projects and then these were classified into different categories according to their cause.The two largest categories were "Design" and "Planning", which accounted for half of the errors that were discovered.In the study results were evaluated to decide whether it was possible to detect discrepancies at an earlier stage. The cost to fix an error in the design stage may be significantly less than to correct the problem in production.According to the evaluation, 55% of the errors could have been detected earlier if there was a greater degree of observation for such issues by everyone involved in the project.

At the EU summit in Cologne in 1999, a consensus was reached concerning the common foreign and security policy within the European Union. It was decided at the summit that the WEU (Western European Union) should be incorporated into the EU - whom would then be given military capability to act autonomously without the necessity of Nato involvement. This essay investigates the factors that made this agreement possible from a rational choice perspective, but also from the perspective of the power and influence on negotiations on behalf of various types of leadership present at the meeting. Many nations at the summit of Cologne where for the creation of a military force in the form of ESDP (European Security and Defence Policy) within the Union, and many where against such a decision. However a consensus was reached and that is what this essay shall try to explain.

This study uses European researcher Tomas Valasek?s hypothesis about factors required for defence cooperation in order to achieve conditions which can be successfully applied to the Nordic defence cooperation NORDEFCO. The study uses only Norway and Sweden on the grounds that they are the original actors and the driving forces behind the defence cooperation. The factors studied are; the countries' strategic culture, solidarity and trust between countries, similarity in military forces, if similar conditions prevail in the defence industry and if the intentions of cooperation have been clarified.Mainly government documents in the form of propositions, orientations and defence documents are studied, together with previous research in this area and, especially, interviews with representatives of NORDEFCO at military level and policy level as well as outside perspectives from the military attachés in each country. With the intention of studying the extent to which the factors Valasek features may prove to be significant in assessing the conditions for enhanced cooperation in NORDEFCO, the study raises the question of how it is possible to find expressions for the factors.

Militärt ledarskap har tidigare utforskats inom en militär kontext. De senaste åren har många officerare slutat inom försvaret och blivit chefer inom det civila. Uppsatsen undersöker kvalitativt huruvida dessa chefer har nytta av erfarenheten från försvaret i sitt civila ledarskap. Detta görs utifrån en litteraturgenomgång av ledarskapsforskning och den militära kontexten. Tretton chefer på mellanchef till VD-nivå intervjuades i ett semistrukturerat format inspirerat av grundad teori.

The aim of this study is to analyze the construction of "Christian masculinity" during the modern era. This is made in opposition to earlier research that has claimed that masculinity could not be constructed religiously, that is, without at the same time being constructed as effeminate or anti-masculine.Using a wide variety of theoretical concepts - such as discourse analysis, class, secularisation, masculinity as constructed from countertypes, and finally masculinity as a homosocial construction - I analyze a free church in Sweden, the Scanian Missionary Society (Skånes Missionssällskap), during the period of ca 1939-1945 (the society was a district of the Swedish Covenant Church, or Svenska Missionsförbundet), in order to argue for the standpoint that masculinity, in fact, could be constructed religiously. The primary source is the society's weekly journal Sydposten.The main results in this study can be summarized as follows: 1) The leading men in the Scanian Missionary Society did, in fact, construct a Christian masculinity, i. e. a masculinity whose core values and ideals were Christian, e.g.

By using modern methods of casting concrete, cast in place can get more effective and industrialized. A modern method is self compacting concrete. By using this type of concrete, advantages like improved working environment and rationalized construction can be reached. Because the concrete doesn?t need to be vibrated, the amount of staff on site and the noise can be reduced.

This bachelor thesis is a critical study in which we are studying if the swedish reports of the so called ?second revolution? in Egypt have been objective. We have been studying this by using Jörgen Westerståhls objectivity model and we have chosen to investigate whether the reports have been objective balance-wise. The second revolution is a term which describes the protests and demonstrations that led to the military action in which the elected president Muhammad Mursi were forced to resign on the 4th of July, 2013The study includes articles from five leading Swedish newspapers, Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Expressen, Göteborgs-Posten and Svenska Dagbladet. We have been studying all the articles that include the word ?Egypt?.

The Swedish Armed Forces have gone through a remarkable change. From beingan organisation built on the notion of countering a Soviet invasion it has evolvedto focusing on small, multilateral rapid reaction capabilities to be used within theframework of the European security and defence policy, ESDP.This thesis regards the change as a process of Europeanisation. Drawing fromsociological and historical institutionalism, it is shown that the Swedish ArmedForces in the post-cold war context was path dependent and unwilling to redefineits historical raison d?être. The origin of the ESDP Europeanised the nationaldefence policy, whereas the bureaucracy was still unwilling to translate the newstructural norms.

ABSTRACT Poverty, and in particular child poverty, is a serious social problem. Statistics show that the number of children living in poverty has increased over the last ten years. Earlier research shows that there are huge gaps in our knowledge of how the actors in civil society handle child poverty. With this study we hope to help fill this gap. The aim of our study is to look at how four different organisations working in the civil society in Uppsala perceive and handle child poverty.

This study was conducted by using a qualitative textual analysis on UNICEF Sweden?s website with the purpose of problematizing the role of UNICEF Sweden in today?s globalised society. This was done in the context of how organisations of civil society have gained influence. Following questions were answered: How does UNICEF Sweden legitimise its operation? Which strategies does UNICEF Sweden use to encourage involvement and donations?The study shows how UNICEF Sweden legitimises its work by promoting a unique influence, their unique methods of work and by showing how the organisation helps the most disadvantaged children.

Aeroseum is an aviation museum located in an old military underground hangar. The ventilation system in the hangar is designed for the military purpose of the hangar. This design includes a solution with air flowing through the space between the construction of the hangar and the rock surface. The solution is intended to avoid a buildup of inflammable gases. This design leads too high humidity levels in the hangar.