The recent development in society?s structure has given rise to a more complex reality for the Swedishbanks. There is an increased pressure from external stakeholders for the banks to take a greater socialresponsibility in society; the bank must therefore focus on both direct as well as indirect effects of itsactions. The term corporate social responsibility implies that the company does not only focus on itsfinancial status but also on values such as ethics and environment. These commitments are crystalized,more or less clearly, in the banks? lending policy?s, whom are entirely defined by the banksthemselves.The nature of the abstract CSR expression gives rise to uncertainty, both in regards to the banks ownefforts towards social responsibility but also for the external stakeholders, for which it can be quitedifficult to understand what commitments are actually made.This study aims to investigate how the Swedish banks public statements, with regards to their lendingpolicy, correlates with the actual actions carried out by the banks.

Within the last year many companies have proactively started to communicate their flaws and weaknesses, believing that this will lead to they being perceived as more personal and human. Dominos Pizza is one of many examples of a company using this practice as a strategic tool for communication. However, the problem concerning the above arises as we found that there was a very limited amount of research defining the effects of communicating flaws, where the company's both dispatcher and initiator. Our study aims to fill the gap between this growing trend and the limited research explaining the communication effects. The study was carried out as an experiment where a total of 420 respondents participated.

This thesis examines the effects of electricity visualization in an office building. The subject was investigated through the creation of a web based visualization tool that was made accessible to the about 1500 employees in a large office building. The visualization was available for three weeks. During this period interviews, user studies and observations took place in order to evaluate what, if any, effects the visualization had on the attitudes and behaviors in the office. Electricity use data was collected and analyzed to see if the project had a statistically significant effect on the electricity consumption in the office.The results from the interviews and the data analysis indicate that no reduction in electricity consumption took place, and a number of factors that could increase the chances of success were identified.

The purpose of this master thesis is to examine some pre-school teacher's and parent's perceptions about communication within the pre-school context and how this can be described in terms of conceptual dichotomy.The empirical investigation consists of a qualitative study, where data have been collected by interviewing two focus groups and one single parent.The main theoretical tools which the study uses as its premiss is Derridas' theory of hospitality and Habermas' theory of deliberative dialogues. The study also considers the conception of the intermediate domain as an arena for communication between parents and pre-school teachers, and further more the conception of stereotyping in social and cultural contexts.In order to explore these processes I have used the qualitative method of interpretation; Hermeneutic, also with a narrative approach to the analysis.The results and the analysis of the data show that the interviewed parent and pre-school teachers have a poor sense of knowing how much influence to give to each other. The parents were not satisfied with the level of open communication and how the pre-school teachers share information of the activities..

The aim of this study is to observe Swedish preschool children in their natural habitat and without any intervention. Four different observations are made and thereafter analyzed. Throughout the whole study the subject of interest is the children's communication in their play. Children can communicate with each other in various ways, for instance with speech and without speech, i.e. with their physical language, aesthetic and multi language.

AbstractBackground: Becoming a parent to a child in need of Neonatal Intensive Care can be a traumatic experience. During a time when the parents may need support, guidance and a sense of control ? the family might need to relocate to a hospital away from home if the child needs highly specialized medical care at a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Aim: The aim of this study is to investigate the parents? experience of having to change neonatal care unit.

AbstractBackground: Becoming a parent to a child in need of Neonatal Intensive Care can be a traumatic experience. During a time when the parents may need support, guidance and a sense of control ? the family might need to relocate to a hospital away from home if the child needs highly specialized medical care at a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Aim: The aim of this study is to investigate the parents? experience of having to change neonatal care unit.

The Swedish population is today exposed to more ads than ever. The number of advertising channels is growing, as well as the number of companies and their advertising expenses. As the products are becoming more alike, the harder it gets for the companies to convince the consumers their product is better than their competitors?. In order to succeed they need to understand what they communicate to the consumers through their different marketing activities, and how that affects the consumers? view of the brand and the product.

Dementia may cause impairment of linguistic abilities, affecting both production and comprehension, which in turn affects communication (Mahendra & Hopper, 2012: Perkins, Whithworth & Lesser, 1998). The aim of the present study was to investigate and describe the communication strategies in everyday conversations between people with dementia and their interlocutors, and to describe the identified interaction phenomena based on a participatory perspective.The study was conducted at a home for people with dementia. Three people with known dementia and two health professionals participated in the study. Everyday interactions were filmed, and then transcribed and analyzed according conversation analytic principles. The transcribed data was also analyzed with ideas from positioning theory.The present study highlights the presence of trouble sources in communication between the person with dementia and carers and how these are handled by the participants in terms of strategies, competence and positioning.

The scope of this master thesis is the scientific publishing at Uppsala University's Faculty of Arts. The aim of the thesis is to investigate publication patterns and publishing strategies. To investigate how the publication patterns of the faculty is structured and what priorities and considerations the researchers have regarding scientific publishing. Furthermore, the aim is to compare these publishing strategies and publication patterns to incentives and selection principles of the bibliometric indicators in the performance based research funding systems on the national and local scale.The thesis is based on the theories of disciplinary differences developed by Richard Whitley and Tony Becher and Paul R. Trowler. These theories suggest a framework based on organizational and sociological perspectives, that offers ways to explain differences in publication patterns between different scientific fields.The study is based on two empirical studies of the faculty.

The study aims to examine the communication between older immigrants and nurses at several nursing homes.Emphasis has been placed on clarifying both parties? experience of communication regarding the older immigrant?s idiomatic difficulties. The following questions were used in the creation of the study: How does the older immigrant communicate with the personnel at a nursing home? How does the older immigrant enjoy their residence at the nursing home? How do language difficulties influence the older immigrant?s possibility to express their self?In the study eight qualitative interviews were made with four older immigrants who lives in nursing homes and four nurses working in a nursing home. The survey shows that the overall problem in the communication is the older immigrant?s lack of language.

Face-to-face communication is always complemented with non-verbal signals that give us clues as to how a message shall be interpreted, but as communication is moved online the possibilities to express oneself becomes more limited.This paper focuses on the instant messaging client Windows Live Messenger and three of the non-verbal functions that it provides (nudges, winks and emotes). The purpose of the paper and its underlying study is to compare the senders' intentions with the receivers' conceptions when it comes to these functions.The study was done as a questionnaire with two different versions of the questions, one looking at the senders' intentions and the other at the receivers' conceptions.The results were then compared in order to look for tendencies. The results showed that the most common intention among the senders was also the most common conception among the receivers, but that the rest of the attitudes didn't match at all. The functions that are supposed to help the conversation flow often create ambiguity instead and lead to vagueness, misconceptions and annoyance..

Organizational democracy has been a popular research area in recent decades but the implementation in real organizations is slow (Kokkinidis, 2012; Verdorfer, Weber, Unter Rainer & Seyr, 2013). Several researchers (Schön Jansson, 2012; Falkheimer, Heide & Johansson, 2013) argue that communication practitioners have a key role in democratic processes and that because their job role is under constant change there are only a few modern studies regarding the subject. The purpose of this study is to illustrate how communication practitioners in private and public organizations experience their role in the process of internal communication and to what extent they are aware of, and work with internal organizational democracy.The practitioners we interviewed had a strong feeling that they were a support function for the business and the organizational management. As a result of the study it is clear that communication practitioners are very loyal to their employers and to the organization they work for. They are, therefore, not neutral in their professional role and argue that their task is to represent the management's interests.

Background: Pervious research indicates that communication between patient and nurse has shortcomings. For the nurse, difficulties in care giving may emerge when the nurse and patient cannot understand each other. Research also shows that patients? participation in their care become more difficult by lack of communication. The care giving of patients who speak a different language is seen as a challenge by the nurse.

The students participating in my development work will work with a process book for handicraft studies. In the beginning of their studies, the students need practical knowledge about the development of the profession itself, but they also need to be challenged and learn how to solve problems on their own which will help them gain a deeper knowledge of the subject.    I focus on open questions to create a process with the students. This process is created when working with Solution-Focused-Education. Through ?assessment for learning? we can help the students to improve their self-assessment and understanding of the learning process.