The purpose of this essay is to examine the concept of competence within the social services. More specifically it aims to find out how the social workers themselves look upon their own competence in social investigations concerning children. As the study was based on focus groups the main questions were vague at the beginning and were cleared later on during the group sessions.In three focus group interviews in three different municipalities in southern Sweden 11 social workers were asked to discuss this issue. The interviews were then thoroughly transcribed. In the data I identified 9 themes seeming to play a special roll in the discussions about competence: practice; experience; approach; intuition; responsibility; theories, methods and laws; reflection; resources and ethics; specialisation versus integration.The analysis made on these themes was based on two different kinds of perspective; one focusing knowing-in-action and the other focusing the organization framing the competence considered.As a conclusion the 7 first themes can be seen as a definition of the competence used in social investigations concerning children.

The aim of this two-year masters thesis is to look for the Swedish public library´s core business, using theories about competence. The approach is qualitative. It is done by studying the Unesco Public Library Manifesto, the Swedish library legislation, the education in library and information science, two important Swedish library related journals and by asking public librarians about their work and point of view regarding competence.The research shows mainly two sides of the core competence of public librarians: information technology competence and literature knowledge. The conclusion is that the two meet in the idea of mass education, which could therefore be called the Swedish public library´s core business..

SammanfattningTitel: Lönesystemens påverkan på fastighetsmäklare - en studie inom fastighetsmäklarbranschen. Författare: Eve-Linn och Nilsson Sanna MattssonHandledare: Sofia MolanderProblemformulering: "Påverkas fastighetsmäklare av provisionsbaserad lön?" "Påverkar provision mäklarens förmåga att leverera god kvalitet på sin tjänst?""Påverkar provisionen konkurrensen och arbetsmiljön på arbetsplatsen?"Syfte: Syftet med vår studie är att beskriva om provision påverkar fastighetsmäklares arbetssituation och arbetsmiljö.Sammanfattning: För att besvara vårt syfte har vi i teorikapitlet presenterat relevanta teorier som ligger till grund för denna studie. Bland annat presenteras de vanligaste lönesystemen för fastighetsmäklare idag, definitionen av tjänstekvalitet, etiska svårigheter hos säljyrken, hur en god arbetsmiljö definieras och vad som krävs för att den ska vara god. Resultatet grundar sig i en enkätundersökning som skickats ut till aktiva fastighetsmäklare runt om i Sverige, där har det ställts frågor angående mäklarnas egen uppfattning om lönesystem och dess påverkan på deras yrkesliv.

Testing and analysis of measurement data is a major part of the workday for development engineers within the section Fluid and Emission Treatment to assure the quality of products developed by Scania CV. The ineluctable variation and therefore uncertainty of results can be quantified and discussed with the use of statistical methods.The overall objective of this study is to examine how the competence of development engineers can be improved within the area of statistics. This has been done by relating the concept of competence with the use of statistical methods to analyse experimental data and by investigating which factors that influence the competence of the engineers. Observations of the daily operations, interviews and a focus group with development engineers and a workshop with management personnel, has been used as research methods in this study.The results show that the desired competence, from the perspective of the individual, consists of knowledge, motivation and support. It is important that none of these parts are neglected when the competence of engineers is to be strengthened.

This study is based on my work as a teacher of Swedish language and literature to upper secondary school students, and my interest in developing the teaching of literature by using both new criticism theories and theories of literary perception focusing on reader response. The purpose of the study is to examine the learning process in trying to develop literary competence and to find out how to describe the competence shown by the students. My starting-point is a discussion about literary competence and the theory and model of literary competence by Örjan Torell. In examining literary competence, by how students use their constitutional competence as well as performance and literary transfer competences, Torell´s model shows the possibility and the need for both knowledge of literature and personal reception by focusing on the dialogue between author and reader.The method is qualitative and the empirics are material collected in one senior high school class in the Social Science programme during their second and third year. The material contains written reading logs, written answers to tasks and transcribed recordings of discussions of literature.The analysis shows a variety among the literary competence shown and developed by the students and points to the complexity of understanding the concept of literary competence.

The concept competence is considered to be difficult to define. Therefore, it may be problematic to define competence in business and to evaluate the level of skills of employees (Thomsen, 2010). In this study the aim has been to identify key competencies for employees working as purchasers for Skanska Nordic Procurement Unit (NPU). These key competencies will afterwards help Skanska NPU to evaluate purchasers? level of competence.The theoretical framework of the study consists of three different parts.

Several studies have shown that the Swedish labour market for different reasons is characterized by ethnical discrimination and that people who have another cultural background than Swedish are being excluded. Most studies done within this area have been focused on why it is harder for immigrants to enter the labour market and identifying the contributing mechanisms for this phenomenon. Instead the aim of this study was to see how the immigrants view their own cultural identity and background and how they perceive that their cultural competences are being valued when they apply for a job. To examine this, the following problematic was used: How does a person who has been brought up with both the Swedish culture and another culture look at using this as a cultural competence when they apply for a job. Two different theories were then applied to analyze the problematic, Erving Goffman´s theory about Stigma and Norbert Elias theory about the Established and the Outsiders.

The purpose of this study is to gain understanding of how self employed entrepreneurs (hereafter referred to as ?entrepreneurs?) develop their competence based on their perceived learning space. The main question is: How do these entrepreneurs develop their competence based on their perceived learning space? Other questions relevant for the study are: How important is the social environment for these entrepreneurs and how do they interact with their social environment in order to develop their competence. The study has a qualitative approach.

Not all payments that an employee receives are cash salary, but may also be salary benefits. It should not matter in which form an employee receives payment, taxation shall be equal despite the form of salary. Cash salary as well as salary in benefits are covered by a general rule in the Swedish Tax Law and shall therefore be taxed when they have a connection to the work performed. There are exemptions to the general rule as some benefits are tax free. In general, taxation shall be easy to foresee.   The legal rules that are treated in this thesis have a general meaning.

Large retirement numbers and fierce competition of available labour, results in municipalities have to be more attractive as an employer. One way for the municipalities to fulfil their staffing requirement is partly to increase their recruitment efforts, and partly to educate their existing employees. Discussions about the supply of competence are therefore pressing within municipal activity. The aim of the study was to investigate how the concept of competence is used within a municipal administration. The method that has been used is Norman Fairclough?s critical discourse analysis, a method that allows multi dimensional analysis.

The purpose of the thesis is to map the meaning of ?international competence? in Swedish company boards of directors. The study is divided in a qualitative part and a quantitative part. The qualitative study consists of a discourse analysis where variation in interpretative repertoires are identified to enhance the understanding of the nature of reasoning related to the meaning and importance of the issue at stake. The discourse analysis is conducted on an empirical material from 27 interviews with decision makers in recruitment processes to Swedish company boards of directors.

Competence Portals are software tools that are intended to make it easier for persons that have had no previous contact to find and contact each other. The portals can address areas ranging from finding an expert within an organisation to the marketing of the competence of a region or a research centre to other organisations. The purpose of the thesis is to examine the necessity of Competence Portals in research-intensive organisations. Important characteristics of the information in such portals have been identified and used as a basis for recommendations regarding how Competence Portals could be designed. Furthermore, the thesis focuses on the task of finding a source of knowledge within an organisation.

The purpose with our study is to investigate why Capgemini adopts the Rightshore strategy, how they implement this strategy and how it affects Capgemini?s core competence. We also aim to look at how the company?s knowledge management is supporting the offshoring strategey, in addition to how Capgemini ?keeps control of? its core competence in following the trend of offshoring to India?.

In the latest years the Swedish armed forces have gone from an armed force with conscripts to voluntary men and women. When the basic training is voluntarily may the question be if the new men and women have the same approach to Desirable competences and pedagogy that is used by their officers during their training. Desirable competences are a part of the model transformational leadership and are divided into task related competence, management competence, social competence and capacitate to cope with stress.To deal with this problem I have used questionnaires from conscripts and a new questionnaire made on voluntary recruits.I have compared the results in a case study method and it shows a positive progress from the recruits view how the officers use examples from the transformational leadership. The study shows that recruits want officers to make demands, motivate and inspire them. The recruits want to know the goal with the education and they want the officers to make demands on them..

This paper conducts a qualitative examination based on interviews with six childrens librarians. The purpose is to put a perspective on the librarians competence and focal knowledge within the area of reading promotion and reading stimulation aimed for children, and also to examine how this competence and knowledge is constructed. The work is based on the following questions: How do childrens librarians experience reading promotion and reading stimulation within their profession? Which competence and what knowledge do childrens librarians experience as most important in order to make their work with reading promotion and reading stimulation function? What can be concluded regarding the construction of their competence and knowledge? The analysis is carried out from theories about competence, tacit knowledge and reading promotion. Following primary conclusions are drawn from the study: The professional role is mainly experienced as promoting reading as pleasure, but also as an important factor for childrens language development.