What every theory of democracy has in common is a reference to ?a people? who are, in one way or another, collectively self-governing. Given that, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the so called boundary problem of democratic theory, or, in other words, the question of who should be included in the democratic community. Lately, the historically given boundaries have been questioned in favour of a cosmopolitan democracy. Still, little has been said about the boundary problem in general, especially from a theoretical point of view.

In scientific investigations on how organizations can learn from their mistakes the perspective is usually that of the social engineer; the object is to prevent human errors through modeling the system in a certain way. The aim of this paper is to explore the learning process from a different standpoint than those usually applied in organizational learning and error theory. By studying the learning process in Swedish health care I seek to discover how theoretical presumptions affect the outcome in terms of what we actually learn. The theoretical framework draws on two major discussions in contemporary political science; the question of structure and agency and the question of whether to focus on formal or informal structures when explaining organizational behavior.The investigation shows that Swedish health care tend to understand human errors as a result of formal organizational structure. Such a view leads to insufficient explanations to why errors occur but is useful in producing preventative measures.

This thesis explores the position of book blogs in the literary system through Robert Escarpit's socio-literary model of the book market. Simultaneously the thesis serves as a test for Escarpit's theory: by actively applying his theory and model to a very new and contemporary actor on the book market I hoped to reach or confirm new insights into the usefulness and validity of Escarpit's work for contemporary socio-literary studies.Three book blogs were selected for the analysis and interviews were carried out with the authors. The interview questions were formulated specifically for the purpose of extracting the kind of information necessary for an analysis using Escarpit?s theory. As a complement to the interviews, statistics on the type of books reviewed on the blogs were also compiled.

This thesis aims to examine the conditions for entrepreneurship in Taiwan by the occurrence of cultural phenomenon guanxi. Based on the concept of familiness and guanxi, the family is central in this study of family business. Traditional descriptions of the Asian culture claim that guanxi is vital in the business context. Though, recent studies indicate that significance of guanxi seems to be changing. Therefore the purpose of this thesis is to create an understanding of the importance and relevance of guanxi in the context of Taiwanese family business.By travelling to Kaohsiung, Taiwan to interview six managers of Taiwanese family firms this study?s empirical material was gathered for further processing based on a qualitative approach.

The purpose of this paper was to discuss stigma and stigmatisation in relation to social policy and social work. By discussing welfare systems in social policy I wanted to see if there could be any connection between social policy and stigma. I used case studies of hearing impaired adults to give examples of how the stigma processes work. By connecting the stigma and the social policy theories with the case studies I wanted to see how the social policy could affect the stigma processes or vice versa.In the paper the concept of stigma has been described and discussed, foremost using the theories of Erving Goffman. I have also discussed the welfare system and the connection between residual systems and stigma.

Wikileaks is using the new technical solutions to mount big leaks, consisting of secret or sensitive information from the government, institutions and business. This might profoundly change the media reality and it certainly means both new opportunities and new challenges for traditional media; the conditions for the journalists, the sources and the news reporting are changing. In this thesis the relationship between Swedish journalists and Wikileaks has been the focus; they both affect each other but the conditions for this relationship is not yet clear. Clearly there is an interdependence, but who really is dependent on the other and to which degree they are dependent on each other is still a question without a given answer.The aim of this thesis has been to discern a new journalism, and how this responds to the theories of Public Journalism and Journalistik 3.0. The main aim has been to examine what Swedish journalist thinks about Wikileaks, what their attitude towards Wikileaks are,  if and how they think that Wikileaks have affected the Swedish journalism.

The aim of this thesis is to gain a deeper understanding of howsocial contacts can serve as information sources for pregnantwomen. Furthermore, we wanted to examine how women?scontext influences their information seeking and the barriers thatcan occur during information seeking. The theoretical frameworkis founded on Tom Wilson's model of information needs as contextdependent, and Pamela J. McKenzie's model of informationpractices in accounts of everyday-life information seeking.

There is an increased pressure for firms to provide the financial market with additional information. Such disclosure is attached with different kinds of costs. In spite of these costs, and in spite of increased mandatory disclosures, firms choose to voluntary disclosure financial information to analysts and others. This indicates that firms also benefit from providing additional information. The subjects of this study is 431 annual reports from firms listed at the Stockholm Stock Exchange for 2002 and 2005 and the objective is to survey factors that can explain variations in firms? voluntary disclosure.

Studiens syfte: Vårt syfte är att med hjälp av en enkätundersökning och etablerade motivationsteorier ta reda på vad som motiverar konsumenter inför ett bostadsköp.Metod: Vi har använt oss av en kvantitativ metod och informationen har samlats in med hjälp av en elektronisk enkätundersökning för att sedan kopplas till Self Determination Theory (SDT).Resultat & slutsats: Resultatet analyserades med hjälp av statistikprogrammet SPSS. Faktoranalysen resulterade i 13 faktorer, vilket slutligen gav en bild av 6 olika typer av konsumenter som alla motiveras på olika sätt.Förslag till fortsatt forskning: SDT skulle kunna användas på fler konsumentområden såsom upplevelser, resor eller för att ta reda på varför vi köper olika typer av varor.Uppsatsens bidrag: Vårt examensarbete har bidragit med att identifiera de motiv som driver oss till bostadsköp. Studien har visat att SDT kan vara ett lämpligt verktyg för framtidens fastighetsmäklare och att resultatet kan vara användbart i fastighetsmäklarrollen. .

Through an examination on a Telemarketing company this paper aim to investigate which relations there is between the level of motivation and performance and how these are related to the factors that are included in Herzbergs two-factor-theory.In this essay we have been using a questionnaire and interview. We have also been able to collect statistics on employees from the Telemarketing company we examine. On the basis of these data we have analyzed which relations there is.The examination shows on relations who mean that the factors Performance and Acknowledgement are the ones that affect the motivation the most, and therefore the level of Performance. The rest of the Motivation factors don?t show any clear relations.

Since the breakdown of the Soviet Union, more than fifteen revolutionary yearshave passed. Estonia and Latvia have undergone a change from communist statesto members of the European Union. As in so many other post-communist statescorruption has been a problem. However, Estonia has since the independence hada lower degree of corruption than the neighbour country Latvia. The main purposeof this thesis is to explain why so.

The Public vs. private movement has over the past decades identified numerous significant differences between public and private organizations. The observed differences covers almost every field in administrative economics ranging from organizational structure, management accounting, goal-setting and in the past few years even leadership. Strangely, in the majority of these studies little or no regards are given to organizational characteristics or fundamental differences between compared organizations and if these organizations really are comparable when studying the effect of sector.The aim of this study is to compare leadership in relatively similar organizations from both the public and private sector and so clarify if earlier identified differences in leadership styles still surface when leaders working with approximately the same thing in a similar work context are studied.A sample of 348 Swedish principals was drawn from both municipal and private elementary schools. The respondents answered a web-based survey based on the CPE-model resulting in leadership styles mapped according to three orientations: change, production and employee.

AbstractThe purpose of this study is to answer the following questions regarding confirmation: In what ways do children seek confirmation in preschool? What are children confirmed for and how do they react to the confirmation? How is confirmation used by teachers? What do children want to receive confirmation for?The starting point for this study is based on the unique theories of Skinner, Maslow and Bronfenbrenner. The main focus with regard to Skinner?s theory (in this study) lies in reinforcement. In Maslow?s theory, the concentration is on hierarchy of needs while in Bronfenbrenner?s theory, the study centers upon interaction.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to investigate how trained social workers experience information in their daily work. The thesis focussed on three major questions: - What type of information and information sources are mostly used by the trained social workers? - What kind of information barriers are described by the participants? - How can the patterns of information seeking and information use be understood on the basis of the trained social workers professional and social context? Semi-structured interviews were carried out with trained social workers working with child welfare enquiries. My theoretical framework consists of user and context oriented theories about classifications of information, information barriers and models of information sources. My conclusions are that trained social workers working with risk assessment in child protection services, need to use different kinds of information in their daily work, such as problem information, domain information and problem-solving information.

This master thesis was made to describe how sales organisations are constructed in Sweden within an industry with almost every sales situation as a new task selling, and where almost every selling is over one million Skr. One of these industries is the homebuilding industry with companies that manufacturers prefabricated houses and semi-fixed manufactured homes in Sweden. The pre-studies where made by using the Internet, intervjues and theory studies to construct a conceptual framework. The sales organisation was conceptualized to be able to measure: salesman, sales leader, improved skills, communication, reported information, compensation and company targets. This conceptualisation and operationalisation lead to a survey that captured organisations within the homebuilding industry in Sweden.