The study aims to investigate student participation as a tool for democratic development in secondary school from a student perspective. Furthermore, students' perceptions of the school's work with student participation in formal and informal contexts are also investigated, with basis in the teaching structure. The results are based on interviews conducted with students who all attend the same class in their last year of high school. Subsequently, an analysis is made based mainly on three different theories: democracy, curricula and sociocultural theory. The result shows that students feel that they are able to practice student participation but the amount of influence they get differs between individuals depending on devotion and commitment.

ABSTRACTWe have chosen to write an essay about competence because we think that it is an important and a current subject of interest, both to us as future team leaders, but also to all activities within the community. We have a background working with eldercare and we have noticed that there are continued changes going on. This made us want to study what team leaders and their staff think about competence and the development of competence. The purpose of this study is to analyse how team leaders work to develop competence with their personnel working in home care. We also want to analyse how the personnel experience their competence and their need for development of competence.

This essay contains material of how the competence maintenance works on a chosen company and how a web based tool developed for its use can help companies with competence insur-ance. As competence maintenance is a major factor to have a long term profit it´s necessary to be aware of the company?s future needs in the competence sector. This essay describes the company?s competence maintenance occupation needs taken from internal documents; it also identifies the need for competence maintenance and presents multiple areas of possible im-provements.

The profit a company makes is dependant of its employees which means that their competence is important for the company to perform well. The middle manager has a central position in the organization and is expected to take on different roles. This probably puts a lot of demands on the middle managers and their competence. We want to contribute with a comprehension of how learning, competence and needs for competence can look at a middle management level. Furthermore we also want to find out what kind of strategy for competence development the middle managers want the company to use so their competence development can be facilitated.

This paper examines the amount of influence that upper secondary school pupils of the Swedish voluntary school system. The curriculum clearly states that democratic values are to be instilled with the pupils at an early age, and that the pupils are to have a degree of democratic influence over their tutelage. This paper is based upon a survey, which involves one hundred and fourteen pupils at the Malmö Latin gymnasium. The hypothesis argues that upper secondary school pupils in Sweden have very little knowledge in this area and it contradicts much of the previous research done in this field. The pupils´ ages vary from fifteen to eighteen years of age.The survey shows that the pupils of this school have little or no knowledge of their democratic rights within the school boundaries.

This paper examined if childrens wellbeing affected their social and academic competence. The data was collected through an anonymous study using questionnaires, where the measuring instruments GHQ12 and EQ was used, and also a number of questions concerning academic competence. The population concisted twentytwo eight grade students, both girls and boys. The population had both Swedish and foreign ancestry. The result showed that wellbeing and the academic competence had a positive correlation.

This paper examined if childrens wellbeing affected their social and academic competence. The data was collected through an anonymous study using questionnaires, where the measuring instruments GHQ12 and EQ was used, and also a number of questions concerning academic competence. The population concisted twentytwo eight grade students, both girls and boys. The population had both Swedish and foreign ancestry. The result showed that wellbeing and the academic competence had a positive correlation.

Problem: In society of today corporate competence is an important factor for survivor and development. IT is developing rapidly and can not be ignored by companies. Then need for people with IT-competence is conquent increasing. A survey of corporate IT-competence is therefore of interest for companies as well as for local authorities. To determine the IT competence within an organisation, this competence has to be measurable.

AbstractSince democracy was developed in the ancient Greece it has come to be used within a small city state, within the national state and as today used within a bigger perspective. After the end of the second world war political leaders wanted to make sure that there would never be a war between European countries again. Now, about 60 years later this type of cooperation now involves 27 of the European countries and goes under the name of the Euroapean Union. This means that democracy is no longer used just within the nation state, but within a big organisation that is responsible for almost 500 million Europeans lives. This also means that the European Union need to make some institutional reforms to be able to handle all the future challenges.

Competence is a complex concept that encompasses many facets. This study aims fora better understanding of the concept. Many branches of business administration science would benefit from a better understanding of competence and, through that understanding, find solutions where competence is one of many variables. By combining a positivistic and phenomenological approach, this study has created a broader understanding of the concept of competence.The study combines systematic study of the relevant literature with in-depth interviewswith people representing both the employer and the union within the staffing company world.The results show that quantifying competence is a complex and next to impossible task, as it would involve including the whole concept of competence in the calculations. When this is done, the phenomenon itself becomes so complex that it loses its validity.This is why theorists who want to perform this type of calculations put most of the competence complexity in ?the black box?.

Problem: In society of today corporate competence is an important factor for survivor and development. IT is developing rapidly and can not be ignored by companies. Then need for people with IT-competence is conquent increasing. A survey of corporate IT-competence is therefore of interest for companies as well as for local authorities. To determine the IT competence within an organisation, this competence has to be measurable.

Background: As the economy turns up and down, and companies sometimes face loosing employees, it is important for them to make sure they do not loose competence at the same time. Therefore a need to handle competence efficiently exist. Purpose. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate what measures companies take to minimise the risk of loosing competence from the company, at times of layoffs and in general. Methodology: We mainly used interviews to gather information.

The aim of this study is to illuminate and discuss a case of political steering, specifically Managment-By-Objectives (MBO) in Swedish municipalities, from a democratic perspective. The essay examines a discrepancy between MBO in the Swedish municipalities and democratic theory.To fulfil the aim of the study one leading politician and one leading civil servant from five municipalities have been interviewed on this matter. This material is discussed in the light of a democratic theory constructed specifically for this essay. The democratic theory consists of three main democratic values in the democratic process: debate, transparence and the ability to demand political accountability.The main conclusion is that there is a contradiction in the use of MBO and the democratic values of debate, transparence and the ability to demand political accountability. MBO has resulted in a lack of debate and transparency and furthermore, it has made it increasingly more difficult to demand political accountability..

The aim of the following paper has been to test the democratic peace theory through applying it on the conflict between Russia and Georgia in 2008.  This to either falsify the theory or come to the conclusion that the states? democracy was not satisfactory in regards to the definition of liberal democracy. The questions asked are: Was Russia and Georgia democratic states? Is democracy a protection from war? And which aspects of the liberal democratic theory, if any, were not satisfactory in either of the countries? The results show that the democratic peace theory is valid in this case and that neither one of the states were democratic.

This essay focus on the European Union and its democracy both from a national perspec­tive and from an international perspective. Furthermore, the essay center on the con­cept of democratic deficit, this in order to study the European Union´s status regarding the democratic legitimacy. This study intends to nuance the problems that previous research and previous researchers have de­fined as democratic deficits in the European Union and ends up in conducting a textual anal­ysis of the latest European Union treaty, the Lisbon Treaty.The aim is that by using previous research on the democratic deficit in the European Union examine whether the Lisbon Treaty has enhanced the EU's position regarding democratic legitimacy. In other words, my study aims to identify what the deficit is and if it exists.The results show that the Lisbon Treaty has been trying to improve the democratic legitimacy and that some practical adjustments have been made, but it also show that there is much that still can be improved before citizens have full democratic rights..