AbstractEssay in political science, C-level, by Line Säll, spring semester 2007.Tutor: Susan Marton.?To do things by the rule of law -A study in the discretion of front-line bureaucrats?This essay has it´s starting-point in the theoretical problem of social science to unite democracy and bureaucracy. The purpose is to illustrate the problems with the discretion of front-line bureaucrats in a democratic state. The theoretical approach is front-line bureaucracy-theory. Certain characteristics of the work of street-level bureaucrats makes it impossible to severly reduce discretion.

The aim of this study is to explore if and how library managers market their competence in communication with local politicians. It is also our aim to find a definition of the competence of librarians. The report identifies and describes problems and possibilitieswith marketing of competence to politicians on the basis of one Swedish municipality's library managers. In order to fulfil this aim we have used a literature study on marketing, competence, the political process and the librarian profession. We have alsocarried out an empirical study where we interviewed ten library managers in onemunicipality, seven politicians in the same municipality and ten representatives for central professional organisations mainly in Sweden.The results are that most library managers don't market their competence because they don?t believe in marketing competence.

The purpose of this study was to examine how young managers (26-32 years old) in municipal old-age care organizations, in Skåne and Blekinge, experience their professional roles as managers in relation to their age. One of the questions asked in this study was whether managers experienced that their age affected their managerial position, and in that case, how? In order to investigate this, a qualitative method was used, including interviews and observations. Seven interviews with young managers were conducted. My approach in the working process was influenced by Grounded theory as defined by Glaser and Strauss (1968).

Background: Motivation is a subject that is on everyone's lips in today's knowledge-intensive firms. What is motivation and what are we motivated by? We will, through three case studies, be grappling with the notion to clarify how managers and employees' perception of the concept is different, or possibly similar. Furthermore, the thesis examines whether the theory and practice of motivation are consistent with each other. Purpose: The purpose of our study is to seek understanding of what management within an organization believes are motivating their staff as well as how the staff perceive themselves be motivated by. We ask ourselves if organizations is up to date with the development of what motivates people.

Middle managers in social care find themselves in a middle position. The middle management position involves demands from several interested parties. The demands affect and generate feelings both within themselves and within others and the middle managers have to deal with them all.The aim of this study was to investigate the social care middle manager?s personal experiences of emotions in work.We have completed interviews with four middle managers who are assigned to carry out social care. When doing the interviews we used an interview guide divided into different interview areas.

We have decided to conduct a case study of German and Swedish mid-level managers within the automobile industry. Primarily we used a qualitative method of investigation and a phenomenographical methodological approach in order to conduct an in depth analysis. We conducted semi-structured interviews with six mid-level managers each in Germany and Sweden. The semi-structured interviews allowed us to conduct flexible interviews which enabled these managers to speak relatively freely about their own view of leadership. Throughout our investigation we have based our results on the empirical findings and at the same time sought explanations to different phenomenon in relevant secondary data, such as management literature, thus used the abductive method of investigation..

This study is based on interviews with four managers in public elderly care and four managers in private elderly care. The aim of this paper is to examine how these managers are experiencing their leadership in relation to conflict management, and if the managers leadership differs depending on private or public elderly care. Leadership and conflict management are theories that have been used in order to analyze the empirical findings. Previous research that has been used in the study concerns ?leadership/leadership styles?, ?conflict management?, ?to be active in the private/public elderly care?.

The purpose of this work is to find out how present manager contracts are set up in Landstinget Västmanland (the county council of Västmanland), explore managers? perception of these contracts and why managers have chosen leadership. The work has also reviewed the question if managers need to have a relationship or expertise to the activities they lead and which qualifications are needed in such case. The survey was conducted in two divisions in which nine interviews were held with managers at all levels. In addition to this a questionnaire including the 87 managers in the divisions were held.

The purpose of our study is to examine the case managers reasoning and descriptions of empowerment as a method in their social work from a comprehensively perspective including family members. To manage with this purpose we interviewed two case managers, two clients with mental disabilities and five family members. We have come to the conclusion that the case managers works more consist of advocacy than empowerment. Despite that we have found that the long term goal for the case mangers work is to give the clients tools for empowerment. Our results also show that the clients feel that they have gained and increased their ability to do things by themselves and to be a part of the community.

The purpose of this study was to investigate a Swedish assessment centre and more specifically the predictive validity of its assessments of ten managers from a Swedish technological company. The study was made by interviews with these managers' executives in order to find out how well their opinion about their employees matched the assessments made by the assessment centre consultants. The results showed that the congruence of the managers' strengths was 74% whereas that of their weaknesses was 59%..

The aim of this master thesis is to examine research perspectives and a selection ofmanagers? views on the concept of work motivation. With an exploratory approach,based on a literature review and interviews these views are examined and compared inrelation to a theoretical framework. This theoretical framework consists of three keyconcepts, the individual, the context and the regulation of work motivation. Theliterature review reveals two research perspectives, a classic economic perspectivebased on Principal?Agent Theory and a more up to date social psychologicalperspective based on Self-Determination Theory.

Work environment has been an important part of the Swedish working life for a long time and with the help of the Working Environment Law the work environment is mandatory. The purpose of this study was to gain a deeper insight into how the system of middle managers systematic work environment looks like. The question was: How do six middle managers perceive and deal with systematic work environment? A qualitative study was conducted with six middle managers from a global company. During the analysis, there were three main themes to be recognized (cooperation and support facilitates the work environment, problem with the systematic work and difficulties with staff) and six sub themes.

Students at Jönköping School of Engineering were given an assignment from Jönköping municipality, to evaluate their decision support system, QlikView. The students have also developed proposals for improvement with focus on usability.The Jönköpings municipality has currently got 11000 employees and consists of nine different administrations. The target group for QlikView is approximately 600 First-line managers.The intention of QlikView is that the users can get an overall picture of their business by having all information in just one system.The purpose of the thesis is to obtain a picture of what the users think about the system today and present relevant suggestions for improvement, which the Jönköping municipality can use when the introduction of the new version of QlikView takes place. The research questions that the study aims to answer are:? Has QlikView got a user friendly interface?? How can the interface be improved to become more user friendly?Theories that this work is based on is Jacob Nielsens ten usability principles and Ben Schneidermans eight golden rules.

Students at Jönköping School of Engineering were given an assignment from Jönköping municipality, to evaluate their decision support system, QlikView. The students have also developed proposals for improvement with focus on usability.The Jönköpings municipality has currently got 11000 employees and consists of nine different administrations. The target group for QlikView is approximately 600 First-line managers.The intention of QlikView is that the users can get an overall picture of their business by having all information in just one system.The purpose of the thesis is to obtain a picture of what the users think about the system today and present relevant suggestions for improvement, which the Jönköping municipality can use when the introduction of the new version of QlikView takes place. The research questions that the study aims to answer are:? Has QlikView got a user friendly interface?? How can the interface be improved to become more user friendly?Theories that this work is based on is Jacob Nielsens ten usability principles and Ben Schneidermans eight golden rules.

Students at Jönköping School of Engineering were given an assignment from Jönköping municipality, to evaluate their decision support system, QlikView. The students have also developed proposals for improvement with focus on usability.The Jönköpings municipality has currently got 11000 employees and consists of nine different administrations. The target group for QlikView is approximately 600 First-line managers.The intention of QlikView is that the users can get an overall picture of their business by having all information in just one system.The purpose of the thesis is to obtain a picture of what the users think about the system today and present relevant suggestions for improvement, which the Jönköping municipality can use when the introduction of the new version of QlikView takes place. The research questions that the study aims to answer are:? Has QlikView got a user friendly interface?? How can the interface be improved to become more user friendly?Theories that this work is based on is Jacob Nielsens ten usability principles and Ben Schneidermans eight golden rules.