Background: How do leaders act during organisational changes which involve downsizing? The leader often ends up in focus during these processes. These issues are by no means recently developed. Already the medieval author Machiavelli wrote about leaders? problems with leading changes.

The aim of the study was to examine individuals' experiences of participating in 5 week mindfulness program as a tool for job seekers. Qualitative methods were used to inter­view three students and two mindfulness educators. The informants were asked to an­swer questions about their experiences of having participated or practiced mindfulness in the project. The results showed that all respondents experienced the project as positive. The partici­pants describe that the project helped them to get out and meet other people and with routines in their life. The par­ticipants also said that unemployment caused alienation and they felt themselves to have poorer health when they were unemployed.

In the past decade there has been a considerable growth of contingent employment arrangements. In Sweden, the most common among these are the temporary-help service firms. The aim of this study is to investigate how the employees of temporary-help service firms experience their situation as employed by one company and working at another. We have used a qualitative approach to reach an increased understanding for the daily situation of the contingent worker. The essay is based on participant observations and semi-structured interviews with six contingent workers.

Vård- och omsorgssektorn i Sverige kännetecknas av snabb teknisk utveckling, organisatoriska och demografiska förändringar. Antalet människor med omfattande komplexa vård- och omsorgsbehov ökar samtidigt som allt tyder på att resurserna inte kommer att öka i samma omfattning. Det ökade antal äldre människor med omfattande komplexa vård- och omsorgsbehov har orsakat att människor i allt större utsträckning bor kvar hemma och behöver därmed mer hemtjänst och hemsjukvård. Antal sjukfrånvaro bland vårdpersonal har på grund av fysisk och mental arbetsbelastning ökat och stressrelaterade besvär fördubblats sedan 1997. Sjuksköterskornas arbetsförhållanden gör dem kritiska mot förändringar, de ökade kraven och nya mål.

Foreseeing future changes in economic activity is of up most importance to a wide array of actors. The time lag in the presentation of official GDP statistics means that to somewhat accurately capture a tendency of where the business cycle is heading one need turn to qualitative sentiment indicators such as Purchasing Managers? Index (PMI) and official sentiment indicators for valuable clues. This thesis uses in-sample and out-of-sample methods to evaluate how well PMI and official Business Tendency Surveys (BTS) in Sweden and Denmark fair against the year-on-year growth rate of industrial production. Moreover, various Swedish regional sentiment indicators get examined and a case study of the indicator for the Öresund region is performed.

This is a qualitative study that includes participants that are in connection with a non-civic organization in Sweden. The study aims to capture the participants? subjective experiences regarding human service organizations. The starting point is to catch both their positive and negative experiences, and then try to concretize what directed their perception in both ways. Is there any specific organization that is represented in positive and the negative column? Is it possible to explain the experience by looking at the organization and the organizational goals? Is it possible to see variables that might explain the perception?The study has a narrative focus that seeks the answers in the organisational context rather than in the stories themselves.

Background: According to many authorities Trademark consideration will within the companies become all more prioritized objectives for competitive advantage and a strong organisational structure.Trade marking is becoming an important tool, not only Production oriented companies apply this on their products or services whereas it is today spread in many different sectors.Problems: On the basis of theoretical and empirical studies, we will try to see how a trademark is built up.This will guide us to our questions at issue:? How has the actual process for HTF been in order to strengthen and to build up their trademark, how have they achieved this in practice?? What are the underlying criteria?s to for this work and what role has the consultant company BMN in the actual process?Aim: The authors have for intention to create an understanding on why there is interesting for a trade union organisation like HTF to carry out a trademark development investment. A further understanding will be to highlighting a strong trademark's advantages and possible disadvantages.Results: As a trade union organisation where the relationship to the members and the potential members is becoming all more important is the interesting to highlight their trademark clear and in addition to that contribute to building and establishing strong relationships. on the basis of this study we can state that it is now one of the most important support activities that as a trade unions to highlight its core values through trademark. As a trade union, one can to a large extent work with and to apply the market the economic mocks-up for trademark build up.The most important aspect is that we can state , in the future developed to concentrate more on communication, positioning, segmentation and diversification, which the trademark act as intermediary.

The purpose of this essay was first and foremost to find out the problems that exist around user education in a university library and the opportunities that exist for university librarians to improve their work with students. My method of use was qualitative and more precise qualitative interviews. By interviewing five teaching librarians with five different subject specializations, I wanted to get an an-swer to what they teach when they meet the students and how they view their teaching. Responses resulted then in an analysis using Christine Bruce's theory of information literacy and Carol C. Kuhlthaus theory of librarian roles and her theory of information retrieval process.

Insikten om att människor och deras kunskaper utgör företags viktigaste resurser är inte ny. Trots det betraktas oftast investeringar i människor som en kostnad och inte en investering för framtiden. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur personalekonomiska nyckeltal kan användas för att kommunicera värdet av den mänskliga resursen och människans bidrag till ett värdeskapande i företag. Studien avser även att generera en teoriutveckling där teorier av bland andra Ackoff (1974) och Nonaka (1994) används och utvecklas med hjälp av den insamlade empiriska kunskapen från studien. I teoriutvecklingen knyts empiri och teorier om organisatoriskt lärande och personalekonomiska nyckeltal samman.Studien utgår från ett ?Human Resource-perspektiv?, och i problemformuleringen ställs frågor kring HR-avdelningens (HR:s) roll och på vilket sätt nyckeltal kan fungera som kommunikationsverktyg mellan HR och ledningen.

The purpose of this study was to explore how interpersonal relationship can be affected by groing up in a New Religoius Movement such as Jehovah?s Withnesses and how it has affected them both in their youth and today. The aim was also to explore if there were people in the respondents' environment that was significant to them during their childhood and which support our respondents have received if they were in need of it.We have not found any previous research on children's social relationships within the Jehovah's Witnesses. We therefore believe that this study is of high relevance to both society and also for all the professionals who come into contact with these children. To discover a child in need, knowledge about how their social environment looks like is crucial.

The name of the study means ?The short arm - a study in diversity and arm?s length in the cultural collaboration model?. Right now there is a reform in the Swedish cultural administration where the responsibility for handing out state funds and grants to cultural organizations is changing from the state government to the local regional governments. The purpose of this study is to map the organisational changes caused by the reform and investigate how this affects the regional policies concerning cultural diversity and the arm?s length principle.

The following study is dedicated to investigate what kind of problems an organisation might stumble upon in the process of implementing a policy related to information security. Alongside investigating the eventual problems occurring in the implementation process of an organisation, the study also sets out to analyse how an organisation can motivate staff in order to follow the guidelines of a policy. The collection of empirical data was done using interviews. In order to seek answers to our research questions a theoretical background is presented that illustrate the need for information security after which motivational theories are applied to our collected data.To summarise the results of the study we find a gap of knowledge between the employees of the organisation. The organisational level of an employee together with the degree of participation in working with a policy seems connected to both the employee?s knowledge of a policy as well as how well the employee are motivated to learn about and follow the guidelines provided from a policy..

Violence in close relationships has for a long time been recognized as a major social problem. Many women who have left a violent and destructive relationship have been broken apart by their former partner. They find different strategies to regain their self-esteem and self- confidence. Selection of strategies may be consciously or unconsciously. Some women have chosen martial arts.The purpose of this study is to explore and learn more about women's experience of performing martial arts and their previous violent relationship.

This thesis examines organisations as mediators and how different kinds of organisations have different prerequisites to act as mediators. Global, regional and subregional organisations are often asked to mediate in conflicts, but considering the circumstances, who should mediate?In a mediating process the mediator should be considered as important an actor as the disputing parties and should hence be scrutinized as one. Mediation is a complex subject to study and theoretically the opinions differ on what characterises a good mediator. I have taken many of the different views in consideration and constructed a model from which organisations and their prerequisites can be compared and evaluated.

Den här uppsatsen vill exemplifiera och beskriva hur interaktionen mellan människor och djur kan användas i socialt arbete. Genom kvalitativa intervjuer med professionella som använder djur i vardagen. Allt från vårdhundar hos dementa på äldreboende till ridhästar för att hjälpa unga med självdestruktivt beteende, har vi funnit gemensamma effekter som djuret bidrar med i inter-aktionen. Genom att applicera teorier som social pedagogik, makt och symbolisk interaktionism försöker vi tydliggöra interaktionen och vad som sker utifrån olika teoretiska perspektiv. Ur resultatet kommer vi presentera djurets olika funktioner och roller som icebreaker, motivations verktyg, skapare av sammanhang och signifikant andre.