The main argument of the thesis is that multinational companies (MNCs) can promote democracy through corporate social responsibility (CSR). MNCs hold some prerequisites giving them the means to create positive changes. But they lack one important prerequisite: knowledge about local conditions. Therefore the best CSR result is reached through partnerships with local NGOs.H&M's CSR-work in Bangladesh, including a partnership with the Bangladeshi women's rights organisation Karmojibi Nari, serves as an illustrating case. It is argued that the CSR-work promotes democracy through strengthening the civil society, through indirectly implementing national laws concerning labour legislation and human rights and through raising awareness about rights and legislation among the workers.The CSR process changes the terms for both NGOs and MNCs.

The purpose of this study was to examine social worker?s own experiences of dealing with gender perspectives in child welfare cases. With a constructionist perspective, this study is based on a qualitative approach with semi-structured interviews. Six social workers were asked to reflect on their work and their methodology, and how it relates to gender perspectives when assessing children and adolescents in child welfare services.The result shows that there is a lack of control and review that children are given a gender neutral treatment. It also shows that there was no explicit protocol for how to take a gender perspective into account when assessing children and adolescents needs of welfare services.

The essay concerns "the knowledge society", IT and the possibilities of school being changedto meet the future. The purpose was to reflect the ideas of researchers and authorities concerningwork and education in "the knowledge society" and to illuminate/shed light on theimportance of information technology in this connection, to map organizational and pedagogicalshortcomings in the current school system and the changes that can be needed, and to investigatehow these changes can affect teachers, pupils and librarians.The investigation, which was a text analysis of normative and futurist sources, was especiallydirected towards how modem information technology can influence education/teaching.The differences between researchers and authorities were most obvious in the view of theimportance of knowledge of facts and central control mechanisms for standards or grading.For the authorities, who were devoid of a thought out/carefully prepared and consequent viewof knowledge and by that also of pedagogics, the information technique was the foremostcause of a change in pedagogy. The researchers also perceived the possibilities of IT, butemphasized the importance of pedagogical innovations irrespective of the technology.

With examples from a single classroom situation, several educational moments show what goes on between the teacher and the student. The teacher?s responsibility in the learning process is, with a gesture frozen in the air of the moment, to lead and follow the student in her tentative efforts at seeking knowledge. Initially, it is an attempt to shed light upon the "not yet seen" with a certainty that the student herself possesses the capacity and the aptitude to reach greater insight and clarity in her understanding. The Validation/Feil Method presented in this instructional situation illustrates how best to communicate with elderly people suffering from Alzheimer?s dementia.

The aim of this master´s thesis is to explore how a library through it´s spatial distribution expresses, and is an expression for, a view of knowledge. This is done by an analysis of the Orkanen library at Malmö Högskola. Questions posed in this study are: What view of knowledge is mediated through the spatial system and in the shelving of books? What view of learning is expressed in the spatial distribution of functions and artefacts?The theoretical framework of this thesis has two fundamental features. One, which focuses on theories of social space, a part that is mainly influenced by the theories of space syntax.

Approximately ten people die every year at building sites in Sweden. Every year TheWork Environment Authority (Arbetsmiljöverket) receives 3200 accident reportsfrom the construction sector. The Swedish building contractor Skanska has the vision:?Zero accidents?. Only at Skanska Sweden, where this diploma work is preformed,350-520 accidents and mishaps are reported every year for the last 5 years.

The purpose of this Master thesis is to examine what knowledge and competence employers at public libraries apprehend that recent graduates of library and information science (LIS) have. We want to illuminate what qualifications employers demand and expect from LIS graduates and to what degree employers find that LIS graduates correspond to these demands. Our aim is also to see how these qualifications can be categorized and understood. Finally, we try to picture the employers? apprehensions of the education received at LIS.As a method of gathering material for the analysis, we sent qualitative inquires with open questions to employers at public libraries in Sweden.

This study investigates the potential of a rhetorical theory of knowledge to expand beyond its own domain and into political theory, specifically theories of deliberative democracy. Despite the increasing interest in communication in democratic theory in the last decades, the majority of theorists have not turned their interest towards rhetorical science. On the contrary, theorists often regard rhetoric as dangerous and incompatible with the deliberative ideal of reason. The aim of this study is therefore to defend rhetorical science by investigating how the rhetorical theory of knowledge ? as it is presented by Chaïm Perelman and Oldbrecht Tyteca, and further developed by Mats Rosengren and Maria Wolrath Söderberg ? can contribute to the understanding of deliberative democracy.

As a school welfare officer you are often alone of having your perspective and must struggle to preserve that perspective. At the same time, there are very little defined what role a social worker should have in a school. This makes it nessesary to form and develop your role of profession independently. According to the Swedish school law, the schools are not required to employ a welfare officer. This makes the school welfare officer inferior to the other branches of occupation in school.

The purpose of this essay was to enhance the understanding and knowledge about phenomenon access support. Access support means that a third person (contact person) must be present during access visits between a child and its parent, if it is necessary for the child?s security or because the child needs support. The study was based on qualitative interviews with four contact persons and two professional social workers, whose main task have been to support and, partially, coordinate the work of contact persons. During the interviews I put the focus on participant?s experiences and thoughts about the phenomenon access support.

In Stockholm there are currently five women, out of a total of 102 employees, working in public sports arenas. In sports arenas men are numerically superior amongst the workers as well as the visitors. These arenas are in many ways male dominated, masculinized environments. In this essay I investigate the reasons behind the uneven distribution, in terms of gender, among sports arena workers. I do this by interviewing seven female sports arena workers (the five current and two former), and by observing their workplaces.

Background: The dependency on knowledge and competence today is more critical than earlier. Today, companies need to put more effort into identifying and filling knowledge gaps, which can be achieved through mergers and acquisitions. It is important that the companies succeed in coordinating their operations after this process of change. Out of a theoretical point of view it can be argued that companies need to balance between different coordination mechanisms that result in standardized and flexible coordination respectively. Purpose: The purpose of this Master Thesis is, in the context of a merger, to investigate and analyze which coordination mechanisms that are used in knowledge-intensive companies, how these coordination mechanisms are combined and what explains the chosen combination.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to study how public librarians? view mediation of fiction: the knowledge needed, the thoughts expressed about their own and other adults reading of fiction and how the informants define their roles as mediators of fiction. The method used was qualitative interviews with six librarians at main libraries in Swedish cities of different sizes. The theoretical starting points are Louise M. Rosenblatt?s reader-response theory, Michail Bachtin?s theory of speech genres and Åse Tveit?s and Jofrid Karner Smidt?s theories about mediation of fiction.

Malmö, like many other bigger cities in Europe, faces a double undertaking when facing the challenges the future. Not only must the municipal be able to provide its citizens with welfare and a high standard of living, it must also establish a level of economic growth that allows the city to act as catalyst for the surrounding area. In order to provide the population with welfare and the economy with a qualified working force, these two challenges have been combined into one plan for the future called Welfare for Everybody. As part of this plan, new organisations have been created with the purpose collaborating with the social services office and support people in their transaction from welfare recipients to self-providing workers. The purpose of our thesis is to build on Michael Lipsky's classic work "Street-level Bureaucracy" and by conducting interviews with a number of front line workers study how they view their role, the client group and how they motivate the working line.

The psychosocial work environment in hard professions is hardly studied and this study was implemented to observe port workers psychosocial work environment in ports of Västerås and Köping. There are two purposes with this study: firstly, to examine how ports of Västerås and Köping, Mälarhamnar AB, can improve and develop their business by using psychosocial methods. To do this, a questionnaire study and three interviews with workers were done and the results were used in a SWOT- analysis. Secondly, the aim is to be able to use the results and make a difference in the business development by adjusting the psychosocial work environment. The results show that the employees are happy at work and are happy with their work colleagues.