The current field of research concerning the impact of railroads in Sweden beside from the State main-line network is relatively narrow. Including cultural impact to the area narrows the results even further. The purpose of this study is to open the field even more into the local societies and to what extent the impact of the introduction of railroad might have had on smaller county villages. Sweden holds a unique position concerning ?station towns? or ?railways towns? in terms of railway policy and the industrial development in towns that were affected by the railway, as the affected towns continued development were based on a hybrid between direct democracy and adaptations of city-law policies.This study takes place in Kisa, a small town in southern Östergötland that during the beginning of the 20th century turned into a municipal community due to the building of Östra centralbanan (roughly translated Eastern central-line).

Learning organizations and organizational development are interesting subjects that does not examine municipal organizations and private organizations an equal amount.  Furthermore, there exists little research on the effects of competence development for individuals in a leadership role within organizations. Because of this, we wanted to examine the impact of competence development in business modeling and how it affected local government activities. Competence development is used by organizations to develop their business and achieve a greater competitive advantage, but does competence development for individuals in a leadership role lead to organizational development? This paper examines competence development in the form of a business modeling course via the Bitstreamproject and the effects that occur within three municipalities as a result of the competence development. By interviewing three participants and four coworkers within different municipalities and studied the data from the Bitstream project, we can not conclude that competence development within business modeling leads to organizational development, only that it exists a tendency for it.

This thesis focuses on the mass media cover of ?Smart textiles?. The Swedish?smart? textiles are developed in Borås and are a mix of ordinary textile and new technology.  I analyse the article with a text analysis method, looking at themes and the language?s propositions in focus. Context and the actors in the articles are also important in the analysis.Many women occur as developers of the new smart technical product, a field often knowed as a typical male subject.

This essay is about local history in history teaching in two cities; Kalmar and Vetlanda. The purpose was to see how teachers in Kalmar and Vetlanda define local history and what kind of local history they teach their students. I have also examined what benefits of didactics the teachers see in teaching local history. In order to find out I interviewed four history teachers at three schools in Kalmar and two history teachers at one school in Vetlanda. Some of the interviews were carried out over the telephone and the rest at the teachers´s schools.

Large-scale land investments is not a new phenomenon, but increasing prices on food and agrofuels have inflated prices on land and has led to an enhanced interest in landinvestments from a range of different actors. The ProSavana project in the Nacala corridor in the Nampula province, northern Mozambique is a large-scale land investment with the purpose of establishing intensive commercial agriculture and is planned to be implemented this year (2013). The project is financed by Brazil and Japan in collaboration with the government of Mozambique. It is not quite clear how large-scale land investments affect the areas they are implemented in and how they can affect the possibilities for sustainable development in these areas. Both opportunities and problems can be observed within the social, economic and ecological dimensions of sustainable development.

The aim of this study has been to describe the ongoing region enlargement process in the region Mälardalen, located in the east part of Sweden, and to investigate how this process can affect the local level. The study is especially orientated on public communications and accessibility. The intention has also been to examine how the local accessibility can affect the re-gional development in Mälardalen. The local investigation object that has been chosen for this research is the city Strängnäs, situated in the province of Södermanland. The city of Strängnäs and the cities in it?s near geographic surroundings has been the benchmark for this casestudy, in which the local accessibility with public transportation has been investigated.

Equal opportunity issues are considered to have a clear position in Swedish policy and the making of Swedish gender policy is considered a precursor. Though many experts and scientists have shed light on the fact that the issue of women assault has had a less stable development than other gender issues such as child care, the labour market etc. within the Swedish society, and that it does not attract the wide political support it needs. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the Municipalities', in the county of Kronoberg, policy on the issue of women assault within their local policies of equality. In my thesis I have chosen a theoretical framework that is built on a dilemma of justice based on three different dimensions; the extent, content and influence of the local policies.

The objective of this study was to examine how an IT department has been affected by the changes of increased local usage of IT, and how the usage have affected municipalities IT departments demands of IT support. In the study we explore how both the IT department and the IT support works by interviewing present and former employees at the local IT department. The current IT department have undergone a series of local changes over the last 20 years, the department has gone from only having internal users to getting the entire municipalitiy?s agencies of IT as users. It started with how the municipality began to dig down fiber optic cable in the middle of the 1990?s, and today has started to develop solutions as to how to meet the demands of future usage of IT.

We live in an exciting society, characterized by continuous changes and challenges. The effects of the globalization are widespread. The continuous flow of people, capital and goods follows in the wake of advances in communications, transport and information technology, resulting in a changed situation for different stakeholders in the society. This situation leads to increased cooperation and exchange, but also increased competition. The primary means of collecting empirical data for this study was interviews and a document study.

Due to the growing population in Stockholm, some of the urban green areas are beingsubjected to exploitation. Hammarbyskogen is an urban forest in the south of Stockholm andis an example of a green area that is planned to be transformed into an urban environment.This paper investigates key qualities and values of an urban forest of Hammarbyskogenvalued by local inhabitants of the neighbourhoods of Hammarbyhöjden and Björkhagen in thesouth of Stockholm. In addition to that, the study seeks to investigate people?s perception ofthe planned development of the forest as well as investigate how these perceptions andqualities are being incorporated into the process of neighbourhood development.Using text analysis, interviews and discussion forums, findings have been made showing thatthe local inhabitants value the urban forest mostly for its ecological and recreational qualities.Regarding perception of the change, people are either positive or negative to the developmentwhich can be explained by people?s experienced sense of place and place attachment of thearea and the forest itself. The study has also shown that the urban planners rely on localinhabitants? view, as well as on expert knowledge during the process of planning.The results of the study contributes to a better understanding of why and for what purposesurban forests are important for the city dwellers..

We live in an exciting society, characterized by continuous changes and challenges. The effects of the globalization are widespread. The continuous flow of people, capital and goods follows in the wake of advances in communications, transport and information technology, resulting in a changed situation for different stakeholders in the society. This situation leads to increased cooperation and exchange, but also increased competition. The primary means of collecting empirical data for this study was interviews and a document study.

AbstractOur study deals with intrapreneurship in local activity. The main purpose of this study is to understand, explain and develop the concept of intrapreneurship in local activity with the help of existing information, our discussion, and reasoning and with the help of theoretical concepts. One reason for the choice of this topic was our pure curiosity towards this quite unique and unexplored phenomenon. We know that the term intrapreneurship in local activity has not existed longer than about ten years and the amount of existing thesis of intrapreneurship in local activity is very few. The information about intrapreneurship in local activity is mainly collected by studying Örebro´s intrapreneurship policies but also by studying other local authorities in Eksjö, Umeå and Västra-Götaland.

This essay aims to examine how safety is reflected in local plans. This was done by describing the physical environments, which are addressed in the local plans and its impact on safety. It has also been undertaken to see if certain physical environments with respect to safety have been addressed differently.The paper is made with the qualitative method Thematic analysis. The method is used to analyze the three local plans that have been available during the essay. The analysis was done with my created themes Traffic separation, Accessibility, High vision, Light and bright and Human presence.The results have shown that the local plans takes up physical environments that are good for safety.

The purpose of this study is to investigate? how a professional librarian can support the work with pupils, age six to twelve years, in their reading and linguistic development? how the conditions at the school have to be for this to become possible? what kind of attitudes the teachers have, and how they relate to the impact of a librarian for the pupils reading and linguistic development.The methods used are analyses of steering documents concerning school libraries and analyses of the means of the local school culture. The latter has been carried out by literature studies and through interviews of eight teachers and two school librarians. The result of the interviews showed a limited insight into how a professional librarian can support and assist teachers and pupils in the work with reading and linguistic development. They also showed the influence of existing traditions and local school culture for the use of a librarian?s services, and also how all the teachers, once they have become used to the services a librarian can provide, now find their support invaluable.

The Swedish political organization is subject for the investigation of this thesis, with regard to the realization of universal human rights. There is a discrepancy between the Swedish state's international undertakings in legally binding treaties and theactualization of human rights by local authorities. The local authorities are ruled by a complex function of both national and local government. Of interest here, is the effect that these, and other organizational aspects, between the national and the local, have for the realization of human rights in local authorities. Also, the discrepancy between the national and the local is attempted to be understood.