This study examines how managers in the public sector experience and manage their digital maturity in the context of digital transformation. The study is based on qualitative interviews with twelve managers and three developers in a municipality in western Sweden and is analyzed based on a theoretical framework that combines individuals digital maturity (DIMI model) with organizational conditions. The results show that managers' digital maturity is influenced by both individual and organizational factors. At the individual level, the importance of digital competence, self-efficacy, and willingness to participate in and lead change are emphasized. At the same time, organizational conditions such as coordination, resources, technical support and clear governance are required.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how three Swedish news publications writes about integration and immigrants. The news articles were analyzed with a rhetorical analysis. The method was supplemented with theories of media and ethnicity, agenda setting theory and gatekeeping theory. This study resulted in the conclusion that racist discourses are found in the three news publications, regardless of political color, writer or article genre. Many of the articles makes a clear division of "us and them", where "them" is defined by the text's "us", who are often Swedes.

This essay is about a debate concerning the magazine Axess, feminism and antifeminism - in relation to a issue of Axess called To a new feminism. The theoretical foundation of this essay is Pierre Bourdieu and his field theories. The battles taking place in this particular field concerns the positioning of feminism and antifeminism in the way we culturally interpret these in our society. The essay shows that the magazine Axess (at least in the first edition of 2012) links feminism with a very prominent symbolic capital in a culture context. This discussion can at times seem confusing, and this is probably due to the fact that Bourdieus symbolic capital can be a very abstract concept. The journalist and author Maria Sveland writes about the development of a culture moving towards accepting antifeminism (and also xenophobia). She expresses the opinion that this, to a high degree, is due to actors in the culture domain with a big amount of trust in the public eye has moved towards expressing anti-feministic (and xenophobic) views.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the factors of children?s voluntarily reading in their spare time. We also want to know if the children choose non-fiction books for their voluntarily reading. The method as well as the empirical basis of this study is qualitative, with interviews of twenty-eight children in ages between 9 and 12 years. We conducted nine interviews with 3?4 children in each group.

The purpose of this study is to highlight how a ring road and an external retail establishment may affect the city commerce. Umeå is the study object with interesting undergoing changes including a new external retail area south of the city and a new transport route that will lead the through traffic around the city.The study is based on a review of previous studies and a qualitative method. Four interviews were conducted with people who have a connection to commerce and/or municipal planning and where considered able to contribute with rich and relevant information. The result shows that the commerce in Umeå will be significantly strengthened in the context of a new external commercial establishment when the city?s overall attractiveness increases.

The purpose of this master thesis is to examine some pre-school teacher's and parent's perceptions about communication within the pre-school context and how this can be described in terms of conceptual dichotomy.The empirical investigation consists of a qualitative study, where data have been collected by interviewing two focus groups and one single parent.The main theoretical tools which the study uses as its premiss is Derridas' theory of hospitality and Habermas' theory of deliberative dialogues. The study also considers the conception of the intermediate domain as an arena for communication between parents and pre-school teachers, and further more the conception of stereotyping in social and cultural contexts.In order to explore these processes I have used the qualitative method of interpretation; Hermeneutic, also with a narrative approach to the analysis.The results and the analysis of the data show that the interviewed parent and pre-school teachers have a poor sense of knowing how much influence to give to each other. The parents were not satisfied with the level of open communication and how the pre-school teachers share information of the activities..

The aim of this thesis is to examine how the Swedish daily press portraits librarians and the profession. I have used a discourse analytic study in my purpose to examine the image of librarians and the profession. I have analysed 34 articles between January 1, 2009 until January 1, 2010 from Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter, which are the two daily newspapers with the largest circulation in Sweden. I have used three major questions to answer the aim of my study: In what context do librarians and the profession appear in the daily press?What qualities are librarians assigned in the daily press?What views and attitudes about librarians and the profession appear in the articles?My analysis resulted in three discourses; discourse about librarians? relation to literature, discourse about librarians and the labour market and discourse about librarians and information.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the understanding of classification as it is manifested in the discussion of implementing DDC in the BIBSAM-libraries. This is accomplished through the answering of three questions: 1. How does the discussion go about the implementation of DDC in the "Cataloguing practises: a survey of Swedish research libraries" project?2. Have there been any criticism against the project or the implementation and, in that case, what does it say?3.

The increasing competition is making increasing demands of today's businesses to be changeable. Change projects have therefore become increasingly common in order to satisfy market expectations. These projects have often proved difficult to implement and fail rather than succeed. There are many people who reflect on why this is and theorists are increasingly reasoning about the importance of communication in the change process. This is something that has given rise to a new area of expertise called change management.

During the Nordic Bronze Age, houses were not exclusively connected with profane contexts, but did also feature in burial places, a peculiar fact when considering the careful separation of settlements and graves. What kind of houses do we find in these sacred contexts? What did these houses stand for? Why was the house symbolism chosen to accompany the dead? And why did the house symbolism flourish during the Nordic Bronze Age? To answer these questions three representatives for the house symbolism in Sweden are discussed in more detail, such as the burial in longhouses, peculiar houses called cult houses and house urns. Further, the phenomenon has been put in its temporal, geographic, social and ideological context, where aspects such as trade and settlement structure are presented. The house symbolism is, however, not confined to northern Europe.

The purpose of the study was to examine how exercise of authority social worker´s view and work with normality has changed. Together with the role of changes in society, as LSS (Act concerning Support and Service for Disabled), user influence and the principle of normalization had in this context. The material has been collected through a qualitative method with semi-structured interviews which were held with eight social workers. Three of them had not been active within the field of this study for more than ten years and five of them are currently working. The collected material was analyzed through the theoretical perspective social constructivism and the theoretical concept case management.

The focus of this thesis is the conception of work and the relation between work, economic growth and welfare in today?s Sweden in the editorial of Dagens Nyheter (DN), which is the main morning paper in Sweden.As the theoretical foundation of this thesis is social constructionism and the method being used is critical discourse analysis, the language is considered as an important source for the construction of value and meaning of work. In that context it is important to investigate how DN, by certain ways of representing reality, preserves a certain view of the human being, the society and the economy. Which ideological ideas underlie the conception of work that emerges in DN? What social consequences will these ideas have?The thesis discusses the ?truths? that the editorialists mediate concerning for example the view of the human being as guided by rational choice and the view of economic growth as the main goal for social life.One of the conclusions is that DN considers work as a means for economic growth as economic growth is regarded fundamental for the survival of the welfare state..

Background: In Sweden and Norway planned home birth is not included in the health care system. In Denmark women with expected low risk birth have the right to choose home birth. Registrations of home births in the Nordic countries are not completed and women?s experiences of planned home birth in Scandinavian context are not earlier described.Objective: The aim of this study was to describe women?s experiences of planned home birth in the Scandinavian countries.Design: Inductive content analysis. Fifty-three Scandinavian women who have experienced planned home birth have replied an open question in a questionnaire.

The aim of this thesis is to examine how mirrors were hung and used in decorating a room during the gustavian period (1770-1810) and the functionalistic period (1930-1939) in Sweden. I have compared the two styles and the way of decorating with mirrors. Based on the comparison I deduced the differences and similarities. The material which the thesis is based on are three drawings and one painting depicting four gustavian rooms containing mirrors. To illustrate the functionalistic period I used four photos from the catalogue from the Stockholm exhibition in 1930.

This Master thesis aims to illuminate nine librarians relation to professional information. This is accomplished by focusing on five questions: How do they communicate and acquire professional information, and how do they evaluate its relevance? What are their experiences of continuing professional education? What are their opinions on the academicalisation of the education? Is it possible to perceive something of the librarians professional project in the informants statements? What is their relation to the academic subject of library and information science and the research on the area? The analysis is based upon the interviews with nine librarians and carried out with profession theory in order to study the role of theoretic knowledge in our participants professionalisation processes. We also use different context oriented theories to study the contextual dimension of information need and seeking. The conclusions of this Master thesis reveal that the communication between the theory of library and information science and the practice need to be improved if we want to see more of an evidence-based librarianship.