The purpose of this study was to examine how commitment to a cause on a local basis had developed in four smaller groups during one decade. In 1996 I interviewed representatives in Åsele, Borrby, Hasslarp and Tving about their commitment and citizen initiative. Now, ten years later, I followed it up by interviewing them again. I wanted to know if the groups/associations still existed, if they had achieved their goals as they where pronounced ten years ago and how a strong commitment on a local basis can develop during ten years. Which phenomena decide whether the group develop or phase out? I use the term citizen commitment instead of citizen initiative to stress the fact that it is no longer an initiative but an on-going commitment.

This study is based on the notion that the most widely cited and used instrument for assessing volunteer motivations, the Volunteer Function Inventory (VFI), might not be sufficient in its aspiration to aid, streamline and benefit the recruitment and retention process within volunteer organizations. Understanding volunteers? motivation is a crucial component in the process of securing future volunteer engagement in a world where their efforts are desperately needed.This study aims to explain motives and motivation behind volunteer efforts in extreme situations as well as to examine the dependability of the theoretical framework in relation to the forthcoming result, based on the following research questions:What motivated Swedish medical personnel to volunteer during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa?How could the motives and motivation of Swedish medical personnel be categorized in accordance with the Volunteer Function Inventory (VFI)?Is the Volunteer Function Inventory (VFI) a sufficient tool for analyzing the motives and motivation of Swedish medical personnel in the given case?The presented research questions will be answer through a qualitative theory-consuming study, based mainly on interviews. The interviews are, however, complimented by various written sources in the field of research.The result and subsequent analysis confirms the authors? notion on the VFI and highlights certain deficits in the tool?s execution and its succeeding result.

Kamratposten is a swedish magazine aimed at youth aged 8-14. They write about almost everything that concerns youth, all the way from dealing with loneliness to animals and celebrities. This study concentrates at how they write about love. With a qualitiative narrative analysis of the 12 articles that concerns love from the 2013 issues of Kamratposten, I have tried to answer the questions: - What narratives about love are being constructed in Kamratposten 2013?- How do they construct males, females and gender in their articles about love?What I found was that the hetero normativity, or the heterosexual matrix as Judith Butler calls it, was very strong in the articles.

Today we live in an interconnected world. Through globalization and the development of information technology one can say that, today everyone is our neighbour. The result of our actions can easily spread and affect people on the other side of the world within seconds.Meanwhile, Third World countries are developing into stable economies and Western European corporations are expanding like never before and setting up their organizations in these new markets.This of course is not unproblematic, it creates new challenges for international organizations especially when it comes to communication. An example of that same problematic communication presented itself for Arla Foods in what came to be called the Cartoon Crisis.In late September of 2005 a number of cartoons depicting the holy prophet Muhammed were published in a Danish newspaper. This event sparked scores of protest ranging from Morocco to the Philippines.

Bachelor thesis, Degree of master in Science and Economics, School of Business and Economics at Linnaeus University, Management, 2FE01E, Spring Semester 2013Author: Johanna Björklund, Sarah Gustafsson and Sofia NicklassonMentor: Anders HytterTitle: Retention: Why stay when your options are unlimited? Background: Employee turnover is a problem today, and companies face increasing challenges when it comes to retain employees within the organization, so called employee retention. This is a present concept and theory holds that more organizations realize that they need to put more focus on retention as one of their business goals to remain competitive. It?s important that organizations understand individuals' different needs and the factors that make them satisfied in their professional life.

The purpose of this study is to use a qualitative approach to get an understanding of what is expected of social workers targeted towards women managers in social services. Nine social workers were interviewed. The empirical data was then analyzed on the basis of gender theory. Respondents did not see their supervisor as a manager but more as a social worker with special tasks. Our empirical data indicates that there is a strong belief that men and women possess different properties.

AbstractTitle: Communicative leadership ? a leadership for modern organizationsQualitative research attempting to define the concept.(Kommunikativt ledarskap ? ett ledarskap för moderna organisationerKvalitativ studie med ansats att definiera begreppet.)Author: Jenny AxällAim: The aim of this essay is to try to find the essence of and a definition of the communicative leadership. Questions asked are: How can communicative leadership be described? How can it be practiced? What does it demand of those who practice it? What organizational conditions are required? And what results and performances can this leadership lead to?Method: Qualitative explorative research method. The study contains an academic lit-erature review of the science of leadership and communication in general and the more specific communicative leadership.

In this study we have focused on the operational management of the public pre-school in Sweden. We have studied how the governance system is designed, why it is designed this way and what impact it has on the operational management. This has been analyzed from a theory stating that there are two types of organizations: pay-driven and function-driven. Through a case and document study we came to the conclusion that the pre-school is a function-driven organization but is nowadays acting on a market and have adopted characteristics of a pay-driven organization. We connect this change to the phenomenon New Public Management.

How do men who define themselves as feminists create and maintain an identity as men? In this qualitative study four men involved in feminist organizations were interviewed about their views on women, men, sex and feminism. Theories of language, psychoanalysis and ethics were utilized to further our understanding of the material these men produce in their effort to define themselves. Our object of study is the text, which we believe holds the key to understanding how an individual shapes his world and himself. The result is our interpretation of the text and its underlying mechanics.

Research has shown that still today mostly men inhibit the managing director positions and jobs such as electricians, engineers, and road workers, which makes the work situation unequal among those work places. Another issue is that studies show that minority groups have fewer possibilities in comparison with majority inhabitants on the labour market. One reason can be that many companies and organizations lack when it comes to the recruitment process due to prejudices and the applicants for a job who has names such as Ahmed, Carlos and Ali are taken out of the process at first stage.The purpose of this research is to study how civil servants at Vägverket (Swedish Road Administration) discuss about diversity and equality. Whereas subjects such as ethnicity and gender will be illuminated..

Att börja växa som företag är svårt, inte minst inom klädindustrin där det granskas stygn för stygn av media. Under de två senaste decennierna har fler klädföretag börjat arbeta med hållbar utveckling. Det som tidigare har genererat tillväxt från den industriella utvecklingen går emot dagens hållbarhetstänk, som har blivit viktigare i klädföretagen. Samtidigt behövs tillväxt hos klädföretag för att konkurrera på den mer globaliserade marknaden. I denna studie undersöks det hur tillväxtstrategier kan tillämpas i ett klädföretag som arbetar med hållbar utveckling.

Att börja växa som företag är svårt, inte minst inom klädindustrin där det granskas stygn för stygn av media. Under de två senaste decennierna har fler klädföretag börjat arbeta med hållbar utveckling. Det som tidigare har genererat tillväxt från den industriella utvecklingen går emot dagens hållbarhetstänk, som har blivit viktigare i klädföretagen. Samtidigt behövs tillväxt hos klädföretag för att konkurrera på den mer globaliserade marknaden. I denna studie undersöks det hur tillväxtstrategier kan tillämpas i ett klädföretag som arbetar med hållbar utveckling.

During the last part of the 20th century many companies has started to build their organizations on knowledge and information instead of manufacturing of products.  Today it is easier to communicate and spread information. At the same time the numbers of untraditional employments like temporary employments and workers from staffing agencies are increasing. Many organizations have higher employee turnover now than before. This allows more people to have access to confidential information, whose spreading might cause great damage for the employer.

Detta examensarbete har utförts vid Ekonomiska institutionen på Linköpings tekniska högskola. Uppdragsgivare har varit Kongsberg Automotive AB och Saab Training Systems AB. Syftet med detta arbete har varit att undersöka om värdeflödesanalys inom produktutveckling kan hjälpa företag att effektivisera utvecklingen av produkter. Metoden för värdeflödesanalys som vi valt att prova har tagits fram av MIT. Arbetets syfte var att pröva denna metod, detta gjordes genom att utföra två studier.

The urgency of sustanible development is world-over issue. This essay focuses on the relations of enviromental ethics in the context of the Swedish upper secondary school and the subject of geography, by analysing different educational texts.The purpose of this essay is to reveal and identify discourses of enviromental ethics in curriculum documents; Lgr 11 and the plan- and the coursedocuments for the subject of geography, in educational publisher?s textbooks and in sponsored texts related to the subject of geography and finally to discuss potential consequences this might implicate for education. For this have the methodology of Norman Fairclough´s critical discourse theory, CDA, as well as a matrix of environmental ethics, based upon Mikael Stenmarks classifications of enviromental ethics, been used.In the Cirriculum, Lgr 11 and documents for the subject of Geography, and in the educational textbooks from ?Liber? and ?Gleerups?, are the environmental ethics of intergenerational anthropocentrism the dominant.