AbstractThe purpose of this paper was to examine preschool teacher?s thoughts about using Manual Signs as Alternative and Augmentative Communication as an aid for children in/with communication disabilities. The method I?ve used in the survey is qualitative interview.The three interviewed preschool teachers use Manual Signs foremost for those children who have a poorly developed spoken language. Manual Signs are used as a complement to the spoken language and the preschool teachers use it to increase the children?s power of concentration.

In several cases, systems that have been developed have been very time consuming and cost a lot of money, but they still do not fulfil the users requirements and requests. To make new systems better, you have to find a way to communicate that allows the developers to understand the needs of the user. The aim for our thesis is to highlight the importance of communication in system development. To investigate this we have choosen to do a study of the real-estate system. The work methods that have been used include mock-ups and informal conversations with the user, who is employed by the Church of Sweden in Ronneby.

AbstractTitle: External communication channels of Prime Care How they where thought to be, how they work and how costumers apprehend them.Number of pages: 50 (64 Including enclosures)Author: Sophie DicksenTutor: Peder Hård af SegerstadCourse: Media- and Communication Studies DPeriod: Spring 2007University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala UniversityPurpose/Aim: The focus of this paper lies on the external communication channels of Prime Care and the aim is to study the following aspects: How do the channels work? How are they apprehended by customers of the company? What are Prime Cares own thoughts behind the channels? How does Prime Cares self-image correspond to the way that customers apprehend the company?Material/Method: Twenty interviews has been done with different customers of Prime Care in order to see how the company and its communication flow is apprehended. A consultant manager of Prime Care has also been asked about purposes behind the companies external communication channels in order to enable a comparison between Prime Cares image and profile. Prime Cares website, one of their mail sendouts, their salescalls, salesvisits and their exhibition participation have been studied on the basis of relevant litterature. Maletzkes model of mass communication was used as a general view of communication flow.Main results: All communication channels included in this study have different ways of function even though they all have the same main purpose, videlicet to promote the company, to inform about its activities and to recruit new customers and consultants.

AbstractBackground: Becoming a parent to a child in need of Neonatal Intensive Care can be a traumatic experience. During a time when the parents may need support, guidance and a sense of control ? the family might need to relocate to a hospital away from home if the child needs highly specialized medical care at a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Aim: The aim of this study is to investigate the parents? experience of having to change neonatal care unit.

AbstractPurpose/Aim: This essay deals with The Swedish Red Cross Society and their work concerning strategical information and communication about HIV and AIDS in the Swedish context. In a broader sense the relation between the global and the local will be investigated and a discussion about what it means to work in an organization operating on a global arena will be held.Material/Method: This essay is based on relevant theories about culture and health communication which I have studied, selected and put together, with purpose to analyse The Swedish Red Cross Society and their informational work with HIV and AIDS- prevention. Furthermore I have interviewed four of the organizations co- workers to collect data about their experiences in working in the Red Cross organization with this specific mission. Moreover I and my colleague Hillevi Good attended at seminars and lectures to observe activities held by the organization and to get inside information about what people working with HIV and AIDS are discussing and considering as critical issues. The study holds a qualitative approach focusing on understanding this typical case rather then generalizing facts in a larger sense.Main results: The Swedish National Society of The Red Cross has a difficult mission in their work to inform the public about HIV and AIDS, although it is the perfect organization when it comes to communication due to their well-known profile and a huge geographical spread.

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the function of TalkingMats in a group of people with Huntington?s disease, with main focus on theeffectiveness of communication. Four individuals with Huntington?s diseaseand their group leader participated in the study. The group was videotapedduring four sets of conversations; two with and two without Talking Mats.

Background: Effective treatment of patients with type 2 diabetes needs a good communication between nurse and patient. This creats a good relation and leads to a more effective patient education. Aim: The aim with the literature study was to describe how nurses trough patient education can achieve self-care for patients with diabetes type 2. Methods: Literature studies with both qualitative and quantitative articles were examined. Findings: The articles that were chosen for the results were sorted in the two categories relation and communication.

An ethnographic study loosely informed by the theoretical framework of distributed cognition was carried out in order to describe how mariners have adopted the Automatic Identification System (AIS) in their work practice, or"made the technology their own". AIS is a transponder-based identification and communication system that allows ships to automatically identify and track each other. In addition to facilitating the identification and tracking of ships, objectives behind the introduction of AIS are to"simplify informational exchange", and"provide additional information to assist situation awareness". Participant observation and interviews were made at four different ships, as well as at two shore stations. A focus group was also held at a maritime conference.

The Public vs. private movement has over the past decades identified numerous significant differences between public and private organizations. The observed differences covers almost every field in administrative economics ranging from organizational structure, management accounting, goal-setting and in the past few years even leadership. Strangely, in the majority of these studies little or no regards are given to organizational characteristics or fundamental differences between compared organizations and if these organizations really are comparable when studying the effect of sector.The aim of this study is to compare leadership in relatively similar organizations from both the public and private sector and so clarify if earlier identified differences in leadership styles still surface when leaders working with approximately the same thing in a similar work context are studied.A sample of 348 Swedish principals was drawn from both municipal and private elementary schools. The respondents answered a web-based survey based on the CPE-model resulting in leadership styles mapped according to three orientations: change, production and employee.

AbstractTitle: Course:Authors: Advisor: Keywords:Problem formulation: Purpose:Target group:Theoretical perspectives:Methodology: Result:Enterprise 2.0 - A qualitative approach of how leadership can be affected by Enterprise 2.0 - Bachelor dissertation - Business Administration, LeadershipDavid Ingvarsson, Markus Rengman and Maria Verdin Jenny StåhlLeadership, managers, Enterprise 2.0, impact, communication, empowerment and motivationHow can managerial leadership in the service sector be affected by Enterprise 2.0?The purpose of this study is to create a better understanding of how managers are affected by the implementation and use of Enterprise 2.0. We examine whether managers who figures in organizations where Enterprise 2.0 applications, have adapted their leadership according to the development. The study is based on leadership changes that may be critical for Enterprise 2.0 to generate internal and external competitive advantages.Our study is addressed for leaders who want to create a better understanding of what implementation of Enterprise 2.0 requires from a leadership perspective.We have compiled three subareas in our theoretical framework; communication, empowerment and motivation. In previous research, we found that each area affects Enterprise 2.0 and leadership.

The aim of this study is to understand first line managers experiences of the impact leadership have on the health of employees. The study focuses on leadership behaviours and actions, experienced by first line managers working in elderly care, with either positive or negative outcomes on the employees health. To answer the purpose of the study a qualitative method was used and the data was collected through seven individual interviews. The analyse was conducted using theories of transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership. To enable a broader dimension to the study the concept of health-promotion leadership was also used in the analysis.

Syftet med f?religgande studie var att unders?ka hur vuxna personer utan hj?rnskada skattade sin kommunikationsf?rm?ga med hj?lp av La Trobe Communication Questionnaire (LCQ) och j?mf?ra samst?mmigheten med deras n?rst?endes skattning. Studien unders?kte ocks? eventuellt samband mellan sj?lvskattning p? LCQ och utbildningsl?ngd, ?lder samt k?n. B?de tidigare insamlade och nya data analyserades i denna studie.

This paper sets out to investigate how companies can create advertisement that focus not only on selling but also on entertainment. The research is based on seven TV-commercials produced by the Swedish food chain ICA. The commercials were analyzed according to the methods of discourse analysis, semiotic analysis and rhetorical analysis. Furthermore, the research compares the analysis made with the thoughts and ideas of Tobias Karlsson, Head of marketing and communications development at ICA to find out how the comprehension of the commercials correlate with the original intentions made by the company.The study shows that ICA creates a commercial that contains the perfect mix of rhetorical approaches, communication strategies and entertainment mixed with gravity. The study also shows that ICA fails with its primary goal which is to sell selected products; however, by producing the entertaining commercials, they manage to strengthen their brand.

This thesis will explore how swedish Talang 2010 used their strategic communication in Kalmar and Stockholm and how the effect of this work was shown in the two cities. With a focus on how the sender was working with the external communication in the two cities, the heart of the research was studying Talang 2010?s communication strategy in these two contexts. The research was made with surveys during two audition days in Kalmar and two days in Stockholm. The competitors, the audience and the general public were answering different surveys but with the same base to study the effect.

Aim: The challenges that arise from the development of the digitalization are forcing organizations to adjust their activities and operations to meet the needs of the society and organization´s important stakeholders. To be able to keep up with the developments organizations are constantly changing. These changes must be communicated to their stakeholders in a way that makes sense to them and to ensure that mutual understanding is achieved for the change to be succesful throughout the organization. The main purpose of this paper is to study an organizations communication during a change process. The focus lies on organizational communication strategies and the sensemaking processes as organization communicates about the change to its important stakeholders.Contribution:This paper will contribute to the field of organizational communication by filling a gap on empirical studies of internal communication during an organizational change.Method: The main method for this paper is the qualitative interviews.