Performance appraisals- a study of the performance appraisals significance as a tool for development in the public sector.Anders Larsson and Åsalill OlssonPerformance appraisals have been given a central role in leading businesses in the public sector and are seen as a tool to create development opportunities and achieve better results. This has resulted that performance appraisal in many organizations takes up capacity and time. This was the starting point of our interest to study whether the time spent on performance appraisals effectively pays for itself in the organization, in other words whether the effects expected actually are achieved. The paper examines first line managers` views on staff appraisal purposes and effects of a function within the Landstinget. The survey design, methodology and transaction are of qualitative and quantitative method with three different sources: literature review of previous research, interviews with first line managers in Landstinget Västmanland and the results from an employee satisfaction survey conducted on behalf of Landstinget Västmanland.

There is a settled stereotype for women and men which give them different possibilities in our society. The schools, which are one of the most important sources of knowledge, have a great possibility to influence. This is the reason why we are interested in how the schools are working with a project, which we will call X henceforth. What was the purpose with the project and what does it contain? What is missing in the former education, since the project was started? Are there any obstacles or prerequisite in the design of the project or in the school teaching on the basis of X? We have done interviews in the gathering of empirical material to find out all the answers to our questions.

För att ta reda på hur väl en Multi-Agent-Systems-bot kan stå sig mot andra, icke-MAS-bottar, så har vi implementerat en bot till brädspelet Arimaa. Botten är implementerad i C++ och den kan spela mot andra bottar, eller människor, genom Arimaas officiella hemsida. Syftet har varit att skapa en fullfjädrad bot som både klarar av att spela korrekt, och att spela bra. För att ta reda på om MAS är en bra designfilosofi för Arimaa så har vi utmanat ett antal av de bottar som andra människor skapat och lagt upp på hemsidan. Alla bottarna har under tiden de legat uppe blivit rankade genom tävlingar och utmaningar och flera av dessa har tävlat om stora pengar, vilket betyder att människor har lagt mycket tid på dem.

The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to examine the similarities and differences between best practice literature regarding digitization and an existing cultural heritage digitization project. It also aims to determine whether this literature is of any help during an actual project of digitization. These results were achieved by examining literature regarding best practices in digitization and analyzing how well an actual project correlates to this advice. The information about the Digidaily project was obtained through two qualitative interviews as well as the project blog. The outcome of our research showed that although there are a great many similarities between theory and practice, the project in question was not helped by literature.

This degree project has been carried out by Carolina Rapp and Jenny Tauson, students at Innovation and Design Engineer program at the Faculty of Technology and science at Karlstad University. The project was carried during Spring of 2009 and took 15 weeks of full time work.  Doppelmayr/Garaventa Group is an Austria/Switzerland corporate group and its associated company Doppelmayr Scandinavia lies in Sunne, Sweden. Doppelmayr/Garaventa Group is the world quality and technology leader in ropeway engineering. The degree project goal was to develop a new shaping of a surface lift. There are two kinds of surface lifts, platter and T-bars. The two kinds of surface lifts have some variation in design but only minor differences.

Profit in first commercial thinnings of today is hard to achieve. This is because of prevailing pulpwood prices and because of high costs of logging and transport. To reduce these costs higher productivity is advocated. One way to increase the productivity is the use of multi-tree handling harvester heads. The aim of this study was to calculate logging and transport costs in first thinnings, where multi-tree handling has been used.

In my study I have participated at the Fifth Dimension / Active Worlds site in Villa Gymnastiken in Ronneby, where I have worked both as an assistant to the project leader and as a researcher, but also as a participant together with the children. The children are working in a virtual world called Femtedim, created in a internet-based program named Active Worlds Education Universe. The Femtedim-world are bridging together two physical worlds in Ronneby and Copenhagen. My main focus is on an intervention that occurred in the 12th of March when the research-team in Copenhagen, which runs the project in Denmark, decided to create a new challenge for the children since some of them started to get bored. They added gravitation to the Femtedim-world, which lead to a few different reactions among the children. Most of the children didn´t like it and were very hostile towards the idea that they would not be able to fly around freely in the Femtedim-world.

Denna uppsats bygger på en utvärdering av leaderverksamheten i Blekinge, Halland och Skåne län, som jag genomförde tillsammans med Lina Brinte under hösten 2013. Utvärderingen var beställd av leaderområdena i Region Syd, som ville ta fram underlag för hur metoden fungerat under programperioden 2007-2013 i syfte att använda resultatet till strategiframtagandet inför kommande leaderperiod. Leader är ett av EU:s verktyg för att skapa landsbygdsutveckling, där underifrånperspektivet beaktas. Leader, som metod, fungerar bra i Region Syd och projektägarna är överlag mycket nöjda med arbetssättet som Leader innebär. Leaders viktigaste resultat är kvalitativa mervärden av typen engagemang, stärkt socialt kapital, ökad stolthet och samverkan som skapas genom projekten. Dessa värden är svåra att sätta ett ekonomiskt värde på och det behövs därför nya system för att hävda dessa värden i slutrapporterna, likväl som ekonomiska värden. Genom att belysa dessa värden och framhålla den nytta dessa gör, som till exempel sänka ohälsotalet bland befolkningen, öka den lokala nyttan och effektiviseringen samt skapa samverkan inom och utanför leaderområdet, skulle värdena få högre ställning när man beräknar vad leaderarbetet tillfört.

I dagens samhälle möter vi ständigt ledares behov av att öka sin kompetens när det gäller att hantera kritiska situationer inom den offentliga sektorn. Bristande kompetens hos ledarna drabbar inte bara dem själva utan även medarbetarna. Många uttalar sig om att det bristfälliga ledarskapet i den offentliga sektorn ger upphov till rekryteringssvårigheter, hög sjukfrånvaro, ineffektivitet, kvalitetsproblem, resursbrist och brist på kompetens. Även forskningsartiklar visar att det är högre sjukfrånvaro pga. dåliga ledare och det illustreras dagligen i dagspress och nyhetsförmedlingar.I vår kultur saknar vi metoder att hantera problemet med dåligt ledarskap.

AbstractTitle: When the cat is away? A study of pedagogical leadership at a distanceLevel: Final assignment for Degree of Master of science (one year) in Educational ManagementAuthor: Evelyn JoelssonSupervisor: Ulla SebrantDate: 2013 mayLeadership is a subject that has been discussed for many generations. Today?s leadership is something completely different than what has been practiced before, in the more hierarchical companies, when leadership was something you were born to do and the workers had no choice but to follow. In the globalised world that we live in today there are demands of a different kind than before and physical distance between leaders and their followers gets more and more common.

This masters degree was a study of some social workers in Gothenburg Community and their expectations of leaders in general, their opinions of work and the leaders influence. The city of Gothenburg will within a few years recruit about 500 leaders. Depending on large pensions among leaders. It is important to have knowledge of the social workers expectations of leaders, their opinions of work and the leaders influence. It is also interesting to see if different generations have similarities or if they have different opinions.

Over the past thirty years the political parties in Sweden have lost five out of six members. In order to retain existing members leadership in these organizations has become increasingly important. The aim of this paper is to identify what group leaders for party groups within the municipal council believe are the driving forces that underlie the councillors' voluntary commitment, identify the group leaders' leadership style and identify whether there exist a relationship between these driving forces and the leadership style. The approach applied is qualitative consisting of twelve interviews with twelve group leaders from six different municipalities in Stockholm county. The theoretical framework of this paper includes the Volunteer Functions Inventory and the Full Range Leadership Theory.

The paper is a research of"The Library project", a three-year collaboration project betweenArbetarnas Bildningsforbund, Studieförbundet Vuxenskolan, Sveriges Författarförbund and public libraries at 14 places in Sweden.The goal of the project is to find new forms for collaboration between libraries, authors and organisations for adult eduacation under the motto "two branches of the same education tree".The purpose of this research is to make a close description of the project and also look at the goals anf purposes of the different actors in the project. The main thought is that the different goals and purposes have caused at least some of the problems in the project..

In todays society the demand on companies to deliver better project management is crucial for them to survive. The higher demands from clients make older project management weak and unreliable. In the constructions sector more and more companies are created and the competition is higher than ever. The clients are aware of the higher competition in the construction sector. This has resulted that construction companies must now make their project management more efficient to create better projects and better relationship with clients. The purpose of this thesis arose from this problem in the construction sector.

Title: Multi channel publishing: a qualitative study on how Norrköpings Tidningen publishes news in multiple channelsAuthor: Roland AlbinssonThesis supervisor: Per-Anders ForstorpBackground: In this day and age, the media is omnipresent and a part of our daily life. The phenomenon of media convergence can be traced back to the birth of the internet, and today all of the major newspapers have a website of their own. As a result of multichannel publishing, consumers have a wide range of tv channels to choose from, but there is still uncertainty as to whether more channels automatically equates to more and better news. There is no doubt about the fact that multi channel publishing is a necessary survival skill for media conglomerates today, but effects such as news recycling and the concentration of ownership are in conflict with the consumers? availability demands.Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to, by means of a case study, describe how NT?s multi channel publishing is an expression of media convergence, as well as to study how the news are affected by multi channel publishing.Research procedure: This study is based on three different research methods, observations, text analyses and qualitative interviews.