AbstractC-level essay in political science, by Frida Orlinder, spring semester 2008Supervisor: Susan Marton?Good contracting? ? A study of contracting in public procurement regarding the transportation of school children?Over the last decades models influenced by the market have been gaining influence in public administration all over the world. New Public Management has been presented as a theoretical ?shopping basket? from which concepts can be applied to the administration of municipal services. The purpose of this essay is to investigate in an explorative way how New Public Management (NPM) views contracting and the role of the internal customer in contracting.

Change is inevitable when software is built and deployed. It?s not particularly problematic to manage change if there is just one system. But in a large global IT organization, with several systems and people who develop, problems may arise. If organizations don?t control change, change will control the organization.

Throughout the history, the theories which have shaped our cities have varied from time to time. We have gone from a city development characterized by spontaneousness, where commerce and people side by side shared the space, into a function-based planning where people and functions are being increasingly separated. Regardless the forms of planning the city design causes implications for those who live there when the physical environment controls were we live, work and meet. In today's society where `sustainability ' has become a watchword the current community planning needs to be questioned so we, in the best possible way, can meet future changes. Searching for new planning strategies is part of this and in this essay the term `mixed-use´ will be investigated and analyzed in terms of its social aspects.

The aim of the study was to gain a deeper understanding of the expectations that assistant nurses in the elderly care have on unit manager's leadership and the consequences if the expectations are not met. To answer the purpose of this paper a qualitative research was conducted with interviews with six assistant nurses in municipal elderly care. To analyze the empirical material communication were used as a theoretical concept. Communication includes codes, signals and messages to be interpreted by the parties in a conversation and they can be both verbal and nonverbal. This means that communication is complicated and can cause confusion if it is interpreted wrong.

Dementia is a concept that describes different conditions when memory and cognitive abilities degenerate. Approximately 140 000 persons in Sweden suffers from some kind of dementia. Many are stricken with behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia, BPSD. The aim of this study was to illuminate nursing staff?s experiences of caring for persons suffering from dementia and BPSD within municipal and institutional care.

ABSTRACT This research explores how the Work Integration Center (AIC) supports unemployed immigrants in acquiring jobs and how the practical work helps immigrants in entering the labour market. It employs qualitative research approach through semi-structured interviews staff members at AIC and municipal commissioners of education and labour market in the municipality of Malmö. Its aim is to examine how governmental setup guidelines were represented in the practical work. These guiding principles of the organization are presented at the top of municipality. The findings suggest that even if the staff has no knowledge of the official measures of the integration plans, they have implemented the aims and criteria in their work with the immigrants.

There has been an increasing interest for ranking of Swedish health care and a lot of emphasis has been placed on the creation of indicators in order to rank hospital units. However, essays on to what extent the choice of statistical method affects the final result of the ranking of health care units have not been given the same attention. For this particular reason, the main objective of this essay has been to investigate whether the choice of statistical model has a significant impact or not on the final result, by using five different, more or less common, statistical approaches: bar charts (with and without confidence intervals), control charts, logistic regression, multi-level analysis using shrunken residuals. The analyzed material in the essay comprises 24119 patients that all have been prescribed some form of the lipid-reducing medicine statin. According to directives given by Region Skåne, doctors are encouraged to prescribe a particular type of statin medicine, namely Simvastatin, which has been proved to be equally effective, but significantly cheaper than other statin medicines.

The purpose of this essay is to examine how social welfare secretaries from the social service and welfare officers from adult psychiatry experience the cooperation between themselves in relation to mentally ill mothers and their children.Moreover, the study aims to shed light on social welfare secretaries and welfare officers views on potential gender related differences in the work with mentally ill mothers and fathers.Five qualitative interviews were performed in two separate municipals in the Stockholm area. Three of the respondents were social welfare secretaries in the social services and two were welfare officers in the adult psychiatry. Our theoretical starting point has been role theory and a model of different dimensions of cooperation.Our result showed that there were shortcomings in the cooperation between the two principals. How well the cooperation worked differed between the two municipals. In one of the examined municipals the cooperation could only be found on an individual client or individual patient case level, whilst in the other municipal the cooperation existed on a more general level in the form of project meetings.

Integration is a concept that is very topical in today's multicultural-cultural society. Integration means that everyone should have the same rights, opportunities and obligations to society, regardless of extraction. What counteract integration is segregation, which implies a distinction between different groups and where there exist an inequality between them. Segregation is widespread in Sweden today and the exclusion that it creates needs to be broken. The aim of this paper is to examine if it is possible to promote integra-tion through physical planning.

Syfte:Syftet med följande studie är att analysera vilka faktorer som förekommer i beslutsunderlagen vid fastställandet av VA-taxan, samt hur utförligt beskrivna dessa är. Detta för att utförligt förstå vad beslutsunderlagen grundar sig på i kommuner runt om i Sverige.Metod:Att utgå från den hermeneutiska filosofin, torde en ökad förståelse realiseras, då vi använder den kunskapen genom att utföra en pilotstudie. Detta innebär att vi under studiens gång har rört oss mellan teorin och empirin, och erhållit en abduktiv forskningsansats.Teori:Studien utgår ifrån tidigare forskning inom området som har använts för att identifiera våra traditionella samt icke traditionella faktorer.Empirin:Den datainsamlingsmetod vi har använt är en semitstrukturerad djupintervju baserad på fem olika kommuners VA-verksamheter, samtliga med traditionella verksamhetsformer.Analys:Vi genomförde en omfattande analys för att upptäcka skillnader och likheter mellan kommunerna samt förekomsten av faktorerna. Samtliga kommuner tar hänsyn till traditionella faktorer då dem förekommer, däremot varierar det mellan de icke traditionella faktorerna och dess förekomst.Slutsats:Studiens slutsats visar att våra traditionella faktorer är mer framstående mot det icke traditionella. Det visar sig även att de icke traditionella faktorerna förekommer i större utsträckning än vad som framgår i tidigare studier.

De klassiska sjökrigsteorierna har åtskilliga år på nacken. Fortfarande anses emellertid Julius S. Corbetts och Alfred T. Mahans idéer äga sin giltighet ? trots att den tidigare var verksam under första halvan 1900-talet och den senare under framförallt den andra halvan av 1800-talet.

Introduction:Corporate limits becoming more diffuse due to the globalization taking place and requirements for analytical strategies are becoming more fundamental parts of organizations. Business Intelligence systems are hot and not without reason, today's world is spinning faster and with a flow of information that is constantly increasing Business Intelligence promises to introduce a support that will render a better decision-making, something that everyone wants.Problem Discussion:The local government business has today demands from the Swedish School-inspection to analyze and create adequate target images to the school and students meet curriculum goals and guidelines. Therefore, local government activities has increasingly begun to implement Business Intelligence tools, with the purpose to facilitate strategic and operational decisions were the result plays an increasing role in today's society.Purpose:This study evaluates how the analysis tool Qlikview fulfills the function of monitoring and controlling the improved student achievement in public schools.Method:The evaluation has been conducted qualitative interviews with staffs that have leadership positions in each municipality and management and possess a deep knowledge of the analysis tool and its processes.Conclusion:The evaluation has shown positive effects on the monitoring and control of student performance through better control of school operations..

Civil-military relations ? conditions for cooperationAbstract: Civil-military cooperation is a branch of current interest, both in studies and research. The importance has also increased after the government´s demands in a more developed and efficient coordination of national contribution to international peace support operations. Several studies show that there is a lack of ability to cooperate between different levels of command and other actors. The Swedish tradition of state administration is strong and the responsibility to cooperate lies within the hands of the different authorities.

Uppsatsen syftar till att försöka belysa vissa av de krav som ställs på svenska soldater och officerare som idag tjänstgör i utlandsstyrkan och hur deras utbildning möter de krav de ställs inför. Jag har undersökt vad doktrinen säger om hur försvarsmakten ska lösa sina uppgifter utomlands och vilken inriktning soldatutbildningen ska ha. Jag har sedan försökt arbeta mig nedåt i kedjan genom att undersöka kursbeskrivningar för officersutbildningen vid Markstridsskolan, jag har undersökt utbildningsdirektiv för soldater vid stridande förband för att till sist intervjuat en officer med lång erfarenhet av förbandstjänst. Jag har sedan skapat en kravlista som endast är exempel på de krav som kan ställas på svenskasoldater utomlands idag. Kravlistan skapades genom att studera litteratur som avhandlaroperationer liknande de fredsoperationer svenska försvarsmakten deltar i idag, samt litteratur som avhandlar de psykiska och fysiska reaktioner soldaten utsätts för när denne utsätts för stress iframför allt stridssituationer.

Background: The dependency on knowledge and competence today is more critical than earlier. Today, companies need to put more effort into identifying and filling knowledge gaps, which can be achieved through mergers and acquisitions. It is important that the companies succeed in coordinating their operations after this process of change. Out of a theoretical point of view it can be argued that companies need to balance between different coordination mechanisms that result in standardized and flexible coordination respectively. Purpose: The purpose of this Master Thesis is, in the context of a merger, to investigate and analyze which coordination mechanisms that are used in knowledge-intensive companies, how these coordination mechanisms are combined and what explains the chosen combination.