While conducting our practical training we experienced how the structure and the complexity of the municipal administration could, from a white-collar workers perspective, become a limitation and burden for efficient work. Deriving from this experience we found an interest in how politicians reasoned with regards to their relationship with supervisor in municipal old-age care. Kouzes och Micos (1979) ?Theory of organizational behavior in human service? became our point of departure. Their framework was therefore the foundation for our research and work throughout this paper. Our aim with this research was to examine how politicians viewed their relationship with supervisor in municipal old-age care.

The purpose of this study was to illustrate a parental perspective of children´s participation and quality of live through personal assistance. Important aspects of parents' experiences were highlighted based on how they experienced participation and quality of life for their children. We chose to use a qualitative approach in the form of four individual interviews with parents from different Municipalities in central Sweden. The study was conducted with a narrative approach in which we used a holistic perspective. Parents' experiences were highlighted over time to create a complete picture.

According to the national legislation concerning discrimination within labour law, it is prohibited to discriminate on the grounds of sex, ethnic belonging, religion or other religious belief, functional disability, sexual nature and part-time work or time-limited employment. The EC-law goes further and also prohibits discrimination on the ground of age. According to an EC-directive the member states must incorporate a national provision against age discrimination by the 2nd of December 2006 and the Swedish legislator is now in the progress to implement this into Swedish law.Even though national legislation does not contain any provision on the area, the EC-law directive has a certain influence at national law. Measures that are in breach of the purpose of the directive can for example not be taken. When the time for implementation has expired, the directive has direct effect and can be referred to within the member states.

It is a qualitative study that describes and analyzes how professionals deal with social issues of inclusiveness and ethics in the investigation of cases involving interventions for adolescents. The focus is on the strategies that staff in social services expressed in terms of obstacles and opportunities for working participatively and especially when it comes to dealing with ethical dilemmas that may arise.    The method used was qualitative research interviews. Five social workers from two different Municipalities were interviewed and the material is analyzed on the basis of socio-cultural theory and organizational theory. Themes that emerged were participation, ethics, discretion and flexibility, collaboration, organization, skills and time. The main obstacles that have emerged in the study are that those who work in social services have had been difficulties to fully create participation due to various factors.

 In 2009, the responsibility for animal welfare was moved from the local authorities at the municipality(kommunerna) to the County Administrative Board(länsstyrelsen). This was a result of many differences between the different Municipalities in how they handled animal welfare. Shoulder lesions of sows are a matter of opinion and therefore, a complicated question. Sows suffer from shoulder lesions for many reasons: e.g. the amount of straw available.

The thesis ?Vi fixar och trixar oss fram till att hjälpa människor? focuses on social work in the field of prostitution and human trafficking in Sweden. Through semi-structured interviews with social workers in the Municipalities of Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö working with persons selling and buying sex, and through discourse analysis, the author analyses the perceptions among these social workers of the relation between human rights, prostitution and human trafficking, and the social work which they conduct.The thesis concludes that although the social workers perceive prostitution and human trafficking and social work in this field as human rights related, they are not explicitly using a human rights based approach in their work.The thesis concludes that the social workers identify several aspects that infringe on the rights of their clients in relation to the human rights principles of Universality, Non-discrimination, Accountability and Rule of law and the principle of Participation and Inclusion. They portray the human rights situation of street based sellers, especially those not being Swedish citizens and those affected by human trafficking, as severe.The thesis concludes that the social workers find several obstacles (legal as well as structural) that diminish their ability to strengthen their clients? human rights situation.

Title: Shall I, shall I not? ? A study of how the intention to engage in entrepreneurial behaviour in Norrbotten is influenced by the financial support from the Structural Funds and the establishment of Ikea in the city of Haparanda. Author: Erica Carlson Tutor: Professor Carin Holmquist/ Docent Monica Lindgren Purpose:The purpose of this thesis is to study what aspects that cause the intention to start a company. Therefore this thesis will look at two different situations, the Structural Funds and the establishment of Ikea in Norrbotten, to try to find out if and how these two situations affect the intention among potential entrepreneurs to engage in entrepreneurial behaviour. Method: A qualitative method is used, since this thesis aims at getting an understanding of a specific phenomena; the intention to entrepreneurial behaviour.

This study is based on interviews with five directors of educational administration within the Stockholm County. The purpose is to investigate how the directors of educational administrations, in the different Municipalities, describe the relationship between the administration and the local school units. Moreover, the aim is also to describe the administration director?s work in relation to the various levels of the administration. To what extent can it be identified as a dimension of the learning organization described in this report.The study shows that skepticism is usually directed upwards toward the next level in the organization and that the decision-making right for local schools is consistently safeguarded.

Economic changes, globalization and an aging population are phenomena that haveaffected the municipal development in the late 1900s. To address these challenges,cooperation in specific areas between Municipalities in the 1990- and 2000's hasincreased. This is referred to in the literature as municipal cooperation. IT is one ofthese areas of collaboration and is seen as a potential solution to streamline municipaloperations. IT implementations are often complex projects involving a large number ofpeople.

This essay shows how natural areas in Älta, a part of Nacka municipality southeast from Stockholm, been changed quantitatively and qualitative as a result of the increased housing construction in the area. Three issues are discussed. Namely: how has Ältas green areas been changed in sizes and quality in line with the settlement's expansion, what is the reason or the reasons to building of different types of accommodations, what has been and is the operators in connection with building of the different types of accommodations?The essay shows that the green areas has been decreased with over 2 km from 1901 to 2000 and in addition to these areas of approximately 1,1km been converted to a planned green structure. Älta has during the years gone through four eras of building types an era of small family houses ? an era of building one million houses on a national scale ? an era of terrace houses ? an era of sporadic building of different housing types (one family houses, pair houses, terrace houses and small blocks of flats).

The development that the Swedish society has experienced during the last four decades and the higher part of the population coming from foreign countries calls for a more intensive research on the situation of these groups. The purpose of this study is to find explanations of the differences in the share of immigrant politicians in Linköping and Norrköping. The starting point of the study is a model of factors assumed to affect the representation of immigrants in the municipality assemblies. The immigrant composition, the municipality organization and the view of democracy of the politicians, are all assumed to affect the civic participation. The civic participation is then assumed to affect the representation of immigrants in the municipality.

The concept of sustainable development is a challenge that demands cooperation from all levels of society for it to be successful. The focus for this thesis is how politicians within the local councils understand the concept of sustainable development and how they implement it in political decision-making.The basis for the study is a questionnaire that was distributed to 303 local politicians in three Municipalities of varying size in Southern Sweden. The study concentrates on departments within the local councils that are directly connected to the Swedish environmental law and the Swedish planning and construction law. One of the primary goals with the aforementioned laws is the achievement of sustainable development within one generation.The outcome of the study was that over half of the local politicians could correctly define sustainable development according to the World Commission on Environment and Development?s (WCED) definition.

The purpose of this thesis is to critically investigate how to understand the regional transformations that are occurring in Sweden and Denmark. At a higher level of abstraction the results can be generalised to a wider context and I have found that there is an ideological hegemony that explains the regional transformation. Nation states are reterritorialising due to a changing world where global capital is becoming increasingly flexible and competition between states, regions and Municipalities is needed to adjust. By using Sandberg's model of structural reforms I have shown that the differences between Sweden's and Denmark's reterritorialisation are due to differences in national political culture and existing administrative systems. In fact these two structural reforms are based on the same regionalist ideology as a reaction to the changing global economy.To investigate the regional transformations I have carried out an idea and ideology analysis on the recent Swedish proposal from Ansvarskommittén, Strukturkommissionen in Denmark and the proposal by the Danish government which was carried out in 2007.

It seems like Swedish Municipalities are dominated by beliefs that all citizen participation is good for the development of local democracy. A critic of this certainty is rising among Swedish scholars of political science. However, a critic with an ambition of such generalization is harsh. Different democratic projects contents different qualities and thereby diverse problems in the democratic process. If these democratic problems within the process can be recognized, a deeper understanding can be found and in the prolongation a strengthening of the democracy.This essay examines the democratic process of Lomma municipality's democratic project of citizen participation.

The purpose of our study is to interpret and understand the collaborative process around a regional model that is based on state developed guidelines for people with dementia. We have chosen to focus on the importance of interaction and have therefore interviewed participants in the project's steering committee. This group participates in efforts to develop a model for dementia care in Halland.The project work in Halland, to develop a joint model for people with dementia and their families was initiated in the spring of 2011 and is due to finish at the end of 2012. The Halland model has been named ?Annas led? and is about Anna and her husband Lars and living with dementia.