More efficient energy consumption is essential to secure a sustainable future, not least within the building and real estate sector which answers for approximately 40 % of the EU countries total energy consumption. One part of EU: s work to reduce the energy consumption is the directive on energy performance of buildings which among other things have lead to stricter demands on energy performance in new and renovated buildings.One of the difficulties with making buildings more energy effective is that it often demands big investments and although it results in lower operating costs the extent of these savings and therefore also the repayment time can be difficult to decide beforehand. To make it interesting for property owners and also tenants to invest in energy efficient buildings powerful incentives are needed. Favorable loans to energy efficiency projects are one example of governmental instruments that have been tested in other European countries with good results.Reduced operating costs appear to be the main incentive for property owners to make their buildings more energy efficient. The best result of an energy efficiency project is usually achieved by cooperation between property owners and tenants but in order to make that interesting it is important that both parts can profit from the savings.

In this report two Sustainability Life Cycle Assessments are carried out for two types of tiles for Riksbyggen, to contribute to a sustainable urban transition. Sustainability Life Cycle Assessment involves performing a life cycle assessment based on four principles based on scientific research and presented by the non- governmental, non-profit organization, The Natural Step. The principles concern raw materials, chemically produced substances, degeneration of nature and social conditions.Origin of products, manufacturing sites and manufacturing procedures were initially completely unknown and much of the work has consisted of finding the entire cycles, understand manufacturing processes of ceramic tiles and evaluating what materials and what type of energy sources that are required for the production. A socially sustainable perspective has been of high relevance alongside an ecologically sustainable perspective.The report begins with the basic underlying facts and the purposes of this investigation and that the reasons why Sustainability Life Cycle Assessments are carried out are to provide Riksbyggen and the own workers with documents presenting Riksbyggens ideas regarding sustainability and to hopefully get the ideas further down in the supply chain. The methods used to fulfill the investigation are presented and scientific facts about LCA and ceramic building materials are reviewed.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the identity, competences and professional development of corporate librarians. I have done an empirical study based on semi structured interviews with 11 information professionals who were working at Astra Zeneca at the time of the re-organizations of the company in 2009 which ultimately led to the closing of the libraries. I have also examined the views on competences and professional development of librarians in general, both in Sweden and in Denmark. I have used Thomas Brante?s theories on profession types as well as Anders Ørom?s theories on librarian identities as my theoretical framework.

The public health care sector has come under increasing pressure to cut down costs, maximize productivity and satisfy patients' needs during the 1990s and onwards. As a way of "getting more for less" quality management has been introduced. Originating in the private manufacturing industry, quality management has a strong focus on productivity and efficiency, aspects which are measured in quantitative terms. However, there are strong concerns that quality management is a means of speeding up the marketization of public health care by introducing core values much different from the ethic and medical norms that traditionally underpin health care organizations.This essay focuses on how quality management has been introduced to, and transformed by, public health care. A theoretical framework based on new institutionalism is constructed, and translation theories are used as a way of illustrating how the medical institutional environment, in fact, changes the concept of quality management.

The aim of this essay is to examine the ambivalence that I consider work of solidarity carried out from majority position to be associated with, and whether it makes sense to understand the relationship between majorities and minorities involved in this work by using the concepts of race and whiteness. Through Ruth Frankenbergs work on white women and race I consider whiteness to be a racialized position, and through Sara Ahmeds phenomenology of whiteness, which describes racialization as made through the orientation of bodies, I investigate how this racialized position is shaped and maintained by the solidarity work. The study is based on qualitative interviews with four White women engaged in two organizations that works on integration of female immigrants through creating jobs in a cooperative and through educating in national and familial democracy. The work of solidarity told of by the interviewees seems to produce racialized notions about immigrated people of color, which acts as a counterpart to the whiteness that the interviewees themselves possess. At the same time, the work also challenge this binary division, especially by incorporating the non-white women in what in this essay is called "the white world"..

This essay analyses the arguments of The Swedish Government Official Report 2008:88 which proposes that the Swedish law (SFS) should shift from promulgation in print to elec-tronic promulgation on a Website. I have studied two aspects of the arguments in the text. On the one hand, the Inquiry?s description of how things might become if their proposal becomes effectuated and, on the other hand, how the present situation is described in the text. The theory I have used is called A Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice, which pictures organizations as often irrational in dealing with problems, solutions and decision making.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how different fractions of Sweden?s left wing (the Social democrats, the Communists, the Syndicalists and the Socialist party) framed the end of the Spanish Civil War and the defeat of the republicans.To answer the purpose four newspapers Arbetaren (syndicalist), Folkets Dagblad (Socialist party), Ny Dag (communist) and Socialdemokraten (social democratic) have been analyzed qualitatively. The thesis has focused on how the different ideologies have framed the war, how they framed the other labour organizations and themselves plus how they relate to information about the war during the period of February 1st1939 till April 5th1939.The analysis shows that the Social democrats and the Communists framed the war as a conflict between fascism and socialism, whereas the Syndicalists and the Socialist party framed the war as a socialistic revolution. Because each side had their own view, their opinions on what threatened a republican victory differed. The Social democrats were most concerned that a non-democratic movement would win the war and the Communists feared that fragmentation within the republicans would threaten their chances to win.

Sweden has one of the best elderly cares in Europe and the Swedish care work is also one of the best in terms of quality, compared to other European countries. In recent years, higher demands have been set on the care work and the number of privatizations of public services has increased. In 2009 a new law came into force, the Act on System of Choice (LOV) which increased individual?s right to a greater participation and a free choice in the selection of health and social care providers. This paper aims to highlight the impact of the law, system of choice.

The purpose of this essay is to identify and analyze the term leadership based on democratically-, authoritarian-, and passive (laissez-faire) leadership and find out which of these types are to be preferred among employees. Our main aspects are:Do employees prefer democratically-, authoritarian-, or passive leadership?Are there any differences regarding ideal leadership considering sex, age, length of service and sector?We have chosen to make a quantitative study of two equivalent organizations, one in the private and one in the public sector. Our method is an explorative method were we seek to find new knowledge about our fenomena. Our study is based on the already established theories on leadership and our empirical data is gathered by questionnaires.The conclusions to be drawn from this study is that our respondents to a large extent prefer a democratic leadership towards an authoritarian and passive leadership. Most of them prefer a democratic leadership with elements of the other leadership types.

The purpose of our thesis has been to study Social Workers view of children?s needs and how they work with children?s needs when they are orphaned because of HIV/Aids in South Africa. The question formulations we used to answer our purpose are:? What needs do the Social Workers consider the children to have?? How do the Social Workers work with children?s needs?We have a qualitative methodological approach in the thesis, where we have performed four interviews with four Social Workers on different organizations in and around Cape Town, South Africa. The presentation of the empirics is made as a summary with representative quotations, which we have interweaved with earlier research and theoretical conceptions.

The amount of web APIs that are open to the public is increasing fast. Both the free web APIs as well as the ones that cost money to access. Both bigger and smaller organizations, professional and non-professional developers use these web APIs to add value to their systems or use it to create new applications. This is an area study where alot of research has been done in the last few years. In spite of this there are still no user-centered evaluation methods for web APIs.

The purpose of this study was to find an explanation for why Amnesty International in Sweden has seen an increasing number of members, while the number of participants at the national annual meeting has decreased.The method of the study was done with an inductive approach in which the problem has affected the choice of theory and empirical data. The empirical data has been collected through both qualitative and quantitative method in which the analysis was implemented with support by statistics and interviews.To strengthen the arguments in the paper, sociological theories on organizations are used and also theories about social movements.The conclusion of the study is that Amnesty International Sweden has undergone a transformation towards a decentralized organization because it is not longer relevant for people who are members to achieve the purpose of the organization to participate at the annual meeting. This because that these members accesses the recourses they want to achieve by working on a local level. The main conclusion of this study is that Amnesty has moved towards being an organization that to some extent are working as a social movement, where there is no longer any clear link between local work and the central board of Directors. .

The improvement programme Six Sigma has often been surrounded by an air of success since it was introduced in the 1980s. Yet there are cases in which introduction of the Six Sigma improvement programme show far from successful results, even complete implementation failures with no traces of the Six Sigma methodology or any improvements after completion of the introduction. These failures can cause severe damage to organizations through direct monetary loss caused by a negative result of the investment. Indirectly the failure can cause confusion in the organization and loss of employee motivation. The conclusions have been derived based on a qualitative case study at a Swedish telecommunications company.

In theory, the logic behind partnerships is simple: All organisations have strengths, but no organisation has all the strength required to do everything. Triggered by global perspectives and challenged by sustainability objectives, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 pointed out needs for corporate responsibility. In this conference, Private-public partnership, PPP, was identified as a potential way to work towards sustainability, especially as a way to emphasize a corporate responsibility commitment. Nowadays, organizations exist to satisfy the needs and interests of all their stakeholders, such as customers, markets, shareholders, as well as secondary stakeholders such as media, NGOs, and society at large. Addressing all stakeholders and working towards a sustainable business development makes PPP a potential solution, but also a source of challenges.

Today every organization is committed to some kind of environmental scanning in order to get necessary knowledge of the world around them. The acquisition, organization and storage of information in combination with a strategic use, is today an important factor for a successful organisation in any sector of our society.In this Master thesis I have studied how an organisation such as The Confederation of Swedish Enterprise (Svenskt Näringsliv) handles its information resources. I have also looked at the flow of information within the organization. The Confederation of Swedish Enterprise is Sweden?s largest business federation representing 50 member organizations and 55 000 member companies.