The aim of this master's thesis is to examine whether librarians working in public libraries see fiction as a source of knowledge, and what role this plays in the educational mission of the public library. This investigation, which consists of a literary study and an empirical section, shows that the concept of phronesis denotes practical wisdom and moral thinking, and that it can be applied to that form of knowledge to which reading can contribute. An important issue in this context is the reader's motivation to learn. The interviews show that librarians see literature as a source from which knowledge can be drawn. When they mediate literature, they believe that they are conveying something of value and they set great store in mediating literature which could have a not inconsiderable import to the borrowers.

The aim of this Master?s Thesis is to examine the importance of literacy and reading in a country like Jamaica. What role do public libraries and bookmobiles play in promoting literacy, and how does this work correspond with the UNESCO public library manifesto?To answer this, interviews were conducted with nine Jamaican librarians, and study visits were made to libraries and bookmobiles. In addition, development plans, policy and other relevant documents were analyzed.

This thesis examines the verification of the terms and conditions stated in contracts based on the Public Procurement Act. In March 2013 the Swedish state procurement commission released " Good Business - A Strategy for Sustainable Public Procurement " (SOU 2013:12), which found that the proportion of control and verification is relatively low. The thesis examine how verification is carried out and looks for an explanation to why verification is not more oftenly performed. To answer these questions two care studies, based on seven semi-structured interviews, is presented as the empirical material. Network theory has been used to analyse the empirical results, and aspects of commonly used theories such as contract management and "Markets and Hierarchies" by Williamson has also been taken into account.

The rapid change within digital medias has increased the possibilities to make information accessible through network. Therefore the European Union EU considers a harmonization within the Union, in order to strengthen the rights of the originator. The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate how the EUs directive 2001/29/EG regarding copyright is to be implemented into Swedish legislation and assess the common opinion in the public libraries on this matter. The basic methodology of this thesis is a democratic perspective, concerning the public libraries democratic role and the right of the citizens to have access to information. The thesis first part is a study of documents.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze and identify a selected number of key factors in successfully implementing open innovation. More precisely, it looks at how value is maximized using open innovation practices. The scientific approach taken is based largely on the network perspective, which puts relations to other companies in focus. An extended view of the resource based view (RBV), different from the traditional one by taking also external resources into account, is in addition central to understanding the use of external resources to create internal value. The two main research questions strive to look at how the company locates relevant partners and what the relations that are established with these partners should look like to get the most of open innovation.

As a result of a successful human development around the world an extensive urbanization of societies are taking place that are networked in various ways. In these networks, increased travel and digitization are central where individuals and organizations converge in a constant and immediate wireless and mobile technology flow. An example of this is Stockholm and its public transportation company Storstockholms Lokaltrafik (SL). Although most participate in most of the network society, SL is struggling with an audience that seldom travel with them: families with children. We intended to find out how the communication of SL´s digital platforms could get families to travel more with public transportation.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att ta reda på hur lokala kommunikationskonsulter i Falun/Borlänge-regionen ser på opinionsbildning via professionella konsulter. De centrala begrepp som avhandlas är PR, opinionsbildning och lobbying.Den teoretiska ram som omger undersökningen består av de teoribyggen som skapats av Jürgen Habermas, James E. Grunig och Larsåke Larsson. Habermas ställer sig tveksam till den demokratiska nyttan av professionell opinionsbildning, Grunig är mer positiv och Larsson ser både för- och nackdelar med PR-verksamheten. Larssons undersökning av opinionskonsulter från 2005 refereras också.Undersökningen bygger på intervjuer med ett antal kommunikationskonsulter verksamma i Falun och Borlänge.

This bachelor thesis in Landscape Architecture is about the planning and design of public spaces in small towns in Sweden. My opinion is that the small towns often are overlooked and my determination is to see if that is right. The purpose with this thesis in Landscape Architecture, with focus on a durable society is to find the central public places in small towns and evaluate their function. This thesis has a focus on good design of central public spaces, designed for the inhabitants of the small towns. A small town, which is the focus of this thesis, is defined to have 200-2000 inhabitants. The small towns, which often are built around industries or the railway, have since the nineteen seventies a problem with people leaving them for the cities in the urbanization. Currently there is also the opposite trend with people moving out from the cities, but to live on the country side, not in the small towns.

The purpose of this work has been to understand the reading group from the perspective of the society. The studyhas taken place in the city of Västerås and the results can thus not be used in a more generalized sence. Byfocusstudies conducted with members from four different reading groups connected in different ways to the libraryin Västerås I have reached the following conclusions.According to Jürgen Habermas theories the reading groups, with their ideals regarding education and meetingswhere everybody are equals, belong in the part of the public sphere that he calls literary. There are someconnections to the political sphere, for exempel the down to earth quality of the literature that is the choice ofthe groups and their way of discussing it.One problem that occures when one tries to apply Habermas idéas regarding the public sphere on readinggroups is that the criteria Habermas considers as vital to sphere for it to work properly does not seem to workon the reading groups. Inclusion, eqality and freedom of subjects are necessary to create a public sphere.

This is an empiric, qualitative, case study of cooperation between two public organizations in Ystad, Sweden (Försäkringskassan and Ystad kommun). The aim of the study is to illuminate why they cooperate and what happen with the idea to cooperate and the organizations when they do. The theoretical tools used are influenced by institutional theory. A translationmodel is used to illustrate what the local actors do with the idea when a decision is made to adopt it and how it affects the actors. The study suggests that the cooperation in Ystad called One Stop Shop is partly done because it's a popular way of organizing public organizations in Sweden and partly because försäkringskassan, aim to upgrade their organization identity.

The aim of this study was to describe how persons with Whiplash associated disorder experience how the pain affects them in their daily life. The design of the study was descriptive with qualitative, individual interviews, questionnaire with background facts of the examination group, and diary notes from persons with pain of WAD. Method for selection was convenience. Through contact with the association of whiplash group in a county in middle of Sweden, the majority of the examination group for the study was found. Five persons where given information about the study, one of them choose not to take part of the study, and one of the persons did not complete the study.

The purpose with this study was to show the relations between parents and youths from an adult perspective. We wanted to examine in what way the individualized society, limits and psychic health and unhealthy with parents could affect their youths. We chose to make a qualitative inquiry about this subject and had implemented interviews with social welfare secretaries, recreation leader and night walkers. To receive a deeper insight participant observation with night walkers, participant in parent education and participant in three different recreation centres was carried out.Both writers were interested in relations and relations making between people, which led us in to the chose subject. We did not found any earlier research in the subject which made the investigation even more interesting.

Abstract______________________________________________________________________Title:A study about creating understanding for different kinds of empowermentLevel:Bachelors thesis in Business Administration, 15 creditsAuthor:Fredrik LegovicSupervisor:Tomas KällquistDate:2014 - JuneAim:The main purpose of this study is to increase the understanding for different kinds of empowerment and how it affects the staff in the public sector.Method:The choice of method was based on the research aim. The method used to meet the objective was qualitative. The qualitative study was conducted with a hermeneutic basis, where individuals were asked to describe their experience of empowerment and how they feel affected of it. This thesis has a deductive approach, where existing theories dealing empowerment formed the basis for the design of interview substrate, which is then paired with the empirical evidence, based on this the conclusions was drawn.Result & Conclusion:What separates the different kinds of empowerment and how it affect the staff depends most of all on how the management chooses to communicate and share information with their staff.Suggestions for future research:A study regarding managers that works with different kinds of empowerment, and how that affects them, could be regarded as an interesting future research.Contribution of thesis:It shows that different kinds of empowerment affect the staff in different ways, which I made clear to the readers.Keywords:empowerment, thinking skills, relations and organizational - structure and theory.

Kritik har riktats mot hur landstingen använder sina resurser. Kritiken har gjort att landstingen pressats till att förändra sin styrning. Studien undersöker utifrån ett New Public Management perspektiv vilka åtgärder landstingen har vidtagit gällande vårdens inköpsprocess för att möta de ökade kraven. Studien sammanlänkar teorier om stordriftsfördelar med New Public Management för att undersöka om landstingets resursanvändning kan påverkas genom gemensam upphandling. Den empiriska studien bygger på intervjuer från två olika landsting.

The aim of this essay is to try to find the differences and similarities of two public librariesin the town of Kristinehamn and the rural community of Vara during the year 1994. Especiallyinteresting was if the different political traditions of the two communities -left wing majorityin Kristinehamn and right wing in Vara- have influenced the forming of the public libraries.The comparison contains accounts from the annual reports produced by the libraries between1987 and 1994, a more thorough study of the activities and interviews with decision makers in1994. The interview with the decision makers indicates that there is a distinct difference betweenthe librarians and the rest of the informants, this distinction shows, that in a tight budgetsituation the librarians prefer not to cut down on staff while the other informants actuallyfavour to make cuts on the procedures handled by the librarians. The general opinionthough, is that they all agree that the role of the public libraries is to defend democratic rights.The final conclusion is that the material of this essay supports the opinion that the idea ofpublic libraries is stronger than the political differences in Vara and Kristinehamn..