This master thesis concerns itself with the actual work of knowledge workers, consultants to be specific. We have through interviews and observation tried to get inside of the ?black box? of the consultants firm Consult in an effort to describe their way of working through a theoretical framework. In this framework we attempt to combine knowledge work theory with that of organizational development, OD. We try to introduce the situation of the individuals we study, the consultants, through Alvesson (2004) and Løwendahl (2005).

Although Lean has received an increased amount of attention in the service context, research still has not established how successfully Lean manages to increase service productivity; since service productivity consists of both efficiency and quality. Research regarding productivity discusses the risk of a tradeoff between efficiency and quality in service production processes. Therefore, this thesis aims to explore if the tradeoff in a production setting with low variability in demand and low customer participation exists, after Lean has been implemented. With a qualitative approach, a case study has been conducted at Scandinavian Airlines Ground Handling to evaluate the effects of Lean in the baggage handling process. The result of the study shows that the tradeoff has not been overcome; efficiency has increased at the expense of quality.

I will write about product placement in film from a Swedish point of view. This entails writing about Swedish films with different types of product placements, not only how they are done but also discuss how they succeed from a sales perspective. In my earlier work I have written about the product placement of watches. In this thesis I focus on the film series about the Swedish agent Carl Hamilton, since here you can see how Swedish film has developed during the past 30 years with regard to product placements. Both world politics and the concrete placements are illustrated in a clear way.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how Bahamas, a magazine belonging to the antideutsche current in German left-wing politics, acted during a two year period between the summer 2001 and 2003. When explaining the anti-deutsche phenomena and the editors? politics it is common to take the currents own history-writing as a fact, thus presenting the development of the current as a reaction to outside factors and impulses outside. In this thesis it is stressed that the editors are far from only passively reacting, rather the opposite is true. I claim that the editors have a fixed ideology that they strive to implant in to certain parts of the radical left.

The name of the study means ?The short arm - a study in diversity and arm?s length in the cultural collaboration model?. Right now there is a reform in the Swedish cultural administration where the responsibility for handing out state funds and grants to cultural organizations is changing from the state government to the local regional governments. The purpose of this study is to map the organisational changes caused by the reform and investigate how this affects the regional policies concerning cultural diversity and the arm?s length principle.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how municipalities handle planning of megaprojects. The term megaproject here refers to a large project in terms of time, space, investments, numbers of agents etc. With an increasing importance of the phenomena the need of discussing the role local politics could take in this process is important.How do municipalities handle the difficulties that come with megaprojects and what roles do they take in their work with megaprojects? These empirical questions are tested on a case where the municipality of Lund works with the megaproject European Spallation Source (ESS). A theoretical question discusses the megaproject in the light of governance and government, and structures the analysis around these two important terms.Different parts of the municipality handle there part of the planning from there own logic.

Sveriges riksdag beslutade i maj 2003 att hela Sverige skulle gå över till digital-tv. Den första kommun som skulle släcka det analoga nätet och gå över helt till digital-tv var Gotlands kommun. Befolkningen på Gotland behövde informeras om beslutet och om de praktiska åtgärder som behövde genomföras och broschyren Sverige inför digital-tv kom till. Denna delades ut till alla hushåll på Gotland.Utgångspunkten i denna uppsats är att en sådan text som Sverige inför digital-tv rimligtvis borde ha en argumentativ karaktär. Den innehåller information om ett redan fattat beslut, men eftersom det är ett politiskt beslut som är fattat i en representativ demokrati kräver situationen att en viss argumentation för att rätt beslut är fattat förs.Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka hur argumentationen ser ut i en situation där det politiska beslutet är fattat men där makthavarna har ett behov av att övertyga befolkningen om riktigheten i beslutet.

The liberal state, it has been argued, must be neutral between different conceptions of the good. Embodying ideals such as fairness and impartiality, state neutrality is intuitively appealing, but working as a restraint for state actions it is somewhat unsatisfactory. People make mistakes about their lives and people live less valuable lives than they could do. To then restrain the state from doing as much good as it can seems just as unappealing as neutrality at first seemed appealing. In this paper, a possible solution to this dilemma is presented.

For a long time economic tax equalization system in Sweden has been creating dispute between Swedish communities. Despite the main purpose of the system - to reduce disparities and create equal economic opportunities for all communities ? some regions were not satisfied.The main purpose of this study is to determine what extant has equalization tax on investment spending of Danderyd municipality during 2000-2010 year period. The study is based on annual reports and personal interviews. The theoretical frame of the investigation is founded on Fjertorp's classification of investments and public choice theory.The investigation shows that there were no significant changes neither in investment spending or equalization tax during 2000-2010 period, even after the last changes of economic tax equalizations system in 2005.

Aim: To investigate how three of the biggest political parties in Sweden made use of socialmedia in the election campaign in 2010, and to get a picture of how the parties perceive therole of social media in political communication today and in the future.Method: The research is conducted through personal interviews and qualitative textualanalysis.Theory: The theory that the study is based on is Habermas theory of the public sphereMain results: Social media is today an excellent channel for communication and informationbetween politicians and voters, and they will probably become increasingly important inpolitical communication in the future. So far, they are only an addition to the traditional mediaand are in no way substituted for them. Internet and some social media is an excellent forumfor political debate and opinion-former..

Syftet med undersökningen var att utföra en kartläggning över hur riksdagspolitiker använder bloggverktyget, främst ur ett språkligt perspektiv, för att fastställa om de publicerade texterna är lika komplexa, skriftspråkliga, opersonliga och abstrakta som konventionellt politiskt skriftspråk. Ett ytterligare syfte var att granska de politiska riksdagsbloggarna utifrån partitillhörighet och könstillhörighet i förhållande till hur blogginläggen blev mottagna i läsarkommentarerna. I undersökningen användes en kvantitativ metod för att undersöka 7 riksdagsmotioner, 79 riksdagsbloggar och 402 läsarkommentarer. Den teoretiska förankringen vilar på den kritiska textanalysen och Bourdieus tankar om maktförhållanden i samhället.Resultatet visar att även i de fall där blogginläggen hamnade nära riksdagsmotionerna i frågan om textuell komplexitet och skriftspråklighet var de utformade mindre abstrakt och betydligt mer personligt än vad riksdagsmotionerna var.Resultatet visar även att det föreligger stora skillnader mellan de olika riksdagspartierna i hur blogginläggen mottas både utifrån ett perspektiv som beaktar partitillhörighet och i fråga om könstillhörighet. De socialdemokratiska riksdagsledamöterna fick över 40 % av samtliga kommentarer.

The main purpose of this paper is to examine and compare the democratic situation and developement in Malung and Nyköping, through a perspective of participatory and deliberative democratic theories. The questions I?ve examined are On what priorities the actions of developing democracy are built? Which positive effects have been reached and what problems have arisen? What are the solutions they have found to the problems? How does one experience the results of the experiments and actions taken? What are the similarities and differences between the two cases? and What is their relationship to the theories mentioned above?The questions are answered through interviews with four central actors in each case and examined in relation to participatory and deliberative democratic theories and in comparison of the two cases.The results have been that even if none of the cases respond to one theoretical ideal, they have touches of both theories as well as representative theory. It shows, however, that in Malung the representative democracy theory is the strongest represented in actions and politics, while in Nyköping the participatory democratic theory is stronger. In short, the most positive and negative effects respond well to the theories..

The Saami, a Nordic indigenous people scattered over four countries, has for centuries been regarded as parts of the national populations of the countries in which they live. During the 19th century saami demands for greater influence resulted en several changes, among them the founding of a Swedish Saami Council in 1993. The council became a popularly elected, representative institution with an agenda of its own, but also a public authority answerable to the government. The decision to attribute the council this twofold role was unusual and, from a certain point of view, even controversial: it makes it difficult to determine the location of the power to act in saami-related issues and the legitimacy to do so.This essay is about how the twofold role came into existence, what it leads to and how the seemingly contradictive duality is managed. It has an institutional approach with theories concerning institutions and etnicity as well as institutional change and handling of complicated and ambiguous demands.

The aim of my study is to illuminate the borders, both spatial and aspatial, that are drawn around Europe in swedish politics by using the word in question in different ways. To increase my possibilites of comparing different concepts of Europe, I have chosen to restrict my study toFolkpartiet and Vänsterpartiet, which are the two swedish parties who seem to stand the furthest from each other on issues regarding Europe and the EU. Using theory on borders and bordering, I construct an analytical framework consisting of a separation of three categories of entities, around which borders can be drawn. In my search for both obvious and implicit ways of filling the word Europe with content, I find that both parties speak of Europe in a highly contradictory way, which both includes and excludes peripheral regions of a geographical Europe. My second conclusion is that both parties tend to associate Europe with things that are positive to them.

This thesis is a study of social movements and their possibilities to effect politics by infuencing values in society through framing. I've looked upon social movements from a functionalistic-structuralistic perspective, as if they were carriers of values from people that otherwise won't be represented in the political life. The values that the social movements are struggling for can affect both the opinion and the decision-makers since the social movements in an active way are trying ti influence the society. The thesis examines the political opportunities that social movements hav to mobilise and grow. I have looked at different factors that either improve or make the political opportunities worse.