The progress in the field of technology is often described as massive and its development has had a great impact on the social development (Vetenskapsrådet, 2012). As a result of the digital evolution, there has been a change in the way customer and company interact (Normann, 2011). The traditional way for players to interact with each other required an interaction human to human (ibid), a mode of interaction that now can be replaced or supplemented by todays technology and often Internet-based solutions (Salomonson et al., 2013). These technological solutions, the technical interaction, are often referred to as self-service systems. These systems enables the customer to carry out the tasks previously performed by the company (Hilton and Hughes, 2013).

The use of technology in today's society is frequent and often necessary, but how, when and where are we supposed to learn how to use it? And if it is such a big and important part of our society, then why don?t teachers get more training in how to use the technology? The purpose of this paper is to examine whether teachers attitudes to technology affects their use of technology in their teaching. In school technology can be a complementary to other material, if teachers have the necessary skills to use technology in a pedagogical way. I have chosen to do a qualitative study in form of interviews and observations at a school outside of Stockholm. The results show that both school and teachers must want to work with technology if anyone will be getting something out of it.

This research is based on the observation that people in the service industry is being replaced by technology.  This insight formed a foundation for the presentation of the problem this essay is based upon. We began to speculate over how tourist information bureaus handle the changes, regarding information technology, in their surroundings when their main task is to inform and communicate with their market. Information technology has created new possibilities for organizations to reach their consumers and it has influenced all kinds of industries. We decided to examine organizations in the tourism sector because it is one of the biggest and fastest growing industries in the world. The entering of information technology in the tourism industry has changed its structure and we want to examine how tourist information bureaus succeed to deal with this phenomenon.The aim with this essay is to examine how and to what extent tourist information bureaus integrate with changes in their surroundings caused by information technology and which values that slip away/ is added by the adaption.

AbstractThe purpose of this study is to see how technology is presented in different fictional picture books that are available in preschool. Six fictional picture books that have connection to technology in picture and text have been analysed. In order to show how technology can be made visible in fictional picture books, the relation between picture and text has been analysed through a technology perspective. Furthermore, the pictures and the texts have been analysed separately in order to show what they show respectively in terms of technology. The fictional picture book has a potential to be a basis for making technology visible in preschool, which is a step in a new direction.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine how disabled people who receive the shut-in-service in one community define service quality. The purpose is also to examine the shut-in-service and to look at the users' context. Answers are sought to the following questions: - How do users experience the service quality of the shut-in-service? - What kind of service does the shut-in-service offer to the user? - How can the user be described and which are his/her requests? The analysis is based on theory about service quality by Christian Grönroos. The theory makes a distinction between two kinds of service quality, technical vs functional quality, as experienced by the user through the profile of the organization.

The intention of this essay has been to investigate how the new digital technology has affected the tourism industry and marketing, as well as how travel agents and tour operators adapt to this. We also aimed to get a broader view of how the future might look like when it comes to marketing and virtual service landscapes. We decided to base our research according to these following four questions:? What affect travel agents? way of adoption to the technical development?? What purposes do the travel agents have for building up their virtual service landscape?? How much does the travel agents emphasize on digital marketing?? What can travel agents do to better adapt to the technological development in the future?We have chosen to use a qualitative research for this essay. The reason for choosing a qualitative research was to gain a wider understanding that would represent a big part of the changes of technology development.

I denna uppsats diskuteras företagens Self-service technology (SST) vilket innebär att kunderna själva får utföra sina tjänster med hjälp av företagens SST. Genom att låta kunderna göra detta kan företagen exempelvis spara pengar på att omorganisera personal eller rent av minska arbetsstyrkan eftersom mindre kunder kommer att kräva hjälp av personalen.I denna uppsats har resebranschen och dess SST att studeras. Uppsatsens frågeställning lyder: ?Hur upplever resebranschens kunder bokningar överInternet? där syfte är ?att undersöka och få förståelse för varför resebranschens kunder använder sig av SST när det finns andra möjligheter?.En kvalitativ metod har genomförts där sex kunder har lagt grunden till uppsatsens resultat. De huvudteorier som använts i denna uppsats är SST, customer value och technology readiness, och Davis TAM modellen samt Sheths value teori har legat till grund för analysen i uppsatsen.Teorin bakom SST är att det inte bara gynnar företagen utan även gynnar kunderna, då SST kan höja kundnyttan.

AbstractThe purpose of this study is to see how technology is presented in different fictional picture books that are available in preschool. Six fictional picture books that have connection to technology in picture and text have been analysed. In order to show how technology can be made visible in fictional picture books, the relation between picture and text has been analysed through a technology perspective. Furthermore, the pictures and the texts have been analysed separately in order to show what they show respectively in terms of technology. The fictional picture book has a potential to be a basis for making technology visible in preschool, which is a step in a new direction.

The development of technology and the mechanization in the Swedish forestry has during the last 60 years resulted in depopulation of the country side and due to that the amount of distance forest owners has increased. Therefore the forest companies need to make some adjustments in order to keep the distance forest owners as customers and to attract new ones. The purpose of this essay was to examine and analyze the distance forest owners satisfaction with Södras service offering and quality of service and further develop some proposals for action. A web-based survey was sent out to 634 distance forests owners in Stockholm, Sweden, all members of Södra. 269 respondents participated in the survey and of them, 27 did also participate in a follow-up telephone interview.

The purpose of this paper is to find out if technology within pedagogy can help pupils with dyslexiaperform on the same level as their peers without using compensatory aid. Is it possible to replacethe compensatory aids with the technology in question? Can the same technology also be used tosupport other pupils as well and in turn removing the stigma of needing compensatory aid?To learn the answers to these questions I have done a qualitative text analysis. This analysis focuson technology in the form of podcasts and Web 2.0 based teaching platforms. The analysis alsofocus on pupils with dyslexia and what kind of help compensatory aids can be.

To be able to maintain an adequate ITservice for various users and needs,more municipalities are looking at thepossibility for mergers of local ITdepartments. One solution for mergingmultiple services/functions and creatingsynergy opportunities is called SharedService Center (SSC). The concept of SSCis that the administrative serviceitself becomes a core activity withinthe organization. The aim of this thesisis to provide municipalities who areconsidering a merging of their local ITdepartments with recommendations on howto design the Shared IT Service Center.Recommendations are outlined based on ananalysis of IT-management literature,reports and by conducting a study onthree ongoing collaborations.The conclusions drawn from the studysuggest guidelines for the design of aShared IT Service Center formunicipalities. These are as following:Create a vision associated with aspecific and structured target state.Identify needs for different targetgroups in municipalities and set acommon standard.Create a clear and practical model/SLAappearance of the cooperation andagreement.Ensure the individual municipalitiescommissioning skills in order to notlose it in the context of a common IToperation.Find an organization that is democraticfor member municipalities andfacilitates long-term partnership.Specify the operation and maintenance sothat it can be regulated and controlledEstablish a common help desk.Establish a common standard andconsolidated infrastructure before theintroduction of a common technology platform..

Service branding is a subject that has been excluded from the traditional branding theory. Our main purpose with this paper is to distinguish what characterizes service branding. To do this, we have looked in to both service marketing theory as well as branding theory. We have also looked at the existing theory concerning service branding. Six qualitative interviews have been performed to explain what characterizes service branding.

This is a study on the electronic reference work of some Swedish university and university college libraries. The purpose of the study has been to find out how the service works at the different libraries, to study the electronic reference interview and to find what is important when you start a new electronic reference service in the light of Brenda Dervin's sense-making theory study. Furthermore, we examine the aims of the electronic services offered and the differences between electronic and traditional reference interviews. In the background to the study we place electronic reference services in a context by describing the role of information technology and electronic mail in the libraries. The electronic reference interview is studied with the help of literature on the traditional reference interview.

Due to their complexity and heavy wear from rail traffic, switches are a sensitive part of the railway infrastructure and moreover expensive to maintain. Furthermore, increasing railway traffic not only accelerates the wear rate but also obstructs the necessary maintenance measures. This paper examines the opportunities for a transition to a long-term maintenance strategy in the Swedish railway network. It contains a study of the maintenance strategy of Banverket, and also analyses statistics of errors in the railway infrastructure. The survey was completed utilising interviews with infrastructure managers, maintenance contractors, planners of railway operations and the Banverket material service department.

As self-service technologies become more common in service provisions, a deeper understanding is needed of how customer satisfaction is affected by automated service encounters. Drawing from theories of customer satisfaction, human interaction, and the dynamics of complex service provisions, the differences between automated and interpersonal service encounters in the initial part of a service provision are examined in terms of customers? evaluation of the service encounter itself, overall satisfaction, as well as the service encounter?s impact on global evaluations and evaluations of other non-dependant service encounters. The study was performed on people travelling by air on Swedish domestic routes. Passengers were asked to evaluate the airline?s performance on different attributes of the air travel they had undertaken, as well as to form an overall evaluation of the service.