Management by contract is nowadays a common method within the public sector since the NPM overtook as paradigm with its mechanisms of control inspired by the private sector. The public agency is foremost a service provider where they interact with citizens in the service process. Swedish eldercare has significantly increased its expose to competition which means that eldercare can be executed not only by the municipalities own provider. Such an adaption increases the requirements to inspect quality and how the purchasers assure goal achievement by control. The outmost liability stays with the municipality to ensure that the service produces god care since their position as the service purchaser implies the responsibility to plan, precise and evaluate the required work that the executor has to accomplish.

The purpose of this masters thesis is to evaluate bookmobile service as a decentralised library service. I have made a qualitative interview survey, with seven Swedish municipalities participating, all providing bookmobile service in their rural parts. The purpose with the interviews is to examine their bookmobile service. I have also studied articles on bookmobile service, and decentralisation through small library units in library journals, to get an insight into how the work with decentralised library service is done in Swedish municipalities. In this thesis answer is sought to the following questions: - Which decentralised library services are suitable for inhabitants and institutions in sparsely populated areas, considering factors such as number of inhabitants, proportion of old people and children, demographic changes, economy, possibilities to cooperate with other municipalities? - What is the current bookmobile service situation in Sweden, taking seven municipalities in the region of Småland as a starting point? My conclusions are that each municipality must decide which decentralised library services that best suites their needs.

The aim of this study is to through six interviews, with six experienced, social workers?, in three cities, understand how the child?s position in the Swedish child protective services? enquiries has change, and the factors behind it. The aim is also to compare if the social workers? view of the child?s position in the enquire has change accordingly to Socialstyrelsens intentions of BBIC. The theoretical approaches that was used is the new institutionalism, the Shier?s pathways to participation and the term discretion.

The aim of this study was to examine the occurence of norms in court cases regarding the Swedish law of support and service for disabled (Lag 1993:387 om stöd och service till vissa funktionshindrade) with the help of a discourse analysis method. More specifically its aim was to examine and identify norms in the different dictums/statements that were to be found in the court cases regarding the supportive institution "contact person" according to the Swedish law "LSS" with the help of a norm science approach. The aim was also to examine when the applicant was found to be entitled to a contact person according to the LSS-law. To be able to do this, the author studied thirty-four different court cases. In these cases six themes were found, that indicated the occurence of norms.

The main purpose of the study was to analyse the well being of children placed in foster care for at least two years, in one sample municipality. An assessment was made of how the social service admistrated and took responsibility for these children in terms of schooling, physical and mental health. To further understand the situation of the children three areas of investigation were added concerning; teenage pregnancy, the mental health and mortality of the biological parents. To receive answers to those questions a qualitative interview method was used, with structured questions to social workers working with foster care. The author also studied journal notes and child investigations to receive a more comprehensive picture.

How do you do co-operation between government agencies? It is a wide spread view that there can be quite a few hitches in co-operation between agencies. In later years this idea has spread to the media where there has been negative coverage of the social service agencies. This generally applies to cases where children suffer because the right assistance takes too long to co-ordinate or does not get co-ordinated at all between schools, healthcare and social services. The social welfare law dictates that it is the social welfare office duty to co-ordinate the government agencies for the child?s best interest.

The purpose of this study is to develop a general understanding of the areas of alliances and service quality as well as their relation to each other, through a consumer perception. Further, to discover more detailed and close up knowledge of customer perceived service quality within airline alliances. This is done by identifying particularly significant dimensions in the service process that have an influence on the perceived service quality.The thesis is based on qualitative study using a critical incident technique to explore the issue of service quality. In the research of the material the iterative approach has been used. The primary information sources are the interviews with customers-members of airline alliance.

The building and plant sectors represent a large part of Sweden?s energy use. Putting energy requirements in public procurement as a tool for reducing energy consumption in the building and plant sectors is therefor an opportunity that operators can take advantage of. The aim of this thesis was to map the energy requirements in procurement that operators in the public sector use today in building and plant projects. The analysis was made with respect to if the energy requirements corresponded to the parts with large energy use in building and plant projects and also in which way energy requirements in procurement are written in the contract.

Our study aimed at gaining insight of co-workers experiences of different factors that affects the verbal communication and leads to dialogue and misunderstanding between co-workers and their managers. The empirical material was gained from semi-structured interviews with co-workers at various departments within the same organization. We used a hermeneutic interpretive approach and our data was analyzed concerning different factors affecting communication. The result has been interpreted using the theories of deliberative conversations and dialogue competence. We have also used Illeris theory of learning. The result shows a number of factors that affects communication between co-workers and managers.

The purpose of this study is to search and analyze different logics that operators use in the work of helping juvenile delinquents to break their criminal behavior. New institutional theory is used in this study to analyze the results. The study was conducted through qualitative interviews of six professionals in two municipalities which work with juvenile delinquency. There are two questions that we want to address in this study. The first one is what methods the social workers are using in two middle large municipalities to help youth to brake there criminal behavior.

In Sweden, the labour movement historically had influenced both society and politics. In recent times, it is considered a change in society with a stronger employer party while the unions weakened by reduced unionisation. This study aims to highlight the presence of individualistic and collectivistic approaches to the labour market in relation to union density. The different approaches are investigated in the labour market by means of a quantitative survey. The study's survey items are workers in the timber industry.

This study concerns paratransit service in a relatively small municipality in Sweden. The aim of this study is to describe the user's experience of paratransit service. The question formulation is mainly built around the user's experience of paratransit service and their view on what impact paratransit service has on their lives. The empirical data consists of ten interviews with ten different paratransit service users with ages ranging from 25-95 years. The data has mainly been analyzed through concepts of independence, empowerment and trust. The result of this study shows that paratransit service in many ways can be described as a crucial part of the users' lives.

The position of middle-management is a role where the manager is at risk of being caught between its management and its employees. Elderly care is an industry that has been discussed a lot, to a large extent on how businesses should be managed and by whom it should be conducted. Middle-management in the business of elderly care thereby possess a vulnerable position in a controversial industry. In this study the aim is to investigate the managers' roles and tasks in both the public sector and the private sector in elderly care. It also aims to examine whether there are differences between the roles and how they in such cases is manifested.

This is a qualitative study which purpose is to examine how the social workers in a medium-sized municipality in southern of Sweden are experiencing the different forms of housing that the municipality has for disposal. The purpose is also to examine opinions - belonging to the social workers? representatives - concerning the value of motivational work in changing the lifestyles of assaulted and addicted women. The questions we have decided to examine are; how is the social services' work with assaulted and addicted women designed, how do the social workers experiences the situation on these forms of housing and what the social workers believe is promoting and inhibiting factors for motivation with assaulted and addicted women. The results in this study are built on qualitative semi-structured interviews with social workers where both sexes are represented.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to investigate how trained social workers experience information in their daily work. The thesis focussed on three major questions: - What type of information and information sources are mostly used by the trained social workers? - What kind of information barriers are described by the participants? - How can the patterns of information seeking and information use be understood on the basis of the trained social workers professional and social context? Semi-structured interviews were carried out with trained social workers working with child welfare enquiries. My theoretical framework consists of user and context oriented theories about classifications of information, information barriers and models of information sources. My conclusions are that trained social workers working with risk assessment in child protection services, need to use different kinds of information in their daily work, such as problem information, domain information and problem-solving information.