The aim of this study was to explore and gain understanding of the situation between managers in different forms of human service organizations. I chose to use a qualitative method and conducted semi-structured interviews with five professional middle managers in the public sector. To accomplish my purpose, I worked on the basis of several questions. The questions dealt with the role of middle management and what it involves, how it is perceived and what the middle managers think of the specific requirements for them and their leadership in organizations that provide services relating to people.  As a result of the analysis I have used the theory of social roles that describes the meaning of the different roles and role conflicts that arise in connection with various and conflicting expectations. The review of the results shows that middle managers in human service organizations experience to have to deal with a complex leadership role.

Background: Mass customization has been identified as a competitive business strategy by both companies and academics because of its ability to incorporate the voice of the customer into companies? products and services. Although mass customization may sound appealing, the strategic concept is still developing and firms adopting this business strategy face several challenges. Production concerns are of high relevance since mass customization implies a high level of customer involvement in the product design. Since the areas are closely linked it is reasonable to ask how a mass customization strategy affects production concerns.

Background and problemThe Swedish mobile market is highly competitive despite the oligopoly that currently exists. A short product life cycle together with fads and new innovations puts pressure on the operators to respond to the ever changing environment and to develop and adapt their strategies after it.As a previous study regarding a specific operator?s strategy was cancelled due to the extensive confidentiality surrounding it, an interest was sparked to perform an industry analysis as this is clearly something the actors spend a great deal of time on developing. The launch of the 4G network will offer new opportunities for the operators regarding products services. It may also impact the competition on the overall market.PurposeThe purpose of this thesis is to present a deep analysis of the industry and give the reader a comprehensive picture of existing conditions.

The aim of this study is, from a norm-critical approach, to find, investigate and analyse human representation in the visual culture of one preschool in order to understand if the children enrolled are represented or not. The research questions are: In what ways is there imagery of human representations in images and materials designed for play? What skin-colors and origins are dominant in the data collected?We carried out a qualitative study in the form of visual ethnography. This method allowed us to use a combination of different data collection tools such as photography and ethnographic field notes to collect our data. The photographs we took of images and material used for play, was then analysed through semiotic picture analysis.

Aim is to investigate from a criminological perspective how the safety questionnaire in Älvsborg police district can be improved theoretically and methodologically, in order for the questionnaire to effectively measure criminal victimisation, concern about crime, safety and confidence in the police.1. What should a good questionnaire contain?- Which methodological problems are related to measuring criminal victimisation, concern about crime and confidence in the police?- Which criminological theories are interesting in this context and how can questions be designed from these theories?2. How will the themes now represented in the questionnaire be measured in the best possible way? Are there any reasons to remove, The material consists of questions from the safety questionnaire, the total analysis report and individual reports for the local authorities, as well the results and technical information from Mind Research.

The purpose of this study is to examine the usage of IT technology within preschool and study how IT tools are used by preschool staff for administrative as well as pedagogical assignments. Several aspects affects the work preschool staff do with IT which concerns availability to technology, how technology is used and how technology is made available for the children. There are a number of questions linked to these aspects where some examples this study examines are which advantages, disadvantages, obstacles or other limitations that comes with introducing IT? This study also examines how, when and in what contexts IT is being used? Other questions examined are the pedagogue?s general views of IT, competence development and eventual needs of investment? Further on this study examines to some part how children interact with IT during pedagogical activities? The overall objective is to shed light on problems that preschool staff encounter  in their daily work and on the basis of identifying important questions at issue that could constitute a basis for further research. The results of this study are based on both a literature review and a field study.

This study aims to analyse how sex and sexuality are presented in the Buddhism and Hinduism chapters of religious studies textbooks for upper secondary school. The chosen textbooks are all linked to the new curriculum Lgr 11 which was implemented in the Swedish school system in the spring of 2012. The textbooks were analysed by using two methods; content analysis and discourse analysis. Content analysis was used to examine with which frequency sexes and sexualities appear in the textbooks, while discourse analysis was used to find what discourses surround the two concepts. The discourse analysis used two theories in order to contextualize the several discourses about sex and sexuality.

Ticks and the diseases they transmit are of major importance throughout the world. In Uganda, cattle are the most important livestock from an economic point of view. Livestock keepers fear bi-directional transmission of tick-borne pathogens between their livestock and wild animals. This cross-sectional study was conducted to establish and compare the sero-prevalence of the tick-borne pathogen Babesia bigemina among randomly selected Ankole Long-horned cattle and European crossbred cattle on 30 farms in Kiruhura district, in two sub-counties near Lake Mburo National Park in South-western Uganda. Half of the farms were situated in close proximity to the park and thereby housed cattle with more frequent wildlife-livestock interface (Sanga), whereas the other half had less frequent contact (Kikatsi).

On a highly competitive market, quality is an important aspect to take into account, both in terms of goods and services. The Swedish timber market is very competitive and to achieve long-term success focus on the customer, in this case private forest owners, is a prerequisite. SCA Skog AB Jämtlands forest management administration is dependent on the acquisition of timber from private forest owners to fulfil their mission to the supply of SCA's paper and sawmills in Sweden with raw material. To be able to develop the cooperation with private forest owners, the administration investigates their quality management by measuring the customer satisfaction index (CSI). The purpose of the study was to identify a practical and systematic method to handle deviations and suggestions for improvements to achieve a higher customer satisfaction.

The purpose of this masters´ thesis is to examine the attitudes of public librarians towards easy-to-read literature and see whether a connection between these attitudes and accessibility can be made. The study has been performed with a qualitative approach and consists of four depth interviews with emphasis on how librarians relate to and experience easy-to-read literature and its´ users. As complement to the depth interviews, two micro interviews were made. The study can be seen as a follow up to a survey I made 2005, commissioned by The centre for Easy- to-Read. As analytical tools the cultural sociological theories of Pierre Bourdieu, with his concepts field, cultural capital and habitus, have been used.

The purpose of this thesis is to study how swedishness is constructed and narrated in two Swedish documentary series that picture the Swedish participation in the international ISAF mission in Afghanistan. The main focus lies on how the Swedish soldier as such is portrayed, on which values, characteristics and qualities that they are said to embody and how these are linked to notions of swedishness, particularly the strong historical narrative, formed during the second half of the twentieth century, that defines Sweden as a peaceful, neutral and humanitarian state, with peaceful, enlightened and democratically minded citizens. Theoretically it draws on the concept of metanarrative to explain how ideas of shared national origin translates in to a broad organizing discourse, that defines, interprets and communicates notions of what it means to be a Swede and what is needed to make claims on swedishness. Another concept, that of national bodyscape, is also used to further define and explain how ideas of nationality are embodied and take the form of specific characteristics and  personal qualities. The meaning-making in these two series makes use of the above mentioned definition of swedishness as defined by humanitarian concerns, democratic ideals and moral superiority to construct an image of the Swedish soldiers as on the one hand soft, humanitarians, who are needed in Afghanistan because of their especially strong sense of justice and moral, and, on the other, as tough soldiers, who are able to participate in every aspect of the war as fighters.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the regulatory power, efficiency and impact of export control on Swedish arms export from the 1980s onwards, linked to the delegation of authority of permit license to the Inspectorate of Strategic Products in 1997. An increase in the administrative sector, based on a collective decision making process and established criteria and guidelines, aimed to strengthen the control of arms export to non-democratic and problematic states. In short, the aim of the study is to investigate and analyze whether there was a decrease in the arms export to problematic states or not. On one hand, it is reasonable to assume that the introduction of the new regulation entailed a more strict arms export policy. However, previous research has showed that regulations are sometimes not effective since incentives to breach these may be present.The study begins by examining the Swedish case and situation in terms of arms manufacturing and export, as well as the delegation of authority and legislation applied to the field over time.

The purpose of this thesis is to study how swedishness is constructed and narrated in two Swedish documentary series that picture the Swedish participation in the international ISAF mission in Afghanistan. The main focus lies on how the Swedish soldier as such is portrayed, on which values, characteristics and qualities that they are said to embody and how these are linked to notions of swedishness, particularly the strong historical narrative, formed during the second half of the twentieth century, that defines Sweden as a peaceful, neutral and humanitarian state, with peaceful, enlightened and democratically minded citizens. Theoretically it draws on the concept of metanarrative to explain how ideas of shared national origin translates in to a broad organizing discourse, that defines, interprets and communicates notions of what it means to be a Swede and what is needed to make claims on swedishness. Another concept, that of national bodyscape, is also used to further define and explain how ideas of nationality are embodied and take the form of specific characteristics and  personal qualities. The meaning-making in these two series makes use of the above mentioned definition of swedishness as defined by humanitarian concerns, democratic ideals and moral superiority to construct an image of the Swedish soldiers as on the one hand soft, humanitarians, who are needed in Afghanistan because of their especially strong sense of justice and moral, and, on the other, as tough soldiers, who are able to participate in every aspect of the war as fighters.

The study is based on a new approach on how Swedish healthcare is supposed to be controlled and organized. There is a renowned administration problem within Swedish healthcare, which seems to be an obstacle to exploit the resources to the fullest. The latest venture within the healthcare system is patient involvement, where the patients become co-producers of their own care, which aims to both improve and make healthcare more efficient. A few wards in Sweden have implemented this new approach whereupon the study intends to discuss the effectiveness and efficiency in some of these.The study is restricted to three wards, whereof two of these are inpatient wards and the other one is an outpatient ward, within the medical clinic in Jönköping County Council, which has implemented the patient involvement approach in their daily work. The methodology for this study is qualitative in its nature where a time study of personnel time allocation and supplementary interviews with managing nurses on the wards have been conducted.

On a highly competitive market, quality is an important aspect to take into account, both in terms of goods and services. The Swedish timber market is very competitive and to achieve long-term success focus on the customer, in this case private forest owners, is a prerequisite. SCA Skog AB Jämtlands forest management administration is dependent on the acquisition of timber from private forest owners to fulfil their mission to the supply of SCA's paper and sawmills in Sweden with raw material. To be able to develop the cooperation with private forest owners, the administration investigates their quality management by measuring the customer satisfaction index (CSI). The purpose of the study was to identify a practical and systematic method to handle deviations and suggestions for improvements to achieve a higher customer satisfaction.