A too large public sector impedes the economic development of Sweden and more privatization could increase the efficiency, quality and diversity of the services offered. It is therefore important that firms operating in traditionally public sectors are given the opportunity to grow. We have through a case study examined two mid-size firms that offer services to, and compete with, the public sector. This thesis aims to describe the growth strategies these firms are using and if competing with the public sector implies any differences in possibilities or barriers when it comes to the firms? growth.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate in which aspects the public library is affected by its local community. This is re-searched by means of an exemplified case study of a Swedish public library in which we analyze governing documents and the library website with respect to environmental scanning and mar-keting of library services.The research questions are: How are the local community?s demands on the public li-brary being described in the governing document? How is the public library?s response to the demands of the local community being described in the operational plan? How are the demands of the local community, as shown in the governing document and the operational plan, re-flected in the marketing of library services on the library website?Our conclusions are that:The demands of the local community are described in a general fashion in the governing document, but there is a lack of concrete political guidelines.The public library's response to the demands of the local commu-nity is described to some length in the operational plan, but not with respect to economical factors.The demands of the local community are reflected to some length in the marketing of library services on the library website. Many of the overall themes that we identify in the governing document and the operational plan can be found in the marketing directed towards important target groups..

The purpose of this essay is to examine how social welfare secretaries from the social service and welfare officers from adult psychiatry experience the cooperation between themselves in relation to mentally ill mothers and their children.Moreover, the study aims to shed light on social welfare secretaries and welfare officers views on potential gender related differences in the work with mentally ill mothers and fathers.Five qualitative interviews were performed in two separate municipals in the Stockholm area. Three of the respondents were social welfare secretaries in the social services and two were welfare officers in the adult psychiatry. Our theoretical starting point has been role theory and a model of different dimensions of cooperation.Our result showed that there were shortcomings in the cooperation between the two principals. How well the cooperation worked differed between the two municipals. In one of the examined municipals the cooperation could only be found on an individual client or individual patient case level, whilst in the other municipal the cooperation existed on a more general level in the form of project meetings.

The purpose of the present qualitative study is to create knowledge about librarydigital services and their marketing to patrons with disabilities in Armenia, on theexample of the National Library of Armenia, as well as, to discover opinions of theNLA librarians and patrons with disabilities about the importance of library digitalservices to people with disabilities. Literature review and qualitative interviewing has been employed as methods to collect the empirical data. The results have been analyzed and discussed based on the library-marketing model of marketing research, marketing segmentation, marketing mix strategy and marketing evaluation suggested by Koontz & Gubbin (2010). It has been concluded, that 1) e-accessibility issomething new at the NLA and the NLA does not provide equally available knowledge, resources, services, facilities to patrons with disabilities, because of the following main challenges: lack of continuous funding and support from the state, lack of appropriate facilities and technologies, lack of qualified staff, and historicallyinherited library infrastructure impediments; 2) no library service marketing is conducted to patrons with disabilities at the NLA; 3) the opinions are that provisionwith such services is very important to people with disabilities, since they allow those people to gain access and use information in formats adopted to their various needs, and, of course, they become integrated into the modern society. The important role of a library as a non-discriminator and copyright protector in a developing country when delivering digital library services to patrons with disabilities has also been discovered..

This thesis presents a new way of providing library users with reference services, namely chat (text based digital reference service in real time). Our research questions focus on the role of reference service, a comparison of chat reference to other reference forms, and the interest for real-time, digital reference. Our literature review covered the areas of digital reference and reference theory, the results of which showed that an ongoing debate hardly exists among Swedish librarians on the topic of reference work. We interviewed librarians from the three different Swedish chat reference projects existing at the time of our study. Most interviewees were very positive about chat reference.

Social work is a social phenomenon, existing in most societies, that has given rise to a multitude of special organizations and professions. For that reason social work is dealing with a complex identity. The purpose of this study is to illustrate how social workers and the scientific discourse interpret the concept of social work. In addition to that the study intends to show similarities and differencies. The research process containes two studies, one based on qualitative interviews with five social workers and the other consisting a surway of academic litterature.

Abstract In order to make the modern agriculture less dependent on non-renewable external inputs, it has to rely more on ecosystem services. The agricultural system produce not only food, fiber and fuel, it also generates other ecosystem services such as e.g. photosynthesis, recycling of nutrients, influencing local microclimate, pollination, biological control and detoxification of noxious chemicals. This study is an attempt to get a better understanding about the interaction among different ecosystem services and different habitats capacity to generate them. An evaluation of eight different methods is done. The ecosystem services studied are the ability to absorb solar energy, biomass production, botanical diversity, decomposition and natural predation of aphids.

I dagsläget har sociala medier fått en större roll i rekryteringsprocessen. Genom en induktiv ansats fokuserade denna forskning på att urskilja vilken roll sociala medier spelar då arbetsgivare bakgrundsgranskar arbetssökande. Undersökningen inriktade sig mot vad arbetsgivare tittade på samt i vilken utsträckning de lät sig påverkas av informationen i sina beslutsfattanden. Totalt intervjuades åtta personer inom personalyrket. I resultatet lyftes bland annat ett etiskt perspektiv med olika dilemman så som generationsskillnader och människosyn samt egen kritisk förmåga.

Author: Karl LarssonTitle: Samverkan mellan skola och socialtjänst ? en studie i attityder och kunskapThe overall purpose of the studie has been to explore inter-professional work between social workers and teachers. The main focus has been on the link between attitude and knowledge. Attitude and knowledge has also been tested for any connection to age, gender, what kind of a teacher you are and for how long you have been a teacher.The collected data has been analyzed in a descriptive part, one part with correlations and in one part with t-tests. The terms samsyn (consensus) and attitude has been reviewed in its connection to the results.The study shows a significant correlation (0.222*) between knowledge and attitude.

This bachelor essay studies families that have migrated from countries in Europe to Sweden,and their experiences of adapting to new conditions of the Swedish welfare state. Theirexperiences are studied firstly from an institutional point of view, which refers to the family?s experience of adapting family life to Swedish family social policy. Secondly it focuses how the families experience new norms and values connected to Swedish family social policy. The main aim is to seek what problems families migrating to Sweden might be confronted with when adapting to new conditions of the welfare state.

Today, there are no standardized ways to characterize SOA, many are talking about SOA and many say they are using SOA. One way that we have chosen to characterize this phenomenon is through an evaluation that will indicate whether SOA have been used in the development. Basedon a Service Oriented Architecture literature study, we have created an evaluation pattern resulting SOA principles of integration, architecture and services. This evaluation was applied to Logica's own integration system AgrCom through an empirical study to result in a response indicating whether AgrCom is SOA based. The results of the evaluation show that AgrCom is part of an SOA solution but not an SOA as a whole concept.

The aim of this qualitative study is to examine how users of talking books perceive the possibility of downloading talking books from home without visiting the library and how this affects them. Three research questions were formulated:How do talking book users reflect on their library usage?Have the subject's' library usage changed since introduction to the download service?How have users experienced the service?To answer these questions, five semi structured interviews were conducted with five different users of talking books in Sweden. All subjects were currently using download services which they had gained access to from their local public libraries. In analyzing the interviews, a theory established by Henrik Jochumsen and Casper Hvenegaard Rasmussen in Gør biblioteket en forskel (2000) was used.

 Abstract: Facebook in the Public Sector - qualitative interviewstudy with The Swedish maritime Administration, the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, the Swedish prison and Probation services and the municipality of Katrineholm about their precense on Facebook.In my bachelor?s thesis I have studied how three government authority and one municipality uses or don?t use Facebook in their communication towards the citizens. I have chosen to study four different cases, to see if there are any significant similarities or differences between how the different services are working with their communication. I have chosen to explore my cases through semi-structured qualitative interviews, where I met communications officers of every organisation face to face.I have found out that there is not one right way to communicate through Facebook, every organisations decisions must be based on their own mission, aims and objectives. And I have seen that both the transmitter and the receiver need to mature into the new acting of this new channel - Facebook..

The purpose with this essay has been to describe and understand why youth community service became a penalty in Sweden. The political discourse in which youth community service was established has been analyzed with Laclau & Mouffe´s discourse theory. A social constructivist onset and a discourse analysis were the methodological tools of the essay. The result is two folded. Youth community service was created to strengthen the constitutional state, combined with high beliefs of the social services competence.

Background: Older people are a major patient group seeking medical care in Sweden. Several of the elderly are living alone and the main reason for living alone is when the spouse passes away. Loneliness is a factor that can affect quality of life, health and wellbeing. Loneliness is an individual experience, loneliness can be self-chosen but involuntary loneliness can lead to lifelong suffering and feelings of loneliness. Aim: The aim of the study was to highlight the factors affecting loneliness among elderly people within municipal care living in Sweden.