Authors: Phia Bergdahl & Karin TydénTitle: This is the era of the personal brand ? a study about the role of a personal brand in a professional context in modern societyLevel: BA Thesis in Media and Communication StudiesLocation: Linnaeus UniversityLanguage: SwedishNumber of pages: 54Background In pursuit of being unique and stand out, it has become fashionable to market yourself as a personal brand. According to some experts on the subject, this has become a necessity for survival in the tough competition about the jobs and the customers. With Internet and social media as a natural element in our society, we also have to relate to these channels when it comes to communicating ourselves.Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the role of the personal brand in a professional context in modern society and to explore Internet involvement in communicating the brand.TheoriesWe have used Bauman?s theory of ?consumer society?, how we live in a society where we are both the consumers and the goods consumed. We have also used Castells?s theory of "network society" and how its growth is changing our culture.

Thesis purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to make a contribution, by connecting the transfer of meaning within the context of TV series. The meaning is transferred from the brand to the character in a TV series and then further to the viewer. To look at different role functions that are used in dramaturgy and narrative techniques, we will be able to see how the brand will have a specific role and thereby make the transfer of meaning more successful and effective. This role will have an important impact on product placement according to the meaning that will be transferred from the brand to the viewer, through the character. Methodology: By looking at the transfer of meaning process that is created from the brand, an unstructured observation is applied where we observed the placement and usage of different within a specific TV series.

The purpose of this study is to find out how clergymen in the Church of Sweden understand their role as pastoral caregivers, in a context of a society that has changed quite a lot during the past decades. The study is based on interviews with four clergymen, two men and two women in the ages of 40-65 with experiences from congregations of different social and geographical kind. The interviews are analyzed in themes. When analyzing the interviews identity and role theory is used as a tool, but also the idea of a postmodern society and metaphors for the different kind of roles a pastoral caregiver can take during counseling.The clergymen meet a broad range of people in counseling, both those who regularly attend church activities and those who are complete strangers. They are all focusing on the needs of the confident.

Although school librarians have an important role to play in high schools helping teachers and students during their education, Swedish school librarians are often considered to end up left out by teachers and head principals due to school librarians vague and unclear professional role in the school. The aim of this thesis is to attempt to study school librarians own apprehensions of their particular professional role in a high school context, and how their professional role is believed to be apprehended by teachers and head principals. The results are based on interviews made with eight school librarians working in different high school libraries in Gothenburg during April 2002. By using phenomenographic method various existing apprehensions of the specific phenomena that the professional role of the school librarian constitutes of are made clear. The aim of the method is not to study what the profession constitutes of, but rather how it is apprehended by the school librarians themselves.

The aim of this case study was to investigate the role of leadership and interpersonal relations among staff during implementation of lean at a University Hospital in Sweden. The 15 respondents were leaders and staff members from different wards and clinics, who had started working according to lean principles. One of the methods used was explorative, low structured interviews. Other methods used for gathering information about the case was attending lectures about lean healthcare at the hospital, part-taking in the lean game and reading articles about lean and the implementation in both daily press and on the intranet of the hospital. The results showed that an open and accessible leader that coaches his/her staff and supports their work, helps the staff to develop a lean identity.

This study used a qualitative interview design to explore the experiences of seven Swedish female elite athletes and their career retirement. The athletes were engaged in three different sports; track and field (athletics), handball and golf and five of them are former professional or semi-professional athletes. The process of their athletic role exit was based on the theoretical findings of Ebaugh (1988) and her four phases: First Doubts, Seeking Alternatives, The Turning Point and Creating the Ex-Role. The findings reveal that for these female former elite athletes Seeking Alternatives already starts before the First Doubts and that possibly the athletes at an early stage have insights of the discontinuity of their athletic career. The importance of transferring their role residual to future paths in life was stressed among the female athletes in order to be able to have a smooth transition process.

Previous research has shown that the psychosocial work environment and leadership have a significant influence on the employees work satisfaction. Still there is much to explore regarding the employees experiences about these two subjects. A qualitative approach was used in this study to increase the understanding of the employee´s experience of psychosocial work environment and leaders role affecting it. Eight semi structured interviews were carried out at two organizations with four interviews in each place. The data was transcribed and a meaning concentration analysis was conducted.

Using a qualitative research method to get the empiricism for analysis, we have analyzed advisors and job seekers experience of management meetings at the job center in Halmstad. We used a semi-structured interview form when we collected the empiricism from four advisors, four job seekers and one complementary actor in the form of a job coach, with a hermeneutic approach to interpreting the informants? subjective experience. We also chose to analyze our results using theories by Asplund, Von Wright, Mead, Scheff, Barth and MalténsThe results presented have shown that time is what they all described as lacking. It was found that the job seekers had a reasonable degree of common experience in both the management meetings and the working role of the advisors, while the advisors themselves were divided on how their role would be applied.

This paper examines the function of narrative discourse in television talk shows. Basing our analysis on five episodes of the Swedish talk show Skavlan, we illustrate how narratives are initiated and elaborated by the participants of the show. The analysis shows that the institutional roles are challanged and that the roles vary between the host ant the guests. The analysis also shows that when guests introduce and elaborate stories they use the same discursive actions and resources as the host. When participants enter an actvie role in their storytelling the hos takes a more restrained role in which he lets the the conversation evolve spontaneously.

The purpose of this essay is to describe how probation service officers regard their professional role and their liberty of action within the motivational treatment program, MIK, and the probation organization. To answer the purpose three questions were formulated: 1) Does the probation service organization affect the individual discretion for the probation service officers, and in that case how? 2) Does the motivational treatment program, MIK, influence the probation officers? professionalism and their professional role? 3) What advantages and disadvantages do the probation service officers consider MIK being related to? The method conducted in the study was interviews with five probation service officers in Stockholm. The interviews were combined with a theoretical framework based on themes as organization, professional role, professionalism and motivation. The result showed that probation officers consider themselves to have a relatively high discretion within their work.

The aim of this study was to understand how social workers perceive and understand violence and threats of violence from clients, and how it effect their working environment. It seems that the respondents understand the violence and threats of violence from clients as a result of the clients background problems, vulnerability, dependency and from ?the reason" that the client is currently in the contact with the organization. How respondents interpret the client´s behaviour based on the above-mentioned factors, seem to determine how the respondents perceive and define the violence and threats of violence by clients directed against them. Interestingly enough, although all respondents in the study experienced violence and threats of violence from clients, none of them perceived themselves as exposed at work. The answer to this is consensual.

Worldwide result over internetusers show that Sweden internet users comes at third place. The technological development has been explosive. Individuals can with the help of technology live some, in other cases all their social lifes through social media. Therefore organizations has a lot to gain by using social media to interact and start up dialogue with their audicence. There are different views whether a civic society has developed on internet or not.

The purpose of this study was to examine parenthood of young mothers from a professional point of view. The professionals work in a medium-sized city in Sweden and they represent different professions to give a broad perspective of the subject. The questions in the study were: What were the advantages of being a young mother of today and were there any problems with being a young mother, from the professionals perspective? What role did young mothers network and family play, from a professional point of view? From a professional point of view, how well did society handle young parenthood? How do the professionals handle the young mothers they met? Studies with reference to professionals' thoughts and expectations of young mothers were few, therefore the professionals were given a central position in this study. A qualitative method was chosen, for this study.

The aim of this study is to examine whether the image of the stereotype librarian has created conflict in young librarians´ personal identity and/or professional identity and if this has shown in their choice of clothes? Our purpose was to find out, with the help of their choice of clothes, the young librarians view of themselves as individuals and professional librarians. We have searched for the answers to the following questions: - Do young librarians experience that clothing at their workplace has any significance and if so, what do they want to signal with their clothing? - Do they experience that clothing and appearance has any impact on their personal and professional identity? - How do they relate, by their choice of clothes, to the stereotype images of the librarian? We have performed qualitative interviews with eleven young female librarians. As a theoretical framework we have used ideas and concepts from different areas of research; semiotics, social psychology, business administration and ethnology.

This is a study with a qualitative approach and a social psychological perspective. Our purpose is to describe and analyze authority officials descriptions of individuals with a social disability and their perception of how the interaction in the encounter with its implementation. We are interested in how they experience their power as authority representatives. The following issues are highlighted.? How do people in authority describe individuals with a social disability?? What is the authority officials view on the interaction in meetings with individuals with a social disability?? How do authority officials experiencing his or her position of power in relation to the meeting?Our results are based on semi-structured interviews with five persons in authority, which is active in Insurance and Employment Service in Örebro County.