The aim of this master?s thesis is to examine the virtual reference service Ask the Library [Bibblan svarar] from a postmodern perspective. Ask the Library is a Swedish online reference service that is run by the country?s public libraries. The postmodern theories of Jean-François Lyotard are used to study how information is managed and transmitted within the service.

The aim of the study was to examine individual staff experience and management of threats and violence in the acute psychiatric department for children and teenagers in Uppsala. Previous research shows that the experience of threats and/or violence is individual, and that it is difficult to distinguish between these concepts. Research shows that it is particularly vulnerable to work in psychiatry when mental illness is a cause when threats and violence occurs. Threats and violence can result in different consequences for the individual. The study is based on qualitative interviews and the material was collected in the autumn of 2012 at Akademiska sjukhuset.

In Sweden there are 354 000 private individuals owning forest. Of these forest owners there are at least two thirds that are self-employed, which means that about 215 000 forest owners conduct some kind of work in their own forest. Those numbers do not refer to firewood production, but every year 7.3 million piled cubic meters of firewood are used for heating Swedish households. This implies that many households are also producing firewood. The objective of this study was to assess and analyse the small-scale firewood production in the Umeå-region in terms of persons engaged in the work, equipment used, produced volumes and share of forest-owning households involved in these activities. According to results from a questionnaire, the average firewood producing person is a man between 40-60 years old.

Kostnaderna för den arbetsrelaterade ohälsan i form av sjukskrivningar och produktionsbortfall är stora. De arbetsorganisatoriska faktorer som har störst betydelse för ohälsan är arbetsmiljön och ledarskapet. Ledningen är den faktor som i sin tur har möjlighet till påverkan på arbetsmiljöns utformning. Detta betyder att ledaren är den faktor som har störst möjlighet att påverka medarbetarens hälsa. Enligt vissa teorier kan ledarskapsbeteendet direkt kopplas till medarbetarnas hälsa.

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.

At the turn of the year 2009/2010 there was a change in the regulations on sickness impact. This led to 328 persons in County of Kronoberg had an expired period of sickness benefit from the Social Insurance Office (Försäkringskassan) when they reached the maximum time for sickness or temporary disability compensation. These individuals were offered introductory programs with the employment services. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the population with expired period of sickness benefit from the Regional Social Insurance Office in the County of Kronoberg (Försäkringskassan Kronoberg) is described in the initial stage, and to explore how individuals who achieved expired period of sickness benefit from the Social Insurance Office (Försäkringskassan) talks about the meaning to get an expired period of sickness benefit regarding economic and social issues. The study was inspired by Grounded theory.

The thesis has two aims to first describe the phenomena by explaining how interim management works and what the charachteristics of an interim manger are. The second aim is to look at the value issue of interim management; What value does an interim manager provide to a company and how do interim managers try to capture and cultivate this?The qualitative method has been used. The interim management market analysed in this thesis can be stated to consist of three parts; the interim manager as a provider of knowledge, a client firm in need of a temporary manager, and an interim agency in between working as an intermediary/supplier. The characteristics of interim managers are; they are in general self-employers and rather generalists than specialists, meaning they are experienced and have great knowledge skills.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to examine what needs and expectations the patrons have on the local public library services for adult students. With increased knowledge of these matters the library will be able to support and improve the service for users. The focus is on adult students with immigrant background who study Swedish as second language in a municipal adult education school. The main questions are: How do adult students use the library at present? What do they consider to be most important when using the public library for their studies? How do these expectations correspond to their experience of the library services? Two focusgroups and one in-depth interview were carried out.

As the environmental requirements on businesses increase from various stakeholders, the incentives for businesses to work more with environmental issues also increase. Historically, the requirements were focusing on companies with direct emissions from operations. Lately, the environmental impacts that occur indirectly as results of corporate activities have become more topical. Companies and organizations that mainly offer services often have a greater indirect than direct environmental impact. This is because they are affecting third parties, which in turn have a direct environmental impact.

The aim of this study was to identify and analyze the dominating discourse in the preliminary work of the Sex Purchase Act. In order to achieve the aim of this study we selected preliminary work of the Sex Purchase Act that was produced between 1977 and 1999. The selection is based on the fact that prostitution began to be recognized as a social problem and a gender equality issue between men and women in society. The ongoing debate during the chosen years resulted in the Sex Purchase Act, which was passed in 1999. By using discourse analysis as a methodological and theoretical approach, we have empirically studied and theoretically analyzed the dominating discourse in the preliminary work of the Sex Purchase Act.

Social hållbarhet är ett högaktuellt ämne. Delegationen för hållbara städer presenterade år 2012 sin slutrapport och bara ett år senare presenterade Malmökommissionen sin slutrapport för ett social hållbart Malmö. Syftet med uppsatsen är att bredda kunskapen om social konsekvensbeskrivning samt att undersöka dess potentiella effekt på social hållbarhet, eftersom det är av största vikt att hitta konkreta arbetssätt för att uppnå ökad social hållbarhet. Genom en litteraturstudie undersöks i uppsatsens första del vad begreppet social konsekvensbeskrivning har för bakgrund, varför det förespråkas, hur en metod för genomförande skulle kunna se ut samt vilka utmaningar som finns. I uppsatsens andra del studeras tre artiklar som utvärderat effekten av att utföra social konsekvensbeskrivning. Litteraturstudiet resulterar i slutsatsen att social konsekvensbeskrivning har stor effekt på social hållbarhet, på flera olika sätt. Trots att metoden medför en hel del komplexa frågor att förhålla sig till finns det därmed god anledning att utveckla arbetet med social konsekvensbeskrivning, för att vi tillsammans ska nå en mer socialt hållbar framtid..

Within this essay a study is made of an LGBTQ-orientated Christian service in Stockholm called Queer Service. The following questions seek to be answered: What reasons does an individual set for his/hers participation in Queer Service? Which aspects of a queer service highlight the participants as important to them?As a method to answer these questions, the author has observed a number of queer church services in autumn of 2012. Moreover communication within the group of the assembly on the social media page Facebook has been followed and five individuals from the Queer Service congregation have been interviewed. As a background to the study, the European religious climate seen from Grace Davies eyes is depicted.  The reader also learns of how the Swedish church has handled questions about homosexuality and bisexuality and what liberation theology is.

The purpose of this essay was to examine how youths are described in certain written statements that are produced by the social services. The statements that this study has focused on, are those written with the purpose of serving the court with suggestions of treatment-measures when a person between 15 and 18 is suspected of having committed a crime. The main issues were: How is the content in these statements described and what do these descriptions tell the reader? Do the images of youths in the statements differ, depending on the degree of intervention for the suggested treatment-measure? The essay is based on a qualitative content-analysis of 50 statements and the material has been analysed from a social-constructive theoretical perspective.The study shows that the youths in the statements are described through descriptions that reinforces a positive or a negative image of the youth, and that these descriptions are described as either utterances or facts. Depending on the degree of intervention for the suggested treatment-measures, the information in the statements differ in that descriptions that are likely to reinforce a positive image of the youth are more frequent in the statements where no or less intervening treatment-measures is suggested.

This study has a double purpose. First, it explores and maps out the use of quantitative key indicators in social performance reporting within a microfinance portfolio. This was done on behalf of Storebrand Asset Management, who would like to aggregate and report the social results of their microfinance investments to their customers. The study concludes that the extent of social reporting and types of indicators used varies, meaning that it is hard to aggregate data for use in further reporting. Thus, the work towards the goal of social reporting has only just begun.

Uppsatsens syfte var att undersöka socialsekreterares erfarenheter av hur placeringar på låst institution inverkar på ungdomar. Våra frågeställningar var 1. Vilka faktorer har betydelse för placerade ungdomars sociala utveckling? 2. På vilket sätt kan tvång motivera till positiv social utveckling? Studien har en hermeneutisk vetenskapsfilosofisk position med kvalitativ ansats och vår empiri bygger på intervjuer med fyra socialsekreterare.