The proportion of elderly people in Sweden is increasing. Many of these live at home and as their age increases so does the likelihood of health problems and the need for support, medical attention and care. Personnel working with home help provide a large part of this care, including areas of home-based care that are the responsibility of the district nurse. The purpose of this paper is to describe how home-help personnel perceive their work in the area of home-based care, as their views are an important factor in the ability to provide a care system that funktions successfully. The method employed here is phenomenografic and nine subjects from a home-help group have been interviewed.

Quality Assurance in Service Procurement --- Total Quality and Total Quality Management refer to popular management philosophies in organizations these days. The purchasing department has an important part in the strive for organizational quality as several studies show corporate spend is significant and increasing. In this master thesis I study the actions companies take to ensure quality in service procurement. I argue that managing quality when sourcing services is particularly tricky, because of the special characteristics that belong to services. The purpose of the study is to examine whether different actions are taken to ensure the quality of different kinds of services.

The outset of this thesis is to raise questions on how we design for the mobile context and the capabilities of smartphones. Not only the presentation but also the use of input and interaction between a service and a user.This work evolves around sign up forms and answers the question: How does the sign up process affect the holistic perspective of a digital service regarding usability and user experience? This thesis consists of a case studies, and design experiments conducted on Twitter, Instagram and Randos sign up processes to explore if and how the usability, and the user experience could be affected and im- proved.This concluded some important aspects to be considered when designing sign up forms for a digital service.The usability, and the user experience is not only affected by user interaction, and the choice of input method but it?s also affected by which data the service is requesting, and more important; if that data is motivated to request by the service..

Service förknippas av de flesta med ett personligt bemötande. Samtidigt strävar företagen inom servicesektorn efter att effektivisera sina tjänster och produkter. Samhället går med teknikens hjälp mot en mer rationaliserad utveckling. En följd av utvecklingen är självbetjäningskoncepten som ökar i de olika delarna av samhället.  Genom att låta gästerna göra mycket av det som tidigare utförts av personal minskar vikten av det personliga bemötandet. Det finns hotell som helt avskaffat det personliga bemötandet och ersatt det med självbetjäningsteknologi.

Denna uppsats handlar om hur Shared service (SS) inom den offentliga sektorn kan ses som en del av New Public Management (NPM). SS har beskrivits som ett verktyg för att uppnå de egenskaper som karaktäriserats som NPM, och denna uppsats syftar till att se ifall användandet av Shared Service inom den offentliga sektorn kan ses som en del av New Public Management. Genom en fallstudie på Kammarkollegiets Enhet för Administrativ Service har detta genomförts. Sekundärdata i form av rapporter har studerats samt intervjuer med direktören för Enheten för Administrativ Service Håkan Viberg har genomförts. Analysen visar på att detta fall i hög grad uppfyller kriterierna för NPM och motiven för SS, även om vissa skillnader har kunnat identifieras.

Background: Since the coining of the phrase lean production by Womack, Jones and Roos in 1990, this mass production system of Japanese origin has been implemented in a multitude of organizations throughout the world, the results being predominantly positive from a financial point of view. The possibly negative effects of mass production on worker motivation have been discussed since quality of work life became an important political issue in Sweden in the 1970?s. As the popularity of lean service is now increasing, there are still unresolved issues regarding the transferability of a mass production system to the service industry, particularly with regards to the motivation of service employees.Purpose: The purpose of our thesis is to study the lean system of a Swedish bank, SEB Way, from a management- as well as an employee perspective in order to describe how lean may affect the work motivation of service employees.Research procedure: The study is empirically based on observations and interviews on multiple hierarchical levels at SEB. We have conducted a total of 13 interviews with front line employees at SEB, with the central SEB Way team as well as two external lean specialists.Results: The study indicates that SEB Way has little direct influence on the intrinsic work motivation of the SEB front line employees, as work motivation was present prior to the implementation of lean.

Purpose: The purpose is to present a greater understanding of the progression of innovation capital in a technology transfer and biotech start-up context. The findings offer technology transfer professionals, entrepreneurs and academia an overall perception and mental framework of the technology transfer practice and the embracement of a promising invention, building upon its hidden value. Methodology: The thesis was conducted using a qualitative case study, executed with the help of interviews, in order to answer the research question: How is an embryo of innovation capital continuously cultivated in a technology transfer and biomedical start-up process? Conclusions: A technology transfer entity provides the means to establish a platform where an entrepreneur can build its own human capital, structural capital, and relationship capital. The forms of capital interact and thus create value, herein considered as innovation capital.

I hospitalitybranschen arbetas det intensivt med att erbjuda sina gäster så bra upplevelser som möjligt. Nya teknologiska lösningar som påverkar gästers interaktion med branschen utvecklas ständigt, samtidigt som människors levnadsvanor blir allt mer integrerade med det teknologiska. Flera undersökningar visar att just teknologi inkorporerad i hospitalitybranschen är en bidragande faktor för en förhöjd gästupplevelse, men trots det är det få inom branschen som väljer att anamma den. Tron om att den typen av investeringar är allt för kostsamma, okunskap om att teknologin finns och en allt för konservativ syn är tänkbara förklaringar till att stora delar av branschen halkar efter.I uppsatsen redogörs för några i världen pågående trender och en litteraturstudie genomförs för att undersöka hur teknologi kan användas för att förhöja gästupplevelsen inom hospitalitybranschen med hänsyn till dessa trender. Uppsatsen diskuterar hur branschen är på väg att förändras och föreslår ett par exempel för hur ditt varumärke kan hänga med i utvecklingen redan idag..

The aim of this study was to understand the contact between foster homes and social workers, by doing a comparison of the social workers and the foster homes experiences of the cooperation that is between them. We started from three main questions to get an answer to our aim, how the foster homes and the social workers experience the organization of the foster care in the Social Service as an impact of the cooperation, what does the foster homes and the social workers experience as a important fact of a successful placement and finally, how does the foster homes and the social workers experience the supporting and controlling contact that is between them. To get our results we based our study on interviews whit four foster homes and whit four social workers. The analysis was based on one theoretical perspective, Skaus (2007) analytical approach for power and help. As a conclusion we have found out, that the organization of the Social Service has significance for the contact between social workers and foster homes.

The public service within health and care has changed remarkably during the last 30 years. It has been inspired by management ideas from profit-making businesses. Those thoughts are an umbrella term called Nex public management. In what way has New public management influenced the public service in Sweden? Important concepts in the change of public service are quality, effektivity and goals.

The increasing public concern regarding the government?s priorities in spending public resources puts pressure on public organisations to address quality issues in their practice. In United Kingdom both BRTF (Better Regulation Task Force) (BIS, 2005b) and the Hampton report (BIS, 2005a) highlighted management and quality problems in public organisations in UK. These reports revealed obstacles within institutions? intent to offer recommendations and appropriate solutions for agencies working with legal enforcement and control.

The Smart Grid technology has during the last decade been established as a way to create a greater flexibility on the electricity grid that will be needed as the development moves towards an increased share of renewable primary energy sources in the electricity production. One part of the Smart Grid technology is the ability to shift loads in time, to adapt to either price or emissions, known as Demand Response. This project, which was conducted at KTH in collaboration with the consulting corporation Capgemini, examines the economic, environmental and social aspects of the Demand Response technology. In the project, three household products are used in a model that derives the potential savings in costs and emissions of CO2e. The results show that the actual savings measured in SEK are small, but that the savings measured in percent can be as high as 20 percent. Reduction of CO2e emissions is slightly lower.

The aim of this study is to describe the market for Digital Signage in Sweden and give the reader an increased insight and understanding of the problems that suppliers and buyers of Digital Signage may encounter. The study is abductive and based on a number of qualitative interviews with representatives from potential buyers, an existing user, a supplier and a number of companies with insight into Digital Signage. Our findings show that the companies in this study have not yet reached the stage of being ready to invest in a system for Digital Signage, since the effects on for instance increased sales and potential savings on marketing communication have not yet been clearly proven. Furthermore the study shows that it is important that a supplier has a fundamental understanding of the business model of the buyer. In addition to this, service, support and IT-related issues are of great importance for the potential buyers.

The purpose of this thesis was to study how internal marketing affects service quality in the tourism industry. It was decided to conduct a case study on two hotels with summer seasonal employees. Pite Havsbad and Strand Hotell Borgholm were chosen as study objects. The case was based on interviews with the hotel manager at Pite Havsbad and the vice president at Strand Hotell Borgholm, who coordinates the internal marketing at the companies. The findings were that seasonal employees do not affect service quality much.

A tough working climate and the lack of extrinsic motivation at workplaces within health care raise the question of what instead drives employees within this industry. A possible answer to this is Public Service Motivation (PSM) - a type of motivation that is based on the desire to do good for society and its individuals. In order to investigate this further we have performed a qualitative study consisting of ten interviews with people working with institutional care, where the purpose has been to identify the sources of motivation and determine the impact of PSM. The results show that the compassion dimension of PSM appears to be one of the most salient motivational factors. While the rest of the PSM dimensions fail to explain the level of motivation to the same extent as compassion, other factors are recognized, such as relatedness and aspects of the nature of the work itself.