In the early 1990?s more and more companies of the Swedish public sector were exposed to competition, and this started the debate on how such actions might affect the business and even society.The first chapter examines how the public sector and especially health care, is financed and managed. We also explore what it means to be exposed to competition and find that there are many different ways of exposing the public sector to competition. The study examines dental care as an example of a market with both publicly and privately owned companies. The purpose of this paper is to explore how publicly and privately owned health care companies view their relationship with their consumers.

AbstractPurpose/Aim: This essay deals with The Swedish Red Cross Society and their work concerning strategical information and communication about HIV and AIDS in the Swedish context. In a broader sense the relation between the global and the local will be investigated and a discussion about what it means to work in an organization operating on a global arena will be held.Material/Method: This essay is based on relevant theories about culture and health communication which I have studied, selected and put together, with purpose to analyse The Swedish Red Cross Society and their informational work with HIV and AIDS- prevention. Furthermore I have interviewed four of the organizations co- workers to collect data about their experiences in working in the Red Cross organization with this specific mission. Moreover I and my colleague Hillevi Good attended at seminars and lectures to observe activities held by the organization and to get inside information about what people working with HIV and AIDS are discussing and considering as critical issues. The study holds a qualitative approach focusing on understanding this typical case rather then generalizing facts in a larger sense.Main results: The Swedish National Society of The Red Cross has a difficult mission in their work to inform the public about HIV and AIDS, although it is the perfect organization when it comes to communication due to their well-known profile and a huge geographical spread.

It is now increasingly common for organisations to work actively with HR issues. Furthermore, it is a constant top priority for organisations to remain profitable. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether so called soft HR values, as manager?s communication skills, has an actual impact on hard values in terms of costs for the organisation. Leadership is largely characterised by emotional communication, which together with personnel costs were the main focus of the research.

Current technology offers many possibilities for remotecommunication. Nevertheless, people with cognitive and communicativedisabilities have limited access to common communication technology like textmessaging via a mobile phone. This study is part of the project Text messagingwith picture symbols - a possibility for AAC users and people with cognitiveimpairments. Semi structured interviews were used to investigate three menand four women?s experiences of using Windows mobiles with adaptedfunctions for text messaging.

This master thesis concerns itself with the actual work of knowledge workers, consultants to be specific. We have through interviews and observation tried to get inside of the ?black box? of the consultants firm Consult in an effort to describe their way of working through a theoretical framework. In this framework we attempt to combine knowledge work theory with that of organizational development, OD. We try to introduce the situation of the individuals we study, the consultants, through Alvesson (2004) and Løwendahl (2005).

Mind-mindedness refers to the mother?s ability to treat her child as an individual with a mental life of his or her own. In the present study, the purpose is to investigate the relationship between the amount of mind-related comments the mother produces when the child is 9 months of age and the child?s development in language and communication at the age of 15 months. The hypothesis is that the amount of mind-related comments the mother produces has a positive affect on the child?s language abilities as well as his or her ability to initiate joint attention.

This thesis is about covers of books and DVD movies. I have tried to find out if the visual communication of the covers differs between the book and movie with the same story. Do they appeal to different target groups? I have also been trying to find out what designers can do to increase the visibility of covers among others. Are there certain rules to follow for making a cover visible?To reach a conclusion I have been studying components in advertising pictures, since covers work as a kind of advertiser for the product.

This study investigates the use of the social network Facebook among 67 Swedish libraries; 27 academic libraries and 40 public libraries. Data is collected through an analysis of the libraries? Facebook pages and through an email survey. To analyze the data, a series of statistical analyses were performed.The results indicate that the public libraries more actively posted Facebook updates than the academic libraries and that the libraries that had a policy for use of Facebook/social media more actively posted updates than those libraries that did not have such policy. The libraries use Facebook mainly to post links and photos and to announce events, provide book recommendations, and to emphasize special occasions.

Språksvårigheter kan leda till sociala problem eller vara en indikation på neuropsykologiska problem. MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDI) och Children´s Communication Checklist (CCC) är instrument som används för att uppmärksamma eventuella brister i kommunikations- och språkutveckling. Swedish Early Communactive Development Inventories (SECDI) är svenska motsvarigheten till MB-CDI. Föreliggande studies syfte var att validera den nya svenska versionen av SECDI för barn 3-5 år gamla (SECDI-III) mot de tio skalorna i CCC-2. 36 föräldrar deltog i studien.

Background: Ambiguity and confusion of ideas within the area of social responsibility have led to that companies not really know how to work with these types of questions. One way for companies to deal with their social responsibility is to affiliate to an initiative that exists and through this show their standpoint. One of these is Globalt Ansvar, a Swedish governmental initiative that is based on Global Compact?s principles and the guidelines of OECD. What does it mean for the companies when showing their point of view? Is this a way to gain legitimacy?Purpose: The purpose with the thesis is to judge if organisations? work with Corporate Social Responsibility gains more legitimacy by affiliating to Globalt Ansvar.Research method: A survey made through telephone interviews with representatives from all of the fifteen Swedish companies which today are affiliated to Globalt Ansvar.Conclusions: In order to give the affiliated companies more legitimacy, Globalt Ansvar has to be a legitimate initiative.

Background: In Sweden it is a legal right for patients to have the possibility to participate in their own care. Several studies highlight the importance of a good relationship, good communication and good cooperation in order to increase a sense of security and thus the possibility of participation. One way to increase patients' ability to influence and participate can be to adapt person-centered care. This moves the focus from the patient's illness to the patient and his/her resources. Aim: The aim of this study is to describe patients' experiences of the possibility to actively participate in decisions regarding its care and treatment at surgical wards.

Drawing on a broad theoretical framework that includes theories about globalisation and honourculture, this thesis aim is to demonstrate that globalisation and honourculture, constitute a conceptual network, i.e a structural relational matrix in which concepts are embedded. Being part of conceptual network, these concepts are related to each other ontologically. The idea of conceptual network, and the thesis as a whole, draw upon what has been called ?relational perspective?This study aims to show the impact of globalisation on honourculture. The study shows the importance of narrative in the construction of discursive boundaries.

This essay is about how basic democratic values are formed in preschool. I have focused on children´s abilities to take on responsibility and also, on the importance of relationships in the development of democratic values in preschool.This essay starts in self-perceived dilemmas, based on my own feeling that the children should have more rights and that the preschool often has too many unreflected rules and routines. The dilemma has been reflected on and has been discussed in relation to other theories. I have also reflected on my own behavior as a teacher and to what extent this behavior has influence on the outcome.The relationship between the governing documents and the work in preschool has been reviewed with the conclusion that they are not synchronized with each other.The investigation shows several examples of the meaning of a good working relationship between teacher and child and that children´s own sense of responsibility should be taken seriously and be recognized as a resource.In the discussion with the theories a connection between democracy, relationships and children´s responsibility was detected. The meaning of a good working communication and the teacher?s significance for the development is central and is made visible and problematized.The concluding words show how the approach to democratic and fundamental values must come to a change in preschools, a change that the teacher partly is responsible for.

This paper was aimed to investigate how a sexual education website, UMO.se, with an explicit norm-critical approach to their work achieved its goal to be norm-critical and inclusive in terms of gender, gender identity and sexual orientation. The investigation was focused on a section of the website, "Ask UMO" where the website visitors could submit questions, which were answered by a midwife, a nurse, a counselor, a psychologist, a nutritionist or a doctor. The questions focused on examining how well the "Ask UMO" lived up to UMOs target norm criticism and if there was any differences between the different professions in how norm-critical and inclusive they were. This was examined by a discourse analysis inspired by Foucault and based on Judith Butler's theory of the heterosexual matrix. The study found that "Ask UMO" in 350 of the sections 425 questions reached UMOs goal to be the norm-critical and inclusive.

The aim of this thesis is to use Gabriel Tardes theories concerning imitation, repetition and the public opinion as a way of understanding how transmedial communication develops over time. This involves a study of social media, traditional press and public organizations in relation to each other. The campaign, What are you doing? (Vad håller du på med?, 2013), launched by the Swedish military as a way of drafting more soldiers, is used as an example of how the theories can be applied to help us understand connections, patterns and social behavior in the rapid mutation and viral spreading of information. By discussing the campaign and its effects, the ambition is to give an understanding of how a campaign of this scale could be planned for and structured.