Changes in the labour market combined with an increased media coverage of managers, have resulted in the rise of a new human due diligence industry. The use of background checks has lately become increasingly popular on the Swedish market and many companies use it as an evaluation tool when recruiting. This study investigates differences in the background screening procedure for recruitment to executive management positions and lower level positions. It also aims to answer why background checks are conducted, using a cultural and a functional perspective. The report takes an abductive approach and data has primarily been gathered through a survey directed to large Swedish companies.

Real estate managers work in a hard branch with big competition and skeptical customers. For most people, buying a property is the biggest private purchase of their lives. This puts a big pressure on the real estate agent to make the process run smooth. But how does the customer know which real estate manager to choose? We have researched what effect the real estate managers clothing has on the customers? first impression and how clothing affects customers? choice of real estate agents.To answer our questions we´ve done 13 projective interviews with ten customers and three real estate agents, where we showed four pictures with the same person dressed in different styles.

The purpose of this study is to describe how the employee appraisal is perceived by managers, employees and representatives from human resources departments. The empirical material con-sists of 15 interviews: respondents were two representatives of the human resources departments, four unit managers and nine employees who work at a state institution or municipal management. In the study, I adopt a sociocultural perspective, with the communicative relational perspective. The latter is a special education perspective in which the interpenetration of participation, com-munication and learning emphasized.The result shows that the majority of employees would like to see that the talks will be held more frequently than once a year. One of the managers has in cooperation with his co-workers devel-oped a model based on that each year, in addition to salary talks, have an individual conversation, a conversation with each group and individual follow-up talks.

This essay is a comparative analysis with focus on Jean-Paul Sartre´s existentialism and Ferdinand Alquié´s cartesianism. They both represented the French philosophy of conscience in the early and mid 1900s. Because of that, they had similar ideas concerning the human conscience and freedom of the mind. But how did they come to those conclusions? And in which cases did they differ from one and other?.

In this thesis I discuss how the western conception of reason is an aspect of power. I consider the western comprehension of rationality to be a masculine and ethnocentric understanding, though by itself acclaimed to be universal. My purpose with this thesis is to analyze how this western and masculine conceptualisation of reason follows a gramscian structure of power, which makes it reproduce itself in the postcolonial project of science.The theory of hegemony and ideology of Antonio Gramsci is central for analyzing the reproduction of the western subject of knowledge. The theoretical approach is also based on the understanding of the Other as essential for defining the identity of the self. My two main objects of study is one text of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, which discuss the problems of representation, and one of Chandra Talpade Mohanty, in which she examines the tendency to neocolonization in certain western postcolonial feminist research.

This thesis examines the way that subversivity is produced in relation to the name of the author, as understood by Foucault, and what potential for ressistance that can be glimpsed there. This from the reading of three text that in different ways relate to that theme.Firstly, throught the reading of "Isis mamma a?r genusvetare, skribent och konstna?r, min mamma a?r f.d. sta?derska, kokerska och dagisfro?ken, numera fo?rtidspensiona?r med diagnosen fibromyalgi" by Lidija Praizovic?, a text that actively work with the internal production of different exteriorities.

This master thesis deals with classifications schemes in multicultural societies. The aim is to investigate how well the Swedish classification scheme SAB has been adapted to the multicultural society of today. I have done a comparative analysis between the SAB and the UDC to see if an international classification scheme would have better possibilities to represent a multicultural society. I have asked some institutions that have a large collection of documents dealing with minority cultures how they experienced the SAB. I have also read literature about classification theories and compared universal enumerative, facetted and special classification schemes to see if the possibilities to classify documents on, or related to minorities differed from each other.

Syftet med vår studie var att att se vilka diskurser som finns kring barnperspektivet bland socionomer verksamma inom barn- och ungdomsenheter. Genom att identifiera diskurser kring detta begrepp var även målet att kunna bidra med ny kunskap kring hur barnperspektivet kommer till utryck och tolkas av utredarna. Vi har använt oss av kvalitativa enkäter med öppna frågor. Enkäterna delades ut till socionomer verksamma inom barn- och ungdomsenheter i åtta kommuner i Sverige. Resultatet har sedan tagits fram med hjälp av diskursanalys.

This paper is about the facades and the streets impact on theexperience of the city and how architects can create cities forthe human kind with simple tools that makes a hugh difference forthe experience of urban space.As the cities are growing in a faster rate and as more people moveto the cities, they will also affect more people. The differentstructures that can be found in the cities therefore gets moreimportant and giving design to city structures also gets morecomplex because of our higher demands on urban functions andcontent. It?s difficult to evaluate the ultimate city structuresince all people experience their city in different ways, butarchitects still should be able to create urban spaces thatis suited for the human kind, just as we can create differentbiotopes for flora and fauna. Therefore there must be generalideas of what the human being experience as good or bad and theseshould be guidelines when designing urban space.Since urban space is something that most people experience everyday it doesn´t always have a clear impact on them.

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.

Internet is the future and VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is growing in use. Companies are starting to realise the benefits with VoIP. Skype is the number one soft phone on the market but it doesn't satisfy the needs of companies (e.g. transfer calls, redirects calls and so forth) and leaves therefore a gap. The purpose of this master thesis is to provide Objektor AB (thesis initiator) with tips on how to design a usable soft phone that they know is based on relevant human computer interaction research.The method used in the thesis has been iterative development.

In the essay, the view of mistakes and disciplinary sanctions within the military aviation and health and medical service, are compared. The comparison shows that military aviation and health and medical service could have several points in common on how mistakes may occur, but that the present view of mistakes is different betwen the sectors. The view of mistakes and disciplinary sanctions is explicit within military aviation, and is based on a clear ideology on how mistakes occur, which is characterised of a systematic approach. Within health and medical service, an explicit and unequivocal ideology on how mistakes occur is missing, but, however, there are implicit ideas about infallibility and perfection. The comparison indicates that the view of mistakes is also, possibly directed by a bureaucratic model (instead of an ideology on mistakes), which aims to legitimacy, but that this may happen on the expense of not taking surrounding circumstances into consideration.

In most software engineering project, users are only involved in the beginning of the project as a help to design the requirements specification but users can be involved after this phase too, but is it effective to do so? With this report we would like to investigate how effective it is to involve users after the requirements specification has been written and approved. To find out how effective it is to involve the users we try some fast and simple involvement techniques on a quite far gone project. These techniques include ethnographic studies, prototypes and surveys. We also interviewed a couple of people who work with usability and finally delivered a report with our results to them to find out if they found our result relevant. By also documenting how much time we spent involving users we will show to which degree user involvement is effective. We found out that a couple of fast techniques could get very much result in the form of usability enhancing suggestions to the developers.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the role of bibliotherapy at hospitals and also what knowledge of and insights on bibliotherapy a few Swedish hospital librarians have. Questions investigated are: What role do the hospital librarians think literature has in the treatment of a patient? What is their view on their role as a hospital librarian and do they believe that they can have a part in the treatment of a patient? Is the concept bibliotherapy commonly used or is there another term in use? How important is the linkage between healing and literature? In this study, the view on bibliotherapy is limited to a hospital perspective. The purpose of the study is therefore to investigate bibliotherapy at the hospital. Six qualitative interviews with hospital librarians were performed at three general or combined general/medical hospital libraries.

The purpose of this thesis is to look into the knowledge city concept and the preferences and requirements of companies on such a city. Furthermore, suggestions of ideal conditions in a knowledge city are proposed. The thesis has been conducted through a qualitative approach where a deductive procedure has been implemented. In order to examine knowledge cities, Barcelona has sketchily been looked at as an early example of a knowledge city, whereas a more exhaustive observation of Copenhagen was conducted. Since the concept of knowledge cities is a rather new phenomenon, models from several disciplines constitute the theoretical framework.