The public sector is a major purchaser of goods and services. By setting requirements for environmental and social considerations in public procurement, an authority has the possibility to use consumer power to influence the actors in a market. The purpose of this paper is to investigate public procurement of textile products in a municipality, in order to gain knowledge about factors that may be important for the use of environmental and social criteria. Håkan Hydén´s (professor in sociology of law) norm model was used as the basis of the analysis, where the conduct was investigated along three dimensions of the norm ? willingness, knowledge and system conditions ? in order to identify underlying factors that can influence the process.The results ? analyzed by using interviews and documents ? show that the procurer's willingness, motivation and knowledge are important factors in this context, as well as the political priority of the municipality.

The purpose of this study is to achieve a greater understanding of the perception of the use of Special Educational Needs Coordinators? (SENCOs?) competence in school. The informants of this study are the director of the school district, two principals and six teachers in two schools in a municipality in Sweden. The method used for this study is qualitative interviews, and the results have been analyzed using perspectives on special education. The results show that the director of the school district has one ideal view of SENCOs working close to the principals with supervision of teachers, school development, administrative tasks etc.

The aim with our study has been to examine how preschool-staffs resonate about the notification requirements according to Chapter 14, section 1, The Social Services Act, when a child fare badly or is suspected to fare badly: first, in relation to the municipality´s policies, but also in relation to the preschool staff´s actions in individual cases. Our study was conducted by qualitative research with semi-structured interviews. Total has two child´s nurses and six preschool-teachers, active within Växjö´s municipality, been interviewed. The result showed that the municipality´s guidelines on the one hand, underpinned by giving a prescribed pattern of behavior for preschool staff on how to act if the suspected that a child to fare badly. On the other hand preschool staff also experienced the guidelines diffuse as there were nothing described of the transition of how much they should document and observe before a notification could be initiated to the headmaster.

This study raises the question how the implementation of the balanced scorecard in the municipality of Gotland has been influenced by the way of communication. A case study is made in the administration of Social-and care management on Gotland. We have been focusing on two different ways of communication. The first one is Shannon and Weavers model where communication is explained as a transmission of a message through a channel to a receiver. The other one is sensemaking where it is focal to give the information meaning.

Municipalities with a higher amount of female representatives has been shown to be more gender equal. Earlier reasearch has also shown that female politicians are more likely than male politicans to represent immigrants and refugees interests. However, the effect of female representation has not been tested on other subordinated groups than women. Swedish municipalities have full autonomy regarding refugee reception and local politicians are responsible for the decision on the amount of refugees that the municipality accept. The variations of female and male politicians in the local assemblies are expected to have different outcomes on the refugee reception, according to females social backgrounds and experiences.

This work broadly illuminates the conditions for increasing the commissions of forestry services within the whole, or parts of, the western regions of Stora Enso?s operating area. Through a questionnaire, a survey was made examining whether the owners of the forests themselves do the forestry on their woodlands. This foremost concerns the pre-commercial thinning, but also planting and soil scarification. The survey also shows who are buying the most part of their forestry services and who are carrying it out themselves.

This bachelor thesis aim to highlight the values that form the basis for the formulation of the municipal local activity support to sports clubs. Key questions was, what are the criteria for the distribution of support, what are the conditions for the support in the municipalities, and what thoughts on development of the local sports club are behind these criteria. The study is based on one policy document from each municipality and 15 interviews that revealed a large spread in mindset and resources between the municipalities, but also similarities in the supports criteria and evaluation work. 14 out of 15 municipalities distribute the support, but the conditions are different. One interesting result the study shows is how little some municipalities really know about the money that goes out to the clubs.

AbstractThe purpose of this study were to examine the appeal that reaches the county administrative court regarding cases within The law of support and service to some disabled (LSS) the third "alternative" with the effort personal assistant. We have gathered 280 cases from seven different county administrative court and from our selection 19 of the cases remained.These 19 cases became our starting point for our study and they have been interpreted through Foucault´s and Skau´s interpretation frame regarding power and Payne´s social constructivism to try and answer our three questions at issue: How are the cases being handled by the county administrative court? What kind of cases leads to appeal? What similarity and differences are there between the cases? These questions have been answered one by one in a systematical order. Our result shows, among other things, that cases that involve certificates from occupational therapist or physiotherapist are the cases that win against the municipality in the county administrative court. Further we have found a new theme in our study regarding clientification among them who apply for efforts within LSS and "alternative" three.

The main purpose of our paper is to reconstruct the intervention logic of the Swedish government's proposal to introduce a tax deduction for homework help. Furthermore, we also intend to outline the perceived impacts of this tax deduction in the municipality of Linköping. Our material consists of the government bill regarding the tax deduction, the parliamentary debate which preceded it as well as interviews with key people in the municipality of Linköping. In our study and in the light of Matthew Clarke?s theory of neo-liberalism within education policy, we also ask ourselves if the intervention logic behind the tax deduction and its perceived effects can be seen as a manifestation of neo-liberalism.

Research has shown that immigrants in the Swedish society often, when seeking jobs, don?t get the same opportunities as the rest of the population. This thesis is a qualitative research that examines the problematic situation of unemployment among immigrants in the municipality of Finspång. The purpose of this study is to analyze how civil servants in Finspång apprehend and describe the labor market problems surrounding the immigrant groups that live in the municipality of Finspång. The empirical material is build upon seven qualitative interviews with eight civil servants working in Finspång.

Bullying is today a major problem in schools worldwide. Far too many children are forced to undergo bullying day in and day out without anyone seeing or doing something. My purpose with this study is to find out how four F-6 schools in a municipality south of Stockholm are describes their work to get zero tolerance for bullying at their school.My questions are:How does the four F-6 schools' anti-bullying group in a municipality south of Stockholm describes their work to have zero tolerance for bullying?What do the employees in the school anti-bullying groups consider that bullying is?Why do the employees in the school anti-bullying groups think bullying occurs?Who do the employees in the school anti-bullying groups think are bullies or are being bullied?To get my results I have done four interviews with those in charge of the school's anti-bullying group. My theory is based on standards, what is acceptable behavior and normative theory, hypotheses, what is right and wrong as well as desirable or undesirable behavior.

This essay has an aim to map out the discourses in the debate around local self government and national equivalence, which are both essential democratic values. The essay is delimited to the area of the comprehensive school. Interviews have been made with key persons in different positions in a selected municipality. I also use material that has been written in the context of Ansvarskommittén. The material is analysed using an integrated discourse analysis.

Purpose/aim: The purpose of this thesis is to examine if, and in that case how, the municipality of Umeå worked strategically with its communication during 2014 when Umeå was chosen as ?European Capital of Culture?. The research is mainly focused on the outlines of their communication plan, main goals, what  communication strategies the municipality has chosen to and their choice of media channels.Material/method: Two methods are used for this research; qualitative interviews with four employees within the communication team during Umeå2014 and a text analysis of three formal documents which provide the framework of communication policies and media strategies during Umeå2014.Results: The results clearly indicate a well structured, strategic planning outlined in the formal documents. The four people intreviewed all had a good knowledge of the policies and strategies in the documents, they also described their work in accordance with these..

Fiscal policy and its consequences have attracted much attention on both academic and societal level, in Sweden and elsewhere. However, the dependence between fiscal policy on municipality level and business cycles has only recently sparked a debate among Swedish economists. Studies point out that a law which came to force in 2000, balanskravet, may have caused municipalities to lower expenditures, alternatively raising taxes, during recessions. This thesis examines how the level of municipality taxes depends on business cycle fluctuations and the impact that balanskravet has had on this correlation. We employ econometric regressions, with annual data covering the period 1980-2014, to enable an analysis of the dependence between taxes and business cycles, both before and after the introduction of balanskravet.

This research aims to determine teacher perceptions on alcohol- and drug use among students, as well as how they implement the municipality framework against alcohol and drugs. The research was carried out in a midsized town in the centre of Sweden. It is characterized by an inductive approach and was performed through a qualitative method. Results were analyzed from a hermeneutic approach, and theories used are system theory, salutogenic approach and Mead?s symbolic interaction theory.