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.

Work-Life Balance (WLB) is defined as the ability to manage both work-life and non-work life successfully. WLB can be evaluated by examining individual?s experience of Work-Family Conflict (WFC) and Family-Work Conflict (FWC), both of which can be assessed by a questionnaire developed by Netemeyer, Boles and McMurrian (1996). The aim of this study was to explore if responses to the questionnaire, the amount of time spent on studies, household chores and sick leave, were gender related or not, among civil-accountants students. The survey included 138 respondents (74 woman and 64 men).

The care for the elderly in the municipalities has recently seen the need for a formalized system for quality assurance. Under increasing demands for monetary efficiency while bound by law to retain acceptable standards in health care, there is need for efficient and at the same time quality-assured management. The municipalities often solve this puzzle by introducing systems and standards influenced by theory-clusters such as NPM (New Public Management), TQM (Total Quality Management) or other quality management theories.This essay focuses on how the public administration in the municipalities defines quality and designs and implements system for formalized quality assurance. Our basic view of organizations is institutionalist and our theoretical framework includes theories about quality, NPM and TQM..

Systematic quality work in preschool ? How preschool teachers thinking and working with systematic quality work The purpose of this study was to investigate how Swedish preschool teachers thinking and working with systematic quality work. All Swedish preschools are required to work systematically with quality. This involves several steps that follow each other in a specific order. It includes following up, documenting and evaluating preschool activities.

The purpose of this study is to describe and analyze how auditors are affected by quality controls and if audit practice changes because of quality controls. To fulfill the purpose of this study there has been interviews made with five auditors. The conclusion by this study is that the interviewed auditors work practices are affected by quality controls and that the extent and effect depends on the auditor and the office that the auditor works in. The auditors who worked as quality reviewers at the agencies where they are employed at, we felt that they were more secured in the response towards quality controls. This may be because they are quality reviewers themselves and they know what the quality control requires and what must be met to be approved.

The purpose of this essay was to investigate the view of what kind of role the personal assistant has in disabled people´s life and sexlife and how conceptions of a "normal" life and "to live like others" can be identified related to this. My research questions was: What does the expression "to live like others" mean to the organisations? What is the view in the organisations of the personal assistant´s role in the client´s life? What is the view in the organisations of the personal assistant´s role in the client´s sexlife? What is the view in the organisations of disabled people´s rights to get assisted help with sex? I chose to do semistructured interviews with different organisations related to disability and assistance and I analysed the interviews with theoretical aspects of social constructivism, the principle of normalization and the theory of SRV (Social Role Valorization), autonomy, individualism and models of action. My main conclusion were that the views of disabled people´s sexuality and the personal assistant´s role in disabled people´s sexlife were widely separate. However, almost all of the organisations were pointing out the autonomy of the individual and the importance of setting the limits.

This essay deals about bilingualism and lifepaths. The essay is based on a qualitative study, where eight individuales have been interviewed, all of them from Gränsskolan in Haparanda. Before the interview´s a study of relevant research literature was made.The main purpose with the essay, is to study if the informant?s life paths have been affected by their bilingualism, i.e. if the informers moves and education etc.

In today's society there is tougher climate both financially and time wise. Accountants working under tight deadlines leading to the compromise between quality and quantity in the audit process and them therefor are being guilty of so-called reduced audit quality, RAQ. Reduced audit quality involves intentional actions designed to somehow reduce the evidence contained in the audit. We examine in this study the impact of time budget pressure (TBP), underreporting of time (URT), ethical organizational culture and charismatic leadership has on the frequency of RAQ.Previous research has already shown that there are clear links between TBP and RAQ, between URT and RAQ and between ethical culture in organizations and audit quality available. Five hypotheses were designed to the study.

Vi har kommit fram till att chefernas reaktioner inte beror på omorganisationen i sig utan hur förändringsprocessen har gått till. Deras reaktioner speglar ett motstånd mot sättet som förändringsprocessen har genomförts på. Det är personerna i organisationen och inte organisationsformen som är det viktiga för cheferna. Vi tycker att de faktorer som påverkar en lyckad förändringsprocess är medarbetarnas delaktighet, möjlighet till en bra dialog innan beslutet är taget, kommunikation samt känsla av sammanhang..

In Sweden over 10.000 patients annually, mostly children, undergo tonsillar surgery. The most common surgical method is total removal of the tonsil, tonsillectomy (TE). During the last decade partial tonsil resection, tonsillotomy (TT), has been reintroduced and is associated with lower primary morbidity and less postoperative pain. The aim of the present study was to evaluate if and to what extent 4-5 year old children?s voice function are affected by tonsillar hypertrophy compared to controls and to study the effects of the two surgical techniques on vocal function.

The ISO 9000-series is a set of quality standards created by the International Organization for Standardization. The series is intended to provide guidance to companies in the process of deploying an effective quality management system. The series includes the requirements standard ISO 9001. This standard contains requirements on how a quality management system should be designed and how companies generally must work with quality issues. When a quality management system is introduced, if wanted, a quality certification can be implemented.

Our purpose was to investigate which readiness, different sectors in a minor city has to meet honour-related problems. We wanted to investigate how they manage honour-related problems and how the co-operation in these cases is between different authorities. Our questions at issue were: Which knowledge's, experiences there are about the culture of honour, which resources has the authorities and how is the co-operation between different organisations work?We have collected present documentation and research about the subject. We made eight quality interviews with different persons within professions, as we understood, came in contact with cultures of honour.

Background: There are many people waiting for a kidney transplant. To get a kidney from a living donor has many advantages. The gift is about giving and receiving. The decision is characterized by life-philosophy of the donor.Aim: To highlight the experiences of the kidney donation process.Methods: A systematic literature review in which 11 articles were included, seven qualitative and four quantitative. The articles are quality and ethically reviewed, the results are analyzed according Granskär & Höglund and Polit & Beck.Results: The results were gathered under two themes: the decision-process shows the path from idea to decision and implementation-process treats the donation and confirmation of the gift.

Background: The relationship between advanced age, presence of illness and impaired functioning is well known. A large proportion of the elderly population has an extensive need of care and service and therefore need help from municipal care. Aging is a transition in life and also affects the person's identity and self image, making the person particularly vulnerable and challenging everyday safety. It is therefore of importance to gain knowledge about which factors at individual and organizational level that support a person-centered nursing care for the elderly so that caring responsibilities and staffing of nursing personnel may be scheduled based on need. Aim: This study aimed at describing dependency and care needs of elderly persons living in ordinary housing, sheltered housing and nursing homes.

The aim of this study is to find out how the tv-program I Zlatans fotspår (English: In Zlatan's footprints) broadcasted on Swedish public service television represent the participating young players and the Swedish football player Zlatan Ibrahimovi?. Our question formulation reads as follows:?        How is the participating youths being represented in the tv-program I Zlatans fotspår??        How is the football player Zlatan Ibrahimovi? being represented in the tv-program I Zlatans fotspår? Our thesis is qualitative and in order to find out how the participants are being represented we used a discourse analysis. We have focused on the theories discourse, identity, representation, stereotypes, discrimination and the perspective social constructionism.