University of ÖrebroDepartment of social SciencesSociology, Contnuation Course, 61-90hp.Essay 15hp. Spring 2008Title: Who is resbonsible? A soceityscientific discussion about burnout.Author: Emilie FuchsAbstractThe purpose with this essay is to do a critical comparation between two different perspectives, burnout as an individual problem and burnout as a social problem. The first perspective states that the individual itself is responsible for her sickness while the second perspective states that the society and foremost the labour market should work in order to prevent people from beeing burned out. With that purpose in mind I want to enlighten and hopefully bring up the topic for discussion.The essay is based upon the following questions:? How can you sociologically understand the labour market of today?? How can you understand burnout in an individual context?? How can you understand burnout in a social context?By studying and reading four books, I have presented the two different perspectives of burnout.

This essay concerns the notion of how immigration politics, defined as a political discursive structure that explains and justifies how and why the movement of people into a state's territory is restricted and controlled, has come to present its purpose not as solidarity with the 'immigrants' wanting to enter the state but as a protective measure for the state's citizens. By using discourse theory combined with theories from the International Relations field I attempt to explain why and how such a discourse positions 'immigrants' as a threat to the state.First, I concentrate on why an immigration politics discourse would position 'immigrants' as a threat. I argue that in order for people to construct their identity, the 'outside' what they "are not" has to be repressed. In the same way, the state has to dislocate the "outside" and create threats to uphold its supremacy. These boundaries are set to create a feeling of predictability and security, and ultimately they are a way of making peoples' "world" coherent.

Equal treatment in school is an on-going debate in the Swedish society. At the same time teachers around the country struggles to make ends meet because of a heavy workload. Voices have been raised that teachers no longer have the time to actually be teachers since they get piled up with paper work and other administrative tasks. However, schools are bound by law to take action against harassments and discrimination of any kind. There is also an overall policy in the Swedish national curriculum that every school must embrace diversity and actively teach students about solidarity and respect.

This is a qualitative study with the aim of getting better knowledge and understanding of how people with mental illness experience having access to a public communication channel. The study builds upon qualitative interviews with four participants of a radio project called Radio Totalnormal (RTN). RTN is a community radio station where people with mental illness do radio. The study focuses on how the respondents describe the participation in the project and how it has affected their self-image. The analysis uses the concept of empowerment and four social psychological concepts: social responsivity, asocial non-responsivity, abstract sociability and concrete sociability.

This study uses European researcher Tomas Valasek?s hypothesis about factors required for defence cooperation in order to achieve conditions which can be successfully applied to the Nordic defence cooperation NORDEFCO. The study uses only Norway and Sweden on the grounds that they are the original actors and the driving forces behind the defence cooperation. The factors studied are; the countries' strategic culture, solidarity and trust between countries, similarity in military forces, if similar conditions prevail in the defence industry and if the intentions of cooperation have been clarified.Mainly government documents in the form of propositions, orientations and defence documents are studied, together with previous research in this area and, especially, interviews with representatives of NORDEFCO at military level and policy level as well as outside perspectives from the military attachés in each country. With the intention of studying the extent to which the factors Valasek features may prove to be significant in assessing the conditions for enhanced cooperation in NORDEFCO, the study raises the question of how it is possible to find expressions for the factors.

This diploma work was performed because the company Sveriges BostadsrättsCentrum, with the abbreviation SBC, had a need to gain insight into how changes in the Work Environment Act and related regulations which took effect January 1, 2009 affecting their work with the work environment. The changes mean that the client may hand over his work environment responsibilities to a contractor and that he has to select so-called building work environment co-ordinators. At SBC they are working as representatives for tenant-owner's association when a construction is about to be carried out. The purpose was to ascertain how changes may affect the work at SBC. The diploma work intends to educate the staff at SBC how work with the work environment would look like if they met the regulatory requirements.

This study deals with work environment from a legal perspective. The study includes legislative history, legislation today and one empirical study. The legislation that concerns work environment (health and safety) in Sweden today is found in the Swedish Work Environment Act (WEA), the Work Environment Ordinance (WEO), Provisions issued by the Work Environment Authority, related legislations and also collective agreements. The WEA, passed by the parliament in 1977, came into force on the 1st of July 1978 and it defines the framework for Provisions issued by the Work Environment Authority, which is an authority superintended by the Swedish government. These Provisions contain more detailed stipulations and obligations with reference to the working environment.

The purpose of this paper is to try to get an understanding of the underlying causes and reasons that students starting in seventh grade junior high school seek out a particular group, and the extent to which they do so.The work is based on the questions: How do students perceive the meeting with their prospective bench-companion in a new composite class? What should a teacher consider when it comes to bench placement in a new composite class? Do the students change, and if so to what extent, friends when they start high school? What are the factors that affect/have affected the students' choice of friends? How large a role does the school play for pupils relationships? What thoughts and feelings do the students have regarding new encounters?I have conducted in-depth interviews with six adolescents in grade seven as the basis for the understanding of how students relate to group selection and group affiliation, and I have then compared this material with previous research on the subject. Furthermore I have availed myself of literature in social- and group psychology.The conclusion which has emerged is that the most important component of a group-process is the sense of solidarity and security, and the results show that students largely retain their old relationships rather than adding new, when they start high school. Hence the teacher plays an important role in ensuring that any imbalance in the group is offset and make sure that nobody is excluded, but also to help make room for new groups and be aware of the sensitive and responsive phase of life that the young people are in..

Work environment has been an important part of the Swedish working life for a long time and with the help of the Working Environment Law the work environment is mandatory. The purpose of this study was to gain a deeper insight into how the system of middle managers systematic work environment looks like. The question was: How do six middle managers perceive and deal with systematic work environment? A qualitative study was conducted with six middle managers from a global company. During the analysis, there were three main themes to be recognized (cooperation and support facilitates the work environment, problem with the systematic work and difficulties with staff) and six sub themes.

A social intranet is an information and communication channel that is relatively new. There is still a small amount of research done around social intranet and what it is, and also on what organizations and their members may benefit from using such an intranet. Therefore, this paper was written with the purpose to em-phasize the reasons, possibilities and difficulties of implementing and using a so-cial intranet. With interview as method we took part of the experiences and views on social intranet from a number of organizations that are using or is about to establish a social intranet, and also from companies who deliver the service. Through the use of previous research in organizational communication, we then analysed the responses we received from our respondents.

This essay investigates the work situation for teacher educators at a university with focus on the subject areas education, research and administration. The research questions contain the work situation the teacher educators have, how they apprehend it, and how they find their position within the work organisation. Six interviews have been executed at the teacher education at a university. Some of the results from the investigation indicate that the teacher educators find education to be very a very demanding work and that the split of work during the academic year is uneven. The work with administration before and after the education, for example work with syllabuses and descriptions for courses, are activities demanding much time.

The aim of this study is to examine the perception of work of young men and women. A central problem that the study focus on is how young men and women value work, what do they expect to get out of work, and what are their experiences of work. The study also examines what work value and work mean for them. Eight young men and women between the ages of 22-25, currently working in different field, were interviewed. The individuals interviewed had different educational backgrounds.

The Swedish school system?s curriculum states that some of the schools goals are to; help to develop pupils? sense of belonging, solidarity and responsibility for people outside the restricted group, combat discrimination and degrading treatment of individuals or groups and to show respect for individuals. (Lgr 11). Eriksson and other authors in School ? an arena for bullying (2002) refer to the professor and psychologist Dan Olweus, who points out that bullying can develop serious consequences for the bullied one.

This study investigates how productivity works when employees have remote work in their workplace. This study will also focus on challenges that cause productivity to decrease when remote work applies. The empirical data shows that individual productivity increases when employees work in a workplace that provides remote work. The data says that less distractions and high autonomy is a big factor to why employees feel that they work productively at home. Briefly it shows that a flexible workplace makes individual employees work productively and even motivates employees to work effectively because of increased concentration and undisturbed work environment.

Abstract:Because personal assistance is relatively new in social care in Sweden we were interested in to get more knowledge in how supervisors for personal assistants worked. In our study we choosed to look into how the supervisors worked with the physical work environment for the personal assistants. The questions we wanted to found answers for in this study was, which work directions the supervisors for personal assistants have around the physical work environment, which legal provisions there were around the physical work environment for the personal assistants and how the supervisors experienced the work with the physical work environment for the personal assistants. We did a qualitative interview study with supervisors for personal assistants. We realised in our study that there were big differences in how the supervisors for personal assistants worked with the physical work environment for the personal assistants.