| 1. |
- Andersson, Lena, 1979-
(författare)
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När strävan efter samsyn blir en kamp : Meningsskapande och meningsgivande i mångtydiga sammanhang
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- När personer och grupper med olika bakgrund och erfarenheter möts för att sam-arbeta förutsätts ofta att samsyn kring målen med verksamheten är en förutsätt-ning för koordinerad handling. Forskningen har dock inte kunnat visa empiriskt i vilken utsträckning samsyn är viktigt för att åstadkomma samhandling. I förelig-gande avhandling presenteras en studie som undersöker hur gemensam mening formas i sammanhang präglade av heterogenitet respektive mångtydighet samt hur koordinerad handling uppstår under sådana förutsättningar. Som empirisk grund för att kunna besvara frågeställningarna studeras FöretagsNära med stöd i me-ningsskapandeperspektiv. FöretagsNära är en ny verksamhet organiserad som ett projekt i samverkan mellan Norrköpings kommun och Arbetsförmedlingen i Norr-köping. Syftet med satsningen är att föra samman näringslivsutvecklande och ar-betsmarknadsinriktade insatser och bidra till fler arbetstillfällen i Norrköping. Ba-serat på en longitudinell fältstudie berättas om meningsskiljaktigheter och strävan efter samsyn. Den longitudinella ansatsen gör det möjligt att se utvecklingen av och komplexiteten i formandet av samsyn och samhandling. Skildringen av Före-tagsNära visar att meningsskapandet i processen tar sig olika uttryck. I fråga om syftet med FöretagsNära uppstår en kamp om meningen. Studien visar hur samsyn och samhandling relaterar till varandra på mer komplexa sätt än tidigare forskning föreslagit. Det finns ingen entydig relation mellan gemensam mening och koordi-nerad handling. Studiens resultat har både teoretisk relevans och stor praktisk be-tydelse.
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| 2. |
- Borg, Ida, 1981-
(författare)
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Housing, poverty and the welfare state : Spatial distribution of tenure types and its effects on housing deprivation, unemployment and residualisation
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- An important question that has caused much academic debate is how to best organise the welfare state system to combat poverty and social exclusion. Much such research is focused on how to combat income poverty through core areas in the welfare state. This dissertation widens the perspective to include housing as a part of the welfare state and it represents an attempt to study poverty outcomes beyond income measures. In doing this, the dissertation uses power resource theory to understand welfare state change and the design of institutions in terms of housing tenures, and shows how this design might affect individual outcomes. Thus, the overall aim of this dissertation is to gain knowledge of the principles that underpin the design and organisation of the housing market in terms of tenure types and to understand the ways in which this design might affect the well-being of individuals and the society as a whole. The dissertation consists of an introductory essay and four papers. The introductory essay presents my theoretical approach and methodology. It also summarises the papers and discusses my main findings.Paper I analyses the extent to which the organisation of the rental sector may explain cross-national differences in the prevalence of housing deprivation. Using a multilevel framework on survey data covering 26 European countries, I find that a large and integrated rental sector significantly reduces the prevalence of housing deprivation across EU countries. The organisation of the rental sector appears to be crucial when it comes to reducing poverty and social exclusion in terms of housing insufficiencies.Paper II continues the quest to find explanations of the variations in the prevalence of housing deprivation in Europe. Our results develop the findings of Paper I. We find that a high proportion of outright owners is positively associated with housing deprivation. This is suggested to reflect the historical and political processes that affect the housing markets in eastern and southern European housing regimes.Paper III investigates a puzzle regarding the relationship between the extent of home-ownership and unemployment. At the macro level, more home-owners indicate higher unemployment rates, while home-owners in general are less unemployed. What can explain this? In this paper, we show that regions with high home-ownership also tend to be regions with small labour markets, which affects the efficiency of matching on the labour market.Paper IV turns to the process of residualisation, a process which can be described as when the public or social rental sectors become dominated by low-income households. For Sweden, this process is of key interest since the public housing sector aims to be universal and is not directed towards any specific income group. The results indicate a clear trend towards increasing residualisation. The trend is most pronounced in sparsely populated municipalities, while the public rental sector is quite mixed in larger cities and municipalities near larger cities.This dissertation offers a contribution to the field of housing by showing that power resource theory may be used to understand institutional design in terms of tenure types, and that this design also affects individual outcomes. Moreover, power resource theory is presented as a viable theory to understand geographical variation in institutional design across and within countries.
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| 3. |
- Lagerlöf, Hélène, 1973-
(författare)
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Samhällsvård och välfärdsresurser : En studie av skolgång, fritid och kamratrelationer bland unga i familjehem och institutioner
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The dissertation analyses access to welfare resources within the areas of schooling, leisure and peer relations for youth in out of home care. The study was conducted in three counties in mid Sweden and is a replication of the recurrent Swedish surveys of living condition of children in general populations. By using the same design, children aged 13–18 (n=272) in foster care and residential care were approached. Throughout the analysis results are compared with conditions for peers living at home, based on data from the 2004/2005 survey on living conditions for children (Child-ULF). Furthermore the results are linked to the young people’s experience of psychosomatic complaints and emotional wellbeing and discussed within the theoretical framework of childhood sociology. Questions regarding society’s ability to convey resources to youth while in care as well as young persons’ potential to exercise determination while in care are also discussed. The study shows that youth in care in general have access to fewer resources than those in general populations in the studied areas. For youth in residential care the differences compared to peers living at home are substantial, while conditions for youth in foster care are more alike those of young people in general. Youth in residential care have fewer school related resources and fewer contacts with friends than peers living at home. Youth in foster and residential care are more subjected to bullying than the general population. The overall conclusions are that society, in the form of foster parents and residential staff fails in certain areas to convey resources to youth in care. The young people’s lack of resources poses limitations to their potential to exercise self-determination while in care. The study points out areas where targeted efforts might be needed to improve the living conditions for youth in out of home care and perhaps broaden their potential to exercise self-determination while in care as well as after.
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| 4. |
- Lundberg, Christine, 1972-
(författare)
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Challenges in Delivering Services: The Front-Line Hospitality and Tourism Employee Perspective
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Significant challenges are faced by front-line hospitality and tourism employees interacting with customers on a daily basis. These challenges and the ways they are dealt with form the focus of this thesis. As they interact, a range of incidents may arise from highly satisfactory encounters to service failures. It has been argued that in order to achieve satisfactory service encounters, employees need to feel in control, satisfied and motivated as well as being given appropriate assistance, information and training. Front-line employees in hospitality and tourism are focused on here due to the complex nature of the industry. It is commonly agreed that it is characterised by poor working conditions such as anti-social working hours, part-time and/or seasonal work, minimal on-the-job training and low levels of pay. These are all factors which may affect employee work satisfaction and motivation as well as recruitment and retention. The thesis is comprised of four studies. In Study I, hospitality and tourism employee work motivation is analysed. Study II examines front-line hotel restaurant employees’ experiences of service encounters. How the skills utilised by employees during these service encounters are acquired and developed is then explored in Study III. Study IV concludes by examining employee informal information sharing activities, which offer one way of developing these skills. The thesis’ findings paint a more positive picture of work and workers in hospitality and tourism than suggested in some of the earlier published research. This could be explained by the fact that the thesis utilises an employee perspective in its truest sense. The findings of the thesis show that employees are motivated (to large extent by factors that have been pointed out in earlier published work motivation research) and that they are active in the pursuit of developing skills necessary to create satisfactory service encounters. Another conclusion of the thesis’ findings is that the interaction between workers and guests in the service encounter provides an important opportunity for workers to feel satisfied at work.
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| 5. |
- Neubeck, Truls
(författare)
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Quality improvement within nonprofit social service providers
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- As a relatively new phenomenon in 2009, Swedish nonprofit social service providers proposed quality improvement as a way to reduce mistakes, use resources more effectively and meet the needs and expectations of clients in a better way. Although similar experiences have been studied in health care, the transfer of quality improvement to nonprofit social services gives a possibility for more knowledge on what enables, and constrains, systematic quality improvement in this specific context.This thesis is based on five years of supporting quality improvement in the Swedish nonprofit welfare sector. Specifically, it builds knowledge on which active mechanisms and enabling or constraining structures exist for nonprofit social service quality improvement. By studying quality improvement projects that have been conducted in the development program Forum for Values, critical cases and broad overviews are found valuable. These cases have resulted in four papers on quality improvement in nonprofit social services. The papers include: critical cases from a nursing home for elderly and a daycare for disabled children (Paper I); a critical case from a sheltered housing (Paper II); an overview of performance measurements in 127 quality improvement projects (Paper III); and an analytical model of how improvement policy and practice are bridged by intermediaries (Paper IV). In this thesis, enabled or constrained events and activities related to Deming's system of profound knowledge are identified from the papers and elaborated upon. As a basis for transforming practice into continuous improvement, profound knowledge includes the four knowledge domains: appreciation of a system, theory of knowledge, understanding of variation and psychology of change. From a realist perspective, the identified events are seen as enabled or constrained by mechanisms and underlying regularities, or structures, in the context of nonprofit social services.The emerging mechanisms found in this thesis are: describing and reflecting upon project relations; forming and testing a theory of action; collecting and displaying measurable results over time; and engaging and participating in a development program. The structures that enable these mechanisms are: connecting projects to shared values such as client needs; local ownership of what should be measured; and translating quality improvement into a single practice. Constraining structures identified are: a lack of generalizable scientific knowledge and inappropriate or missing infrastructure for measurements.Reflecting upon the emergent structures of nonprofit social services, the role of political macro structures, reflective practice, competence in statistical methods and areas of expertise becomes important. From this discussion and the findings some hypotheses for future work can be formulated. First, the identified mechanisms and structures form a framework that helps explain why intended actions of quality improvement occur or not. This frameworkcan be part of formulating a program theory of quality improvement in nonprofit social services. With this theory, quality improvement can be evaluated, reflected upon and further developed in future interventions. Second,new quality improvement interventions can be reproduced more regularly by active work with known enablers and constraints from this program theory. This means that long-lasting interventions can be performed and studied in a second generation of improvement efforts. Third, if organizations integrate quality improvement as a part of their everyday practice they also develop context-specific knowledge about their services. This context-specific knowledge can be adopted and further developed through dedicated management and understanding of variation.Thus, if enabling structures are invoked and constraining structures handled, systematic quality improvement could be one way to integrate generalizable scientific knowledge as part of an evidence-creating practice.
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| 6. |
- Pedersen, Helena, 1968-
(författare)
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The School and the Animal Other : An Ethnography of Human-Animal Relations in Education
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- How human-animal relations are expressed and negotiated has significance for the situation of animals in society and offers insights that contribute to our understanding of how we organize relations between humans as well. This critical ethnographic investigation is positioned at the intersection of education research and the interdisciplinary area of human-animal studies. It uses participant observation, interviews with students and teachers and critical discourse analyses of texts and other artefacts used in the schools investigated to contribute cross-curricular perspectives on how human-animal relations are configured in the daily activities of both vocational (animal caretaker) and university preparatory programs. Building on central ideas from the Frankfurt School, the study proposes a platform for a critical theory of human-animal relations in formal education that embraces species-inclusive versions of critical pedagogy as well as gender and postcolonial analyses. In this vein, the study explores how social processes and practices in and outside the classroom enable certain human as well as animal subject positions while disabling others. A primary question is how a species-discourse intersects with categories formed around conceptions of gender, race/ethnicity, and class. A variety of ascribed animal representations and positions embedded in these processes are identified.The study argues that human-animal relations are characterized by indeterminacy and contradiction. While the school may educate to achieve improved conditions for animals inhuman society, it is at the same time involved in a process of social and cultural reproduction that normalizes the accessibility of animal bodies for human purposes. At the heart of this reproduction process lies boundary work around the animal as “other”. Such conceptualizations at times conflict with the views of animals that students bring with them to school and they therefore receive guidance about the “appropriate” position of animals in society; guidance that at the same time allows students to keep intact a sense of self as caring and moral actors toward animals. The school has a repertoire of concrete strategies for achieving this, and the effects of these strategies are identified as key components in a hidden curriculum of human-animal relations. The analyses show that these effects constitute a shared frame of reference of commonsense knowledge about animals in which contradictions embedded in human-animal relations can be comfortably accommodated. In addition, analytical tools borrowed from postcolonial theory are proposed that contribute to understanding the operations of hegemonic discourses of human-animal relations in the classroom as well as the effects generated by resistance to these discourses.
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| 7. |
- Trumberg, Anders, 1976-
(författare)
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Den delade skolan : segregationsprocesser i det svenska skolsystemet
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In the beginning of the 1990s the responsibility for the compulsory schools shifted from the government to the local authorities, a freedom of choice was introduced, and several municipalities brought in a school voucher system. With these changes, the educational system in Sweden went from being one of the world’s most government dominated and unified, to one with a high level of freedom of choice. The overall aim for this study is to explore the interplay between the school choice policy in the compulsory school and the process of integration and segregation on a school level. The aim is also specifically to study to what degree the pupils’ choice of school reflect the schools’ composition, with regards to ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds between 1992 and 2004.The thesis is based on three different kinds of materials; registry data from SCB (Statistics Sweden), the municipality’s data surrounding the school applications, and interviews with civil servants, politicians, and head teachers. In conclusion, the study shows that a divide has emerged between different schools, the make-up of pupils is becoming more homogenous, and the school as a meeting place between different ethnic groups is affected in a negative way. The study also shows that the school choices have an influence on this segregation between the schools. However, there are a small number of exceptions. In certain schools, the ethnic mix of pupils is relatively fair.
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| 8. |
- Andersson, Hans, 1974-
(författare)
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Spelets regler : raggning och flirt på krogen
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis focuses on sexualized behaviour in nightclubs and pubs. It describes the patterns of interaction and the rituals characterizing nightlife “clubbing” and “pubbing” environments, and relates these to gender specific norms and ideals. Special focus is on men’s and women’s experiences of, and strategies in, nightlife clubbing environments, as well as on how they regard such behaviours as picking up potential sexual partners (“going on the pull”) and flirting.The study is based on fieldwork conducted in the nightclubs and pubs of Umeå. The fieldwork consisted of fifty nights out, during which data was collected through observations and participant observation. Ten women and nine men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-two were interviewed individually or in groups.The analysis starts with a description of those behaviours that distinguish the club and pub environment as compared with everyday life. The suspension of everyday norms, allows for the relaxed behaviour associated with “partying”, and not least allowing for strangers to have sexualized encounters.Picking up sexual partners and flirting is analysed at different levels and from different perspectives. The meaning of flirting behaviour is related to discussions of sexual morals. Flirting is seen as a harmless and playful form of behaviour seeped through with notions of love, romance and coupledom. Picking up sexual partners is, on the other hand, behaviour associated with sexual urges, and is thus talked of as a sordid, low-life form of action.The study includes descriptions of mutually appreciated situations of picking-up and flirting behaviour and also its opposite - rejection behaviours, that seek to deflect and break off attempts at sexualized contact. The observations indicate that men and women use different strategies when participating in such events. Women’s behavioural strategies are premised on a rejecting attitude vis-à-vis men, which reflect ideals of respectability and a more restrictive sexual morale for women. Women’s ability to exert discretion and care in her choice of a man, and to reject unsuitable men, is interpreted as an indication of self-control and self-respect.Amongst men, “going on the pull” appears to be associated with notions of “conquering”, which in turn is seen as a form of manly performance. “Going on the pull” gives men an opportunity to prove themselves, but is also a source of a feeling of powerlessness and lack of control – as “pulling” needs to be conducted on women’s terms and conditions.Observations from pubs and clubs in the field, suggest that pretending to reject (token resistance) is a normalized part of women’s strategies. The existence of token resistance reinforces the notion of “a woman’s no means yes” and contributes to the unclear boundaries between rejection and consent. This is evident in situations where women experience unwished-for attentions from men and have difficulty rejecting them.
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| 9. |
- Andersson, Monica, 1948-
(författare)
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Politik och stadsbyggande : Modernismen och byggnadslagstiftningen
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of this dissertation is to describe, understand and explain the role of modernism in Swedish urban planning, and analyze if modernist urban planning ideas influenced building legislation in ways that can explain the structural changes of our cities during post-war period. Earlier epochs were characterized by intense construction of working-class housing in garden cities and large courtyard housing blocks with double-sided lighting in residences. The dissertation has been carried out within the tradition of historical institutionalism with a counterfactual approach. It covers the time from 1928 to the present with a focus on the period 1928-1975. The object of study is the formal regulations in building legislation. The central analytical instruments are formative moments and path dependence. A formative moment should be characterized by uncertainty, significance and unpredictability. Path dependence is studied with the help of theories of experience-based learning and the power of bureaucracy. The dissertation shows that modernist ideas were written into the building code of 1931 in accordance with functional partitioning and a diagram by Walter Gropius from the 1920s calling for relative distances between houses, the longer the higher houses, and direct sunlight on facades, permitting one-sided lighting in residences. Instead of prevailing praxis, cities were built in conformity with principles of buildings-in-the-park with slab blocks. These regulations were gradually tightened over time and also guided redevelopment policy. In the sixties higher slab blocks and tower blocks began to be frequently built and functional partitioning assumed a unique guiding role in traffic policy and urban planning. Starting in the middle of the 1970s, modernist ideas gradually were dismissed in government policy. Leading modernist architects where driving forces in the formative moment, supported by the Association of Property Owners. Their colleagues could, in the path dependent process, augment the modernist ideas by virtue of their profession. They led state agencies, participated in commissions on building legislation and wrote referral comments on proposals, as well as sitting on building committees together with building contractors, entrepreneurs and construction workers.
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| 10. |
- Andersson, Sofia, 1978-
(författare)
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Characterization of Bacterial Biofilms for Wastewater Treatment
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Research performed at the Division of Environmental Microbiology has over the last years resulted in the isolation of possible bacterial key-organisms with efficient nutrient removal properties (Comamonas denitrificans, Brachymonas denitrificans, Aeromonas hydrophila). Effective use of these organisms for enhanced nutrient removal in wastewater treatment applications requires the strains to be retained, to proliferate and to maintain biological activity within theprocess. This can be achieved by immobilization of the organisms using an appropriate system.Two putative immobilization systems, agar entrapment and biofilm formation, wereassessed. Surface attached biofilm growth provided better results with respect to cell retention,proliferation and microbial activity than immobilization in agar beads. Thus, biofilm physiology was further characterized using simplified systems of single, dual or multi strain bacterial consortia containing the key-organisms as well as other wastewater treatment isolates. Mechanisms for initial adherence, biofilm formation over time, dynamics and characteristics of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) and exopolysaccharides, nutrient removal activity as well as the effect of bacterial interactions were investigated. The results showed that all theassessed bacterial strains could form single strain biofilm providing that a suitable nutrientsupply was given. Production of EPS was found to be critical for biofilm development and both EPS and polysaccharide residue composition varied with bacterial strain, culture conditions and biofilm age. Denitrification and phosphorus removal activity of the keyorganisms was maintained in biofilm growth. Co-culturing of two or more strains resulted in both synergistic and antagonistic effects on biofilm formation as well as the microbial activitywithin the biofilm. Bacterial interactions also induced the synthesis of new polysaccharideswhich were not produced in pure strain biofilms.The complexity of single and mixed strain biofilm development and the implications of interactions on biofilm performance were underlined in this study. The data presented can be useful for modeling of biofilm systems, serve as a tool for selection of bacterial strain combinations to use for bioaugmentation/bioremediation or provide a base for further experiment design.
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