| 1. |
- Rostami, Amir, 1981-
(författare)
-
Criminal Organizing : Studies in the sociology of organized crime
- 2016
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- What organized crime is and how it can be prevented are two of the key questions in both organized crime research and criminal policy. However, despite many attempts, organized crime research, the criminal justice system and criminal policy have failed to provide a shared and recognized conceptual definition of organized crime, which has opened the door to political interpretations. Organized crime is presented as an objective reality—mostly based on anecdotal empirical evidence and generic descriptions—and has been understood, as being intrinsically different from social organization, and this has been a justification for treating organized crime conceptually separately.In this dissertation, the concept of organized crime is deconstructed and analyzed. Based on five studies and an introductory chapter, I argue that organized crime is an overarching concept based on an abstraction of different underlying concepts, such as gang, mafia, and network, which are in turn semi-overarching and overlapping abstractions of different crime phenomena, such as syndicates, street-gangs, and drug networks. This combination of a generic concept based on underlying concepts, which are themselves subject to similar conceptual difficulties, has given rise to a conceptual confusion surrounding the term and the concept of organized crime. The consequences of this conceptual confusion are not only an issue of semantics, but have implications for our understanding of the nature of criminal collaboration as well as both legal and policy consequences. By combining different observers, methods and empirical materials relating to dimensions of criminal collaboration, I illustrate the strong analogies that exist between forms of criminal collaboration and the theory of social organization.I argue in this dissertation that criminal organizing is not intrinsically different from social organizing. In fact, the dissertation illustrates the existence of strong analogies between patterns of criminal organizing and the elements of social organizations. But depending on time and context, some actions and forms of organizing are defined as criminal, and are then, intentionally or unintentionally, presumed to be intrinsically different from social organizing. Since the basis of my argument is that criminal organizing is not intrinsically different from social organizing, I advocate that the study of organized crime needs to return to the basic principles of social organization in order to understand the emergence of, and the underlying mechanism that gives rise to, the forms of criminal collaboration that we seek to explain. To this end, a new general analytical framework, “criminal organizing”, that brings the different forms of criminal organizations and their dimensions together under a single analytical tool, is proposed as an example of how organizational sociology can advance organized crime research and clarify the chaotic concept of organized crime.
|
|
| 2. |
- Fridlund, Veronika, 1980-
(författare)
-
Play with fire, play with you sometimes : Social aspects of condom use among young people in Sweden
- 2014
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Although Sweden invests a great deal of money and effort in prevention work, STIs are a major problem in our society. Young people are at high risk both when it comes to unwanted pregnancies and STIs and several studies have revealed that the condom use is quite low. Condom use is a complex issue. There are often several factors that interact and affect the decision to use or not use condom. The result in this thesis shows that young people have behavioral expectation to use condom, especially for anal sex and vaginal sex with a casual partner (both known and unknown). At the same time, the condom use is low irrespective of type of partner and type of sex. Approximately 20 % of the participants never used a condom during the preceding 12 months. Most of the participants said that reason for their use or non-use was based on partner evaluation. However, our participants indicate that there often is a deeper reason why they do not use condoms. Women talk about their male partner’s resistance against condom use. Men in the other hand mention the problem with fit and feel especially problems related to erection problems when they have been drinking alcohol. One of the most interesting findings is that the participants’ view of sex affected their condom use. Those with a relaxed view (e.g., did not connect love with sex and had had more sexual partners during the past 12 months) had fewer occasions of unprotected vaginal intercourse compared with the participants with a traditional view (e.g., often associated sex with vaginal penetration).The most important thing we need to do is increase ’men’s sense of responsibility and involve them in the prevention work. It is also important that the condom counseling is individualized. It is not enough to simply speak about condom use in general; instead we need to relate condom use to sexual practice and partner type but also to the individuals’ specific condom problem.
|
|
| 3. |
- Hansson, Disa
(författare)
-
Hidden desires : Modelling sexual behaviour and the spread of sexually transmitted infections
- 2017
-
Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this thesis we use statistical and mathematical models to study different sexual behaviours of relevance for the spread of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Two groups of special interest for STI interventions are considered: sexually active youths and men who have sex with men (MSM). The focus of the first paper is on mechanisms giving rise to the observed condom use and anal sex behaviour among young people in Sweden. We study the sexual dispositions of individuals, how these interact and generate the observed sexual outcome. The second paper concerns the sexual behaviour of MSM in Sweden and the transmission process of HIV within this population. The population is modelled by a stochastic dynamic network which incorporates both steady partnerships and casual contacts. We model the spread of an infection where individuals are susceptible, infectious, or diagnosed (and unable to transmit) and derive the basic reproduction number R0, the probability of a major outbreak and the endemic prevalence.
|
|
| 4. |
- Hansson, Disa, 1986-
(författare)
-
Modelling Sexual Interactions : Sexual behaviour and the spread of sexually transmitted infections on dynamic networks
- 2019
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this thesis we develop statistical and mathematical models to study different factors of relevance for the spread of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Two special interest groups for STI interventions are considered: sexually active youths and men who have sex with men (MSM). The statistical models developed make it possible to estimate individuals’ dispositions towards sexual behaviours related to the spread of STIs: condom use and anal sex. To study the spread of an infection in a population we use mathematical models. The mathematical models in this thesis give insights into the transmission process of HIV among MSM in Sweden—a population at high risk for HIV infection.The focus of the first paper is on mechanisms giving rise to observed sexual behaviour, such as condom use, among sexually active youths in Sweden. We study the sexual dispositions of individuals and how these interact and generate the observed sexual outcomes.The second paper concerns the sexual behaviour of MSM in Sweden and the transmission process of HIV within this population. The population is modelled by a stochastic dynamic network model that incorporates both steady partnerships and casual contacts. We model the spread of an infection where individuals are susceptible, infectious or diagnosed (unable to transmit) and derive the basic reproduction number R0, the probability of a major outbreak, and the endemic prevalence.The third paper further develops the dynamic network model of the second paper. The model now takes into account that individuals may be sexually high-active or sexually low-active. The division into two activity groups makes it possible to study a preventive intervention against HIV that is only targeted to sexually high-active. The intervention studied is pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV (PrEP), i.e. that the antiviral drugs tenofovir-emtricitabine are taken by individuals with negative HIV serostatus to prevent getting infected by HIV. We study the PrEP coverage needed to reduce the observed HIV prevalence of 5% to a value close to 0%.In the fourth and final paper we focus on condom dispositions among MSM. The disposition models from the first paper are extended to better fit an MSM population and are additionally extended to be used for more types of sexual behaviour data.
|
|
| 5. |
- Malmros, Jens
(författare)
-
Some advances in Respondent-driven sampling on directed social networks
- 2013
-
Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Respondent-driven sampling (RDS) is one of the most commonly used methods when sampling from hidden or hard-to-reach populations. The RDS methodology combines an improved snowball sampling scheme with a mathematical model that is able to produce unbiased population estimates given that some assumptions about the actual recruitment process are fulfilled. One critical assumption, which is not likely to hold in most cases, is that the underlying social network of the population is undirected. The papers in this thesis provide extensions of RDS theory to populations with partially directed social networks.
|
|
| 6. |
- Malmros, Jens, 1980-
(författare)
-
Studies in respondent-driven sampling : Directed networks, epidemics, and random walks
- 2016
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Respondent-driven sampling (RDS) is a link-tracing sampling methodology especially suitable for sampling hidden populations. A clever sampling mechanism and inferential procedures that facilitate asymptotically unbiased population estimates has contributed to the rising popularity of the method. The papers in this thesis extend RDS estimation theory to some population structures to which the classical RDS estimation framework is not applicable and analyse the behaviour of the RDS recruitment process.
|
|
| 7. |
- Mondani, Hernan, 1985-
(författare)
-
Modeling Organizational Dynamics : Distributions, Networks, Sequences and Mechanisms
- 2017
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The study of how social organizations work, change and develop is central to sociology and to our understanding of the social world and its transformations. At the same time, the underlying principles of organizational dynamics are extremely difficult to investigate. This is partly due to the difficulties of tracking organizations, individuals and their interactions over relatively long periods of time. But it is also due to limitations in the kinds of quantitative methods used to tackle these questions, which are for the most part based on regression analysis.This thesis seeks to improve our understanding of social organizing by using models to explore and describe the logics of the structures and mechanisms underlying organizational change. Particular emphasis is given to the modeling process, the use of new concepts and analogies, and the application of interdisciplinary methods to get new insights into classical sociological questions.The thesis consists of an introductory part and five studies (I-V). Using Swedish longitudinal data on employment in the Stockholm Region, the studies tackle different dimensions of organizational dynamics, from organizational structures and growth processes to labor mobility and employment trajectories. The introductory chapters contextualize the studies by providing an overview of theories, concepts and quantitative methods that are relevant for the modeling of organizational dynamics. The five studies look into various aspects of organizational dynamics with the help of complementary data representations and non-traditional quantitative methods. Study I analyzes organizational growth statistics for different sectors and industries. The typically observed heavy-tailed statistical patterns for the size and growth rate distributions are broken down into a superposition of interorganizational movements. Study II models interorganizational movements as a labor flow network. Organizations tend to be more tightly linked if they belong to the same ownership sector. Additionally, public organizations have a more stable connection structure. Study III uses a similarity-based method called homogeneity analysis to map out the social space of large organizations in the Stockholm Region. A social distance is then derived within this space, and we find that the interorganizational movements analyzed in Studies I and II take place more often between organizations that are closer in social space and in the same network community. Study IV presents an approach to organizational dynamics based on sequences of employment states. Evidence for a positive feedback mechanism is found for large and highly sequence-diverse public organizations. Finally, Study V features an agent-based model where we simulate a social influence mechanism for organizational membership dynamics. We introduce a parameter analogous to a physical temperature to model contextual influence, and the familiar growth distributions are recovered as an intermediate case between extreme parameter values.The thesis as a whole provides suggestions for a more process-oriented modeling approach to social organizing that gives a more prominent role to the logics of organizational change. Finally, the series of methodological tools discussed can be useful for the analysis of many other social processes and more broadly for the development of quantitative sociological methods.
|
|
| 8. |
- Klingvall, Mikael, 1971-
(författare)
-
Adaptability or Efficiency : Towards a theory of institutional development in organizations
- 2008
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Organizations, once established, tend not to change, typically going obsolete as society continues to evolve. This makes adaptability an important issue. Organizational members must make sense to each other, or coordination suffers. They must also make sense to environmental actors, or the organization will not achieve the support it needs to survive. This sense-making is a process of institutionalization, of constructing a shared understanding of the organization's enterprise, business and environment. When environmental actors adopt new priorities, ideas and modes of thinking, organizations must develop a new understanding of reality or go obsolete. To stay adaptable, organizations needs to contain competing perspectives. But the pressures to conform and to coordinate make it difficult for established organizations to adapt, trapped by the very benefits of increased efficiency. Using an agent-based model of organizational institutionalization, I show that an organization's adaptability is highly dependent on structural elements that affect the member interaction frequencies, and that organizations that leverage the strength of weak ties between member groups can maintain adaptability. The effects of changes to any of these elements are decidedly non-linear, however, which helps explain why it is difficult to design effective organizations. Organizational structure is one part of a tri-partite framework of institutional development in organizations and of organizational adaptability, where the other two parts are the individual characteristics of the members and the content of the organizational culture.
|
|
| 9. |
|
|
