Detta är en fallstudie om personalinflytande på en förskola. Studien belyser vad som möjliggör och vad som förhindrar personalens inflytande i verksamheten. Behovet av kunskap inom detta område är kopplad till frågan om hur tillitsbaserade former, för styrning av de offentliga verksamheterna, ska kunna utvecklas. Inflytande förstås holistiskt som ett sammansatt fenomen som uttrycks i mötet mellan subjektiv vilja och objektiva omständigheter – mellan individuell agens och kollektiva processer. Den metodik som utvecklades för att studera inflytande utifrån dessa premisser utgick från ett verksamhetsteoretiskt och marxistiskt ramverk med en fältstudie som innefattade både observationer av verksamheten likväl som intervjuer med personal och ledning. Resultatet pekar på att resursbrist och instabilitet på en övergripande organisationsnivå dominerar verksamheten på den lokala nivån och utrycker bristande inflytande ur både personalens och ledningens horisonter. Denna brist på inflytande tolkas som ett resultat av hierarkiska organisationsformer som lägger ansvar för övergripande problem på lägre organisatoriska nivåer. Arbetet med att hantera problem på den lokala nivån leder till dilemman mellan personalens möjligheter till egen kontroll och ledningens möjlighet till rationell övergripande resursfördelning. Personalinflytande ses uttryckas i arbetsledande insatser som hanterar akuta problem samt i personalens egna förhållningssätt som innebär ett avvisande av övergripande ansvar och prioritering som lägger fokus på barnen. / This is a case study on employee participation in a preschool. The study explores how employee participation is enabled or prevented in the workplace. A need for knowledge in this area is linked to the question of how trust-based forms for management can be developed in the public sector. Participation is understood as a holistic phenomenon that is expressed in the convergence between subjective will and objective circumstances – between individual agency and collective processes. The methodology of the study was based on activity theory and Marxism – with a field study that included both observations as well as interviews with preschool staff and management. The result highlights how a lack of resources and an instability at an overall organizational level dominates the activities at the local level and expresses a fatal lack of participation from both the staff's and management's point of view. This lack of participation is interpreted as a result of hierarchical organizational structure that place responsibility for overall problems on lower organizational levels. The efforts of dealing with problems at the local level leads to dilemmas between the staff's ability to self-organize and the management's ability to rationally distribute recourses on an overall level. Employee participation is seen to be expressed in cases when work management handles urgent problems and, in the staff’s, own ways of handling the situation that implies a rejection of overall responsibility and a prioritization that enables a focus on children’s needs.

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The term Community of Practice (CoP) is often used rather loosely to describe many types of instructional settings that support more constructivist or social learning settings. This study differentiates CoP from other learning communities with greater discipline in defining CoP, as characterized by sustained self-organization for example. Such a CoP sits quite apart from the typical intent of instructional settings. The literature on intentional CoP suggests that the greatest challenges are a sense of interdependence among CoP members, the authenticity of the practice or purpose, and a trajectory for the CoP's future. The purpose of this case study was to attend to these issues with an online initiative to nurture CoP among practicing teachers in a reading-specialist, graduate program. For the course under study, learners engaged only in cooperative projects with the support of a community worksite (Sakai). Throughout the term, the worksite was promoted as a community place independent of the course and program, a place where they could continue to share indefinitely; and they were encouraged to think of what formal and informal activities the system could support, and how. The study explored how participants responded verbally and behaviorally to the community worksite and the other technologies employed to better support their group work and sharing of knowledge in general. The group's technical skills, competing cultures and practices, and the level of authenticity were all significant challenges. The study's findings challenge the application of this learning theory at the course level of academics, and they inform future design of online support for intentional CoP. / Ph. D.

Syftet med denna fallstudie har varit att, med hänsyn till rådande försämrat säkerhetsläge, granska hur anställda inom försvarsindustrin beskriver företags brottsutsatthet. Vidare har syftet varit att diskutera hur brottsutsattheten kan förklaras utifrån kriminologisk teori. Detta har gjorts med semistrukturerade intervjuer, där anställda inom försvarsindustrin varit intervjudeltagare. Intervjudatan relaterades sedan till rutinaktivitetsteorin samt strainteorin. Av studiens huvudresultat har det framgått att anställda på företag i försvarsindustrin upplevde att företagens brottsutsatthet i huvudsak bestod av verkstadsstölder, cyberbrott, IP-intrång samt otillåten informationsspridning. Denna brottsutsatthet kunde förklaras av rutinaktivitetsteorin i vissa fall, samt i kombination med strain i andra fall. Brottsutsattheten upplevdes ha ökat i samband med att landets säkerhetsläge försämrades samt det huvudsakliga företaget expanderade personellt. Studiens viktigaste slutsatser var att brottsutsattheten i stort upplevdes ha ökat gällande samtliga ovan nämnda brott, men att orsaken till ökningen skiljde sig åt och att endast för cyberbrott upplevdes det föreligga ett samband med säkerhetsläget. / This case study examined how defense industry employees perceive crimes against their companies, in the context of a deteriorating security situation. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with employees, and the data was analyzed in relation to routine activity theory and strain theory. The main findings show that employees perceived the companies' exposure to crime mainly as a result of workshop thefts, cybercrime, IP infringement, and unauthorized dissemination of information. This crime exposure can be explained by routine activity theory in some cases and strain theory in others. The crime exposure increased as the country's security situation deteriorated and the main company expanded its personnel. The most important conclusions of the study were that crime exposure was generally perceived to have increased for all the above-mentioned crimes, but that the reason for the increase differed and that only for cybercrime was there perceived to be a connection with the security situation.

Syftet med studien var att få ökad förståelse och kunskap om smugglingsbrottsligheten i Sverige. Vi studerade likheter och skillnader gällande nivå och utveckling av anmälda smugglingsbrott samt varor som smugglades i Stockholms kommun, Göteborgs kommun och Malmö kommun mellan år 2016-2023. Vi studerade även myndighetsdokument för att förstå vilka faktorer som enligt dem inverkade på smugglingsbrottsligheten i Sverige. Studien kombinerade beskrivande statistik över anmälda brott med en tematisk innehållsanalys av myndighetsdokument. Att dra tydliga slutsatser angående anmälda smugglingsbrott var komplext då smuggling är ett brott där anmälningar påverkades av myndigheternas satsningar. Trots detta fann vi likheter och skillnader mellan kommunerna där narkotika och en hög nivå av anmälda brott i Malmö var de mest dominerande dragen. Vår tolkning av de svenska myndigheternas dokument var att de ansåg att kontroller och geografisk plats hade en central betydelse för smugglingsbrottsligheten. / The purpose of the study was to gain increased understanding and knowledge of smuggling crimes in Sweden. We examined the similarities and differences in the level and development of reported smuggling crimes, as well as the types of goods smuggled, in the municipalities of Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö between 2016 and 2023. We also analyzed government documents to understand which factors, according to them, influenced smuggling crime in Sweden. The study combined descriptive statistics on reported crimes with a thematic content analysis of government documents. Drawing clear conclusions regarding reported smuggling crimes was complex, as smuggling is a crime where reports are influenced by government efforts. Despite this, we found similarities and differences between the municipalities, with drugs and a high level of reported crimes in Malmö being the most dominant features. Our interpretation of the Swedish government documents was that they considered controls and geographical location to be of central importance for smuggling crime.

Organisational learning is conceptualised within healthcare policy as an acontextual entity to be implemented across services through a prescribed governance framework. Studies of organisational learning often exclude context in this way. The central questions of this thesis concern how and why context is relevant and important in relation to organisational learning. In order to address these issues, context and organisational learning were conceptualised as mutually constitutive activity and knowing-in-practice respectively. Taking a cultural-historical activity theoretical approach, learning is understood to be an intrinsic part of activity. These issues were explored empirically through qualitative case study in three purposively sampled Scottish primary care teams. Initial findings suggested collective learning occurred through participation in everyday activity. Team accounts of apparently the same routine object of work revealed distinctive patterns of activity. Each team seemed to be doing the same thing differently. Exploration of mediating means present in each teamâ s activity accounted for these differences: although similar on the surface, the attribution of meaning to each was contested and shaped through the cultural, historical and inherently contextual activity which they mediated within each activity system. Further analysis demonstrated members of each primary care team co-configured these objects with members of other interlinked activity systems. Different things were actually being done in similarly different ways. This showed how inherently contextual activities shaped the content of collective learning and offered an explanation of why context is relevant and important in collective learning. These findings suggest efforts to transfer knowledge as a discrete, manageable entity between situations are unlikely to succeed due to the filtering and translating effect of inherently contextual activity. From this perspective, organisational learning and related concepts such as â implementationâ and â best practiceâ become problematic. Healthcare policy concerning collective learning, within which such approaches are central, may benefit from reconsideration.

This thesis describes and analyses vocational learning in school and workplaces, particularly the vocational learning involved in becoming a construction worker in Sweden. This includes learning the trade in upper secondary school education and a subsequent apprenticeship. An underlying argument is that activities in these contexts enable a diverse vocational learning outcome. However, there are potential tensions and contradictions, especially between production- and education-oriented aspects of the learning activities in these settings. To address these and associated issues, two research questions were posed. First, how do work-based activities enable vocational learning? Second, what forms of learning are enabled in school and work life settings and how are these forms of learning constituted? These questions were addressed using information drawn from observations, interviews and a survey. Analyses of the data, using a theoretical framework based on activity and forms of learning theory, show that the school and workplace settings enable different types of learning that form a joint constructed object. Further, the contexts provide diverse tasks that, with guidance from more experienced persons, can enhance the learning outcomes. So, vocational learning is enabled through tensions in the activity systems that form a learning outcome. In project-based vocational education and training (PBVET) provided in upper secondary school, vocational learning is enabled through basic training and opportunities to learn key techniques. In subsequent apprenticeships, the transformation of basic knowledge into specialized knowledge is enabled through close guidance and by the apprentices performing complex tasks. There are also clear differences in the freedom allowed in the performance of tasks between the PBVET and apprenticeships. The PBVET does not allow students to develop and apply their own solutions, while apprentices are encouraged to discover and implement solutions that enhance the performance of tasks. So, different forms of learning are enabled in the two contexts; the PBVET largely promotes reproductive learning and the apprenticeships largely promote productive learning. Scope for improvement was detected, as the PBVET does not appear to provide knowledge that fully meets criteria in the syllabuses, and the apprenticeship does not fully meet the learners’ educational needs. However, the settings provide complementary vocational learning opportunities. Thus, tensions and contradictions can be identified in the activity systems in the school and workplace settings that collectively form the boundaries of a learning outcome that largely corresponds to what the learners need to know and (hence) become construction workers.