Det är sällan man läser i tidningar om det goda sociala arbetet som utförs av socialtjänster i Sverige. Den enskilde medborgaren vänder sig inte heller ofta till media för att få berätta om stödet och det goda bemötandet de fått av myndigheten. Däremot kan klienter kontakta media för ett sista försök till att få uppmärksamhet samt upprättelse i ett beslut. Denna kontakt i kombination med journalistens sökande efter nyhetsvärde kan resultera i artiklar där socialtjänsten arbete framställs negativt. Således kan en missvisande bild målas upp i media, särskilt hos människor som aldrig själva haft kontakt med myndigheten. Ärenden gällande barn och ungdomar granskas oftare än övriga inom socialt arbete. Syftet med vår uppsats var att undersöka hur socialsekreterare som arbetar med barn och ungdomar upplever att de påverkas av den negativa bild som kan förekomma i media. Studien är kvalitativ och genomfördes i två fokusgrupper med tre informanter i var grupp. Empirin analyserades utifrån innehållsanalys med meningsbärande enheter, koder och kategorier. Resultatet i studien påvisar bland annat att socialsekreterarna som handlägger barnavårdsärenden har en negativ uppfattning av hur media skildrar deras arbete, att sekretessen hindrar att ge en heltäckande bild, att det är viktigt att ha stöd på arbetsplatsen samt att sociala mediers framväxt skapar nya möjligheter för personligare påhopp. Slutsatsen för studien visar att media har en avgörande roll gällande konstruktionen av samhällets bild på socialtjänsten. Beroende på struktur och ledarskap kan socialsekreterare som handlägger barnavårdsärendens känna mer eller mindre påverkan i arbetet. / It is rare to read in the newspapers about the good social work of social services in Sweden. Individual citizens are turning nor often to media to tell us the support and the good reception they received by the Authority. However, clients can contact the media for a final attempt to get attention and redress in a decision. This connector in combination with the journalist's quest for novelty may result in articles where the social work produced negative. Thus, a misleading picture painted in the media, especially in people who never have had contact with the agency. Cases concerning children and adolescents are reviewed more frequently than others in social work. The purpose of our study was to investigate how social workers who work with children and young people feel that they are affected by the negative image that may appear in the media. The study is qualitative and was conducted in two focus groups with three informants in each group. The empirical data was analyzed based on content analysis with meaningful units, codes and categories. The results of the study indicate, among other things, that the social workers dealing with child welfare cases have a negative perception of how the media portrays their work, that confidentiality prevents to give a complete picture, it is important to have support in the workplace, and that social media's emergence creates new opportunities for more personal attacks. The conclusion of the study shows that the media has a crucial role existing structure of social perception on social services. Depending on the structure and leadership can be social workers dealing with child welfare errand feel more or less influence in the work.

No description available.

“Red coats and wild birds: military culture and ornithology across the nineteenth-century British Empire” investigates the intersections between British military culture and the practices and ideas of ornithology, with a particular focus on the British Mediterranean. Considering that British officers often occupied several imperial sites over the course of their military careers, to what extent did their movements shape their ornithological knowledge and identities at “home” and abroad? How did British military naturalists perceive different local cultures (with different attitudes to hunting, birds, field science, etc.) and different local natures (different sets of birds and environments)? How can trans-imperial careers be written using not only textual sources (for example, biographies and personal correspondence) but also traces of material culture? In answering these questions, I centre my work on the Mediterranean region as a “colonial sea” in the production of hybrid identities and cultural practices, and the mingling of people, ideas, commodities, and migratory birds. I focus on the life geographies of four military officers: Thomas Wright Blakiston, Andrew Leith Adams, L. Howard Lloyd Irby, and Philip Savile Grey Reid. By the mid-nineteenth century, the Mediterranean region emerged as a crucial site for the security of the British “empire route” to India and South Asia, especially with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Military stations served as trans-imperial sites, connecting Britain to India through the flow of military manpower, commodities, information, and bodily experiences across the empire. By using a “critical historical geopolitics of empire” to examine the material remnants of the “avian imperial archive,” I demonstrate how the practices and performances of British military field ornithology helped to: materialize the British Mediterranean as a moral “semi-tropical” place for the physical and cultural acclimatization of British officers en route to and from India; reinforce imperial presence in the region; and make “visible in new ways” the connectivity of North Africa to Europe through the geographical distribution of birds. I also highlight the ways in which the production of ornithological knowledge by army officers was entwined with forms of temperate martial masculinity. / Thesis (Ph.D, Geography) -- Queen's University, 2011-09-02 09:17:17.931

How is it that some potentially strategic issues find themselves on a Rim's strategic agenda, while others do not? Why is a top manager more attentive to some aspects of his firm's strategic situation than to others? What shapes his interpretation of his firm's strategic reality? How does strategic issue diagnosis (SID) actually take place within a top management team? These are the types of questions that this thesis addresses. It contends that the way strategy formation in general and SID in particular have so far been studied in top management teams---through essentially cognitive lenses---has been inadequate, largely because these cognitive approaches, although concerned with the biases that affect thinking are themselves based on an incomplete and therefore biased and distorted view of people, their choices and their actions. / The findings of a single-case field study that explored strategy formation and SID in a medium-sized entrepreneurial family firm led by a still-active founder are presented. The study utilized an enlarged conceptual framework that combined the dominant cognitive approaches in this domain with certain concepts from dynamic psychology. Its findings show that the deeply-entrenched personal preoccupations of a CEO, shaped by developmental processes and formative experiences throughout his life, and of which his cognitions are only one manifestation, have the potential to profoundly influence his strategic orientations, the top management team (TMT) dynamics in his firm, and consequently SID and its outcomes. It concludes that enriching the dominant cognitive models of SID and strategy formation by incorporating concepts taken from psychodynamic theory (specifically, concepts dealing with the consistent manifestations of individual character in all aspects of an individual's life) can lead to a better understanding of the complex subjective phenomena involved.

Large corporate organizations in Durban are hiring younger, less experienced and highly qualified individuals to lead at the top end of the company. Various concerns are raised with regard to these and other demographic variables in terms of the organization reaching its optimum success. In dissecting the problem statement, the following variables are extracted. These variables include: academic qualification, leadership experience, leadership training and age. The sample is segmented using academic qualification as the central focus. The research, quantitative in nature is aimed to establish if there exists a significant difference in self-perception leadership styles between these variables upon investigating the specific hypothesis generated. Interesting conclusions were drawn. / Thesis (MBA)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2006.

Abstract: This thesis examines the origins, selection process, training, promotion and general performance, at battalion and regimental level, of combat officers of the New Zealand Expeditionary Forces of the First and Second World Wars. These were easily the greatest armed conflicts in the country’s history. Through a prosopographical analysis of data obtained from personnel records and established databases, along with evidence from diaries, letters, biographies and interviews, comparisons are made not only between the experiences of those New Zealand officers who served in the Great War and those who served in the Second World War, but also with the officers of other British Empire forces. During both wars New Zealand soldiers were generally led by competent and capable combat officers at all levels of command, from leading a platoon or troop through to command of a whole battalion or regiment. What makes this so remarkable was that the majority of these officers were citizen-soldiers who had mostly volunteered or had been conscripted to serve overseas. With only limited training before embarking for war, most of them became efficient and effective combat leaders through experiencing battle. Not all reached the required standard and those who did not were replaced to ensure a high level of performance was maintained within the combat units. Casualties were heavy among the battalion officers, especially with platoon commanders. The constant need for replacements during both wars led to the promotion of experienced non-commissioned officers from the ranks who had proven their leadership abilities in the turmoil of fighting on the front line. Such measures further enhanced the performance of the New Zealand divisions, where a team ethos, reflective of the character of New Zealand society, was embraced. The opportunities for promotion on merit at all levels, regardless of previous civilian social class or occupation, provided a sense of egalitarianism seldom found in professional military forces. This, together with the familiarity between the officers and other ranks within the regional-based infantry battalions that formed the foundations of the forces, led to a preferred style of leadership that the New Zealanders responded well to. It was these officers who provided this leadership in the cauldron of battle who helped forge the expeditionary forces into elite fighting formations.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att utifrån ett socialpsykologiskt perspektiv undersöka hur poliser bearbetar problematiska emotionella upplevelser som uppstår i de sociala interaktioner de ingår i under en arbetsdag. Vidare är syftet att undersöka vad poliserna själva har en önskan om att uppnå när det gäller bearbetning av emotionell påfrestning.    Studien har en kvalitativ hermeneutisk ansats och baseras på åtta semistrukturerade intervjuer. För att analysera resultatet av studien har följande teorier använts; Erving Goffmans dramaturgiska perspektiv, Björn Nilssons rollbeskrivning, Tomas. J. Scheffs teori om skam och stolthet samt Arlie Hochschilds beskrivning av emotionellt arbete.    Resultatet visar att polisernas roll är tydlig och att förväntningarna på rollen är höga. Vidare visar studien vikten av en gemenskap inom arbetslaget som präglas av tillit och öppenhet då de till facto håller varandras liv i sina händer. Bearbetningen sker främst genom mental förberedelse samt samtal och stöttning inom tur-laget. / The purpose of this study from a social psychological perspective to examine how police officers process problematic emotions that arise in the social interactions they are part of on a working day. Further on to explore the officers view on processing of emotional stress.    The study has a qualitative hermeneutical approach and is based on eight semi-structured interviews. To analyze the results of the study, the following theories have been used; Erving Goffman's dramaturgical perspective, Björn Nilsson's role description, Tomas. J. Scheff's theory of shame and pride, and Arlie Hochschilds description of emotional labor.    The result shows that the policemen's role is clear and that expectations of the role are high. The study also shows the importance of a community within the work team that is characterized by trust and openness when they actually hold each other's lives in their hands. The processing of emotions are done primarily by mental preparation as well as conversation and support within the work team.

This thesis argues that the Prison Service, while it has several unique features, is a bureaucratic structure with a typical mix of organisational strengths and weaknesses. The study of the development of the organisation of the Scottish Prison Service is, therefore, as possible and as proper as is the study of any large organisation. The first substantive chapter of the thesis analyses the historical development of the Scottish Prison Service within an organisational context. This has taken place in 3 main phases, the first two of which were sequential, the third less obviously so and more the result of the increasing involvement of central bureaucratic processes. Historically the Scottish prison system has been properly located within the criminal justice process and throughout the first 100 years of its modem existence the judiciary and the legal establishment played a central role in its development. The first phase or its history covers the years between 1835 and 1877 when it was taken progressively under central control. Particular attention is paid to William Brebner, the founding father of the Scottish prison system, and to the place of the General Prison at Perth. The second historical phase covers the tenure of office of the Scottish Prison Commission between 1877 and 1929. The significance of the Elgin Report of 1900, which has not previously been the subject of research, is described. The third phase of development which began in 1929 and continues today-has attempted to take the prison system out of the criminal justice process and to place it inappropriately within the mainstream of the administrative Civil Service. The thesis analyses the reasons for this and suggests that this structural change, rather than any lack of resources, is responsible for many of the present difficulties facing the Prison Service. The second substantive chapter of the thesis examines the place of the prison system within the sociology of organisations. By definition, an organisation can have only one primary goal. A feature of bureaucratic organisations is that those who work within them will not be satisfied with a single objective and are likely to develop secondary goals. One consequence of the location of the prison system within the mainstream of the civil service has been an emphasis on the secondary goals of imprisonment, principally that of rehabilitation, to the neglect of the primary goal which is the punishment involved in the deprivation of liberty for the length of time laid down by the court. A second consequence is the influence which staff are able to exert on the development of the service. The manner in which the trade unionism of prison staff has evolved in Scotland makes this area particularly worthy of study; an important and topical example is the control of difficult prisoners. The Thesis suggests that the management of the Scottish Prison Service is more participative in style than either the Official or the Staff Side recognise. Throughout the thesis many of the arguments presented are given support by responses to a questionnaire which was issued to serving members of staff and which is fully documented into appendices.

Thesis (M.A.)--The Master's College, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 125-127).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Trinity International University, 2005. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 218-226).