Project Head Start, a federal child development program for low-income families,serves both the mother and her children. Previous studies have emphasized Head Start's influence on the child in terms of cognitive gains, social development, and social-emotional development. A continuing problem to understanding the extent of Head Start impact on families is the absence of reliable information about Head Start's influence on the mother and how that influence transfers to the family as they work toward self-sufficiency. This study investigated two issues: (1) the experiences, perceptions, and levels of involvement of mothers who participate in Head Start social services, and (2) how these mothers describe their benefits and relate these benefits to family experiences such as increased problem-solving, coping, and parenting skills. A multiple case study methodology was selected because of its flexibility to allow the researcher to follow new leads that emerged. Participants met three criteria: (1) enrollment in a Head Start social services program for at least six months, (2) willingness to sign an informed consent form and participate in three 90-minute interviews, and (3) having at least one child currently enrolled in Head Start. A participant pool of 17 African American mothers was constituted from parents enrolled in one of three Head Start programs in the Washington, D.C. area, and a sample of eight mothers was then selected for in-depth study. Each mother was interviewed three times, and data were drawn from these interviews. The findings of this study suggest that participation in Head Start social services may have important benefits for mothers and their children. Mothers had developed increased coping and problem-solving skills as well as increased leadership and organizational skills. The findings also suggest that participation in parent group meetings had an empowering influence that prompted several mothers to become involved in certain community activities and in their children's education. / Ph. D.

Yes / This study adopts a theory of reasoned action approach to understand consumers’ mask wearing when shopping in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We investigated mask wearing while shopping as a prosocial consumption behaviour whereby self-oriented benefits and others-oriented benefits are added as proposed drivers of attitudes and perceived social norms. Empirical evidence from a survey in France and Germany confirms a strong effect of social norms on mask-wearing intentions. Moreover, altruistic benefits predict mask-wearing intentions, with attitude and subjective norms as mediators. In contrast, self-expression benefits of mask wearing only influence perceived social norms and not attitudes; this effect differs between the countries. Our findings guide scholars, policy makers and practitioners to steer consumers’ mask wearing as a prosocial behaviour. / Received support from central internationalization funds of Universität Hamburg.

This dissertation consists of three articles on social assistance benefit receipt dynamics in European countries. The first article presents an analysis of state dependence in benefit receipt in Germany based on annual survey data from the German Socio-Economic Panel. The observation period extends from 1995 to 2011, thus covering the 2005 'Hartz reforms'. I estimate a series of dynamic random-effects probit models to control for observed and unobserved heterogeneity and the endogeneity of initial conditions. The high observed state dependence has a substantial structural component, with benefit receipt one year ago being associated with an increase in the likelihood of receipt today by 13 percentage points. There is only little evidence for time-variation in state dependence. The second article presents evidence on spell durations and the frequency of repeat spells using monthly administrative data from Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. In the two Nordic countries, short-term benefit receipt is the norm, with only around 6% and 11% of spells in Norway and Sweden lasting longer than 12 months. Most recipients however have multiple spells. In Luxembourg and the Netherlands, long-term benefit receipt is frequent, with median spell durations of 14 and 9 months, respectively, and one-third and one-quarter of all spells lasting 24 months or longer. The total duration of benefit receipt across spells is much higher in the Netherlands and Luxembourg than in Norway and Sweden. The third article tests the validity of one of the central assumptions of dynamic discrete-choice models of benefit dynamics, the conditional Markov property. Using monthly administrative data from Norway, the article shows that the Markov property is violated as estimated state dependence is affected by the chosen time unit of analysis. The standard model can be improved by permitting for different entry and persistence equations and duration and occurrence dependence in benefit receipt.

Den ökade mängden data i världen leder till att allt fler företag väljer att investera i BI-system som kan stödja hantering och analys av data. Genom att analysera data kan det leda till nytta för företaget som exempelvis bättre kontroll och beslutsunderlag. Samtidigt har utvärderingen av nyttan med systemen inte följt med i samma utveckling som investeringarna. Svårigheten att utvärdera de mjuka och strategiska nyttorna med ett BI-system är en av anledningarna till det. Genom att utvärdera ett BI-system kan företag få en uppfattning av vilka nyttor som uppnåtts och om ytterligare aktiviteter krävs för att öka nyttan. En kvalitativ intervjustudie har utförts på stora tillverkande företag och konsultföretag för att se hur arbetet med utvärdering av nyttor med BI-system går till i praktiken. Studien inkluderar utvärdering både innan och efter en implementation och resulterar i rekommendationer. Studiens resultat visar att det kan skilja sig hur små företag och stora tillverkande företag använder BI-systemet och därmed hur utvärdering bör ske. Det har även påvisats att det bör ske ökad utvärdering efter att BI-systemen införts i företaget. Genom att inkludera utvärdering av delar som påverkar möjligheten att uppnå nytta, såväl som delar som kan påverka utvärderingen, leder det till en mer realistisk utvärdering och därmed en större chans för företag att öka nyttan med sitt BI-system. / The growing amount of data in the world leads to an increasing amount of investments in BI-systems, which can support management and analysis of data. Businesses can experience benefits such as better control and decision base when they analyze their data. The evaluation of BI-systems has fallen behind at the same time as investments in these systems has increased. The difficulty in evaluating the soft and strategic benefits of a BI-system is one of the reasons for the lack of evaluations. Evaluation can give businesses a notion of which benefits that they have achieved and if further activities are needed to increase the benefits of the BI-system. A qualitative interview study has been carried out on large manufacturing businesses and consulting businesses, with the purpose to study how the evaluation of BI-system benefits are being done in practice. The study include evaluation before and after an implementation of a BI-system and results in recommendations. The result of the study shows that there can be differences in the way small and large manufacturing businesses use the BI-system and therefore also differences in how to perform the evaluation. The study has also established that more evaluations should be done after the BI-system has been implemented. Evaluation of parts that affect the possibility to achieve benefits as well as parts that affects the evaluation results in a more realistic evaluation, and a greater chance for the business to increase the benefits of their BI-system.

The objective of this thesis is to assess the current status of employee benefits in practice, and the trends emerging in this area. The thesis first focuses on the characteristics of employee benefits in general, with a view to their growing importance, characteristics of the advantages and drawbacks of a fixed versus flexible system of benefit introduction, including tax impacts from the point of view of both the employer and employee. The thesis further analyzes the situation in the area of employee benefits in the Czech Republic. The practical part of the thesis assesses an employee benefit system introduced in a purely Czech company, SLUŽBY MĚSTA JIHLAVY s.r.o., and compares developments experienced in the last few years. The level of employee satisfaction with the benefits and other options being offered by the company was also examined. The evaluation of the outcome of the analysis includes proposals for resolution of the shortcomings found in the process.

Purpose – The aim of this research is to explore the benefits and barriers of integrating EMS to SCM in Sandvik Tooling. While exploring that, it is intended to gain insights into the methods employed to integrate the systems and find out the type of integration used in practice. Design/methodology/approach – Explorative case study method is employed in this research paper. Primary data is obtained through semi-structured interviews and observations. Triangulation, respondent validation, peer review are the principal strategies employed to ensure validity and reliability of this study. Findings – Sandvik Tooling employed a composite view of integration in which verbal and documented forms of information exchanged together with novel solutions to provide integration throughout supply chain on the basis of common goals and vision, shared values and resources. Integration is provided with a balanced mixture of interactions and collaborations. Benefits of integration are categorized as environmental, economic, and organizational benefits. On the other side, barriers are presented as internal and external barriers. Practical Implications – This research paper has significant practical contributions to businesses with presenting the ways to integrate and analyze these two systems and demonstrate barriers to overcome and benefits to take advantage of. Originality/value – Environmental management systems and supply chain management topics received considerable interest among researchers in recent decades. However there is a lack of research about how these two systems can be integrated and what kind of integration will best define this integration type. Analyzing barriers and benefits of integration process will also advance and contribute our knowledge in this research area.

Background: Procurement as a main part in supply chain management is supported through information technology traditionally. With the usage of Internet and e-commerce technologies, procurement is experiencing a revolution from a conventional paper-based process to e-procurement. E-procurement is increasingly becoming recognized due to its abilities to improve the management of business operation, which in supply chain allows organizations to take use of Internet source to procure indirect and direct materials, and handle value-added service such as quality validation. However, although e-procurement solutions are adopted by many industries currently, no previous study is about e-procurement adoption in Swedish food companies. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to study the adoption of e-procurement from the perspective of Swedish food wholesalers. Through exploring the e-procurement adoptions with the aspects of benefits, strategies and barriers in three food wholesale companies, similarities and differences in these three aspects are analyzed to find the current situations in e-procurement adoption settings in Swedish food wholesale companies. Method: This thesis was conducted by using qualitative semi-structured interviews, and a deductive approach. Both primary and secondary data are collected. Three sampling examples are involved in for a multiple and holistic case study. Conclusion: Through the study of this thesis, the most important benefits with e-procurement adoption that Swedish food wholesalers can perceive include planning control, time savings and cost savings. With e-procurement solutions, accurate data information can better forecast demands of customers. However, cost savings could only be achieved obviously after adopting e-procurement more than three years. Almost all food wholesale companies use both direct and indirect purchases with e-procurement adoption. Also, independent portal or online trading communities are not the mainstream for food wholesalers. Swedish food wholesalers play the role in both buy-side and sell-side, and webshops are owned by all of them. As for e-procurement approach, wait and see approach with e-procurement adoption are more attractive for Swedish food wholesalers from a strategic perspective. Aggressive approach could be used for the food wholesale companies that are in development stage. After researching, the most serious barriers for Swedish food wholesalers could be low assurances with problems such as suppliers standards, services or delivery capabilities, two or more systems with overlapped functions, and unstable e-procurement systems.

Music interventions have been shown to improve parent-child interactions (e.g., Lyons, 2000; Mackenzie & Hamlett, 2005; Nicholson et al., 2008; Oldfield et al., 2003) and maternal sensitivity (Nicholson et al., 2008). However, there are currently no studies of Canadian parents’ perceived motivations for, and their experiences participating in, singing classes with their infants. Therefore, more information is needed on Canadian parents’ experiences, and motivations for, participating in singing classes with their infants in order to better understand and support healthy parenting behaviours and infant development.. Specifically, the research questions guiding this preliminary inquiry, were: (1) What do parents identify as factors motivating them to participate in parent-infant singing classes? and (2) What do parents identify as the benefits of participating in parent-infant singing classes? Interviews were conducted with four mothers who were attending parent-infant singing classes. Two music instructors involved in the parent-infant singing classes were also interviewed to learn more about the content and functioning of the classes. Additionally, the Parenting Sense of Competency Scale (PSOCS) and the Key to Interactive Parenting Scale (KIPS) were administered to gain additional information related to parent participation in parent-child singing groups (i.e., parenting behaviours and parental sensitivity), and to triangulate data from parent interviews. Four themes emerged from the parents’ interview data: (1) mothers’ motivations, (2) enhanced parenting, (3) parents’ enhanced view of self, and (4) predictors of change. Parents described their development of music-based parenting tools they perceived to have helped them better regulate their infants’ emotions and behaviours, strengthen their parent-child relationship, and support their child’s language and musical development. In addition, parents described the positive development of their view of self as demonstrated by decreases in reported parenting guilt, normalization of parenting struggles, and an increased focus on success. Moreover, preliminary findings raised questions about additional variables that may enhance growth of parenting skills to foster language and musical development and parental self-efficacy, such as using repetition, routines and structure, and developing supportive relationships with classmates and instructors. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.

published_or_final_version / Social Work / Master / Master of Social Work

published_or_final_version / Sociology / Master / Master of Philosophy