This essay has examined the transition from physical pastoral care conversations to digitalized ones and the experience of it in the workplace. The thesis for this essay is the following; how has the pastoral care conversations continued during the pandemic, and what advantages and disadvantages has the informants experienced in the transition from physical pastoral care conversations to digitalized meetings? The study has been conducted through qualitative semi-structured interviews with a selection of priests and deacons within the Church of Sweden. The main questions that have been asked are: 1. How has the pastoral care meetings practically taken place during the pandemic? 2. What thoughts and experiences has the informants had to the transition from physical to digitized pastoral care meetings? 3. What advantages and disadvantages has this in turn meant for the work with pastoral care? Each interview has been transcribed and then analyzed through a so-called content analysis. This type of analysis has been helpful in being able to pick out relevant themes from the material that have been keys within the interviews. From the analysis, there was four themes that stood out, which were: openness, access, problematics and challenge. The first two categories deal with the informants' experience of the transition as an advantage, while the two latter one’s points to disadvantages that arises with the digitalized transition in their work. The analysis from the interviews showed that one does not exclude the other, that the transition is not just a disadvantage or the other way around, but rather that the two are connected. Instead, both of them help the congregations to create new ways to continue being a church for the community. Reaching out and responding to peoples need to converse and to feel connected even though they have been isolated. The conclusion shows that the advantages and disadvantages have helped bringing the Church to the people when physical meetings are limited or cut off completely due to restrictions within the society. The analysis has also shown the difficulties that these informants have battled with and how they have handled them.

Tourism is an important factor for economic growth. Unfortunately, the on going COVID-19 pandemic has struck hard on the tourism sector due to the lockdowns and travel restrictions. The lockdowns have also led to an increasing isolation among people which in the long term can lead to a decline in people’s psychological wellbeing.Together with Cybercom Group AB, an idea to solve this problem was to developan application with the intention to nurture the tourism sector and get people out of their homes while keeping the human interactions at a satisfactory level. The main feature of the application developed was a scheduler that carefully planned out people’s daily activities depending how crowded a specific location was. An application such as the one developed could lead to an increase in foot traffic while simultaneously decreasing the amount of physical contact between people. The result of this thesis mainly focuses on the developed application but more specifically the developed algorithms to schedule your day using crowd data. The algorithmdeveloped, the Optimal Time Slot Algorithm, averaged a crowding value of18,8% while the average of the best possible crowding value was 17,8%. / Turism är en viktig faktor för ekonomisk tillväxt. Tyvärr så har den pågående COVID-19 pandemin slagit hårt mot turismsektorn till följd av nedstängningar och restriktionerpå resande. Nedstängningarna har även lett till en ökad isolering hos personersom långsiktigt kan leda till en försämring av människors psykologiska välmående.Tillsammans med Cybercom Group AB växte en idé fram om att utveckla enapplikation som har till uppgift att främja turismsektorn och hjälpa folk att ta sig utur sina hem samtidigt som de undviker trängsel. Huvudfunktionen hos den utvecklade applikationen var en planerare som noggrantplanerar en persons dagliga aktiviteter beroende på hur mycket folk det var på denspecifika platsen vid ett visst tillfälle. En applikation likt den som utvecklats kan ledatill en ökad mängd personer i rörelse i kombination med att minska mängden fysiskkontakt mellan människor. Resultatet av detta examensarbete fokuserar huvudsakligen på den utvecklade applikationenoch specifikt de algoritmer som utvecklats för att planera din dag genomträngseldata. Den framtagna algoritmen, Optimal Time Slot Algorithm, resulteradei ett trängselsnitt på 17,8% där 18,8% var snittet av det bästa möjliga resultatet.

Syfte: Ekonomiska kriser kan påverka ledningens incitament att manipulera finansiell redovisning. Eftersom varje kris är unik och den ekonomiska nedgången till följd av coronapandemin inträffade relativt nyligen, har forskningen om earnings management under denna kris ännu inte fullt utforskats. Tidigare forskning ger motstridiga resultat, och har brustit i att ta hänsyn till institutionella skillnader mellan länder. Den här studien ämnar att bidra med en specifik institutionell kontext. Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur tillämpningen av earnings management i svenska börsnoterade företag påverkades av coronapandemin.  Metod: Studien tillämpar en kvantitativ metod med deduktiv ansats och en positivistisk syn på kunskap för att undersöka earnings management. I studien tillämpas en etablerad metod, den modifierade Jones-modellen, för att mäta diskretionära periodiseringar. För att pröva hypoteser tillämpas t-test och regressionsanalyser. Finansiell data från börsnoterade företag mellan 2017 och 2021 hämtas från Refinitiv Eikon-databasen och analyseras i SPSS. Resultat och slutsats: Studien finner att coronapandemin inte hade någon signifikant påverkan på omfattningen av earnings management i svenska börsnoterade företag. Resultatmanipulering har dock tillämpats och studien finner att resultaten i svenska börsnoterade företag sänktes genom manipulation under pandemin. Resultaten tyder på att den ökade övervakning som förekommer under kriser inte påverkat företagsledningen till minskad resultatmanipulering utan har fortsatt manipulera resultatet för att erhålla fördelar, som statligt stöd och högre framtida avkastning. Examensarbetets bidrag: Studien är av akademisk nytta eftersom resultaten som erhållits skiljer sig från tidigare studier på området under coronapandemin, och indikerar att kontexten som studien genomförs i påverkar resultatet. Studien är även av praktiskt nytta för att ge företags intressenter en inblick i hur företag i den undersökta kontexten hanterar resultatmanipulation under kriser. Förslag till fortsatt forskning: Framtida forskning behövs för att undersöka om skillnaden i resultatmanipulation under coronapandemin i Europa kan förklaras av rättslig tradition. / Aim: Economic crises can influence management's incentives to manipulate financial reporting. Since each crisis is unique and the economic downturn resulting from the covid pandemic occurred relatively recently, research on earnings management during this crisis has not yet been fully explored. Previous research offers conflicting results and has failed to account for institutional differences between countries. This study aims to provide a specific institutional context. The purpose of the study is to investigate how the application of earnings management in Swedish publicly listed companies was affected by the covid pandemic. Method: The study employs a quantitative method with a deductive approach and a positivist view of knowledge to examine earnings management. An established method, the modified Jones model, is applied in the study to measure discretionary accruals. To test hypotheses, t-tests and regression analyses are conducted. Financial data from publicly listed companies between 2017 and 2021 is obtained from the Refinitiv Eikon database and analyzed using SPSS. Results and conclusions: The study finds that the covid pandemic did not have a significant impact on the extent of earnings management in Swedish publicly listed companies. However, income manipulation has been applied, and the study finds that the results in Swedish publicly listed companies were lowered through manipulation during the pandemic. The results suggest that the increased oversight that occurs during crises has not affected corporate management to reduce income manipulation but has continued to manipulate results to obtain benefits, such as government support and higher future returns. Contribution of the thesis: The study is of academic value because the results obtained differ from previous studies in the field during the covid pandemic, indicating that the context in which the study is conducted affects the outcome. Additionally, the study is of practical utility to provide stakeholders with insights into how companies in the examined context manage income manipulation during crises. Suggestions for future research: Future research is needed to examine whether the difference in income manipulation during the covid pandemic in Europe can be explained by legal tradition.

Embedding itself in the larger discussion on protests against measures taken by governments all over the world to mitigate the effects of the covid-19 pandemic, this work concerns itself with the role of the Holocaust in narratives found in prominent Telegram channels and chat groups of German covid-protests. Building on the existing body of research, it uses the theoretical framework of New Social Movement (NSM) theory to categorise the protests in Germany. Choosing a mixed-methods design, the phenomenon is described using narrative analysis, computer-assisted coding, and elements of network analysis. The narrative analysis and results of computer-assisted coding, find that the Holocaust is narrated as a valid comparison to pandemic politics, while some Telegram channels engage in historical revisionism. The network analysis reveals a large network of Telegram channels, strengthening the importance of the analysed channels for the protests in Germany

What does it mean to be a school leader trying to improve chronic absenteeism at the high school level? Intervening with chronically absent high school students entails adapting existing practices designed for students in attendance, finding alternate ways to motivate students who simply are not there, and affording educational opportunity equitably to students whose voices and stories have largely been silenced, all against a landscape of increasingly rigorous and conflicting accountability pressure associated with chronic absenteeism, graduation rate, suspension rate and student achievement. While scholarship and dialogue pertaining to leadership responses to chronic absenteeism at the high school level generally support an emphasis on outreach and engagement with families, building relationships with students, affording students opportunities to recover credit, and connecting them to experiences that relate to the world of work after high school, scarce research focuses on the complex, dynamic role identities of the school leaders who innovate and implement these ad hoc responses, often without guidance from policy, and in turn, influence the experiences, outcomes and possibilities for chronically absent students. This current study investigated the ways that role identity components influenced the motivated actions of school and district leaders towards chronic absenteeism at the high school level. The study’s guiding questions were: (a) how do school leaders’ role identity components (i.e.., ontological and epistemological beliefs; purpose and goals; perceived action possibilities; self-perceptions and definitions) emerge and interact with each other to inform their actions regarding chronically absent high school students? (b) to what extent do the beliefs and perceptions of school leaders about supporting chronically absent students compare and contrast to the lived experiences of adults who were chronically absent students in high school? (c) to what extent do the beliefs and perceptions of school leaders about supporting chronically absent students compare and contrast to the lived experiences of parents and guardians of adults who were chronically absent students in high school? The guiding theoretical frame for this study is the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (DSMRI; Kaplan & Garner, 2017). The DSMRI conceptualizes motivated action to be influenced by an actor’s dynamic and contextualized interpretation of his or her social cultural role, or role identity. According to the model, four multi-elemental components comprise an actor’s role identity: ontological and epistemological beliefs, purpose and goals, perceived action possibilities, and self-perceptions and definitions. These components are interdependent, irreducible, and reciprocally influencing each other, the behaviors and their meanings to the actor, and the future iterations of the actor’s role identity system. The study employed a narrative approach to investigate the school and district leaders’ motivated actions and the meanings they made of high school student absenteeism. Using Seidman’s (2013) protocol, I interviewed nine school leaders, five former students, and three parents who operated at a small, urban public school district in the Tri-State area about their past and present social-cultural roles concerning the meaning of they made of chronic absenteeism at the high school level. Additionally, I observed the nine school leaders and they provided artifacts and documents relating to chronic absenteeism. Transcribed interviews and the student focus group, as well as observations, documents and artifacts, were analyzed utilizing Saldana’s (2013) pragmatic eclecticism approach and Kaplan and Garner’s (2016) DSMRI Codebook and Analysis Guide. The results demonstrate how each school leader’s meaning of working with chronically absent students at the high school level, amidst an array of accountability pressures, has been incorporated into their dynamic role identity system within the sociocultural context, guiding their experiences, perceptions and actions. Despite their nuanced role identity systems - the participants come very different backgrounds with varied lived experiences and expertise in the domain, and reference different prior role identities and future role identities - the findings also highlighted common processes and content across Participant Roles (e.g., school leader, parent or student). This manifested distinctly in the themes reflecting school leaders’ actions changed in response to the system’s control parameter of accountability pressure, the ways school leaders communicated to parents and students about absenteeism, and the very different cultural meanings that students and parents gave to absenteeism and attendance than the cultural meanings and characteristics that school leaders largely experienced. These findings illuminate a complex, turbulent landscape comprised of school and district leaders, with myriad accountability systems to which they are beholden and their chronically absent students and families, all operating with multiple role identities that integrate with one another. The insights from this study can inform the work of educational leaders, educators and researchers who endeavor to intervene with the elusive problem of chronic absenteeism at the high school level. It may further guide educational leaders and policymakers who made decisions about the utility value of social-emotional learning that emphasizes exploration of identity for students, teachers, and leaders alike, as well as how outreach efforts are regarded and measured in school system outputs such as educator evaluation systems and professional development offerings. Importantly, this research aims to provide leaders with a tool for reflection on the importance of role identity as a lens to view their own professional practices and responses to challenging, complex problems in the domain such as chronic absenteeism. Moreover, when school systems were pressed to shut physically and adapt school services and instruction due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the existing, multidimensional consideration of attending school manifested in new meanings and barriers for students, parents and school leaders grappling with the issue of chronic absenteeism in a changing context. Finally, this research aims to contribute, in a small way, to improve educational opportunity for all students, including those experiencing complex barriers to attending school. / Educational Administration

De flesta barnen idag går i förskolan och inskolningen är första mötet mellan pedagoger, vårdnadshavarna och barnet. Forskning om förskola och pandemin visar att förutsättningar i förskolans verksamhet har förändrats på grund av restriktionerna. Där barn och pedagoger haft högfrånvaro, men även att pedagoger och vårdnadshavarna behövt hålla avstånd sinsemellan. Mot denna bakgrund är det av vikt att förstå hur relationsskapandet och samverkan mellan vårdnadshavarna, barn och pedagogerna sett ut under pandemin, eftersom det i Läroplanen för förskolan, Lpfö18 (2018) står att pedagogerna ska samarbeta med hemmet och skapa tillitsfulla relationer till vårdnadshavarna. Syftet med denna studie är att öka kunskapen om pedagogernas erfarenheter av inskolningar under pandemin ur ett omsorgetiskt perspektiv. Tidigare forskning visar att det är en fördel att vårdnadshavaren är aktiv vid inskolningen eftersom pedagogerna får möjlighet att koncentrera sig på relationsskapandet till barnet, samt att vårdnadshavarna vill ha tydlig information vid skolstart. Studien grundar sig i kvalitativa semi-strukturerade intervjuer, som ljudinspelats med sex olika pedagoger som har erfarenheter av inskolning både innan, under och efter pandemin. Det insamlade empiriska materialet har sedan kategoriserats utifrån olika teman utifrån intervjupersonernas berättelser, där materialet analyserat med stöd av ett omsorgsetiskt perspektiv. Resultatet visar hur covid-pandemin påverkat inskolningen på olika sätt i förskolan. Tillexempel att relationsskapandet till vårdnadshavaren har blivit mer problematiskt, men även gjort att pedagogerna fått upp ögonen för nya inskolningsätt.

Although its impact was felt globally, the pandemic of Covid-19 still prompted a wide range of national strategies aimed to counter it. In light of possible future crises of similar scope and duration, this master´s thesis seeks to determine the locus of these strategic differences. It posits that the answers lie in governments unique and context-dependent capacities for governance, and how these enabled and constrained their pandemic strategies. This thesis therefore tailors a theoretical framework, made for analysing governance capacities of governments in crisis, from the rich field of governance research conducted on the pandemic. This framework is subsequently applied empirically through a comparative case study of Danish and Swedish governments, in an effort to both test its functionality and to examine Nordic policy variation. Insights derived from these cases are finally used to evaluate the framework and discuss its potential for further use. The thesis finds that the Danish government was more able to overcome challenges to pandemic governance than the Swedish government. It argues that this difference derives from both the Danish government´s higher pre-pandemic governance capacity and from its ability to consolidate governance during the pandemic. Key differences between the cases appears to furthermore stem from governments’ capacity to enact regulation, the national systems of crisis management, and whether the nation is characterised by ministerial rule or not. The theoretical framework is finally assessed and deemed widely applicable for use in cases where there is a break in the societal status quo.