The study of nonmonotonic logics is one mayor field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The reason why such kind of formalisms are so attractive to model human reasoning is that they allow to withdraw former conclusion. At the end of the 1980s the novel idea of using argumentation to model nonmonotonic reasoning emerged in AI. Nowadays argumentation theory is a vibrant research area in AI, covering aspects of knowledge representation, multi-agent systems, and also philosophical questions. Phan Minh Dung’s abstract argumentation frameworks (AFs) play a dominant role in the field of argumentation. In AFs arguments and attacks between them are treated as primitives, i.e. the internal structure of arguments is not considered. The major focus is on resolving conflicts. To this end a variety of semantics have been defined, each of them specifying acceptable sets of arguments, so-called extensions, in a particular way. Although, Dung-style AFs are among the simplest argumentation systems one can think of, this approach is still powerful. It can be seen as a general theory capturing several nonmonotonic formalisms as well as a tool for solving well-known problems as the stable-marriage problem. This thesis is mainly concerned with the investigation of metalogical properties of Dung’s abstract theory. In particular, we provide cardinality, monotonicity and splitting results as well as characterization theorems for equivalence notions. The established results have theoretical and practical gains. On the one hand, they yield deeper theoretical insights into how this nonmonotonic theory works, and on the other the obtained results can be used to refine existing algorithms or even give rise to new computational procedures. A further main part is the study of problems regarding dynamic aspects of abstract argumentation. Most noteworthy we solve the so-called enforcing and the more general minimal change problem for a huge number of semantics.

The point of departure for this study is Michael Lipsky’s description and problematization of street-level bureaucrats’ discretion. Street-level bureaucrats, such as teachers, have a possibility to influence the implementation of policy at the point of delivery to citizens.This can create a problem within the democratic policy process as policy does not materialize in the way that politicians intended. I used a qualitative research design and interviewed ten teachers in upper secondary schools about their exercise of authority, in order to investigate a factor that may lead to policy-making: logics of action. I claim that logics of action are suitable tools for analyzing and discussing the policy-making that street-level bureaucrats perform in the democratic policy process. The main purpose of this study is to contribute to such a discussion. A second purpose is to elucidate logics of action as a type of factors that guides teachers’ exercise of authority, but which has not been noticed to any great extent in previous research. I investigated which logics of action are mainly present in teachers’ exercise of authority concerning assessment and grading: a logic of consequences or a logic of appropriateness; a manufacturing logic or a service logic; and an instrumental logic or alternative logics. The relationship between logics of consequences and appropriateness is complex. It is difficult to say that one logic is the dominant force behind teachers’ exercise of authority. This is because of the constantly changing circumstances in the school environment. As for the manufacturing and service logics, the latter is dominant in assessment and grading. This does not influence decision-making as such, but enriches policy with a certain value production. Lastly, teachers claim that they instrumentally follow the guidelines in their exercise of authority. But at the same time alternative logics, such as gaming and cheating with the rules, are very much present in assessment and grading. Alternative logics distort teachers’ decision-making in several ways. These results show that logics of action are indeed tools that can help us to better understand what influences street-level bureaucrats’ exercise of authority, and how this contributes to policy-making. I conclude by suggesting how the use of logics of action as analytical tools can enhance our knowledge of street-level bureaucrats’ discretion in future research.

Description Logics (DLs) are a family of logic-based knowledge representation (KR) formalisms designed to represent and reason about static conceptual knowledge in a semantically well-understood way. On the other hand, standard action formalisms are KR formalisms based on classical logic designed to model and reason about dynamic systems. The largest part of the present work is dedicated to integrating DLs with action formalisms, with the main goal of obtaining decidable action formalisms with an expressiveness significantly beyond propositional. To this end, we offer DL-tailored solutions to the frame and ramification problem. One of the main technical results is that standard reasoning problems about actions (executability and projection), as well as the plan existence problem are decidable if one restricts the logic for describing action pre- and post-conditions and the state of the world to decidable Description Logics. A smaller part of the work is related to decidable extensions of Description Logics with concrete datatypes, most importantly with those allowing to refer to the notions of space and time.

The purpose of this work was to contribute with increased knowledge about the role of principals as decision-makers in today's education system. This was done by examining 12 principals' experience and actions in relation to a law change that has meant an opportunity to introduce grades from year 4. Factors that were expressed as being able to influence the principals' decisions regarding earlier grades were their personal attitudes to and experiences of grades, teachers' attitude, contextual factors and science. The results indicated that the principals experiences a high degree of autonomy in the decision regarding earlier grades, although most principals involved teachers and/or the management team in the decision-making process. In general, the principals felt it was positive that they were the ones who made the decision about introducing earlier grades, although several principals expressed that it was strange and that there were risks in relation to equivalence. Many of the principals expressed that they would have preferred the state to have made the decision, especially if it was the same decision as their own. The results indicated that the principals would prefer an education system were decisions that affect their work would be delegated directly to them, alternatively that the state would make these decisions. A resistance to the decision about grades being made at the board- or municipal-level could imply a dissatisfaction with today's education system were the board or the municipal can have a significant influence on how a school is organized and thus on the principal's daily work and possibilities to make decisions. A professional and bureaucratic logic was expressed in a somewhat higher degree than the logic of market in the principals' experience and action in relation to the possibility to introducing earlier grades.

Studien hade till syfte att genom kvalitativa intervjuer undersöka hur professionella såg på ADHD-symtom hos flickor, samt hur de ansåg att arbetet med att upptäcka ADHD hos flickor i en tidigare ålder kunde underlättas, både genom samarbete och enskilt arbete. Fem semistrukturerade intervjuer genomfördes med fem olika professioner; en kurator från Barn- och Ungdomspsykiatrin (BUP), en socialsekreterare, en skolkurator, en lärare samt en fritidspedagog. Resultatet från intervjuerna analyserades med hjälp av en teoretisk referensram innehållande genus och organisationsteori. Huvudresultatet visade på skilda kunskaper om ADHD hos flickor, men visade även att intresset för ytterligare utbildning inom området var stort. På grund av bristande utbildningsmöjligheter försvårades arbetet med att upptäcka ADHD för flertalet av professionerna. Resultatet visade även otydliga rutiner och icke fungerade kommunikation mellan organisationerna vilket ledde till ett bristfälligt samarbete. Slutsatsen som drogs var att utbildningsmöjligheter, verktyg och samarbete mellan professionerna behövde utvecklas för att upptäcka diagnosen hos flickor. / The aim of this study was to explore how professionals view ADHD symptoms in girls, and how they think the work procedure could develop to be able to find ADHD in younger girls, both through individual work and cooperation. Five qualitative semi-structured interviews were done with five professions; a counsellor from the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (BUP), a school counsellor, a social worker, a teacher and a leisure educator. The material was analysed using a theoretical framework of gender and organisation theory. A major result showed various levels of knowledge when it came to ADHD in girls, but a large interest in further education. Due to lack of educational opportunities, detecting ADHD in girls was made more difficult. The results also described unclear routines and dysfunctional communication between organizations. The conclusion that was drawn was that lack of education, tools and cooperation contributes to girls not being diagnosed.

Despite its benefits, output controls are less prevalent than its counterpart input controls in public sector agencies. Performance budgeting aligns the input of resources with the output of products and services systematically, enabling assessment of the efficiency and effectiveness of organizational activities. Yet, implementing performance budgeting is challenging, as observed in the Swedish Armed Forces, thus constituting a suitable case to explore this thesis’ research question – why do public sector agencies seldom succeed implementing performance budgeting?   The inquiry is grounded in the multi-layered institutional framework of performance budgeting by Ho ​(2018)​ which, along with extant literature, is developed into propositions guiding the data gathering. The empirics are examined from a discursive perspective with the theory of multiple institutional logics​ (Besharov & Smith, 2014)​ and its technical dimension with the sociology of translation ​(Latour, 1999)​. Findings indicated that the present financial model did not achieve performance budgeting due to a lack of internal transparency, as the model were perceived as convoluted, and that military and financial performance were assessed and reported in separate structures. Looking ahead from an institutional perspective, the recently developed evaluation model, might assist the development of performance budgeting as its underpinning logic of mission command seems compatible with program logic. However, current lack of standardization and managerial infrastructures are indicative of an ineffective translation process, limiting the representational value of the accounting and performance inscriptions, thus limiting their ability facilitate stable spatial and temporal control.

The aim of this qualitative study is to understand the processes around the prevention of child endangerment in deportation processes in Germany focusing on street-level bureaucrats. Eight social welfare professionals directly working with refugee minors and having experiences with deportation processes where refugee minors are or were involved distributed along three Federal States participated in this study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted online and were analysed afterwards by using discourse analysis. Strong engagement, emotional involvement, frustration, and anger but also objective views and uncertainty when it comes to the prevention of child endangerment in deportation processes emerged. The deportation process is viewed as something very horrible and not compatible with the best interests of the child leading to cases of child endangerment. Responsibility for this was attributed to the system/state, street-level bureaucrats, as well as parents. Prevention of child endangerment in this context is seen as very difficult as there appear to be barriers at different levels where improvement is needed, containing a professional and personal level, the parental level, and a political and state level. The results were discussed then by using the concept of institutional logics and Lipsky’s theory of street-level bureaucracy. The street-level bureaucrats’ reasoning and practice are informed by several institutional logics which are interpreted and valued differently and raise conflicts which need to be solved. The human rights logics and national state logics, as well as logics of professionalism and logics of bureaucracy play an important role in this context.

Computing the least common subsumer (lcs) is an inference task that can be used to support the \bottom-up' construction of knowledge bases for KR systems based on description logics. Previous work on how to compute the lcs has concentrated on description logics that allow for universal value restrictions, but not for existential restrictions. The main new contribution of this paper is the treatment of description logics with existential restrictions. More precisely, we show that, for the description logic ALE (which allows for conjunction, universal value restrictions, existential restrictions, negation of atomic concepts, as well as the top and the bottom concept), the lcs always exists and can efiectively be computed. Our approach for computing the lcs is based on an appropriate representation of concept descriptions by certain trees, and a characterization of subsumption by homomorphisms between these trees. The lcs operation then corresponds to the product operation on trees. / An abridged version of this technical report is published in the Proceedings of IJCAI'99.

Unification of concept terms is a new kind of inference problem for Description Logics, which extends the equivalence problem by allowing to replace certain concept names by concept terms before testing for equivalence. We show that this inference problem is of interest for applications, and present first decidability and complexity results for a small concept description language. / This revised version of LTCS-Report 97-02 provides a stronger complexity result in Section 6. An abridged version will appear in Proc. ECAI'98 .

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to explain how the gender diversity of the top management team affects the disclosure strategy regarding gender diversity, in state-owned enterprises. The study, in addition, tests if hybridity, conceptualized as conflicting institutional logics, has a moderating effect on this relationship. Theoretical perspectives: With its starting point in the upper echelon theory, the study uses both positive accounting theory and signaling theory to explain managers’ disclosure decision, where the intuitional logics approach represents the moderating decision-making context. Methodology: The study is based within the positivistic paradigm, following a deductive approach and quantitative methodology. Both the textual and visual diversity content of the annual reports of 30 state-owned enterprises over a 5-year period, is collected and analyzed using the Spearman correlation matrix and multiple regression analysis. The moderating effect of hybridity is tested through hierarchical moderated multiple regression analysis. Findings: The findings of the study provide partial support for the relationship between the gender diversity of the top management team and gender diversity disclosure, suggesting that the influence of management depends on the means of disclosure. No support is found for the claim that hybridity has a positive moderating effect on this relationship. However, incorporating hybridity stills indicates that integrating the institutional context into the upper-echelons model facilitates understanding about the relationship, by establishing conditional boundaries and identifying main effects.