Sedan barnkonventionen blev lag i Sverige år 2020 ska barnens rättigheter i samhälletstärkas, vilket omfattas inom den fysiska planeringen. Denna uppsats ämnar till att undersökahur barnperspektivet hanteras inom kommuner, för att skapa en tydligare bild harNorrköpings och Motalas kommun användas för analys. Kvalitativa intervjuer medrepresentanter har genomförts och ska tillsammans med dokumentgranskning av kommunalaplaner stå till grund för jämförelse av kommunernas arbete med barnperspektivet. Resultatethar visat att barnkonventionen till viss del har stärkt barnens rättigheter inom den kommunalaplaneringen, men också att olika aspekter så som resursbrist och målkonflikter bidrar till attperspektivet inte helt inkluderas inom planeringen, utan i många fall bortprioriteras. Dettasker trots att retoriken kring barnperspektivet visar sig vara stark, då kommunerna själva ochdess representanter beskriver barnperspektivet som viktigt. Tydligare riktlinjer, mallar ochändrade prioriteringar behövs för att helt implementera barnperspektivet. / Since the Convention on the Rights of the Child became law in Sweden in 2020, the rights ofchildren have been strengthened, including in spatial planning. This essay will examine howthe child perspective is handled, the municipalities of Norrköping and Motala have been usedfor in depth analysis. Qualitative interviews with representatives have been conducted, andtogether with documents of municipal plans, they have formed the basis for comparing themunicipalities' working methods. The results have shown that the Convention has to someextent strengthened children's rights, but also aspects such as lack of resources and conflictsof goals contribute to the perspective being deprioritized. This is despite the fact that therhetoric is strong, as the municipalities and their representatives describe it as important.Clearer guidelines and changed priorities are needed to implement the children's rights.

Tidigare forskning visar att klimatpåverkan som har skett under decennier, leder till negativa konsekvenser för samhället. Om samhället ska vara robust för denna påverkan behöver samhället anpassas. Klimatanpassningsarbetet är fortfarande en relativ ny fråga och ses som mer utmanande för mindre kommuner. Syftet med studien är därför att undersöka hur mellanstora- och mindre kommuner arbetar med klimatanpassningsfrågan med fokus på fyra kommuner i Östergötland. Syftet grundar sig i frågeställningarna som behandlar vilka utmaningar som kommunerna ser i arbetet samt vad som skiljer kommunerna åt.   Studiens besvaras genom kvalitativ metod där material från intervjuer med tjänstepersoner inom respektive kommun samlades in samt dokumentanalys av kommunernas översiktsplaner samt handlingsplaner. Materialet analyseras utifrån en tematisk analys. Studiens resultat visar på att kommunerna arbetar med klimatanpassning men att implementeringen skiljer sig åt. Som beror på olika utmaningar som kommunerna står inför där resursbrist samt politiskt intresse styr utvecklingen. / Previous research shows that climate impact, which has taken place for decades, leads to consequences for society. If society is to be robust to this impact, society needs to adapt. Climate adaptation is still a relatively new issue and is seen as more challenging for smaller municipalities. The purpose of the study is therefore to investigate how medium-sized and small municipalities work with the climate adaptation issue with a focus on four municipalities in Östergötland. Also to see what challenges the municipalities highlight. The study is based on a qualitative method. Material from interviews with representatives from each municipality was collected and document analysis of the municipalities documents. The material was analyzed with thematic analysis. The results of the study shows that the municipalities work with climate adaptation, but that the implementation differs due to various challenges that the municipalities face.

Alla kommuner har investerat eller är i behov av investeringar, vissa mer än andra. Idag blir immateriella investeringar allt mer väsentliga för alla typer av organisationer, kommuner är inget undantag. För att en investering ska genomföras går kommuner igenom processer som har en stark relation till politiken. Tidigare studier om immateriella investeringar är redan väldigt tunn, kommunala immateriella investeringar är även mer tunn. Syftet med denna studie är att förbättra kunskapen om hur investeringsprocessen i kommunala immateriella investeringar går till, även ge en översiktlig bild på hur hela investeringsprocessen går till vid immateriella investeringar. Det som visats i studien är att det finns faktorer som påverkar kommunerna bland annat vilken syn de har på immateriella investeringarna, vad kommunen är i för situation vad gäller politiken, in- eller utflyttnings takten. Med vår analys hoppas vi att det klargjorts hur den kommunala immateriella investeringsprocessen går till inom kommuner. / All municipalities have invested or are in need of investments, some more than others. Today, intangible investments are becoming more important for all types of organizations, municipalities are no exception. In order for an investment to be implemented, municipalities go through processes that have a strong relationship with politics. Previous studies on intangible investments are already very thin, municipal intangible investments are even thinner. The purpose of this study is to improve the knowledge of how investment appraisals regarding municipal intangible investments are carried out, and also to provide an overview of how the entire investment process is carried out with these kinds of investments. What has been shown in the study is that there are factors that affect the municipalities, such as their view of intangible investments, the municipality's situation in terms of politics, the rate of immigration or emigration. With our analysis, we hope that it has been clarified how the municipal intangible investment process takes place with inmunicipalities.

With an expanded increase in consumption and production in the last decades, the Western societies’ unsustainable way of living has started to have a destructive effect on the planet. Energy use and greenhouse gas emissions linked to production and waste control in societies can be reduced immensely with fewer goods. Through the sharing economy, goods, materials and services can be utilized to the fullest, decreasing the need for more production of raw materials. Sharing has both practical and economic gain for the consumer, the community and the environment. The aim of this research is to analyze and map the present state of sharing economy within Uppsala Municipality and evaluate how to adopt and implement sharing economy from the governance perspective of Uppsala. In this case study, a document analysis, a survey and interviews are used as analytical tools to answer the three research questions; what sharing economy practices and strategies are to be found within Uppsala Municipality; which are the identified drivers, barriers and attitude towards sharing economy within the public sector of Uppsala and how sharing economy platforms and services can be implemented in Uppsala Municipality. The results show that while some sharing economy practices and strategies can be found within Uppsala Municipality, there are no clear guidelines to be found on how to work with sharing economy. The public sector is positive towards a sharing economy and wants to see more sharing alternatives. In their opinion, the main drivers to sharing economy are saving on resources, economy and energy, while the main barriers are time consumption, uncertainty in who should be responsible for these services and complication in implementation. Finally, a shared knowledge and definition on sharing economy, a justification on why sharing economy should be implemented and a collaboration where every stakeholder finds their place in the projects seem to be the main premise of implementing sharing economy on a local governance level.

Automation of work processes has become a central aspect of increasing business competitiveness, effectiveness and quality. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a new technology that can be used for this. It is a relatively new technology that, through a defined workflow, performs the tasks instead of a person. The RPA technology does not require little integration to interact with multiple systems through the interface, in the same way a person would. Organizations in public sector, like municipalities are today facing increasing challenges and need to change the way they are working, to keep up with the new technologies, and make the most out of scarce resources. Through a qualitative study, we have investigated what barriers and enablers small municipalities have to be ready for when considering RPA implementation. To collect empirical data, we performed nine semi-structured interviews with participants from four small municipalities, which had not implemented RPA yet and with one large municipality who is already using RPA today. The analysis of this study identifies the barriers and enablers in small municipalities that define their digital maturity to implement RPA. These barriers and enablers were categorized in to four themes: digital maturity, digital competence, time and resources and interest and strategic mandate.

Background:  Entering a new geological epoch where humans are the main force shaping of the biosphere, have forced an immense stress onto society and the Planet with regards to sustainability. The United Nations and the Paris Agreement have strongly emphasized the urgent need to allocate finance onto urgently mitigating climate change. The financial sector has confronted this challenge through providing sources of finance to meet sustainability requirements. Thus, green bonds emerge as an instrument aimed to cooperate in the transition towards advancing sustainability.    Purpose: Given the ambiguity of green bonds impacts on environmental sustainability, this study explores the contributions of green bonds towards a fruitful transition towards sustainability. Being crucial stakeholders in the transition towards sustainability, these contributions have been examined in the context of Swedish municipalities    Method: To examine the contributions of green bonds in the given context, an exploratory research was conducted using a multiple case study design. Five municipalities, two investors and a municipal funding agency were interviewed though semi-structured interviews. A thematic analysis was performed on the empirical data. First, a within-in case analysis was conducted following a cross-case analysis allowing to find emergent and common patterns.   Conclusion: The green financial instrument does not appear to be a main driver of sustainability, nor does it have a significant influence on the environmental impact of the municipalities’ investment projects. Nevertheless, the study finds that green bonds contribute to advancing sustainability in municipalities through three main areas: Financial impetus, organizational effects and structure and requirements. Thus, the municipalities studied provide evidence that green bonds grant a small reduction in the cost of capital, produce organizational effects like increasing collaboration between the environmental and financial department and enhances transparency through its structure and requirements.

Background: It is important to work with environmental sustainability and to reach this goal since protection of the natural environment is necessary. Every day without more knowledge and action gives future generations worse prerequisites to live a sustainable life. This thesis attempts to address environmental sustainability from a local perspective. Through the Swedish municipality Lund’s Municipality’s climate goals ambition for 2030 and their climate policy “LundaEko”, it is explored how the local sport clubs can contribute to the municipality’s ambition. However limited research is conducted related to environmental sustainability and grass-root sport clubs. Grass-root sport clubs are important since they have a direct impact in children and youth’s upbringing. Through the local sport clubs, Lund’s Municipality have the opportunity to reach more citizens in order to affect them to contribute to the climate goals.  Aim: The overall purpose of this study is to analyse the prerequisites for municipalities to use grass- root sport clubs to contribute to environmental sustainability. The study uses Lund’s Municipality in Sweden and the local sport clubs within the municipality as the empirical example.  Methods: Seven representatives participated in this research. Two from Lund’s Municipality, one from the national sport federation’s regional department “RFSISU Skåne” and four from local sport clubs in Lund. The data was collected from semi-structured interviews and documents/policies. Thematic analysis is used to process, organise, and analyse the collected data. Triple bottom line and institutional theory was applied as a theoretical framework, in order to analyse the data.  Results: The research shows that all interviewed sport clubs endorse environmental sustainability. However, the sport clubs are unsure how to approach the topic, due to lack of knowledge, experience and resources. The sport clubs request support in order to initiate environmental sustainability practices from Lund’s Municipality and RFSISU Skåne.  Conclusion: Lund’s Municipality is responsible of informing the sport clubs about their own climate ambitions and the clubs’ opportunities to contribute. The sport clubs are able to contribute by identify and adopt easy applicable environmental values and utilise their status as an institution to disseminate these values to their members through institutional mechanisms.

This essay is based on a societal problem related to the exclusion that arises when young peopledo not reach upper secondary school eligibility, and how low education can have consequencesfor society over time. The thesis focuses on the municipalities' work and responsibility towardsthe individuals who make up the current target group, 16-19 year olds who do not study or havean employment. The study is concretized by these issues: • How do the municipalities in question describe the problem of young people who do not have uppersecondary school qualifications? • What measures are the municipalities taking and do they have stated goals? • Do the municipalities use united actions with public actors and other municipalities in the region tofind common solutions? The results of the thesis are mainly based on a questionnaire answered by representativesworking with the target group from nine different municipalities, where they were asked toanswer questions related to the purpose of the study. The study also used a secondary empiricismin the form of documents to strengthen the answers in terms of goals and measures. Theconclusions we came to were that all municipalities believe that lack of upper secondary schoolqualification entails great future risks for individuals, which in turn has consequences for society.An overwhelming majority of the municipalities have goals and measures linked to the law theyneed to comply with, which includes trying to motivate young people to return to some form ofeducation. United actions occurs in all municipalities, and with an increased understanding of thecomplexity of united action as a theoretical concept, the conclusions are based on the fact thatvarious forms of united actions also imposes different requirements. It can therefore beexperienced both as an asset and a challenge among the participating actors.

Mgr. Josef Bernard Dizertační práce Local politics in small municipalities and its informal aspects Abstract The subject of the thesis is the analysis of political processes in local government of small municipalities in the Czech Republic. The author focuses particularly on the question how do the activities of local government influence the different aspects of local life. The goals of local government, the negotiation of these goals and the role of different local government members in achieving these goals are examined. The thesis is based on three theoretical approaches - on the theories of local communities and their development, on the social capital theory and on theories of local political leadership. Different types of empirical data are used in the thesis: qualitative interviews and non-standardized observation of political processes in selected municipalities, questionnaire data and census data as well as other accessible statistical data on local communities and municipalities in the Czech Republic. The analyses have proved that local governments in small municipalities can be regarded as specific types of community interaction fields. The existence of this field has a significant impact on the situation in the community, including local citizen participation and social capital of the...

This thesis deals with the inter-municipal cooperation in the Pilsen region. In the theoretical part there is the concept of inter-municipal cooperation defined and the reasons behind the cooperation among the municipalities explained. These include efforts to overcome the fragmented municipal structure, more efficient and cheaper providing of the services and savings. In this thesis there are also the risks and limits of the inter-municipal cooperation mentioned and the attention is paid to the possible democratic deficits. The cooperation of the municipalities is also compared to the amalgamation of municipalities. The next section contains case studies of inter-municipal cooperation in selected European countries. The following section regards the Czech Republic, in which there is the development of municipal structures explored, as well as the legislative basis of the inter-municipal cooperation issues and also the causes that lead to cooperation between municipalities are assessed. After that, the attention is given to the voluntary associations of municipalities and micro-regions in the Pilsen region.