The municipal social services under the Social Services Act is responsible for the municipality’s citizens, but is at risk because of the situation in social services as social secretaries choose professions other than the exercise of authority. Social service work may be compromised on the basis that there will be a heavy workload for those social secretaries that stays when there are not enough resources. How social secretaries experience control in their work affects the way to trade and manage their work situation and the perceived control may be a discretion. The purpose of this study was to investigate how social secretaries perceive their work situation. The study was conducted based on a qualitative method and consisted of interviews of five social secretaries that all work in the same municipality. It was revealed from the qualitative content analysis that the social secretary job situation may seem complicated and the social secretaries tend to ”end up trapped” on the basis o fits position between the organization and the client. The conclusion of the study show that social secretaries work situation is characterized by frustration, both from the client and from the social secretaries own frustration to feel limited in their role as street-level bureaucrat. The framework constituting the discretion consists of organizational and social factors that the social secretaries needed to relate to. The discretion was perceived limited but constituted mainly a security in the complex work. / Kommunens socialtjänst har enligt socialtjänstlagen det yttersta ansvaret för kommunens medborgare, men detta riskeras på grund av den situation som råder inom socialtjänsten då socialsekreterare väljer andra yrken än myndighetsutövningen. Socialtjänstens arbete kan äventyras utifrån att det blir en hög arbetsbelastning för de socialsekreterare som arbetar kvar och att resurserna inte räcker till. Hur socialsekreterare upplever kontrollen i arbetet påverkar deras sätt att handla och hantera sin arbetssituation och den upplevda kontrollen kan utgöras av ett handlingsutrymme. Syftet med studien var att undersöka hur socialsekreterare upplever sin arbetssituation. Studien genomfördes utifrån en kvalitativ metod och bestod av intervjuer av fem socialsekreterare som arbetar inom samma kommun. Det framkom av den kvalitativa innehållsanalysen att socialsekreterares arbetssituation kan upplevas som komplicerad och att socialsekreterare tenderar att ”hamna i kläm” utifrån sin position mellan organisationen och klienten. Slutsatsen av studien visar att socialsekreterarnas arbetssituation präglas av frustration, dels från klient och dels från socialsekreterarnas egen frustration i att känna sig begränsad i sin roll som gräsrotsbyråkrat. Ramen som utgör handlingsutrymmet består av organisatoriska och sociala faktorer som socialsekreterarna behövde förhålla sig till i arbetet. Handlingsutrymmet upplevdes begränsat men utgjorde till största del en trygghet i det komplicerade arbetet.

The purpose of our study is to examine whether social welfare secretaries experience obstacles in work to do their tasks in a way that they, from their own values, thinks is right. And if so, what are the reactions and what strategies do they use to manage this. The study is based on a qualitative method. The data consist of interviews, with five social welfare secretaries, which all work in southern Sweden. The social welfare secretaries both work at a children- and youth department and at a social allowance department. The interview guide was constructed in relation to the essays main purpose, which consists of three main themes (obstacles, reactions and strategies). Previous researches that are made are based on nurses and their employment that often focusing on ethical decisions that results in moral stress. We have found one study that is focused on moral stress among social welfare secretaries. The result of our study showed that the social welfare secretaries we interviewed experienced obstacles in work to do their tasks in a way that they, from their own values, thought were right. The obstacles that the social worker secretaries experienced were the Law, the lack of time and the economy. The result of our study also showed that the social welfare secretaries reacted in different ways when they experienced the obstacles. The social worker secretaries in our study reacted with anxiety, negative stress- symptom and anger/frustration. The social welfare secretaries in the study also told us about what strategies they used to handle situations when they experienced obstacles in work to do their tasks in a way that they, from their own values thought were right. Some of these strategies the social welfare secretaries used were communication, displacement to the Law, loyalty and experience (which we construed as a strategy in a longer time of view).

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on January 30, 2007) Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

There are an increasing number of unaccompanied children coming to Sweden. Sweden is one of the countries in the world that receive many of them. This awoke my interest to investigate the assessment of financial assistance and “other living expenses” considering unaccompanied children. My approach was a qualitative study including interviewing five social secretaries working in five different districts in Malmö. Theories used to analyze collected data were: organization theory, bureaucracy school, decision making and cognition and Sence of Coherence. Eight themes were identified: briefing profession, knowledge, values, the individual needs in centrum, assessment of "other living expenses", Malmö City Guidelines, Framework as working tool and finally labour division. These together increase our understanding of the assessment of financial assistance.The result of my study shows that three factors contribute to the assessment of financial support. 1) Social Service law which is a frame law. 2) The national and local rule tools that complement the law. 3) The social secretaries personal view of the law, frameworks and unaccompanied children. The social workers did not have an internal or external education about the unaccompanied children’s situation or the child perspective. They rather took personal responsibility to help them.

This survey presents views of department store officials on what they expect from their employees in an effort to improve the training of stenographers and secretaries.

The study described the development of a standardized, normed, content-valid machine transcription test which could be used to evaluate the ability of secretarial applicants to type a mailable copy of a business letter from a dictated tape recording. The test was based on a thorough job analysis and was pretested using a pilot study with job incumbents to confirm its feasibility. Normative data were developed from 50 job applicants. Interrater reliability was statistically significant (r = .85, p <..05). The test was adopted for use at the headquarters office of a major oil and gas producing company.

This thesis consists of three studies on corporate governance issues of Chinese listed companies. In the first study, I investigate the role of board secretaries in management earnings forecasts. Individuals in this senior executive position are responsible for coordinating information disclosure. I find that their legal and accounting expertise and foreign experience help improve management earnings forecast quality. The quality of forecasts, as indicated by forecast occurrence, frequency, precision and accuracy, is positively associated with board secretaries' duality role and equity holdings, whereas it is negatively associated with their political connections. The quality of forecasts is found to increase the compensation of board secretaries. Finally, I show that the equity holdings of board secretaries reduce litigation risks and increase corporate philanthropic giving. Based on the notion that women cooperate more with women than with men, my second study examines the gender interaction effect between female top managers and female board directors in Chinese firms. I show that this gender interaction is positively associated with the firm's accounting return but negatively associated with its stock price return. Earnings management, which can lead to overstated accounting numbers but unfavourable stock market reactions, partly explains the opposite results. Furthermore, I find that only the newly appointed female top managers engage in this earnings management. Overall, the findings suggest that the pressure on women to perform leads to 'women helping women', which is detrimental to shareholders' value. Women are underrepresented on corporate boards. By employing the large variation in socioeconomic development across provinces of China, the third study shows that the barriers to board gender diversity are deeply rooted in societal gender role attitudes. I find that corporate boards tend to be more gender diverse in a province where there is a smaller gender difference in educational achievement in STEM disciplines, where there is a stronger belief that women and men possess equal intrinsic abilities, or where female political leaders are present in the provincial government or communist party. However, I find little evidence that female labour force participation or childcare provision would affect board gender diversity. Collectively, the findings suggest that it is the gender equality attitudes rather than the supply of average female labour that contribute to gender-diverse corporate boards.

The aim of the study was to understand how the family home secretary reasons and thinks and how they express themselves in their actions towards the family home’s biological children. The method used is qualitative semi-structured interviews, involving six family home secretaries from four different municipalities. The results were analyzed with the help of two theories – the theory of grassroots bureaucracy and the sociology of childhood theory. From the collective views of all informants, the biological children’s attitude towards the family home mandate is considered important. However, participation from the biological children is limited. Education and guidance is directed solely towards the family home parents, without any active involvement from the biological children in these efforts. Some of the informants stress that they as professionals must be better at paying attention to the biological children than what prevails today. The collective results show that family home parents are expected to take great responsibility for their biological children as well as their participation and well-being within the family home mandate.

The master thesis deals with the application of state church policy to the Roman Catholic Church. First chapter describes the activity of state structures towards the church at the country-wide level. The period between 1948 and 1989 is covered in four subchapters.Second chapter deals with the individual subjects that participated in realization of the state church policy in South Bohemia, both from the side of state power and the church.

The dissertation concerns with the restrictions on the church life by the State of Czechoslovakia during the years of 1945-1989 with a special regard to restrictions on the celebration of liturgy in South Bohemian Region. Facts that have been gathered from the literature and primarily from the secretaries for the church affairs reports, that have been preserved in the archive funds of Regional National Committee and the South Bohemian Regional National Committee, prove convincingly that the state authorities imposed restrictions on life, pastoral ministry, and the church liturgical celebrations systematically.