Social games have become popular on social media such as Facebook and MySpace. While there are plenty of market reports regarding social media, the related academic research is limited. This study applies Homans’ cost‐reward structure from Social Exchange Theory to investigate how social games change people’s social behavior on social media. The concepts of rewards are drawn from the gratifications of social media use, and the concepts of costs are drawn form the symptoms of media addiction. In a survey of 323 college students, participants’ perceived rewards and costs of Facebook use and game play are measured. The results indicate social game players perceived significantly higher costs of Facebook use than non‐players. In addition, costs of Facebook use and costs of game play also play important roles to influence social game players’ willingness to play more social games. Discussion and limitations are provided. / text

In a two-part study, dating sexual expectations will be evaluated and the sexual social exchange theory will be investigated in a date rape trial. In Part 1, participants (N = 100) will be presented with one of two fictional date scenarios that will differ only on the cost of the date (i.e., $30 or $175). Participants will then indicate what behaviors (sexual and not sexual) are appropriate at the end of a first date and then a fifth date. It is predicted that all participants will expect sexual intercourse more on the fifth date than the first, and that participants in the expensive date scenario will expect sexual intercourse more than participants in the inexpensive date condition. Part II will use the information gathered in Part I to investigate how sexual expectations in a dating scenario may manifest themselves as feelings of reciprocity in the sexual social exchange theory. In Part II participants (N = 160) will be presented with one of four trial summaries that differ depending on the cost of the date (i.e., $30 or $175) and the date number (i.e., first or fifth). Participants will render a verdict and then rate the defendant and alleged victim on various rating factors (e.g., credibility), in addition to completing the Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance scale, short form. It is predicted that there will be fewer guilty verdicts and lower pro-victim judgments for both men and women when the cost of the date was high and when the couple was on their fifth date. It is also predicted that men will render fewer guilty verdicts and report lower pro-victim attitudes than women. Juror rating subscales (e.g., victim credibility) and rape myth acceptance scores are predicted to mediate the effects of the cost of date and date number on verdict. The results will be discussed in terms of how the sexual social exchange theory can explain juror perceptions in a date rape trial.

Sjukvårdsorganisationer står inför stora utmaningar när andelen äldre i befolkningen ökar. Undersköterskor inom äldreomsorgen är en yrkeskategori som det ställs höga krav på eftersom de står för huvuddelen av den praktiska patientvården. Sjukskrivningarna ökar och ur ett nationellt perspektiv sticker Västsverige ut med särskilt höga sjukskrivningstal. Syftet med föreliggande studie var att få en djupare förståelse för undersköterskors subjektiva upplevelser av arbetslivet inom kommunal äldreomsorg. En kvalitativ fenomenologisk metod med tematisk analys tillämpades med semistrukturerade intervjuer som datainsamlingsmetod. Tio undersköterskor från en kommun i regionen deltog. Intervjuerna transkriberades och kodades. I resultatet utkristalliserades tre teman och åtta underteman/kategorier: Arbetsuppgifter (praktiska arbetsuppgifter, sociala arbetsuppgifter, osynliga arbetsuppgifter), Organisering (formell organisation, informell organisation, omorganisation), och Välbefinnande (ökar välbefinnandet samt minskar välbefinnandet). De socialpsykologiska teoretiska utgångspunkter som ligger till grund för analysen är social utbytesteori samt gruppsykologi. Resultaten visade att upplevelser av arbetslivet till stor del präglas av sociala relationer, både inom arbetsgruppen och mellan vårdtagare - undersköterska. Själva arbetsuppgifterna var mindre framträdande när det kom till meningsskapandet kring vad som upplevs påverka välbefinnandet i yrkeslivet. / Healthcare organizations face great demands as the proportion of the elderly is increasing. Assistant nurses account for the majority of practical patient care and as a result, they are experiencing negative working conditions. As a consequence, the Western region in Sweden especially, is dealing with high levels of sick-leaves. The aim of the present study was therefore to gain a deeper understanding of assistant nurses’ experiences of working conditions. Qualitative phenomenological method together with semi-structured interviews was adopted. Ten assistant nurses in one municipality participated. The interviews were transcribed and coded based on qualitative thematic analysis. Three themes and eight thematic categories emerged: Working tasks (practical working tasks, social working tasks, invisible tasks), Organization (formal organization, informal organization, re-organisation), and Well-being (increasing well-being, decreasing wellbeing). The social psychological theories underlying the theoretical part of the analysis were Social Exchange Theory and Group Psychology. The result showed that experiences of working conditions to a large extent were connected to social relations, both within the working group and between healthcare providers and care-recipients. Working tasks were less prominent as far as the creation of meaning about what affects well-being within the profession.

En stor andel av alla sjukskrivningar i Sverige beror på psykisk ohälsa. Kvinnor inom kontaktyrken löper störst risk att drabbas. Konflikter på arbetsplatsen är en anledning till psykisk ohälsa. Syftet med denna kvalitativa studie är att undersöka hur kvinnliga undersköterskor upplever konflikter i arbetsgrupp utifrån fyra perspektiv: arbetsgrupp, genus, makt och socialt utbyte. Med hjälp av semistrukturerade intervjuer har vi intervjuat tio undersköterskor i en mindre ort i Västra Götaland. Resultatet visar att informanterna upplever att konflikter har en negativ inverkan på undersköterskornas arbetssituation. Informanterna upplever även att konflikter uppstår på grund av olika personlighetstyper som inte harmoniserar med varandra, olika arbetssätt samt undvikande från arbetsuppgifter. Majoriteten av informanterna upplever att de agerar på ett medlande eller undvikande sätt i konflikter. De upplever även att konflikternas uttryckssätt beror på genusstrukturer. Exempelvis upplever informanterna att de hellre väljer att prata bakom ryggen på varandra än att reda ut konflikterna. De upplever att det är ett genusrelaterat beteende att prata bakom ryggen på varandra. Informanterna vittnar även om upplevelsen att det lätt uppstår en maktobalans bland nyanställd personal och mer etablerad personal. Slutligen visar studien resultat att informanterna upplever att chefens beteende är av stor vikt för personalens välmående. Sammanfattningsvis tyder resultaten på att undersköterskornas konflikter på arbetsplatsen är komplexa och kan te sig på olika sätt. Att konflikterna är varierande i sin uttrycksform kan bero på att det är en kvinnodominerad arbetsplats med en hög arbetsbelastning. / A majority of the individuals on sick leave in Sweden is due to mental illness and women working in healthcare is at high risk. A common reason due to psychological health related sickness is conflicts in the workplace. The purpose of this qualitative study is to examine female enrolled nurse’s experiences of conflicts in workgroups. Four perspectives are taken in to account – work group, gender, power and social exchange theory. The empirical samplings were collected via semi-structured interviews with ten enrolled nurses attending from a smaller city in the Västra Götaland region. The result shows that conflicts have a negative impact regarding the workplace situation in general. The conflicts arise due to differences in personality type, different approaches to how to get the job done and also evading of work duties. The result also show that a majority of the informants consider their conflict management strategies characterized by meddling or avoiding. They also consider the conflicts means of expression originating from gender structures. For example, the informants prefer to talk behind each other’s backs rather than solve the conflicts immediately. They consider this originating from gender related behavior. Further on a power imbalance tend to occur between enrolled nurses who is newly hired and/or with less professional experience and those who has a lot of professional experience and has been at the workplace for a longer time. The head manager’s behavior toward conflicts is of great importance regarding the enrolled nurse’s wellbeing in the workplace. In summary the results show that the conflicts in the workplace is complex and appear differently. A reason behind this could be the fact that the enrolled nurse’s work place is both female dominated and characterized by a heavy workload.

International joint ventures (IJV) are frequently stated to be increasingly popular but with significant managerial dissatisfactions in their operations. Severe failure rates of IJVs is distinguished in previous literature, between 30-70 percent eventually end up in failure. Prior research suggests that the management aspect of inter-partner relationships is limited. There is also limits in research regarding the factors impacting how to manage inter-partner relationship and how it relates to IJV performance. The theory used for this study is an integrated framework of social exchange theory (SET) and transaction cost economics (TCE). These theories acquire two sets of mechanisms on how to manage inter-partner relationship and its impact on IJV performance: (1) social mechanisms of trust, communication, and cultural adaptation, and (2) structural mechanisms of ownership control, contract, balanced asset specificity and resource complementarity. The framework is tested empirically using interviews as data collection from five Swedish companies involved in an IJV with partners headquartered in Europe, Asia, and Africa. The outcome of this study suggests that a majority of the mechanisms impact on how to manage an inter-partner relationship and also provide to enhance IJV performance. The most influencing factors on inter-partner management and IJV performance are trust, communication, contract and resource complementarity. We also identified interesting results regarding the interaction between the social and structural mechanisms in relation to management and IJV performance.

Tourism social networking sites (SNSs) are websites that provide users with templates for describing their travel experiences and an infrastructure to share such travel posts with a network of like-minded individuals. Tourism SNSs represent an important advertising channel for the tourism industry, as they may assist travelers in selecting destinations and planning vacations on the basis of other travelers’ experiences, which may further stimulate travel and generate income for the tourism industry (Yazdanifard & Yee, 2014). User-generated content (UGC) in the form of travel posts is the core offering and key success factor of tourism SNSs. Travel posts constitute a valuable resource that attracts users to these websites, and they serve as a key data feed into the data mining process that is used to develop travel products on tourism SNSs. However, one problem with tourism SNSs is that their users, especially the new ones, do not publish their travel experiences on these SNSs as often as they do on traditional SNSs, such as Facebook. This may result in a lack of content and, therefore, a loss of potential consumers and, consequently, revenue. Therefore, a study on self-disclosure behavior in writing travel posts may contribute to understanding the reasons why this problem exists and help tourism SNSs improve their service accordingly. The author used multiple theoretical perspectives (social exchange theory and social cognition theory) to develop a comprehensive self-disclosure framework. The framework was tested by using a partial least squares based structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) approach with data from 443 participants recruited from the two most popular Chinese tourism SNSs: Qyer.com and mafengwo.cn. The findings show that self-disclosure behavior on tourism SNSs was significantly affected by self-benefit, positive feedback from other users, social benefits, rewards, tourism SNSs’ security mechanism, and ease of use. However, habit and motive did not have a statistically significant effect on self-disclosure behavior. Moreover, self-disclosure behavior positively affected electronic word of mouth (EWOM) relating to the tourism SNSs. Finally, the findings have theoretical and practical implications, and the thesis ends with a discussion of the limitations of this study and suggestions for future research.

Globala virtuella team är arbetsgrupper som jobbar mot gemensamma mål och där merparten av kommunikationen sker virtuellt. Dessa team kännetecknas av att förtroende är viktigt för att de ska fungera effektivt och att de ofta används för att utbyta kunskap. Uppsatsen utforskar hur förtroende och kunskapsutbyte förhåller sig till varandra i globala virtuella team. För att genomföra det har olika konceptualiseringar av förtroende och kunskapsutbyte studerats: generellt förtroende och snabbt förtroende samt uttrycklig kunskap och tyst kunskap. Detta har studerats genom semi-strukturerade intervjuer med respondenter som ingår i globala virtuella team. Resultatet i studien indikerar att generellt förtroende och kunskapsutbyte har stor betydelse för varandra. Vidare indikerar resultatet att snabbt förtroende har betydelse för i vilken utsträckning kunskapsutbyte delas och att det finns betydande svårigheter att dela tyst kunskap i globala virtuella team, vilket kan leda till bristande generellt förtroende.

To keep in mind while reading and focus of the thesis: -       Sustainable tourism, what is it and who is it for?  -       How can the tourist industry affect cultures?  -       Why do some hosting population fear culture losses but happily receive tourists?  -       Why do people choose to travel?  -       What and how can I as an individual contribute?    The numbers of international tourists are steadily increasing along globalization, which makes it an important phenomenon to highlight. The tourist industry contributes to global development, which would preferably be done through sustainability’s three pillars: economically, socially, and environmentally. Sustainable development and eco-tourism are the main fields for this research. Based on the wish to avoid disturbing peace and harming people, the topic is relevant to investigate. The field study aims to explore and understand the correlations between the development of the tourist industry and the Maasai communities.    Different stakeholders were defined within the tourist industry, to collect various perspectives on this matter through semi-structured interviews and field observations. I choose to investigate the topic by focusing on the world known ethnic group Maasai´s. By centering the conditions of a village based in Siana conservancy, which is located next to Maasai Mara in Kenya. The village consists of habitats who practice traditional and culture settlements. Thus, the interest of the study is to explore and explain why Maasai cannot be viewed as an homogenic ethnic group, with the aim to reduce assumptions.    Social Exchange Theory (SET) was applied as a lens to analyze the findings. To discuss possible reasonings when calculating expected outcomes made by the stakeholders, whether to socially interact based on the key principles in the theory: evaluating profits versus costs before socially engaging.    The findings identify complications with the social exchange that the tourist industry implies. However, the Maasai´s culture based on livestock came to be a central topic from the stakeholder’s perspectives while I was processing and writing the findings. Furthermore, other topics that were highlighted were: education, equity, and education. Lastly, the village members shared a significant fear regarding culture loss, even though they welcomed the root cause of it to continue and even expand - tourism.

Sexual harassment is common in the workplace and leads to negative outcomes for individuals and organizations. Previous research has shown that turnover is a negative outcome of sexual harassment. Organizations can implement policies and procedures, but little research exists examining the impact of these policies on employee perceptions and intentions. Thus, the aim of this study is to examine perceived enforcement of organizational policies and procedures as a moderator of the relationship between sexual harassment and turnover intentions. Social exchange theory is used to explain this concept between women from male-dominated professions and gender-balanced professions. Participants were 66 employed females from different industries. A series of regressions and ANOVAs indicated that sexual harassment and turnover intentions had significant results. Future research directions and limitations are discussed.

The rapid and to some extent uncontrolled tourism expansion in Bali is likely to have major impacts on the island and its residents. Tourism development in Bali is a top priority for economic growth and is the main economic sector on the island. Sustainable tourism has become an increasingly important and recognized topic due to tourism’s inherent nature to generate both positive and negative economic, socio-cultural and environmental impacts. Sustainable tourism development is about striking a balance between meeting the needs of local communities, satisfying tourist demand and protecting the natural environment. Residents of host communities are seen as a vital component of the tourism experience as they are the first to interact with tourists. The residents' perceptions are essential to assessing the feasibility of all types of development initiatives, as well as their perceptions are of great importance linked to their personal well-being. Social exchange theory (SET) and triple bottom line (TBL) were used as theoretical frameworks to fulfil the purpose of this study. The study aimed to create an understanding of how residents in Bali experienced the island’s tourism development, and whether and how it differed between residents of the two different destinations: Ubud and Canggu. By examining Bali residents' perceptions of tourism on the island, a small contribution can be made to tourism research from a resident-centric perspective. In turn, this can contribute to subjective indications concerning tourism that are likely to be important in a developing island context. The results showed that the perceived economic benefits outweighed both the socio-cultural, and environmental perceived costs. This result can be interpreted as being due to the residents' strong dependency on tourism, where their vulnerability should be taken into account in sustainable tourism development.