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Adults’ (parents’) sensitivity and awareness of their children’s issues and thoughts are important in order to answer their children. There is a need to investigate how parents try to find an appropriate strategy to answer their children’s life questions. The research question of the current study is how parents answer their children’s ‘difficult’ questions. The data set has been collected using semi-structured interviews and audio taping of ten participants with different backgrounds. The data set has been thematized as ‘responsive’, ‘avoiding’ and ‘dominant’ answers using thematic analysis in order to analyze the interviewees’ stories and investigate how they use different strategies of answering their children’s questions. The results show that almost all of the parents try to be responsive about their children’s life questions. Furthermore, it is shown that some of the parenting’s styles of answering could be included in more than one category of answering style, for example parents try to be responsive and meanwhile intended to avoid answering.

The aim of present study was to create greater understanding and knowledge of how an organization, in practice, can achieve robust but at the same time change friendly processes, while maintaining or increasing customer value. The following research questions were answered: How can an organization, in practice, create a common understanding of their actual present situation in terms of robustness and change kindness in their processes? How can an organization, in practice, identify and prioritize areas for improvement that leads to robust but at the same time change friendly processes? The study design was a qualitative case study where a model was tested to examine the research questions. The model is built up on identified customer value, flow mapping extended with narrative networks, and a workshop with problem solving in groups. Results and conclusions showed how an organization in practice could work with the model RobustChange.

Sustainable development most prominently entered the global political arena in 1987 in a report from the United Nations Commission on Environment and Development, also known as the Brundtland report. In response to the concept of sustainable development, a vast array of ideas, concepts, methods and tools to aid organizations and governments in addressing the socio-ecological problems has been developed. Though helpful in many contexts, the multitude of such support also risks creating confusion, not the least since there is no generally endorsed overriding and operational definition of sustainability. Thus, there is a growing need for such a definition and for an understanding of how these ideas, concepts, methods and tools relate to sustainability and to each other. A framework for strategic sustainable development (FSSD) has been developed over the last 20 years to create such a unifying structure. The aim of this research is to contribute specifically to the social sustainability definition of this framework. The research follows the Design Research Methodology. First, the social dimension of the FSSD as it stands currently was examined and described as was the general field of social sustainability. Then, a new approach to the social side of the FSSD was created. The studies revealed that the field of social sustainability, in general, is vastly under-theorized and under-developed, and that a clear framework is important and desired. They also laid out in which ways specifically the structure of the FSSD could be used to further develop the social dimension of strategic planning and innovation, and that currently this aspect of the FSSD is relatively under-developed. This assessment was followed by a first attempt at a clearer definition of social sustainability. Based on these explorations, this research suggests five principles as a hypothesis to be used as a definition of social sustainability, the key-terms of which being ’integrity’, ‘influence’, ‘competence’, ‘impartiality’ and ‘meaning’. For validity purposes the results were cross-checked with other approaches and theories. The validity check shows that similar key-terms have been found by other researchers. In conclusion, this research contributes with a hypothesis for a clearer definition of social sustainability, which is general enough to be applied irrespective of spatial and temporal constraints, but concrete enough to guide decision-making. This is a contribution to systems science in the sustainability field and it is a step to creating an enhanced support for strategic planning and innovation for sustainability. Further testing and refinement of this theoretical foundation, and bringing it into practical use, will be the subject of the continued studies.

Causal philosophy is very closely linked with development theories. Though there may not be standard agreement on what causes development or non-development, the topic is often discussed at great debate. In this paper I explore the link between these two ideas from a broader perspective. I focus less on the details of researchers before me and try to instead identify the process of how development authors use causal theories in their language by performing a discourse analysis. This study is important because it allows readers to take another view on theories of development—in this case Modernization and Post-Development—by making connections to other theories they may not have otherwise investigated. The research does not intend to establish any concrete conclusions, and in fact does not manage to do so, but does open up some interesting doors on questioning the pre-conceived relationships between (un)conscious thought frameworks and developmental values.

Children with special educational needs (CSEN) are exceptional learners. They are not handicapped, but merely living with a disability of one kind or the other. Handicaps are the disadvantages faced when society does not enable them to fulfil their lives. Idioms such as children are the future generation or the leaders of tomorrow are common and overly used today, hence the need for greater and more nuanced effort in preparing them for future responsibilities. Implementing education services for children with special education needs in Zambia comes with challenges. The predicament of diversity among various learners in Zambia is evident as the results of this study illustrate. The lack of a child database, nature of disability and distance from school, apt learning materials and choice of school placement are some of the issues educationalists and parents have to deal with in making education participation possible for exceptional learners. Informed by the transformative philosophy and the theory of Social Inclusion, this qualitative desk study has been carried out purposefully to examine the factors hindering the implementation of services for CSEN at all levels of their education and / but more specifically, beyond their primary schooling. In the paper, the use of content and thematic analysis has enabled the author to understand the identified views emerging from the study which have then been classified and arranged according to themes. The themes, based on the findings are further analysed through the lens of Amartya Sen’s Human Development and Capability Approach. The findings of the study indicate that education implementation dilemmas in Zambia are multi-dimensional. Hence, the argument presented here is that building the capacities of children by providing arange of educational opportunities and choices opens doors to many other necessaries of life such as employment. Using the Human Development and Capability Approach as a tool for analysis, the paper evaluates  the functioning of the education system, the well-being of children and how they fit into the social arrangements of society. Put simply, the process of social inclusion is introduced and highlighted as a significant process in the overall development of CSEN.

Climate change and the sea level rise that it contributes to is an ever more pressing issue for costal municipalities around the world. Today there is a great deal of scientific reports and projections on what these changes could entail. However, resent studies on south Swedish costal municipalities have shown great discrepancies when it comes to how these scientific projections are implemented in the municipal planning and adaptation strategies. In an effort to understand the underlying reasons for this lack of concurrence, this paper has applied Rolf Lidskogs theory of the hetrogenity of science. The theory gives an explanation to the complications in the science-policy interface, by describing complicating factors in the communication between these actors. Furthermore this paper present one alternative on how these complications can be addressed, by using another one of Lidskogs theories, the theory of boundary organizations. This theory presents a framework on how science-based policy and policy-relevant science can be produced more efficiently through boundary organizations and the implementation of portable representation.  This study shows that it would be beneficial to most actors involved with adaptation strategies if permanent boundary organizations were established. Boundary organizations would create a forum for science and policy actors to interact and enable a greater understanding and communication between the different actors involved in defining, understanding and combating these challenges.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the possible barriers to why the implementation of gender equality policies in the everyday activities on the ground of humanitarian action is not evident in practice. To investigate this arena, in-depth interviews were conducted with gender advisors of humanitarian organisations. The data was analysed using thematic analysis through the lens of the theoretical framework of systems theory and the concept of `knowledge into practice’. The findings indicate that there are three types of barriers on three dimensions for the implementation of gender equality policies on the ground of humanitarian action. The first barrier is the lack of external and internal pressure on the humanitarian community in form of accountability mechanisms. The second barrier is the internal structure of the humanitarian community with internal difficulties to integrate the gender community as well as fragmentation within it. The third barrier is the lack of a suitable semantic as well as operational understanding of the concept of gender within humanitarian action.This thesis highlights the importance of a common language and receptive attitudes between humanitarian actors for the practical implementation of gender equality policies. Key words: gender equality, gender equality policies, gender equality programming, knowledge transmission, knowledge implementation, barriers, humanitarian action.

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