Syftet med denna studie är att genom kvalitativ metod och utifrån ett lednings-perspektiv, urskilja viktiga faktorer för kommuner i arbetet med att implementera och långsiktigt vidmakthålla Lean som metod. Studien har genomförts i två svenska kommuner. Vi har undersökt varför och hur kommuner arbetar med Lean samt vad de hittills har uppnått. Totalt har sex semistrukturerade intervjuer utförts med nyckelpersoner som innehar en ledande- eller stödfunktion. Resultatet påvisar att införandet av Lean grundas i att kommunerna vill förbättra kvalitén för kunden, minska slöserier samt effektivisera organisationen för att kunna möta framtidens ökade efterfrågan. Deras huvudsakliga fokus finns på att skapa en Lean-kultur. De främsta verktygen som används är värdeflödes-kartläggning, visuell styrning genom förbättringstavlor samt 5S. Vissa verksamheter använder även PDCA-hjulet. Det som Lean-arbetet hittills genererat är att vissa arbetsuppgifter och processer har förändrats och resultatet har därmed blivit minskat slöseri. I ett fall har värdet för slutkunden ökat genom minskad väntetid. Studien påvisar följande faktorer som avgörande för att skapa ett långsiktigt Lean-arbete: fokus skall vara på att skapa värde för slutkund, verksamheten måste inneha god kunskap om metoden samt stödjande ledarskap måste finnas på alla nivåer. Lean måste dessutom anpassas till varje enskild verksamhet, fokus bör finnas på kultur istället för verktyg samt ha ett sunt förhållningssätt för att minska motstånd. / The purpose of this study is to with a qualitative method and from a management perspective, identify important factors for municipalities in their work with implementing and maintain a long-term Lean methodology. The study was conducted in two Swedish municipalities. We have studied why and how municipalities are working with Lean and what Lean so far generated in. A total of six semi-structured interviews were conducted with key-people who has a managing- or supporting function. The result found that the aim of introducing Lean in the municipalities is to improve the quality for the customer, reduce waste, and make the organization more efficient so that it can meet future increased demand. Their main focus is to create a Lean culture where Lean is a natural part of the daily work. The main tools used are 5S, value stream-mapping, visual control. Some departments also use the PDCA wheel. What Lean work so far generated in is that some tasks and processes have changed which resulted in a reduced waste. In one case has the value for the end customer increased by reducing waiting time. The study establishes the following factors as crucial to creating a long-term Lean work: focus must be on creating value for the end customer, the organization must possess a great knowledge of Lean as a method, and the leadership must at all levels be engaged and supportive. Lean must be adapted to each individual organization, the focus should be on culture rather than tools, and have a reliable approach to reduce any resistance.

The study examines medias impact on every day racism through Agenda Setting and Framing. Prior studies on the subject are either conducted from an American perspective, or are several years of age. In this study we highlight how todays media depicts our society and how it affects the concept of the world on an individual level. The study is a content analysis of the case study on the news stories “The hunt for the unregistered immigrants”, which have been analyzed through critical discourse analysis. It builds upon studies conducted by Löwander (1997) and Brune (2004) regarding ethnic groups in the Swedish society. The result of this study suggests that Swedish public service media, SR and SVT convey an image in which ethnic minority groups are of lower value than “the white norm” in Swedish society.

Women working in the Canadian Federal Public Service (CFPS) face complex issues and competing demands. However, despite challenges such as obtaining further education, managing home responsibilities, and dealing with workplace issues, some have also developed and managed successful careers. Problems highlighted within literature on career development for women relate to the nature of women’s lives with their many transitional points, in which personal and organizational factors inextricably intertwine. The purpose of this qualitative research study was to explore the career development and advancement of women towards and into entry executive level positions within the Canadian Federal Public Service (CFPS). Three research questions guided this inquiry: 1) How have personal factors influenced career development and advancement of women in the CFPS towards and into pre-executive and entry executive levels? 2) How have organizational factors influenced their career development and advancement? and 3) How have personal and organizational factors combined to influence their career development and advancement? This research was grounded in a social constructivist paradigm which guided the research both ontologically and epistemologically. Schwandt (1994) contends that “objective knowledge and truth is a result of perspective. Knowledge and truth are created, not discovered” (p. 125). The inquiry attempted, therefore, to understand women’s complex career development processes from a holistic perspective through their career life stories. Ten women at the pre-executive or entry executive level from various departments within the CFPS took part in the study. Data collection was carried out mainly through a series of three semi-structured interviews. The findings of the study describe how participants’ personal dispositions, formal education, and home lives (personal factors) influenced their career development and advancement. In addition, it was found that the organization’s culture of long hours, its support for learning, participants’ organizational networks, and superiors’ contributions (organizational factors) also influenced women’s careers. This study contributes to our understanding of women’s career development, thereby providing important insights for future research. The study may have implications for CFPS policymakers, career counsellors, universities responsible for educating future career counsellors, as well as for individual women themselves, and perhaps even men.

Contemporary scholars have been studying audiovisual translation for the past twenty years. However, health communication has never yet been included as a part of the audiovisual material under discussion. The goal of this thesis is to create Russian subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing from the original English version of The Three Amigos, a series of PSAs (Public service announcements) regarding the prevention of HIV/AIDS, and to analyse and discuss the theoretical and practical aspects of this work. After analysing the current situation on HIV/AIDS in Russia and Belarus, I use this series entitled The Three Amigos as an example of health communication that works, and therefore, should be accessible to more viewers. The thesis is organised into three chapters. Following a general introduction, Chapter 1 discusses health communication, presents statistics on HIV/AIDS in Russia and Belarus, and provides an example of health communication that fulfills its functions – public service announcements on HIV/AIDS prevention in the form of The Three Amigos. Chapter 2 discusses the necessity of subtitling for the target audience, and emphasises the fact that people with hearing impairment need special subtitles that differ from the ones that are suitable for viewers without hearing impairment. Chapter 3 contains the analysis of the subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing that I created for this project. Finally, the conclusion summarises the findings of this research, and addresses possible directions for future projects on this topic.

This study of public service reform examined how the Liberal BC government attempted to convince public servants to adopt private sector-type work values (referred to in this study as contemporary values). To accomplish this goal, government top advisers designed a change management program for senior managers known as Public Service Renewal. The research problem was framed as a special case of change management to investigate what until now have been unanswered questions on the adoption of new, contemporary work values in the public service. The study asked questions about the government’s reform strategies, change management processes, rhetorical tactics, and the extent to which values currently held by public servants reflected new public service work values promoted by the BC government. The main findings of this study are that BC’s senior public servants hold strong traditional Westminster-based values concerning public servants’ commitment to serve the public good, be respectful of the government of the day, behave responsibly and be willing to be held accountable and above all, take pride in public service integrity. The value profile of senior public service managers presented in this study shows these traditional values to be relatively robust as there was only minimal adoption of contemporary values. The study also highlights the important role played by socio-demographic variables in determining public servants’ orientation towards their work values. There were significant value differences between men and women, between managers who worked in social and land ministries and between managers older and younger than 45 years of age. Other value differences were found between managers engaged at the (senior) strategic levels in the organization and those who ranked lower in the hierarchy, and between managers who have been with the government for more than 15.5 years and those who have lesser seniority. The research further established empirical support for the construct of contemporary values and suggests that traditional values may be weakening, presumably as the result of the latest wave of public sector reform known as the New Public Management. Based on these key findings this study concludes that the BC government’s effort to encourage the public service to adopt contemporary work values did not succeed. Several factors contributed to this lack of success including the normative perspective of the New Public Management which holds the unproven view that private sector management principles create a more effective and efficient public service. Other contributing factors included incoming politicians wary of the public service, inconsistencies between rhetoric and reality, fragmentation and ultimate demise of the original vision of Public Service Renewal, shortcomings of the implementation process, and the persistence of traditional public sector work values.

In 2006, the BC Public Service published the first of a series of corporate human resource plans entitled “Being the Best”. One of the key goals of these plans is to improve employee engagement at the BC Public Service. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is used to uncover the ideas and assumptions that underlie the employee engagement construct at the BC Public Service as well as better understand the influence these beliefs have on power relationships within the organization. Because there is a paucity of critical literature specifically focused on employee engagement discourse, the critical discourse analysis considers the broader discourse of human resource management. The analysis reveals that values and assumptions associated with the discourse of New Public Management (NPM) are woven into and across the texts. Three themes emerge from the analysis: transformational change is necessary and there is only one ‘right’ way to solve the crisis; the public servant identity is reshaped around the entrepreneurial spirit; and the organizational culture is redefined to align with NPM values. The effect of this discourse is to maintain and intensify managerial control over front line employees. / Graduate

Radio är en av många plattformar och arenor där offentlig debatt kan äga rum. Och just som medium når radio ut till en stor mängd människor. Med den bredden kommer även ett stort ansvar. Ett ansvar, inte minst för kanalerna på Sveriges radio, för att förse medborgarna med korrekt information så att publiken kan skapa egna uppfattningar om samhälleliga fenomen och problem. Med detta i ryggen tycker vi att det är både intressant och relevant att kika närmare på Sveriges radio, och specifikt på programmet P1 Debatt. Vi har valt att kolla hur genusrepresentationen ser ut på P1 Debatt. Syftet med studien är att se rent konkret hur genusrepresentationen ser ut i stort. Även att undersöka om det finns något mönster av typiska könsroller som yttrar sig i de olika avsnitten samt i vilka roller män respektive kvinnor har som medverkar i programmet. Vi har valt att utföra analysen genom en kvantitativ innehållsanalys. Materialet vi har undersökt täcker nio avsnitt som är två timmar långa vardera. Analysenheterna som vi har analyserat består av repliker. Alltså blir varje gång någon har börjat tala eller uppträda en ny analysenhet. Resultatet av genusrepresentationen har visat sig vara jämn, det om man endast räknar det totala antalet män respektive kvinnor som har medverkat i programmet. Men när man bryter ut avsnitt för avsnitt kan man se stora skillnader i könsfördelningen. Alltså kan P1 Debatt se jämställt ut vid första anblick men går man in på djupet så får man en helt annan bild.

The existing literature on philanthropic effort during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has taken a number of different approaches to the subject. These include general works charting the development of the charitable sector, the exploration of voluntary organisations as a subsidiary topic to broader themes and regional studies adopting a range of perspectives. Most research in this latter category has been conducted on large towns and cities that generally have copious amounts of source material. In contrast, lesser provincial towns have received relatively little scholarly attention, despite the more manageable nature of their documentation. The aim of this thesis is to explore the growth of charitable organisations within Macclesfield, an East Cheshire industrial town that was dominated by the silk industry. This study concentrates on the period from 1750 to 1900, when the silk industry was dominant within the town and philanthropic activity was at its height. The town?s silk manufacturers were renowned for their charitable work and thus this research focuses on the extent to which this occupational group was critical in the development of Macclesfield?s voluntary institutions, the motives that lay behind their contributions, and their achievements. In order to see whether their involvement was typical of other businessmen, comparisons are drawn throughout with the charitable activities of contemporary entrepreneurs in a variety of urban settings.This study investigates the silk manufacturers? participation in Macclesfield?s voluntary institutions in the fields of religion, education, public services and public amenities, together with any additional charitable acts. The evidence from all these areas suggests that in most cases the silk manufacturers were heavily involved in funding and managing these institutions. Their obvious motives reflected altruistic, religious and educational beliefs, but there were also a variety of other concerns that could have been contributory in determining their support for particular institutions. The primary achievement of Macclesfield?s voluntary sector was to provide a network of services that, in conjunction with later state initiatives, improved living standards for inhabitants by the end of the nineteenth century.This thesis gives an insight into the development of charitable institutions in a medium sized industrial town and demonstrates how one group of businessmen were able to dominate this field. Many silk manufacturers were generous in their support of charitable causes in Macclesfield, but the scale of their support did not match that of some other notable philanthropic families, such as the Crossleys of Halifax. The charitable work of the silk manufacturers appeared to be broadly similar to that of entrepreneurs in other small and medium sized industrial towns where they could form a dominant occupational group in public life. In larger towns and cities, this strong manufacturer influence was less evident and a greater range of other people contributed significantly to philanthropic institutions. This type of approach supplements the existing material on philanthropic effort during the long nineteenth century and overlaps a number of related subject areas, such as urban ?lite activity and the growth of the welfare state.

No description available.

Thesis (M.S.)--Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, 1997. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 2725. Typescript. Abstract precedes thesis as preliminary leaves [1-2]. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 30-31).