Detta är en fallstudie om personalinflytande på en förskola. Studien belyser vad som möjliggör och vad som förhindrar personalens inflytande i verksamheten. Behovet av kunskap inom detta område är kopplad till frågan om hur tillitsbaserade former, för styrning av de offentliga verksamheterna, ska kunna utvecklas. Inflytande förstås holistiskt som ett sammansatt fenomen som uttrycks i mötet mellan subjektiv vilja och objektiva omständigheter – mellan individuell agens och kollektiva processer. Den metodik som utvecklades för att studera inflytande utifrån dessa premisser utgick från ett verksamhetsteoretiskt och marxistiskt ramverk med en fältstudie som innefattade både observationer av verksamheten likväl som intervjuer med personal och ledning. Resultatet pekar på att resursbrist och instabilitet på en övergripande organisationsnivå dominerar verksamheten på den lokala nivån och utrycker bristande inflytande ur både personalens och ledningens horisonter. Denna brist på inflytande tolkas som ett resultat av hierarkiska organisationsformer som lägger ansvar för övergripande problem på lägre organisatoriska nivåer. Arbetet med att hantera problem på den lokala nivån leder till dilemman mellan personalens möjligheter till egen kontroll och ledningens möjlighet till rationell övergripande resursfördelning. Personalinflytande ses uttryckas i arbetsledande insatser som hanterar akuta problem samt i personalens egna förhållningssätt som innebär ett avvisande av övergripande ansvar och prioritering som lägger fokus på barnen. / This is a case study on employee participation in a preschool. The study explores how employee participation is enabled or prevented in the workplace. A need for knowledge in this area is linked to the question of how trust-based forms for management can be developed in the public sector. Participation is understood as a holistic phenomenon that is expressed in the convergence between subjective will and objective circumstances – between individual agency and collective processes. The methodology of the study was based on activity theory and Marxism – with a field study that included both observations as well as interviews with preschool staff and management. The result highlights how a lack of resources and an instability at an overall organizational level dominates the activities at the local level and expresses a fatal lack of participation from both the staff's and management's point of view. This lack of participation is interpreted as a result of hierarchical organizational structure that place responsibility for overall problems on lower organizational levels. The efforts of dealing with problems at the local level leads to dilemmas between the staff's ability to self-organize and the management's ability to rationally distribute recourses on an overall level. Employee participation is seen to be expressed in cases when work management handles urgent problems and, in the staff’s, own ways of handling the situation that implies a rejection of overall responsibility and a prioritization that enables a focus on children’s needs.

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The term Community of Practice (CoP) is often used rather loosely to describe many types of instructional settings that support more constructivist or social learning settings. This study differentiates CoP from other learning communities with greater discipline in defining CoP, as characterized by sustained self-organization for example. Such a CoP sits quite apart from the typical intent of instructional settings. The literature on intentional CoP suggests that the greatest challenges are a sense of interdependence among CoP members, the authenticity of the practice or purpose, and a trajectory for the CoP's future. The purpose of this case study was to attend to these issues with an online initiative to nurture CoP among practicing teachers in a reading-specialist, graduate program. For the course under study, learners engaged only in cooperative projects with the support of a community worksite (Sakai). Throughout the term, the worksite was promoted as a community place independent of the course and program, a place where they could continue to share indefinitely; and they were encouraged to think of what formal and informal activities the system could support, and how. The study explored how participants responded verbally and behaviorally to the community worksite and the other technologies employed to better support their group work and sharing of knowledge in general. The group's technical skills, competing cultures and practices, and the level of authenticity were all significant challenges. The study's findings challenge the application of this learning theory at the course level of academics, and they inform future design of online support for intentional CoP. / Ph. D.

Syftet med studien var att få ökad förståelse och kunskap om smugglingsbrottsligheten i Sverige. Vi studerade likheter och skillnader gällande nivå och utveckling av anmälda smugglingsbrott samt varor som smugglades i Stockholms kommun, Göteborgs kommun och Malmö kommun mellan år 2016-2023. Vi studerade även myndighetsdokument för att förstå vilka faktorer som enligt dem inverkade på smugglingsbrottsligheten i Sverige. Studien kombinerade beskrivande statistik över anmälda brott med en tematisk innehållsanalys av myndighetsdokument. Att dra tydliga slutsatser angående anmälda smugglingsbrott var komplext då smuggling är ett brott där anmälningar påverkades av myndigheternas satsningar. Trots detta fann vi likheter och skillnader mellan kommunerna där narkotika och en hög nivå av anmälda brott i Malmö var de mest dominerande dragen. Vår tolkning av de svenska myndigheternas dokument var att de ansåg att kontroller och geografisk plats hade en central betydelse för smugglingsbrottsligheten. / The purpose of the study was to gain increased understanding and knowledge of smuggling crimes in Sweden. We examined the similarities and differences in the level and development of reported smuggling crimes, as well as the types of goods smuggled, in the municipalities of Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö between 2016 and 2023. We also analyzed government documents to understand which factors, according to them, influenced smuggling crime in Sweden. The study combined descriptive statistics on reported crimes with a thematic content analysis of government documents. Drawing clear conclusions regarding reported smuggling crimes was complex, as smuggling is a crime where reports are influenced by government efforts. Despite this, we found similarities and differences between the municipalities, with drugs and a high level of reported crimes in Malmö being the most dominant features. Our interpretation of the Swedish government documents was that they considered controls and geographical location to be of central importance for smuggling crime.

Syftet med denna fallstudie har varit att, med hänsyn till rådande försämrat säkerhetsläge, granska hur anställda inom försvarsindustrin beskriver företags brottsutsatthet. Vidare har syftet varit att diskutera hur brottsutsattheten kan förklaras utifrån kriminologisk teori. Detta har gjorts med semistrukturerade intervjuer, där anställda inom försvarsindustrin varit intervjudeltagare. Intervjudatan relaterades sedan till rutinaktivitetsteorin samt strainteorin. Av studiens huvudresultat har det framgått att anställda på företag i försvarsindustrin upplevde att företagens brottsutsatthet i huvudsak bestod av verkstadsstölder, cyberbrott, IP-intrång samt otillåten informationsspridning. Denna brottsutsatthet kunde förklaras av rutinaktivitetsteorin i vissa fall, samt i kombination med strain i andra fall. Brottsutsattheten upplevdes ha ökat i samband med att landets säkerhetsläge försämrades samt det huvudsakliga företaget expanderade personellt. Studiens viktigaste slutsatser var att brottsutsattheten i stort upplevdes ha ökat gällande samtliga ovan nämnda brott, men att orsaken till ökningen skiljde sig åt och att endast för cyberbrott upplevdes det föreligga ett samband med säkerhetsläget. / This case study examined how defense industry employees perceive crimes against their companies, in the context of a deteriorating security situation. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with employees, and the data was analyzed in relation to routine activity theory and strain theory. The main findings show that employees perceived the companies' exposure to crime mainly as a result of workshop thefts, cybercrime, IP infringement, and unauthorized dissemination of information. This crime exposure can be explained by routine activity theory in some cases and strain theory in others. The crime exposure increased as the country's security situation deteriorated and the main company expanded its personnel. The most important conclusions of the study were that crime exposure was generally perceived to have increased for all the above-mentioned crimes, but that the reason for the increase differed and that only for cybercrime was there perceived to be a connection with the security situation.

This thesis is a user study within library and information science on participatory practices of a professional group in work activity. This has been investigated only to a minor extent in previous library and information science research. The qualitative empirical focus alternates between physicians‟ engagements in work practice and workplace learning within patient care. The overall research problem was to learn how people in workplaces interacted with information that was embedded, intricately intertwined, and tightly bound to the ongoing routines of their everyday work. This thesis aims at understanding information practices of professionals in occupational settings as exemplified by a team of physicians in a Nigerian teaching hospital. In this thesis, the focus was on the collective work activity, and the specific goals identified include how physicians interact and make meaning in the context of the social activities in the workplace, how professionals individually or collectively gather, understand, produce, share and use information, and how workplace learning influences information practices. Information practices are viewed as sociocultural practices that occur inside other practices. The thesis focuses on a nuanced, contextualized understanding of the interplay between the participating actors in activity, the activity per se, and the intermediary role of tools and artefacts. The epistemological point of departure is the sociocultural perspective that emphasizes the dynamic interdependence of the individual with the social and collective development focusing on mediation through tools and artefacts in cultural, institutional, and historical situations. I have chosen cultural-historical activity theory and the practice theories to analyse the dynamic processes in the context of patient care. Their underlying principles guided the empirical study, facilitating extrapolations and illustrations in the analysis. The cultural-historical activity theory was used to understand contextual issues that influence information practices in work activity: the object and subject of activity, division of labour, rules and norms, community, tools and artefacts, as well as the activity system itself and the hierarchical structure of the activity. Theories and concepts employed from a practice perspective on learning were considered useful for understanding the participatory modes in workplace and the influence of social learning communities on diverse information processes. In so doing, the study strives to provide a holistic understanding of information practices, workplace learning, and the relationships between them.The empirical data was gathered through a qualitative case study that lasted over a period of two years. Direct observation was the dominant data collection technique 5 used throughout the preliminary and main empirical studies to capture physicians‟ information practices and experiences. The observation focused on the Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (CPT) team‟s encounters with patients; the interactions they had amongst themselves, and events and situations surrounding patient care. During the main study, other data collection techniques were employed alongside the observation method. In-depth open-ended interviews were conducted with 17 physicians and 9 non-physicians who were selected to provide rich and varied descriptions of the phenomena under study. The interview time totalled at 1,535 minutes. Physical artefacts were another data collection technique employed: 30 patients‟ medical records were assessed during the empirical study. Finally, informal interactions in the research setting were an additional data collection technique used continuously throughout the two empirical periods. The results were analyzed through a combination of inductive and deductive methods of analysis. There are four parts to the empirical results in this thesis. In the first, contextual elements that showed how work environment can be an influencing factor in the information practices of a professional group are described from the perspective of cultural historical activity theory. In the second part, the nature of information access in the real-world information environment was portrayed. It was found that information sources and strategies contributed to the overarching goal of restoring patient health to normalcy. The information sources and strategies were also found useful for mediating the information environment both subjectively and intersubjectively. An equally important result concerns the authority issues related to information sources and strategies. In the third part, available tools and artefacts were presented as useful information aids that also played a mediating role. Tools were categorised into physical tools and language. Language was categorized according to the social situations or classes of speakers. The case notes were seen as useful artefact and occupied a central niche in the studied work activity. These tools and artefacts enabled affordances around which social practices were built on in the work activities. In the last part of the results, various information practices that mirror the participatory practices rather than those of isolated individuals are highlighted. Six dimensions made up and covered the most vital spectrum of the information processing: information gathering, meaning making, information sharing, information use, reading, and documentation. Furthermore, the study revealed that learning took place simultaneously with the work activity and that it influenced information practices at the same time. / <p>Academic dissertation for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Library and Information Science at the University of Borås to be publicly defended on Friday 19 October 2012 at 13.00 in lecture room D 211, University of Borås, Allégatan 1, Borås.</p>

Organisational learning is conceptualised within healthcare policy as an acontextual entity to be implemented across services through a prescribed governance framework. Studies of organisational learning often exclude context in this way. The central questions of this thesis concern how and why context is relevant and important in relation to organisational learning. In order to address these issues, context and organisational learning were conceptualised as mutually constitutive activity and knowing-in-practice respectively. Taking a cultural-historical activity theoretical approach, learning is understood to be an intrinsic part of activity. These issues were explored empirically through qualitative case study in three purposively sampled Scottish primary care teams. Initial findings suggested collective learning occurred through participation in everyday activity. Team accounts of apparently the same routine object of work revealed distinctive patterns of activity. Each team seemed to be doing the same thing differently. Exploration of mediating means present in each teamâ s activity accounted for these differences: although similar on the surface, the attribution of meaning to each was contested and shaped through the cultural, historical and inherently contextual activity which they mediated within each activity system. Further analysis demonstrated members of each primary care team co-configured these objects with members of other interlinked activity systems. Different things were actually being done in similarly different ways. This showed how inherently contextual activities shaped the content of collective learning and offered an explanation of why context is relevant and important in collective learning. These findings suggest efforts to transfer knowledge as a discrete, manageable entity between situations are unlikely to succeed due to the filtering and translating effect of inherently contextual activity. From this perspective, organisational learning and related concepts such as â implementationâ and â best practiceâ become problematic. Healthcare policy concerning collective learning, within which such approaches are central, may benefit from reconsideration.