Tourism destinations are implementing policies based on global sustainability agreements. Countries are taking different approaches to fulfilling their sustainability goals. Collaboration was considered an important ingredient to implementing policies and achieving targets. The city of Uppsala in Sweden has been awarded most sustainable city and recognized for its collaboration efforts. In this study I evaluated the collaboration both within public and private organisations. The research was designed as an inductive and qualitative case study. Data was collected by interviewing 12 organisations and analyzing 7 documents. To evaluate the intra- organisational relationship of the municipality, documents were analysed. Timeline of policy development and implementation was compared to Gary’s Collaboration theory (1989) and Selin’s Strategic Bridging (1995). Results indicate that Uppsala’s municipal government (MO) has successfully developed sustainability policies with strong collaboration. This is especially the case intra-organisation. However, most of these partnerships were collaborative in nature with larger organisations. Smaller businesses with more direct contact with the tourists are not having their problems effectively addressed. This was the case with marketing material and information sites. This leads us to believe that Uppsala has the common characteristics of trust, commitment and communication with the larger players in tourism; but not the smaller ones. Furthermore, this study indicates that collaboration efforts are more different in cities; factors such as resources availability and economic contribution of organisations affect the strength of the partnership.

Abstract In the last years the refugee inflows towards Europe was striking, particularly in 2015 approximately 1 million refugees crossed the European borders, among the refugee population there were many children, amid those children there were also a special category; the unaccompanied children. The topic of this work is based on the highlighted issue of the unaccompanied minors in Greece. I present the context and the humanitarian response of the Greek refugee crisis including the humanitarian action which aimed to cover the unaccompanied minors needs. Moreover, I tried to identify the figure of the unaccompanied minor in Greece after 2015 and I examine the humanitarian response through the humanitarian governance concept and the Agambenian “bare life” theory. I conclude that humanitarianism as it is structured reduces the unaccompanied minors in “bare life” while the “bios” the political life is excluded. Key words: unaccompanied minor, Greece, humanitarian action, bare life, humanitarian governance, humanitarianism

Innovation has been widely discussed as being extremely important for our drive towards the attainment of the sustainable development goals. This is because, as embed in its definition, sustainable development requires that we shift away from business as usual to find new ways of doing things, that take into consideration the preservation of the three pillars of sustainable development; the economic, social and ecological pillars. Since the publication of the Brundtland Report, there have been more focus, both in terms of research and policy, on the economic and ecological pillars of sustainability than on the social pillar.  The thesis carried out a research to determine how Jonkoping Municipalit is working to achieve the sustainable development goals, taking into perspective, the three pillars of sustainability: the ecological, economic, and social pillars. The research found that, even though the Municipality is working with all the goals and dimensions of sustainable development, more progress has been made with the ecological and economic dimensions than the social dimension. Using the Quadruple Helix Model of Innovation Cooperation, this research examines what kind of social innovations that are taking place within Jonkoping Municipality that are tailored for the attainment of the sustainable development goals located within the social pillar of sustainability, and who are kind of actors and activities involved. The research finds that there are some social innovations going within the municipality that are specifically geared towards the 2030 agenda.

In Sweden the healthcare sector is the profession with the highest amount of sick leave. There is also an ongoing trend of work-related health issues and high staff turnover in this sector, which includes the elderly care. Hence, it is important to develop working conditions that supports job satisfaction among coworkers. One way to work towards a higher level of job satisfaction within coworkers is to increase their motivation at work. For this to be realized, leaders play a crucial part. The purpose of this study was therefore to examine how leaders within the elderly care work with motivation to foster job satisfaction among their coworkers. The question of interest was which work methods leaders use to foster motivation among coworkers. The study was conducted using a qualitative method where the data was collected through semi-structured interviews. The sample consisted of eight unit managers from two different municipalities. The results showed that there were several work methods that the unit managers frequently used in their work to foster motivation among their coworkers. These were; systematic efforts, feedback, self-determination, participation, operational leadership, building relationships and trust. Of these, feedback, participation and building relationships were identified as the most important work methods. Furthermore, the result showed a distinction within the perception on operational leadership.

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COVID-19 have caused a global pandemic that has taken the lives of millions. This studyexamines factors that contribute or inhibit its contagious nature. It is considered for the analysisfeatures of three groups: air pollutants, meteorological measurements and human mobilityindices. The research analyses the relationship between those features and the mortality ofCOVID-19 measured by daily excess of deaths between March 19, 2020 to July 20, 2020 (120observations). The results reveal air pollutants such as PM2.5, PM10 and CO have statisticallysignificantly positive relationship with excess of deaths. Additionally, meteorological variableslike temperature, solar radiation and relative humidity are negatively correlated to Coronavirusmortality. In consequence, it should be noted that cold and dry weather favors COVID-19lethality, while solar radiation in high degree, diminish it. Moreover, it was found that humanmobility is positively linearly correlated with excess of deaths. It is worth to mention that allthe dependencies anlysed, depicted delayed effects along 25 days lag represented by highrelative risk of excess of deaths in upper or lower extremes of the factors. Finally, the machinelearning algorithm, gradient boosting machine, reported the best accuracy on predicting theexcess of mortality shifted backwards 25 days (exposure to death period) from theaforementioned factors. The model depicted as the most important variable to google mobilityindex, explaining 75% of the variance and its marginal effect on the mean response indicatesif quarantine was maintained more than twice less people would die from COVID-19.

This qualitative study investigates the complex relation between wind power developments and municipal decision-making in two Swedish project cases. The study is investigating why the municipalities have changed their attitude towards the developments and thus used their veto-right to stop it. The two cases have been identified by the research company Westander. They recently published a report, commissioned by The Swedish Energy Association, showing that 78% of all planned wind turbines in 2021 got rejected by the municipal veto. The cases are Tönshult, in the Municipality of Hultsfred, and Skottfjället, in the Municipality of Munkedal. The resulting courses of events are discussed in relation to municipal decision-making. The purpose is thus to highlight possible influencing factors on the decision. The complex relation between local resistance and decision-making is thus forming the discussion of the study. The theoretical framework begins with a conceptualization of three main topics, which are: Public choice, Social acceptance, and Attitudes. These theories are forming the literature review and the topic of decision-making in municipalities. Local politicians have the power to make decisions that should be in harmony with the public interest. However, the relation between locals and politicians are complex, which can be seen as subjective attitudes are involved in the decision-making. The results show that local politicians decided to change their attitude toward the development as there were too many perceived negative consequences of it. The results of the study indicate that municipal decisions get effected by local resistance. The decision is affected in a direct way by locals opposing it, and in an indirect way as locals change the subject of the debate to the development. Both ways risk undermining the purpose of the municipal veto. The usage of the veto is supposed to be a way for municipalities to secure that their land is used for its intended purpose. The political statements and media coverage expressed in relation to the decision shows thus that the veto is not being used for this purpose. Instead, other arguments can be seen in the discussion, and in the political explanations behind decisions. That is the resulting interpretation of the political statements and other media coverage, in relation to the decision. However, it is difficult to establish any specific conclusion as clear interviews with decision-makers would have been required.

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