The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how the research library of Linnæus University is used by students as a meeting place. Building upon Putnam's theory of bonding and bridging social capital and Audunson's conception of high and low intensive meeting places, it aims to explore the research library's potential for creating social capital and thus strengthening both learning and democracy in a university context. Borrowing part of the survey design from a study conducted as part of the Norwegian PLACE project, this study collects responses from 134 students as to their use of the library as a meeting place. The results show that the Linnæus University library is used for a variety of meetings of both high and low intensity, why it should provide a good setting for the creation of social capital. There seems to be a connection between how often one visits the library, as well as to which department one belongs, and how one uses the library as a meeting place. The thesis concludes that the research library may aid the creation of social capital and that emphasizing this role would benefit both learning and democracy.

The meeting industry is a growing industry around the world, and the technological development in recent decades is one of the contributing factors to the increased travel opportunities and meeting industry's expansion. It can be assumed that the technology could replace some of the personal meetings, but humans have always had a need to meet in physical locations in work related purposes, therefore there is no evidence that personal meetings will disappear. Technological development should be seen as complementary rather than a substitute to the existing professional meetings. Public and private sectors within countries has drawn attention to meeting industry's potential, as favored destinations in terms of economic administration, image creation, expansion and acquisition of further market share in the global market. Meeting industry is complex precisely because there are so many different actors and stakeholders that integrate. For a destination to differentiate them and excel in the increasingly global world needed an elaborate marketing plan and effective cooperation between the various actors at the destination. Usually the largest professional meetings takes place in cities where there is capacity to receive large numbers of visitors. Essential elements for sustainable meeting industry are mutually dependent network relationships with strong organizational skills, and are of primary importance to a functioning whole. Among the various meeting actors, Convention Bureau occupy key role as the representative, the primary aim is to market the destination, display options, and finally bring together stakeholders with meeting participants. Lack of a Convention Bureau inhibit communication between meeting participants and stakeholders, also weakened the meeting related image because of incomplete representation.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, many companies have been forced to make their employees work from home, fully distributed. One of the work aspects affected by this change is meetings. The purpose of this study is to investigate what effects the fully distributed context have on meetings, meeting participants, and meeting leaders. To achieve this purpose, a qualitative single-case study was conducted. The empirical data were gathered from 15 interviews with employees at a large information and communications technology company in Linköping, Sweden. The theoretical framework including the fully distributed context, leadership, motivation, and attitudes, behaviors, and norms is the foundation for the analytical model used to analyze the empirical data. For meetings, it was found that the number of meetings has increased, meetings without fixed end times get longer, meetings need clear agendas and structures, and that meetings are booked in a tighter sequence without room for breaks. Using cameras during meetings increases participation but not if there are many meeting participants or when someone starts sharing their screen. It was found that inter-office meetings work better in the fully distributed context. Discussions are fewer and less lively in fully distributed meetings, but virtual fika1 is a kind of informal meeting that can help employees feel more connected and maintain interpersonal relations. For meeting participants, it was found that the fully distributed context has enabled participants to not be seen during meetings, to multitask more, to go on walks during meetings, and to attend more meetings. Fully distributed meetings offer participants more flexibility in meeting attendance but are also more difficult for participants to stay focused during. The perceived social pressure from the surrounding often determines how participants behave in meetings, for example if participants turn on their cameras or not. For meeting leaders, it was found that, contrary to the literature, meeting participants’ behavior affect the motivation of the meeting leader. Meeting participants' multitasking during meetings is considered positive for productivity but makes meeting leaders feel insecure as participants seem to listen less. Cameras can offer supportive feedback as the meeting leader can see the participants reactions, but it only works in smaller meetings. Fully distributed meetings demand more of meeting leaders who need to work harder to structure the meetings, force discussions, aim questions, and keep participants active. The results implicate that meeting leaders should set agendas for and structure meetings, implement breaks between meetings, and start meetings with some informal conversations. Moreover, meeting leaders should turn on their cameras in smaller meetings without screen sharing and aim questions at specific participants instead of posing open questions. At the end of this report, a number of suggestions for future studies on the topic of fully distributed meetings are proposed. 1Fika is Swedish for taking a break and sharing a cup of coffee or tea with friends or colleagues possibly, but not necessarily, with a little something to eat.

Bakgrund. Möten utgör en essentiell funktion för organisationer och är avgörande för genomförandet av arbete. Arbetstid spenderad i möten ökar och möten utgör en stor kostnad för företag. Till följd av covid-19 pandemins framfart har organisationer skiftat till att bedriva möten virtuellt. Denna övergång lyfter frågan huruvida övergången har påverkat hur möten bedrivs, samt hur deltagarna vid virtuella möten upplever effektiviteten.  Syfte. Föreliggande studie syftar till att undersöka hur övergången till virtuella möten har påverkat möjligheten att bedriva effektiva möten. Studien beaktar rutiner och strävar efter att explorativt undersöka den virtuella övergången och vilken effekt den har haft på mötesrutiner.  Metod. Studien är genomförd genom utförandet av intervjuer, observationer, samt granskning av dokument. Totalt genomfördes 11 intervjuer och 4 observationer. Insamlad empiri analyserades genom en innehållsanalys. Kategorier identifierades utifrån empiri där stycken från empirin blev inplacerade.  Resultat. Studiens resultat tyder på att övergången till virtuella möten kan påverkan möteseffektiviteten. Studien har uppmärksammat 16 kategorier som kan påverka möteseffektiviteten. Dessa är: antal deltagare, punktlighet, agenda, dialoger, miljö, förberedelser, prioritering, mötesmedium, förändring, känsla, relation, deltagande, inbjudan till möte, mötesledare, mötesprotokoll, och multitasking. Vidare noterar studien att rutiner i koppling till nämnda kategorier förändrats.  Slutsatser. Studien presenterar fyra övergripande slutsatser. En övergång till virtuella möten indikerar på att: tid spenderad i möten ökar; det blir upp till deltagarna själva att skapa optimala mötesförhållanden; fokus minskar hos mötesdeltagarna; lokala och globala relationer kan påverkas negativt respektive positivt. / Background. Meetings are an essential function of organizations and are crucial to the execution of work. Time spent in meetings is increasing and meetings represent a large cost for companies. As a result of the covid-19 pandemic, organizations have shifted to conducting meetings virtually. This transition raises the question of whether the transition has affected how meetings are conducted, as well as how participants in virtual meetings experience the effectiveness of meetings. Objectives. The study aims to investigate how the transition to virtual meetings has affected the ability to conduct effective meetings. The study pays attention to routines and strives to exploratively examine the virtual transition and what effect it has had on meeting routines.  Methods. The study is carried out through the execution of interviews, observations, and review of documents. A total of 11 interviews and 4 observations were conducted. Collected empirical evidence was analysed through a content analysis. Categories were identified based on empirical evidence, where pieces from the empirical evidence were fitted.  Results. The study's results indicate that the transition to virtual meetings can affect meeting efficiency. The study has drawn attention to 16 categories that can affect meeting efficiency. These are: number of participants, punctuality, agenda, dialogues, environment, preparation, prioritization, meeting medium, change, emotions, relationships, participation, invitation to meeting, meeting leader, meeting minutes, and multitasking. Furthermore, the study notes that routines in connection with the mentioned categories have changed.  Conclusions. The study presents four overall conclusions. A shift to virtual meetings indicates that: time spent in meetings increases; it is up to the participants themselves to create optimal meeting conditions; the focus of the meeting participants decreases; local and global relations can be affected negatively and positively respectively.

More than 35 years ago, calls were made for research on the constitutive role of accounting. Since then, many statements have been made to specify what accounting is or is not. This study describes what accounting does, in order to amalgamate a fragmented picture of accounting in practice, instead of seeking the answer to the existential question of what accounting really is. The purpose of this study was to investigate and describe what accounting does, and how this is done on the basis of business meetings in order to contribute to a better understanding of the role of accounting in practice.This study is based on the actor-network theory approach. Particular attention hasbeen paid to accounting as named numbers, when becoming a performative participantin framed situations. The framed situations of business meetings contained three elements; 1) pure calculation, 2) qualculation which include both calculation and judgments, and 3) calqulation as a collective social process. An ethnographically inspired field studywas carried out at Eton Fashion AB, a Swedish shirt making company. Data was collected by participant observations of business meetings supported by interviews. Photography, sound recording, and field notes were used as techniques for documentation.Diagnoses of five business meetings revealed that; 1) accounting restricted time,place and content, 2) accounting brought past and future into the present, 3) accounting summarized and obscured discontinuities, 4) accounting defined people and things, and 5) accounting called for the filling of content. Accounting became an actor in these five ways as they were allied with people and things that appeared in the meetings. Accounting was in a context where people made sense of situations by making both estimates and judgments. During the meetings, an ongoing reduction of complexity was taking place. Step by step, diversity and complexity were reduced until an order filled with numbers was the only thing remaining. At the same time, something was gained, as we step by step achieved greater legibility, transportability and universality. In this way the situation could subsist. It might move to new situations and it might allow for new summaries and new situations to take place. The situation of a meeting contained elements of pure calculation representing the cold, anonymous and empty part. Oftenthough, calculation, because of its emptiness, initiated for qualculation and calqulation to begin. Accounting as an idea is a taken for granted phenomenon, with influence, often far beyond what we can see when we find ourselves in a given situation. I conclude that it could have been some other way. It is not accounting in itself, its own excellence or ability to represent the truth, which makes it successful. The success story of accounting is simply about “the others” with whom accounting is an ally. / För avläggande av ekonomie doktorsexamen i företagsekonomi som med tillstånd av Handelshögskolans fakultetsnämnd vid Göteborgs universitet framlägges för offentlig granskning fredagen den 30 mars kl. 13.15 i CGsalen vid Företagsekonomiska institutionen, Vasagatan 1, Göteborg.

Bakgrund: Sjuksköterskor behöver möta närstående till personer som vårdas palliativt. Sjuksköterskan kan skapa meningsfulla relationer med närstående och använda denne som en resurs för patienten. Närståendestöd är en av hörnstenarna inom den palliativa vården. Sociala relationer är en av de 6 S:n som används vid personcentrerad palliativ vård, då närstående kan tillföra fler dimensioner till patientens livsberättelse. Syfte: Syftet med denna litteraturstudie var att beskriva sjuksköterskans erfarenheter av att möta närstående till patienter inom palliativ vård. Metod: Metoden var en litteraturöversikt där tolv vetenskapliga artiklar inkluderades. Artiklarna hämtades från databaserna CINAHL Complete och Pubmed och analyserades med hjälp av Fribergs analysmetod. Resultat: Två teman identifierades: yttre och inre förutsättningar för sjuksköterskan. Yttre förutsättningar för sjuksköterskan delades in subteman såsom tidens betydelse, vårdmiljöns inverkan och när närstående har en annan åsikt. I inre förutsättningar för sjuksköterskan framkom sjuksköterskans förmåga att involvera närstående, sjuksköterskans förmåga att utveckla sin kompetens i mötet med närstående, kommunikationens betydelse och förutsättningar att skapa teamarbete. Diskussion: Med de 6 S:n som teoretisk utgångspunkt har litteraturöversiktens resultat diskuterats utifrån bakgrund och annan relevant litteratur. Närstående behövs i vården kring patienten men det är inte alltid som närståendes vilja är densamma som patientens eller vårdgivarens. För att sjuksköterskan ska kunna använda närstående som en resurs krävs tydlig kommunikation och stöd från sjuksköterskan i arbetet mot ett gemensamt mål för palliativ vård. / Background: Nurses need to face next of kin to people who receive palliative care. The nurse can create meaningful relationships with the next of kin and can use them as a resource for the patient. Support for the next of kin is a cornerstone in palliative care. Social relations are one of the 6 S:s used for person-centered palliative care when next of kin can add more dimensions to the patient's life story. Aim: The purpose of this study was to describe nurses' experiences in meeting next of kin to patients in palliative care. Method: The method was a literature review where twelve scientific articles were included. Articles were taken from the databases CINAHL Complete and Pubmed and analyzed using analysis of Friberg. Results: Two themes were identified: external and internal conditions for the nurse. External conditions for the nurse divided into subthemes such as time significance, the care environment impact and when the next of kin has a different opinion. The internal conditions for the nurse came up as the nurse's ability to involve next of kin, nurses' ability to develop their skills in the meeting with next of kin, the importance of communication and the ability to create teamwork. Discussion: With the 6 S:s as a theoretical basis, this literature review has been discussed from the basis of the background and other relevant literature. Next of kin are needed in the health care around the patient but it is not a guarantee that the next of kin`s wishes is the same as the wishes of the patients or the caregivers. For the nurse to use next of kin as a resource it requires clear communication and support from the nurse in the work towards a common goal of palliative care.

Magistro baigiamojo darbo tikslas yra išanalizuoti ir įvertinti susirinkimų, pramogų draugijų, spaudos teisinio reguliavimo teorinius bei praktinius aspektus. Magistro baigiamojo darbo chronologinės ribos – 1918 – 1940 metai – visapusiškai sutampa su nepriklausomos Lietuvos valstybės gyvavimo laikotarpiu. Pirmojoje darbo dalyje laiko riba apima parlamentinį laikotarpį, kuomet šalyje buvo kuriamos ir plėtojamos spaudos, draugijų, susirinkimų ir pramogų laisvės, šių teisių reguliavimui buvo kuriama nacionalinė teisinė bazė. Antrojoje darbo dalyje analizuoju autoritarinių nuostatų įsigalėjimą šalies įstatymuose, o vėliau ir Konstitucijoje. Trečiojoje darbo dalyje nagrinėju nepaprastos padėties poveikį nagrinėjamoms laisvėms viso tarpukario laikotarpio metu. Parlamentinio valdymo laikotarpiu teisės aktuose spaudos, draugijų, susirinkimų ir pramogų konstitucinės laisvės buvo reguliuojamos atitinkamų įstatymų, kurie nustatė spaudai, draugijoms, susirinkimams ir pramogoms pareikštinę tvarką, galimybę piliečiams teisinėmis priemonėmis ginti savo teises ir neperžengiant įstatymo ribų naudotis konstitucijų suteiktomis garantijomis. Šalyje įsigalėjus autoritarinei prezidentinei santvarkai draugijų, spaudos, susirinkimų ir pramogų laisvės buvo reguliuojamos atitinkamų naujų įstatymų, kurie suteikė galimybę piliečiams naudotis konstitucijose numatytomis teisėmis ir laisvėmis tik gavus atitinkamus leidimus iš valdžios atstovų ar pareigūnų. Piliečiai neteko galimybės ginti savo teisių... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / The aim of Master's work is to analyze and evaluate the juridical adjustment of the meetings, entertainment, associations and the press by the theoretical and practical aspects. Chronological range - 1918 - 1940 year – is the independent Lithuania state lifetime. The first part of the work includes the parliamentary term, when the country created and developed the human rights, according to the national law. The second part of the work intended to analyze the authoritarian regulations in national law and eventually in the Constitution. In the third part I analyze the impact to the liberties of the state of emergency through all the inter-war period. During the parliamentary period the press, association and entertainment and meetings have been regulated by the relevant laws. Authorities were trying to create a legal means to defend human rights within the limits of the law to granted constitutional guarantees. Although the constitution declared the liberty of the press, meetings, association and entertainment, the legal regulation of these areas were established by law. When the country has entrenched the authoritarian presidential position the press, meetings, association and entertainment has been regulated by the new laws, which allowed the citizens to use their constitutional rights and freedoms only with appropriate permits from the government representatives or officials. Were denied the opportunity to defend citizen’s rights and the constitutional guarantees dependent... [to full text]

One of the main problems faced by automatic speech recognition is the variability of the testing conditions. This is due both to the acoustic conditions (different transmission channels, recording devices, noises etc.) and to the variability of speech across different speakers (i.e. due to different accents, coarticulation of phonemes and different vocal tract characteristics). Vocal tract length normalisation (VTLN) aims at normalising the acoustic signal, making it independent from the vocal tract length. This is done by a speaker specific warping of the frequency axis parameterised through a warping factor. In this thesis the application of VTLN to multiparty conversational speech was investigated focusing on the meeting domain. This is a challenging task showing a great variability of the speech acoustics both across different speakers and across time for a given speaker. VTL, the distance between the lips and the glottis, varies over time. We observed that the warping factors estimated using Maximum Likelihood seem to be context dependent: appearing to be influenced by the current conversational partner and being correlated with the behaviour of formant positions and the pitch. This is because VTL also influences the frequency of vibration of the vocal cords and thus the pitch. In this thesis we also investigated pitch-adaptive acoustic features with the goal of further improving the speaker normalisation provided by VTLN. We explored the use of acoustic features obtained using a pitch-adaptive analysis in combination with conventional features such as Mel frequency cepstral coefficients. These spectral representations were combined both at the acoustic feature level using heteroscedastic linear discriminant analysis (HLDA), and at the system level using ROVER. We evaluated this approach on a challenging large vocabulary speech recognition task: multiparty meeting transcription. We found that VTLN benefits the most from pitch-adaptive features. Our experiments also suggested that combining conventional and pitch-adaptive acoustic features using HLDA results in a consistent, significant decrease in the word error rate across all the tasks. Combining at the system level using ROVER resulted in a further significant improvement. Further experiments compared the use of pitch adaptive spectral representation with the adoption of a smoothed spectrogram for the extraction of cepstral coefficients. It was found that pitch adaptive spectral analysis, providing a representation which is less affected by pitch artefacts (especially for high pitched speakers), delivers features with an improved speaker independence. Furthermore this has also shown to be advantageous when HLDA is applied. The combination of a pitch adaptive spectral representation and VTLN based speaker normalisation in the context of LVCSR for multiparty conversational speech led to more speaker independent acoustic models improving the overall recognition performances.

It is of primary concern, both from the perspective of the individual and of society at large, to take measures to prevent the occurrence of a negative development amongst young people. The starting point of this dissertation is the notion that interpersonal interactions that occur between people contribute to a process of learning, thus focus is placed upon the pedagogic interactions between society's authorities and young people in trouble. How such interactions contribute to the process of learning regarding the young people, and what that learning entails, is seen as a vital pedagogic question. The overriding aim of the dissertation is to identify aspects of learning that occur during the interactions between society's authorities and young people in trouble, in order to contribute to an understanding of how such interactions can be developed in a constructive manner. The thesis is based on the theories of man as a social being, dependent on relationships and interaction for the process of knowledge. The empirical study includes interviews with teachers, social workers, police officers and young people. Vignettes have formed the basis of discussions about the measures and initiatives taken by society and the types of experience the young people feel the measures and initiatives have led to. Since an element of authority is a component of the relationship between the representatives of society and the young people, the concept of governmentality formulated by Foucault has been used in the process of analysis. Also von Wright's concepts of punctual and relational perspective have been used in this process. The purpose of this study is to attempt to determine what consequences the various perspectives taken in the interactions may lead to, in relation to the knowledge these young people develop about themselves and about society. The result shows that society's representatives among themselves have different views of young people in trouble. Young people's experiences of interactions with society's representatives argue for the fact that their backgrounds often direct the course of the interaction and its contents. Young people testify about irrelevant measures and initiatives taken by society; that they are subject to prejudice and that the principle of "equality before the law" is not observed. Their experience has led them to feel that they have less of human dignity. The dissertation ends up in a discussion about the prerequisites necessary, in order that pedagogic interactions between a person in authority and young people in difficulties may proceed from a relational perspective. The ability to take the young person's perspective would thereby be a central aspect in the discussion about what measures and initiatives taken by society are appropriate to change a troubled lifestyle.

Bakgrund: HIV upptäcktes i USA 1981. Troligtvis uppkom dock sjukdomen tidigare. HIV är ett virus som lagras i kroppens arvsmassa. I slutet av 2015 uppskattades 36,7 miljoner människor i världen leva med HIV. Söder om Sahara beräknas det vara ca 25,6 miljoner och i Sverige finns cirka 7000 personer som lever med HIV. Smittskyddslagen finns för att förhindra spridning av smittsamma sjukdomar och hälso- och sjukvårdslagen finns för att alla ska erhålla god hälsa och lika vård. För sjuksköterskeyrket finns en etisk kod som är framtagen av ICN (International Council of Nurses). Sjuksköterskor möter patienter med blodburna infektioner i sitt dagliga arbete vilket kan medföra vissa risker för sjuksköterskor. Syfte: Syftet var att undersöka sjuksköterskors och sjuksköterskestudenters upplevelser av att i vårdande situationer möta personer som lever med HIV. Metod: En litteraturöversikt med datainsamling från databaserna CINAHL Complete, PubMed och Nursing & Allied Health Database genomfördes. Resultatartiklarna bestod av både kvalitativa och kvantitativa studier. Resultat: Positiva upplevelser med utbildningsnivåns betydelse för sjuksköterskors attityder och ökad förståelse som underkategorier. Negativa upplevelser som uppkom med fyra underkategorier som utgjorde; rädsla för att bli smittad, stigmatisering, etisk stress och demografiska skillnader. Negativa upplevelser förekom främst relaterat till rädsla och resterande underkategorier kom som följd av dessa. Diskussion: Författarna har utifrån Katie Erikssons vårdvetenskapliga teori tillsammans med konsensusbegreppet vårdande diskuterat några specifika delar i översiktens resultat. Det som diskuterades var rädslor då detta var något övergripande. Annat resultat som diskuterades var stigmatisering samt utbildningsnivå men även ett resultat av genusaspekter som författarna fann intressant. / Background: HIV was discovered in the US in 1981 but the disease probably originated earlier. HIV is a virus that is stored in the body's genetic material. At the end of year 2015 it was estimated that 36.7 million people worldwide were living with HIV. In sub-Saharan Africa it is estimated to be approximately 25.6 million, while in Sweden there are about 7000 people living with HIV. Communicable diseases act (smittskyddslagen) is to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. Medical legislation (hälso och sjukvårdslagen) is for everyone to obtain good and equal healthcare. The nursing profession code of ethics by the International Council of Nurses (ICN) sets a direction for nurses work. Nurses encounter patients with blood-borne infections in their daily work which can entail certain risks for nurses. Aim: To examine nurses and nursing students experience regarding persons with HIV in caring situations.  Method: A literature review of data collection from databases CINAHL Complete, PubMed and Nursing & Allied Health Database. Results: Positive experiences with the importance of education level for nursing attitudes and increased understanding as subcategories. Negative experiences that occurred with four subcategories that constituted fear of becoming infected, stigmatization, ethical stress and demographic differences. Negative experiences were mainly related to fear and the remaining subcategories came as a result of these Discussion: The authors have based their discussion on Katie Eriksson consensus concept of caring. The authors have discussed some specific parts of the literature review results. The mainly discussion were fear of becoming infected, since it was slightly overall. Other results discussed was stigmatization and education level, but also a small profit of gender aspects that the authors found interesting.