This paper characterizes the need for a theory that links context to information through the behaviors rooted in cultural identity and social awareness. Based on hypermedia objects and four methods of social communication, I develop a framework for a theory of social linking. This theory assumes that social interaction is the plinth from which we communicate and argues that studies in human computer interaction and information retrieval require ongoing exploration of social communication.

Large infrastructure projects are seldom completed on time or on budget. Unlike many other projects of this type, the construction of the Øresund Bridge was considered to be a successful infrastructure project. Since no plan can foresee all events, deviations from plans arise, and these have to be managed as they appear during construction. How deviations are managed is of strategic importance. This dissertation investigates the ability of the contractor organization, constructing the Øresund Bridge, to manage deviations from prescribed requirements. Deviations can be detected and corrected through formal routines (ISO 9000, a quality standard), or informal groups (communities of practice). The findings show that deviations were managed through both communities of practice as well as through formal routines. The development of communities of practice was both impeded and enhanced by the built-in surveillance and disciplining processes embedded in ISO 9000, as well as the ability to communicate using rich media. The performance of the communities studied was variable, and moreover, it can be concluded that some communities of practice are more important than others. The implications of this dissertation is that when knowledge-based capability of managing deviations is included as a metric of project performance several actions could have been taken to enhance the management of deviations. / Diss. (sammanfattning) Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2002

This thesis is based on three empirical studies of the director interlock network among Swedish firms listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, focusing on its consequences for firm behavior and its association with ownership structures. Director interlocks are created when directors serve on, and hence interlock, several boards. Director interlocks aggregate to a social network that not only connects most firms into a single component, but are, more essentially, also shown to affect firm behavior. The introductory chapter contains a review of the director interlock research as well as some suggestions for future research directions. Study I is an examination of the importance of director interlock relations for stock repurchases. Using parametric survival analysis, it is demonstrated that the decision to repurchase stocks is dependent on both the firms’ economic settings and their director interlocks. Study II examines the network impact on recruitment of new board members in the network of firms, directors, and owners. Using simulations, it is shown that directors with personal contact with a director and/or owner of the recruiting firm have a substantially increased probability of being recruited to the focal board. Study III examines the association between ownership and director interlocks. Re-analyses of the same network examined in Study II show that multiple director assignments are highly dependent on ownership interlocks. The three studies exemplify the real-world consequences of board interlocks and field a new understanding of the mechanisms behind their formation. Furthermore, the association between the director and ownership interlocks suggests that the ownership network (co-)produces some of the phenomena that have been attributed to the director network. These results underscore the need for further examination of director interlocks to bring the owners back into the analysis. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 3: Manuscript.</p>

Entrepreneurship is an important part of every country‟s economy. With the recent flow of migration to many countries, immigrant entrepreneurs have received interest from both societal and economical scholars to measure the effect they create on the home country economically or demographically. In Sweden as well as in other European countries, the rate of migration increases significantly. Upon migrating to Sweden, immigrants enters the labor market but difficulties in integrating into the labor market drive immigrants toward self-employment and thus becoming immigrant entrepreneurs.A nationality which has a long history of migration to Sweden and account for a considerable proportion of immigrants coming to Sweden every year are the Thai, but there is little research on this group of immigrants. The purpose of the study is to find out how Thai entrepreneurs use social capital in starting their business venture in Sweden. In the theoretical chapter, entrepreneurship and immigrant entrepreneurs are first defined, then the relationship between networking and entrepreneurship is discussed, followed by a section on social capital and its relationship with immigrant entrepreneurs. The literature suggests that entrepreneurs usually go through 3 stages of venture creation: idea generation, resource acquisition and market organization. With the help of social capital through their social network, entrepreneurs retrieve benefit from their network members in several aspects throughout these stages.We conducted a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews with seven Thai entrepreneurs in Sweden who work in food, health-care, retail and lodging businesses. Both the business network and the ethnic network, in this case Thai network, have important roles when Thai entrepreneurs develop new business ventures. Social capital assists the entrepreneurs in solving the difficulties faced during establishment process, such as labor, taxation and legitimacy. In addition, social capital enables the entrepreneurs in information and resource acquisition, word of mouth advertisement and business registration. Further, family members and spouses are found to be significantly important for Thai entrepreneurs in Sweden as a source of labor, capital and business partners. / Master thesis 15p spring term 2010

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Title: Constructing identity on Facebook.com – A qualitative ethnographyNumber of pages: 40 (34)Author: Clara LindholmTutor: Amelie HössjerCourse: Media and communications studies CPeriod: HT (Autumn) 2009University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of InformationScience, Uppsala University.Purpose/Aim: The purpose is to study how the social community Facebook.com canbe used in order to construct identity. The study follows three Facebook users in anobservation where they are able to document their thoughts and reflections in anprivate media diary. This study investigates their use of the medium and focuses onthe functions with which they are able to alter their profiles. The result consists of acombination of these reflections, interviews and a selection of literature relevant tothe subject of new media, the use of social internet communities and social sciencetheories. The social theories are a selection of theories from the social scientist ErvingGoffman.Material/Method: This study is based on a qualitative research method and anethnographic method. The ethnography is a combination of an observation where theobserved are asked to keep a diary over the changes and updates they make on theirFacebook profiles. The ethnographic method further consists of selected literature andpersonal interviews. Finally the results are analyzed and presented.Main results: The three people in this study admit to being worried about uploadingpersonal information on the community Facebook. Still they found the socialcommunity Facebook as something positive which they all use several times per weekand in some cases daily. The conclusion shows that there is an uncertaintysurrounding the ethics of the use of Facebook when it comes to the differencebetween private and public and how to handle the personal information of others.Also it is concluded that an important part of the construction of identity on Facebookprofiles is the activity of deleting information whilst trying to uphold an image thatgoes along with the person’s percepted role in the society.Keywords: Facebook, social network, community, ethnography, Digital identity,Web 2.0

The conception of exhaustion was first used in the end of 1960 and was then used in a psychological context directed towards the working life. Eventually was the conception devided into two main categories: mental and somatic symtoms. Today research of exhaustion is mainly aiming towards recovering and returning to working life. This work sets out to analyse the importance and effects of social networks such as family, friends and professional relations in helping people who suffer from exhaustion to recover. The study is based on interviews with eith people who have suffered from exhaustion but today are recovered. To my aid I have used tree different questions: What part have the social network of family and friends ment to the recovery? What part has the professional relationships with doctors, therapists and curators ment to the recovery? How have you changed your life in order to maintain balance? The interviews pointed out the importance of the social relationships as support, feedback and understanding that the process takes time. Courses in handeling stress had a vital part in order to learn how to manage stress, meet people with similar problems and the guidace of professionals. An important issue to maintain health and to keep the life balanced is consious present and to learn to do one thing at a time. The content of the examination has showed me that it is important to set your own boundaries and not to compare to others. It is also importent to take control over your own choices which is not easy to handle in todays stressed socity.

Coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) föregås av en väntetid som kan vara påfrestande för patienten i och med att en hjärtkärlsjukdom är ett livshotande tillstånd. Effektivi-sering inom sjukvården har lett till förhållandevis korta vårdtider efter detta ingrepp. Med tanke på den relativt långa rehabiliteringsfas som följer läggs mycket av ansvaret för återhämtningen på patient och dennes närstående i hemmet. Syftet med studien var att belysa det sociala stödet och dess betydelse för patienten i samband med en CABG-operation. Studien genomfördes som en litteraturstudie. Resultatet visade att socialt stöd hade en positiv effekt på välbefinnan-det för patienter i samband med CABG-operation. Socialt stöd gavs i olika grad i form av emotionellt, informativt eller instrumentellt stöd, av sjuksköterska och närstående. De närstående utgjorde den viktigaste källan till stödet. Vissa patientgrupper hade större behov av socialt stöd än andra. Sjuksköterskan bör vara medveten om dessa utsatta grupper och försöka tillgodose deras behov av utökat stöd. Vidare forskning bör göras för att se hur detta utökade stöd bör utformas för att ge bäst effekt.

This thesis assessed responses toward rape against women as experienced by the victims and victim supporters in the context of the interaction between victims, supporters, and formal agencies in Tanzania. The overall research design was based on triangulation with a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. A semi-qualitative study, in which free listings and semi-structured questionnaires were used, explored social reactions from 44 community nurses and 50 rape victims (Paper I). A tool developed from this first study was utilized for collecting data on people’s attitudes and their behavior toward rape and rape victims from a representative community sample of 1505 men and women aged 18-65 years (Paper II). Both studies helped to access suitable rape victims and supporters who participated in the third study to share experiences on the process of rape disclosure to formal and informal social networks (Papers III and IV). The results highlighted the salient social reactions and how rape victims perceived the impact of these reactions. Half of the participants interpreted rape situations based on social relationships, circumstances, and social status of the woman, rather than the legal definition. Two-thirds of the adults explained they would express negative social reactions toward a victim in some rape scenarios, and this correlated with their attitudes towards rape and rape victims. A variety of barriers in the informal and formal networks with potentially negative impacts on rape reporting, service utilization and, health outcomes were identified. In conclusion, successful interventions aimed at improving people’s response to rape, rape disclosure and, health outcomes in Tanzania should assume a holistic approach to address the negative factors identified at the individual, family and, community levels without forgetting the normative context that appears to underlie most decisions and practice.

In the wake of deinstitutionalization, people with psychiatric disabilities are, to a great extent, living in the community. In this thesis everyday life of people with psychiatric disabilities, living in independent housing with community-based social support to manage their daily life, is investigated. Special attention is paid to the characteristics and meaning of community-based social support. Through participating observational studies, interviews and time-geographic diaries, data have been gathered about everyday life of seventeen men and women. It is the interpersonal social conditions that have been the main target of the study, addressed as social networks and social support. Everyday life conditions are dependent on social as well as physical and material circumstances. Although the social conditions are emphasized in the study they are not looked upon as isolated dimensions but as part of everyday life circumstances. The everyday life perspective offers an opportunity to reveal the structures within which everyday life takes place. The time-geographic concepts “community-organized projects” and “individual-organized projects” were used to investigate the structures of everyday life, resulting in four substructures. Four types of everyday life and four patterns of networks connected to the different substructures were identified, showing great variations. The characteristics of community-based social support can be summarized as “the doing”, “the talking” and “the being with” in a reciprocal type of relationship. The meaning of support is shortly described as solution of and relieving problems, social companionship, security, protection and control. Community-based social support show similar importance regardless of the type of everyday life when it comes to solution of problems and different importance when it comes to aspects of support such as social companionship.