En fråga som förr eller senare dyker upp i växande företag är beslutet om en introduktion på börsen ska genomföras eller inte och statistik visar på att antalet börsintroduktioner skiljer sig markant mellan olika länder. Tidigare forskning på vad som kan förklara dessa internationella skillnader är relativt begränsad och finns endast i en liten omfattning. Social tillit har visat sig vara viktigt i samhället och en bidragande orsak till att flera ekonomiska och sociala mål uppnås. Flertalet forskare har i sina studier kommit till slutsatsen att social tillit är positivt relaterat till ekonomisk tillväxt.   Det övergripande syftet med denna studie är att analysera vilka faktorer som påverkar graden av börsintroduktioner i ett land, med speciellt fokus på social tillit. Studien syftar till att öka förståelsen för vilka faktorer som skapar en aktiv marknad för börsintroduktioner. Detta studeras genom en undersökning av 31 olika länder under en tidsperiod som sträcker sig från 1988-2005.   Vid genomförandet av studien har en kvantitativ forskningsansats tillämpats. Detta har gjorts genom en positivistisk kunskapssyn och med ett deduktivt angreppssätt. Problemformuleringen har undersökts empiriskt samtidigt som tidigare teorier inom ämnet har studerats.   Studiens resultat visar på ett signifikant negativt samband mellan social tillit och antalet genomförda börsintroduktioner i ett land. Detta kan bero på att en hög nivå av social tillit innebär att företag har lättare att få tillgång till krediter och därmed inte behöver äntra den publika marknaden för att få tillgång till kapital. / One question that sooner or later turn up in a growing business is the decision whether an introduction on the stock exchange will be implemented or not, and statistics show that the number of IPOs differs markedly between countries. Previous research on what might explain these international differences are relatively limited and is only available to a small extent. Social trust has been shown to be important in the community and a contributor to several economic and social objectives. Most researchers has come to the conclusion that social trust is positively related to economic growth.   The overall aim of this study is to analyze the factors that influence the degree of initial public offerings in a country, with special focus on social trust. The study aims to increase the understanding of what factors that creates an active market for IPOs. This is studied through a survey of 31 different countries over a period stretching from 1988 to 2005.   In implementing the study, a quantitative approach has been applied. This has been done through a positivistic research strategy and with a deductive approach. The problem formulation has been studied empirically, while previous theories on the subject have been studied.   The results show a significant negative correlation between social trust and the number of completed IPOs in a country. This may be due to a high level of social trust which means that companies have easier access to credit and therefore they do not have to enter the public market to get further capital.

The thesis takes its first steps along previous theories of social capital based on the research of Bo Rothstein with colleagues contributed to the field. The thesis aims for a deeper investigation into the experiences that according to the theory have affected social trust in the minds of immigrant women in Sweden. The main aim of this thesis is to gain a better understanding and knowledge for groups that have lower social trust than others. According to earlier research on the field, immigrants that come to Sweden, especially those born outside of Europe, tend to have a lower social trust than people born in Sweden and Europe (Holmberg & Rothstein, 2016:3). This thesis therefore probes the complex topic of “how contacts with public bodies, the service such institutions offer, affect social trust among citizens depending on the ability to provide justice” (Rothstein & Kumlin, 2005:348). Two research questions are used to fulfil this purpose; the first being if immigrant women’s interpersonal trust is affected by experiences in personal contact with public bodies? The second question to be answered is how interpersonal trust can be seen to be affected by such experiences and contacts? This thesis aims to answer those questions through the method of interviews with immigrant women in Sweden. The empirical material concludes that contacts with public bodies influence the ability to trust other people and that it is possible to regain trust in another society, but also that there might be a lot more to consider for a greater understanding of immigrant women’s social trust.

Yes / One of the main aspects of the Web 2.0 revolution has been social commerce that has resulted in many people across the world increasingly engaging with commercial activities over social media platforms. However, the academic and research interest in social commerce is still low, and more studies are required to accelerate awareness of the most important issues relating to social commerce, in particular, social trust and value cocreation. Thus, the present study aims to propose a conceptual model that is intended to enable greater understanding of the causal interactions between social commerce constructs, social trust, and customer value cocreation. We collected data using a sample of 300 followers and fans of online Facebook communities, and we analysed them by using a structural equation model. The results show that social commerce constructs positively impact on social trust. Furthermore, we found that social trust positively impacts on the three dimensions of customer value cocreation. We found that social trust mediates the relationship between the social commerce and customer value cocreation dimensions. The paper presents a considerable theoretical contribution for being the first study that links social commerce constructs with social trust. The linkage between social commerce constructs, social trust, and customer value cocreation dimensions will also be beneficial for social media marketing strategists and managers.

This dissertation focuses on how distributive politics influences the geographic allocation of federal grants to state and local governments. A secondary focus is the role of social trust in the growth of government. In the first essay, I test the degree to which the earmark ban of 2011 prevented legislators from directing federal competitive grants to their home congressional districts and whether earmarking distorted equality in the distribution of federal grants across demographic groups. I find that earmarking skewed the distribution of federal grants toward wealthy congressional districts and away from poor congressional districts. This is a groundbreaking finding, considering that no literature has addressed the impact of earmarking on economic inequality. In the second essay, I estimate the returns to lobbying for local governments in terms of federal earmarked grants, and I find that local governments in counties with higher levels of income per capita were more likely to engage in lobbying. I also find evidence of a causal link between lobbying and federal earmarks to local governments. Given that local governments in wealthy areas tend to have larger tax bases, which allows them to more easily fund public infrastructure projects, my findings imply that lobbying and earmarking hampered the ability of federal grant programs to promote equality in the distribution of federal funds. The third essay utilizes time series econometrics to examine the relationship between government regulation, spending, interest group activity, and social trust in government.

Today, there are user annotated internet sites, user interaction logs, online user communities which are valuable sources of information concerning the personalized recommendation problem. In the literature, hybrid social recommender systems have been proposed to reduce the sparsity of the usage data by integrating the user related information sources together. In this thesis, a method based on probabilistic latent semantic analysis is used as a framework for a hybrid social recommendation system. Different data hybridization approaches on probabilistic latent semantic analysis are experimented. Based on this flexible probabilistic model, network regularization and model blending approaches are applied on probabilistic latent semantic analysis model as a solution for social trust network usage throughout the collaborative filtering process. The proposed model has outperformed the baseline methods in our experiments. As a result of the research, it is shown that the proposed methods successfully model the rating and social trust data together in a theoretically principled way.

Darbą sudaro trys pagrindinės dalys – konceptualioji, metodologinė ir tiriamoji. Konceptualioje darbo dalyje atskleidžiama NVO samprata ir vaidmuo vietos valdyme, nagrinėjami tarpinstitucinės partnerystės bruožai, pateikiamos pagrindinės savivaldybės ir NVO sąveikos modelių charakteristikos, įvardijami pagrindiniai socialinio pasitikėjimo komponentai. Metodologinėje darbo dalyje pristatoma empirinio tyrimo strategija, pateikiama kokybinio ir kiekybinio tyrimų metodika, charakterizuojama empirinio tyrimo imtis. Remiantis savivaldybės ir NVO sąveikos modelių bei pagrindinių socialinio pasitikėjimo komponentų teorinės analizės rezultatis, atliktas pusiau struktūruotas interviu su Šiaulių miesto ir Joniškio rajono savivaldybių darbuotojais bei anketinė apklausa Šiaulių mieste ir Joniškio rajone socialines paslaugas teikiančioms NVO. Interpretuojant tyrimo rezultatus, remtasi turinio analizės ir aprašomosios statistikos metodais. / The paper consists of three main parts – conceptual, methodological and investigative. The conceptual part of this paper discloses the conception of NGO and its role in the public administration, examines inter-institutional partnership features, analyses NGOs and municipalities cooperation models and creation of trust in inter-institutional networks. Methodological part of the paper presents the strategy of empirical research, also presents methods of qualitative and quantitative research, characterizes sample of empirical research. According to NGOs and municipalities cooperation models and theoretical analysis that singled out factors leading to a mutually beneficial relationship, accomplished a semi-structured interview with the municipal employees of Siauliai city and Joniskis district. Also a survey was accomplished of Siauliai city and Joniskis district NGOs providing social services in order to identify the factors leading to the emergence of social trust. The interpretation of the results was based on content analysis and descriptive statistical methods.

This dissertation is about social mobilizations in rural Kyrgyzstan from 2010-2015. Following a constructivist approach, I aim to answer a puzzling question in regard to multiple but rarely sustainable protests in this global periphery: Under what conditions can provisional episodes of mobilization be transformed into sustained mobilization? In particularly, I consider Eric Hirsch’s insight that the commitment of participants of mobilization to the cause is formed within collective instances, i.e. ‘group processes’, and I employ it in the Kyrgyzstani context of generalized distrust and discredited corrupt politics. I explore the conditions in which participants of episodes of mobilization create trust in organizers and into the cause of mobilization. I investigate these conditions in two case studies: one concerns a fragmented labour force at a state-owned gas and oil company in which, in the course of four years, workers succeeded to empower themselves as a collective actor within the group processes of collective learning and collective decision-making. The second tells a story about a fragmented rural community that goes against mining operations but sees the decline of an initially successful mobilization within group processes of monitoring. These findings point to the presence of a specific ‘pre-condition’ for any lasting mobilization: trust between organizers and participants of episodes of mobilization must be established in the process of monitoring the commitment to collective interests. With this insight I contribute to the literature on social movements and mobilizations that tends to take commitment and trust as pre-established resources. Furthermore, this work intervenes in the ongoing discussion on social change in the former Soviet Union. First, my observations of the difficult formation of protest groups lead, surprisingly, to the conclusion that the weak state produces a weak society. Second, due to the fragmented and localized nature of these mobilizations, social and political change in Kyrgyzstan is most likely to occur at the local level.

This study is based on theories on how social capital can lead to collective action in the case of the international volunteers active during Europe’s refugee crisis. The purpose of the study is to investigate if previous research on social capital can explain why people came together from different countries to support the people seeking refuge in Europe in late year 2015 and early year 2016. Thus, the study is based on a theory-consuming method, using triangulation of quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis to determine if the volunteers’ levels of social networks or social trust can explain the action that was taken in this specific case. The results show that the volunteers studied in this paper have high levels of social capital, in regards to both social trust and social networks through the quantitative analysis. The high levels of activity in social networks were furthermore confirmed through the qualitative analysis of the volunteers’ own comments to why they decided to volunteer. The conclusions are that the volunteers are showing signs of creating bridging social capital between them through the activity in their social networks, that the higher levels of trust in other people shown in the results can help them to over-come collective action problems, and that the hypothesis of that high levels of social capital should have facilitated collective action also in this specific case is considered confirmed for the volunteers responding to the survey.

Apart from the significant amount of research based in the perspective of social service workers, parents’ viewpoints of their experiences with children in long-term foster care is notably underrepresented within social science literature. To address this lack in coverage this paper discusses parents’ experiences of compulsory care (LVU) using content analysis drawing on selected comment sections from two internet-based discussion forums, Flashback and Familjeliv. Our main objective was to analyse parents’ descriptions of their relations with the social services and changes in the perceptions of the role of parenting after the emergency removal. Applying the theoretical framework of social trust we sought to achieve a deeper understanding for the parents’ situation. The social trust theory aims at analysing individuals’ trust for the state and state institutions, especially in relation to different social groups. The study shows that the high levels of trust between citizen and authorities, one of the Swedish society’s central trademarks, was not reflected in the material collected concerning parents’ experiences of the so-called social safety net. In line with previous research, parents’ narratives demonstrated a significant distrust for the social services and their descriptions indicated a sense of neglect. Parents’ comments also suggested a lack of understanding for the judgements made by social service workers and the resulting compulsory care.

The education level has proven to be a good predictor of a range of important outcomes. However, despite substantial research, there are still areas to further explore and as far as the author is aware of, a study comparing education effects between different regions has not been conducted. The aim of this paper is to link previous theory and research and use it to examine effects of the education level on four different areas; politics, health and well-being, social trust and nationalism and immigration. Specifically, focus is on exploring potential differences regarding education effects between the Nordic countries and other countries in Europe. The study was conducted using a quantitative method by analyzing data from European Social Survey covering the period 2012–2016. By adding interaction terms to the regression models this study indicated that the education effects were robust, with higher education levels being associated with higher trust and political interest, better health and well-being, and with less political cynicism and less negative attitudes towards immigration. The study also identified that the education effects differ between the Nordics compared to other European countries. Analysis of the data showed that the education effects related to politics and nationalism and immigration were stronger in the Nordic countries compared to other countries in Europe. In contrast, education effects related to health and well-being and social trust were stronger in other countries in Europe compared to the Nordics.