Thesis (M.A. (Maatskaplike Werk)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.

Introduction: The National Board of Health and Welfares conclusion was that today there was a low awareness about children who act sexually toward others and how their problems can be handled. This requires extensive work by school personnel and social workers to give the children the support they need. Aim: The aim was to investigate social workers perception in cases concerning children and adolescents who committed sexual assault. Method: A qualitative method was utilized with semi-structured interviews to describe social workers perceptions in cases concerning children and adolescents who committed sexual assault. Four social workers from different communities were interviewed in southern Sweden. Results: The result described social workers experiences from working with these cases, investigations, treatments and preventative work. Analysis: The study shows that social worker experience the work with children and adolescents who committed sexual assault as difficult. It could be hard to decide which sexual behavior that was normal in the different ages. Teamwork between schools and social services are important to detect these cases. It is also important to work with children- and adolescent psychiatry and private companies that specialize in investigation and treatments in these cases. Conclusion: Children and adolescents who commit sexual assault seem to be an unknown area even within the social field. With more education to personnel who work with children and adolescents knowledge can be improved in this subject. The personnel need knowledge about which signs to be aware of.

Over the past decades outsourcing decades outsourcing has become an increasing trend.Firms decide to outsource in order to increase their profits or flexibility and many differentfunctions of the firm may be outsourced, one of them being the Human Resource (HR)function. When it comes to HR outsourcing, recruitment and selection are among the morecommon functions to be outsourced (Ordanini & Silvestri, 2008:373). The motivation foroutsourcing of HR is to reduce cost and increase efficiency (Elmuti, Grunewald and Abebe,2010:177). Outsourcing of HR functions like recruitment can also have negative aspect, forexample lack of loyalty and high turnover (Fisher et al, 2008:202). Previous research hasinvestigated how commitment and loyalty is affected by HR outsourcing (Connelly &Gallagher, 2004:963) and one aspect that has been touched upon but not dealt withexclusively is motivation and therefore this paper will explore it further. Using the following research question: How does motivation vary between individuals working at a company butare hired through a staffing firm versus hired directly by the company? This paper tries to both evaluate the existing literature and provide practicalimplications for managers. In order to explore this question and abductive research approachhas been used where the data and theory are intertwined and played of each other to achievethe purpose (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2009:4). The data collection consists of eight semistructuredinterviews, four with people hired directly by the company and four that are orhave previously been hired through a staffing company. The study found that the theoretical framework does for the most part explain themotivational behavior of both groups studied, and that the two groups are not alwaysmotivated in the same way. Those hired directly by the company are more interested inreceiving praise, relationships at work, and receiving small tokens of appreciation. The grouphired by staffing companies was more often motivated by an internal drive to satisfythemselves and did not value work relationships to the same extent. The research also showedthat the individual rather than the form of employment plays a big role when it comes to howpeople are motivated. It was also made apparent that education and work situation wereimportant factors influencing the respondent’s motivation.

The point of the problems of peasant workers in city is that the binary economy in China city and country has separated peasants and city residents as two different identity systems. Household system was deployed in China in 1950 to strictly limit the labor force of rural village, peasants were isolated from the city, and rural village became the sacrifice under the industrialization policy and developed slowly. Peasant workers play a vital role in the procedure of economy development in mainland China in recent years, the enormous and cheap labor force attracts foreign capital and Taiwan capital enterprises involve into China market to lead the development of district economy, it became a problem that China government put emphasis on due to the gradually emerge of labor dispute and social conflicts. Peasant workers have no opportunity to participate in social and political life; have no ability to maintain self rights, and become the ¡§silent class¡¨ in the city society. In the respect of economy, the labor disputes emerged in endless caused by the delay payment to peasant workers and resulted in sever social public security incidents, and laid a layer of shade upon the ¡§harmony society¡¨ leaded by Chinese Communist Party; in the respect of society, the class of peasant workers isn¡¦t approved by the city, the social exclusion and prejudice are all-pervasive owing to the enlargement of the gap between the rich and poor and created profound painful influence on the social attitude of peasant workers. The problem of peasant workers reflects not only the market failure due to imperfect market system but also the failure of the policies of Chinese Communist Party, and the emerge of civil organizations compensate the gap between the government and society, the NGOs of China thereby concern the problems of peasant workers and attempt to get involve in the aspects that government can¡¦t achieved. This text dissertates mainly from the social levels and class respects to explore the status of peasants and causes of being discriminated; to analyze the leadership of Chinese Communist Party how to bring up corresponding solution focused on the sever social problems caused by peasant workers; to explore whether the relationship between nation and society also changed in Mainland China during the development procedure of peasant workers and what¡¦s the context and direction of change.

Now, companies all around the world are facing growing and fierce business competition. In order to save costs and raise revenues, companies adopt more flexible and temporary strategy to hire employees, which called ¡§atypical employment¡¨. This research applied the methodology of ¡§narrative inquiry¡¨ to discuss my experience as atypical worker. As both a story-teller and a student, I want to write down what I had experienced, what I had observed and what I had been inspired. Hope what I learned could bring something new and different to the industry and the academic circle. Before entering NSYSU, I had worked at Acer Incorporated as a business assistant for two years and it was also my first job. At that time, the concept of dispatched worker was not well-known and I took the job ignorantly. In Acer, I had been through two different positions and it allowed me to have varied views and know better about atypical employment in Acer. Through pondering my past experience and writing my thesis, here are my research goals and findings. First, reexamine what I had learned and discovered as an atypical worker, employ ¡§narrative inquiry¡¨ to record the story and try to gain some valuable introspection. Second, provide companies and dispatched agencies which were interested in ¡§atypical employment¡¨ with details, obstacles and problems that might happened in atypical employment. Last but not least, as an exploratory study, supply first-hand materials for the academic circle to discover more useful and worthy phenomenon or information to peruse.

While enterprises are facing competitions from the business environment, they not only rely on progress and innovation but also should understand how to maintain their competitive advantages in order to survive in the fierce and capricious business world. Nowadays, the labor market has been changing rapidly. Decreasing personnel costs and increasing the flexibility in using manpower is a critical factor contributing enterprises¡¦ adoption of dispatched workers. Ever since the business of dispatched manpower has been legally taking effect in Taiwan in 1999, the business already becomes one of the channels for job seekers to look for appropriate jobs. Moreover, enterprises also take advantage of dispatched workers to look for workers fit for their organizations and meanwhile, cut down costs. However, as dispatched workers are widely accepted, it is important to know how to effectively manage dispatched workers within an organization, how to increase their organizational identification and job involvement and furthermore increase overall work performance. There are numerous studies of dispatched workers, such as studies of the welfare condition and job satisfaction of dispatched workers. This study aims at understanding whether or not dispatched workers have different organizational identification and job involvement due to their different employment status. Research results can serve as references for enterprises to manage dispatched workers. This study targets at the high-tech industry in Taiwan and distributed 620 questionnaires to regular employees and dispatched workers in the high-tech company. There are 440 questionnaires for regular employees and 180 questionnaires for dispatched workers. 305 valid questionnaires were collected. Research results suggest that¡G 1. The regular workers have higher organizational identification than the dispatched workers. 2. The regular workers have higher job involvement than the dispatched workers. 3. There is the significant effect of organizational identification on job involvement. 4. There is the significant difference between the regular workers and the dispatched workers on the effect of organizational identification on job involvement. Key words: organizational identification, job involvement, dispatched worker.

This thesis is about policy instruments for the regulation of international labour mobility. It focuses on the use of government-to-government agreements on the cross-border movement of nurses, negotiated between source and destination countries. This research is a qualitative case study of agreements signed in the early 2000s between the UK and Spain, South Africa, the Philippines and India. It aims to understand the role of these agreements in British policy as perceived by actors in the destination country. It addresses three questions: 1) What types of agreements did the British government negotiate? 2) Why did the British government negotiate these agreements? and 3) What functions did these agreements perform? Employing the notion of ‘policy tools’ as an organising concept, this thesis’s analytical framework draws on political sociology and the conception of policy instruments as being composed and brought into existence by actors and their power relations in multilevel policy contexts. This study is based on documentary analysis and elite interviews with experts in international organisations, officials in the Department of Health (England), recruitment officers in the source countries, and professional nursing organisations and trade unions in the UK. This thesis argues that government-to-government agreements between the UK and supply countries emerged from a discourse on the ethical recruitment of health workers which was framed in the language of human rights. One of the roles of these agreements was to contain contradictory and conflicting interests between and within institutional actors involved in the international recruitment of nurses on both sides of the migration process. More broadly, the research addresses and advances the discussion of the policy instrumentation approach, and contributes to the understanding of the choice of policy tools and their performance in an ambivalent policy context.

Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka hur socialarbetare resonerar kring olika grupper av hemlösa och om det finns skillnader i bedömningen av boendelösningar utifrån vilken orsak till hemlöshet en klient har. Uppsatsen baseras på personintervjuer med sex socialarbetare inom samma kommun. De teorier som användes för att analysera data var symbolisk interaktionism och stigmateori. Resultatet visade att socialarbetarna hade olika syn på skälen till hemlöshet då de arbetar på olika positioner inom kommunen och har olika erfarenhet av arbete med hemlösa. Utifrån de boendelösningar som den studerade kommunen erbjuder hade socialarbetarna olika sätt att se på dem. Några tyckte att det var för mycket krav på de hemlösa och inte tillräckligt med boendelösningar, medan andra inte höll med. Alla intervjupersonerna ansåg att bostadsmodellen Bostad först kan uppfattas som ett tillskott till möjligheter att lösa boendet för hemlösa eftersom modellen inte i första hand utgår från krav på att klienten ska vara drogfri. Socialarbetarna ansåg att ansvaret för de hemlösa ska vara på en samhällelig nivå, det vill säga att det inte är individen själv som har skapat problemet utan det sociala systemet i samhället och dessutom i förlängningen att hemlöshet i sig är ett samhälleligt skapat fenomen. / The aim of the essay was to examine how the social workers reason about the client’s reason for being homeless and how the social workers think about the housing solutions and if possible highlight the ambivalence that can be seen between the client’s reason for homelessness and the housing solutions that are at hand. This essay is based on interviews with six social workers with various titles within the same municipality. The theories that have been used are symbolic interactionism and stigma theory. The results show that these social workers have different attitudes with regard to the approach of the causes of homelessness. Based on the housing solutions of the municipality the social workers approached the homeless clients differently. Some social workers opinions were that there were too many requirements for the homeless to live up to and too few housing solutions to place them in. The social workers that were interviewed said that they believed that the housing model Housing First will be a great addition to the options in housing for the homeless. The reason for this attitude towards the model is that it is based on the requirement for abstinence. The social workers thought that the responsibility for the homeless ought to be on a society level, in other words it is not the individual itself that has created the problem but the social system. In a longer perspective this means that homelessness is created by society.

The aim of this study is to indicate the necessity for training Christian workers and to formulate suitable criteria for undergraduate study. The central theoretical argument is that criteria regarding the effective training of Christian workers are lacking and should therefore be formulated. An increasing demand for healthy reformed-theological and ministry oriented undergraduate training of Christian workers, calls for an interesting and new challenge for the departments of Practical Theology at Theological Faculties in South Africa and worldwide. The first aim of this study was to determine which possible Scriptural perspectives exist on the intra- and interpersonal development of the believer. The basis-theoretical perspective showed a distinct relationship and interdependency between the development of emotive and spiritual skills. Both form an integral part of the believer's process of growth towards spiritual maturity and maturity of faith. The second aim was to examine the contributions of other relevant disciplines. Regarding the metatheoretical perspective, emotive training is considered increasingly important. Disciplines such as Sociology. Psychology, Psycho Neurology and Social Work contributes interesting perspectives on the intra- and interpersonal development of the individual. This knowledge has to be taken into account when a scientifically answerable training course for Christian workers is to be developed. Empirical research clearly showed the need for ministry oriented undergraduate training of Christian workers, which should include the development of intra- and interpersonal skills. The third goal was reached by integrating the basis- and meta-theoretical perspectives, and by laying down guidelines for this new field of practice. The researcher evaluated relevant study material of the above-mentioned disciplines and integrated the information into criteria for a new theo-psychosocial study course for undergraduate training of Christian workers. / Thesis (M.A. (Pastoral))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2006

Thesis (M.A. (MW Forensic))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.