Processanalys vid Color Print Sweden AB med fokusering på prepressavdelningen

This thesis work has introduced process orientation at the printing company Color Print Sweden AB. The outcome ofthis work is a survey of the work flow at the prepress department. To visualise the production process at the companya comprehensive mapping of the main process, order-to-delivery, has been made. The work has detected a couple ofcritical elements in the existing process. These elements are the following: initial check of material delivered to the prepressdepartment as well as the control made of the plotter print-out, digital test print and plate. To guarantee the qualityof the prints it is very important that the work made in the prepress department is optimized. This survey can thereforebe used as a basis for continuous improvement in the processes at Color Print Sweden AB. This work has alsoresulted in a template that Color Print Sweden AB can use to design routine descriptions to ensure that specific worktasks are performed the right way by everyone and all the time.

Mellan frihet och kontroll : Om läroplanskonstruktioner i svensk skola

The aim of this thesis is to explore how different competing discourses in the historical context of the Swedish education development have qualified and disqualified different constructions of national curriculum. How and after what kind of principles is the curriculum constructed? What qualify who are going to be recognized as the author and addressee of the curriculum? These key ques-tions of the study are discussed in the first part of the thesis. My point of depar-ture is that the curriculum can be understood as a relation between freedom and control. In an educational system this relationship reflects the problematic ten-sion between the external demands from an authoritative center and the local need to independently reflect over educational issues. How these concepts are defined by the prevailing social discourses affect specific relations and construc-tions of curricula as a steering tool and a producer of specific teacher identities. In this sense, I claim that curriculum is constructed in different ways depending on which of the didactic questions are emphasized and answered and who is judged as the legitimate author. Based on this, three models of curriculum con-struction are formulated; the content based, the result based and the process based. These models are subsequently used as an analytical tool to examine the historical development of Swedish national curricula. The second part of the thesis investigates the Swedish education system and the production of the national curriculum as a product of rival discourses. The historical investigation begins 1842 when the first state curriculum was issued and the inquiry concludes in 2008. The findings indicate that no one single con-struction has been totally dominant and that there has been an on-going discur-sive struggle between different alternative and opinions about what teachers must do and be.

Manager's task to support integrated autonomy at the workplace : Results from an intervention

A new managerial task arises in today’s working life: to provide conditions for and influence interaction between actors and thus to enable the emergence of organizing structure in tune with a changing environment. We call this the enabling managerial task. The goal of this paper is to study whether training first line managers in the enabling managerial task could lead to changes in the work for the subordinates. This paper presents results from questionnaires answered by the subordinates of the managers before and after the training. The training was organized as a learning network and consisted of eight workshops carried out over a period of one year (September 2009–June 2010), where the managers met with each other and the researchers once a month. Each workshop consisted of three parts, during three and a half hours. The first hour was devoted to joint reflection on a task that had been undertaken since the last workshop; some results were presented from the employee pre-assessments, followed by relevant theory and illuminating practices, finally the managers created new tasks for themselves to undertake during the following month. The subordinates’ answers show positive change in all of the seventeen scales used to assess it. The improvements are significant in scales measuring the relationship between the manager and the employees, as well as in those measuring interaction between employees. It is concluded that the result was a success for all managers that had the possibility of using the training in their management work.

Using modeling as a co-design approach in the planning process of new care environments

Current research shows a relationship between healthcare architecture and patient-related Outcomes. The planning and designing of new healthcare environments is a complex process; the needs of the various end-users of the environment must be considered, including the patients, the patients’ significant others, and the staff. The aim of this study was to explore the experiences of healthcare professionals participating in group modelling utilizing system dynamics in the pre-design phase of new healthcare environments. We engaged healthcare professionals in a series of workshops using system dynamics to discuss the planning of healthcare environments in the beginning of a construction, and then interviewed them about their experience. An explorative and qualitative design was used to describe participants’ experiences of participating in the group modelling projects. Participants (n=20) were recruited from a larger intervention study using group modeling and system dynamics in planning and designing projects. The interviews were analysed by qualitative content analysis. Two themes were formed, representing the experiences in the group modeling process: ‘Partaking in the G-M created knowledge and empowerment’and ‘Partaking in the G-M was different from what was expected and required time and skills’. The method can support participants in design teams to focus more on their healthcare organization, their care activities and their aims rather than focusing on detailed layout solutions. This clarification is important when decisions about the design are discussed and prepared and will most likely lead to greater readiness for future building process.

Emergens i Meads sociologi : Process, interaktion och det sociala livets villkor

Emergence in the sociology of Mead: Process, interaction and the conditions ofsocial life. Within sociology, and especially in the symbolic interaction genre thereof, emergence have been used in order to analyze the process between different dichotomies such as structure and agency, individual and collective, improvisation and the pre-determined as well as the relationship between a now, a past and a present. The aim of this article is to, based on mentioned dichotomies, discuss the possibilities and the limitations of emergence. In terms of possibilities emergence can be used as an analytical and theoretical tool for analyzing the process between different social phenomena. In terms of limitations, emergence could (and have been) criticized for not acknowledging the pre-conditioned aspects of social life. Hence, this article is concluded in a discussion on how to integrate pre-conditioned aspects of social life, such as power, dominance and subordination in the analysis of the emergent and dynamic social life.