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Improved quality and safety in drug use is a public health goal of major importance. In Sweden, local drug and therapeutics committees (DTCs) have adopted the task of working for safe and rational drug use. This study aimed to explore how chairs conceived the role of the DTCs, to explore how information officers conceived their own role, and to determine whether the respondents included patients in their answers.

Data were collected using questionnaires and the answers were analysed according to phenomenographic method to identify conceptions. “Patient awareness” was studied by content analysis.

In both groups the prescribers were the focus of attention, and only a few respondents mentioned patients. A variation of four conceptions was found among chairs and three among information officers. It would be beneficial if DTCs used this knowledge in their development.

The importance of “patient awareness” within DTCs must be further explored.

According to Swedish law, every county is required to have a local drug and therapeutics committee (DTC) to contribute to safe and cost‐effective drug use. The law presents merely a framework and gives no detailed instructions addressing, for example, organisation and methods. The aim of this study is to explore the variation of conceptions of the role of the DTCs among committee Chairs and to compare the results with an earlier study.

Data were collected by questionnaires and telephone interviews with committee chairs, which were analysed using a phenomenographic approach.

Four conceptions were identified, namely: traditional, patient‐aware, influential, holistic and cooperative, which all involved prescribers. In one conception the DTC acted as an expert to decision‐makers. One conception included the notion that cooperation across the bureaucratic borders was important. Patients were involved in two conceptions. Comparison with the earlier study showed a trend toward higher patient awareness and a higher agreement on DTC goals with an increased focus on quality issues.

This study demonstrates an alternative research method bringing in new perspectives when exploring activities within healthcare. Patient involvement in the work of the DTCs is increasing, but should be further explored and developed.

This paper presents a platform for analysing public relations in the future. The author suggests a reintroduction of concepts of the public sphere in public relations theory and calls attention to an emerging function of the public sphere. This function is called the public sphere of organisational legitimacy and identity. Further, the paper describes three different concepts of the company in society. These concepts are labelled “The economically successful but socially innocent company”, “The economically successful and legal company”, and “The economically successful, legal and responsible company”. Examples are provided to show that these three images represent a historical trend and that they logically exclude each other, but that they prevail simultaneously. The role of public relations is analysed in relation to each of the three concepts of the company. Combined with the analytical concepts of the emerging functions of public sphere they are suggested by the author as an analytical framework for reflecting potential viable or problematic aspects in the future.

To get beneath the surface of the focal concepts of public relations practice today, the major sociological theories of Jürgen Habermas and Niklas Luhmann have been fruitful as frames of interpretation. Two paradigms for reflection on the public relations phenomenon have been developed on their theories: the inter‐subjective and the social systemic public relations paradigms. These paradigms indicate fundamentally different interpretations of the concepts of conflict and social responsibility, with crucial consequences for the role of public relations in today's social order. Each perspective has its blind spots but the switching of perspectives allows us to see more. Habermas's theories make it possible to disclose the ideal perception which seems to prevail in the self‐understanding of public relations practice while, at the same time, setting out normative ideals for the practice. The ideal in the inter‐subjective paradigm is to re‐establish the system's coupling to the lifeworld. The public relations practitioner must act as an individual through communicative action. Public relations is a matter of ethical issues in a normative perspective. We might also call this the ethical, communicative or normative paradigm of public relations. The keyword is legitimation in post‐conventional discourse society. Luhmann's theories make it possible to disclose the social systemic mechanisms that can be viewed as the framework for public relations practice, and to set out functional conditions for that practice. The functions of the social systemic paradigm are to assist in maintaining the boundaries of the organisation system through strategic reflection and to assist in ensuring that society's differentiated system logics can function autonomously because they also understand how to function together. The sphere of action of the public relations practitioner is defined by the social systems. Public relations is a matter of functional issues in a cognitive perspective. We might also call this the functional, reflective or cognitive paradigm of public relations. The keyword is public trust in the context‐regulated society. This paper is based on a thesis by the author entitled: ‘The Inter‐subjective and the Social Systemic Public Relations Paradigms’, University of Roskilde, April 1996, also to be published in English.

Feminist criminologists are well acquainted with how their research on sexual harms and gendered forms of victimisation may serve as powerful levers for punitive agendas. In recent years, culturalist interpretations of sexual violence have become key themes in debates on migration and integration in liberal welfare democracies, such as Denmark, Norway and Sweden. In this, complex issues of gender, ethnicity and power are involved, and the balancing of these, both analytically and ethically, poses a challenge to feminists in their attempts to contribute to social change. This chapter will, based on examples from debates in Sweden, present and discuss how argumentation about sexual freedom and integrity is enlisted in attempts to reinforce borders and ideas about dangerous Others, and outline how a fruitful meeting between criminology and feminism can advance the scholarship on sexual violence.

This study aims to focus on the switching path analysis technique (SPAT) application to enlarge the understanding of customer switching from the business to consumer (B‐to‐C) context to the processes of business‐to‐business (B‐to‐B) supplier switches.

The paper is a theory extension of SPAT, with nine (9) supplier switching cases in different B‐to‐B settings. The cases shed light also on the actual triggers and determinants of the B‐to‐B switches.

The study proves the applicability of SPAT in B‐to‐B settings. The B‐to‐B context adds complexity, forming a relationship flow where many driving factors act for switching. Thus, the findings suggest that a comprehensive analysis of the triggers and determinants is required to understand the switching processes. In particular, the characteristics of the active/passive behaviour should be analysed separately in the customer and in the old and new suppliers.

The empirical findings are exploratory in nature. Further research should refine the characteristics of active and passive behaviour at the levels of the relationship, the companies and the individuals to comprehend the notion of the influential trigger in SPAT. Further research should also address the wider topic of the patterns of certain triggers and determinants that actually lead to unstable supplier relationships.

The B‐to‐B supplier switches appear to be complex processes. The supplier should be able to be constantly aware of the major changes in the customer's business. Based on this awareness, the supplier may actively affect the development of the relationship to avoid unwanted switches.

The paper combines the relatively mature research stream of B‐to‐C supplier switches and access to B‐to‐B supplier‐switching cases. The theory contribution of the paper is the extension of the theory to the B‐to‐B context, with relevant research implications.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyse the change trajectory in a large, global, project‐oriented company, with focus on standardization of project work, and on how the company's structure, processes and employment‐base changed in line with the company's increasing volume of projects.

The stance taken is to define firm‐based projects as temporary organisations embedded in, and coupled to their parent company. Narratives of employees' working history were combined with historical company data. The outcome is a trajectory of the company's history from four different perspectives, shown in parallel with the development of the company's project operations.

The projectification history was found to be connected with two parallel movements: a push towards project decoupling countered by a pull towards standardization of project management practices to tighten the coupling. The direction of the movements was influenced from current project management trends.

The model of a projectified company as a loosely‐coupled system provides a novel way of analysing an organisation and its interfaces to its projects. Even though the work focuses on a unique company's projectification history, the intention is to provide a means to better understand the forces impacting the transformation of organisations increasingly using projects as a work‐form.

Adding the notion of coupling gives a new dimension to the transformation of project‐oriented companies. The model for analysing projects by means of their patterns of loose and tight coupling provides arguments for the shift in focus from the individual project to the interplay between structure, people and processes in the project‐oriented company.