Toward a New Social Contract? The Participation of Civil Society in Swedish Welfare Policymaking, 1958–2012

In contribution to current debates on the changing roles and responsibilities of civil society in welfare state arrangements, I examined the participation of various types of civil society organizations in national welfare policymaking in Sweden between 1958 and 2012. Drawing upon an extensive dataset of over 1400 civil society, state, and for-profit organizations, I tested three claims related to the role and responsibility of civil society in the governance of welfare: the changing balance between corporatist and welfare organizations, the shift from voice to service, and another shift from nonprofit organizations to FPOs. My results revealed weak but emerging trends aligned with changing patterns of corporatism and the marketization of Sweden’s welfare system. However, support for any shift from voice to service remains uncertain

Strengths Based Coaching—A Positive Psychology Intervention

Strengths approaches have grow in popularity over the past decade, with a profileration of writing, models and questionnaires used for strengths assessment and in coaching. These questionnaires include including VIA, Strengthscope and StrengthsFinder and Strengths Profile. The questionnaires have become a popular intervention for consultants, HR professionals and executive coaches for adding both personal development and coaching, to assisting with recruitment and selection. We will briefly review in the first section of this chapter three popular questionnaires, considering their development and constructs. In the second section we will explore positive psychology coaching as an intervention using questionnaires and strengths cards, before reviewing the research evidence and opportunities for future research

The aesthetic motives of play

Why do people enjoy playing games? The answer, in its most general form, is that there are aesthetic pleasures offered by games and other play experiences that meet powerful and profound human and animal needs. As such, we can identify specific aesthetic motives of play, and one of the clearest ways of characterizing these motives is in terms of the emotional experiences associated with them