Background: Goodwill has always been frequently discussed and a lot of scientific research has been done regarding factors that affect companies? impairment of goodwill. Previous research has concluded that companies reporting low results are more prone to do impairments of goodwill than companies reporting better results which possibly can be seen as a form of earnings management.Purpose: The purpose of this essay is to examine if goodwill impairments occur to a greater extent among Swedish listed companies when the companies are reporting lower earnings. A subsidiary purpose is to see if there has been an improvement since 2008 regarding the size of reported goodwill in comparison to equity in the years 2009-2011. And to analyze the development of the companies goodwill impairments in relation to reported goodwill.Methodology: Three quantitative studies have been performed for the years 2009-2011 where all the listed companies on NASDAQ OMX Stockholm have been included.

The purpose of this ideology critical study is to investigate the hidden content in the reform Gy11 and compare it with the concept new public management. After the clarification of the hidden content, we compare the structure of the organization in Swedish high schools with the structure in public sector called new public management. The main questions of this study are the following: Is it possible to see the foundation of new public management in the Swedish high schools when it comes to the views of knowledge and the formation of goals? Which similarities can we find when we look at the organization new public management and the Swedish high school?The result showed many similarities, both regarding the views of knowledge and the formations of goals. The structure of new public management has been largely implemented in the Swedish high schools and the schools now focus more on instrumental knowledge rather than universal knowledge based on understanding.This is not surprising due to the social progress.

The thesis has two purposes. First, to give a practical insight into the challenges that Swedish companies might face, and how these challenges are tackled, when implementing strategy in a local area. Second, to develop a general applicable model as a conceptual contribution to the field of international strategy implementation in local areas. This empirical-driven thesis is written in a qualitative and explorative approach, where abduction is adopted in order to find mysteries and contribute to the forming of new theories. The empirical foundation is twenty-two interviews and observations of three large Swedish companies.

Agencies towards Sustainable Development ? A Study of Environmental Management Systems in Governmental Agencies 2005A vision of the Swedish government is to build an ecologically sustainable society. A tool in this effort is to implement environmental management systems (EMS). The aim of the thesis is to present in which phase of the implementation of EMS Swedish governmental agencies are. This will be done by compilation and evaluation of agencies? yearly environmental reports.The thesis is written in co-operation with the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (Swedish EPA).

There are about 700 000 dogs in Sweden. Roughly 70 % of the dogs are purebred and registered in the database at the Swedish Kennel Club (SKC). The database includes records of birth date, pedigree, offspring and results from e.g. veterinary examinations related to genetic health programs.Every year approximately 10% of the dogs die; most are euthanized by a veterinarian. Dog mortality data is stored as digital medical records at animal clinics and in insurance databases.Dog owners tend to register their puppy in the SKC, but they rarely report that the dog has passed away.

Background: In the eighties the debate concerning the declining relevance of the traditional calculation started. The reason was that the method of calculating not had been changed despite that the costs and manufacturing had changed in many companies. This led to the development of activity-based costing. Management by means of activity information is called activity-based management, but there is no general accepted definition of what the term com- prises. Neither are there any studies which describe within which areas activity information is used as a base for decisions.

This paper investigates the relationship between dividends and institutional and foreign ownership in Swedish firms. We use a dataset which covers the Swedish stock market over the period 1999-2009. The institutional ownership is defined as mutual funds, pension funds and insurance companies and these are analysed separately. The study confirms the expected positive relationship between the level of institutional investors in a firm and the size of dividends. We also confirm? the expected negative relationship between foreign investors and the size of dividends paid by Swedish firms.

Time has passed since the new standards regarding goodwill were introduced. Duringthe period that occurred pre the financial crisis several companies managed to creategreat goodwill assets on their balance sheet. These assets were highlighted during thefinancial crisis and the aim of this study is to evaluate analysts contemporaryconsideration of these assets. The study will be of interest due to the fact that we nowfind ourselves in-between periods, post financial crisis and pre euro crisis. Ourempirical study has been carried out by interviewing analysts covering IT-companiestraded on the Swedish stock exchange.Our analysts were chosen with consideration to the fact that they were coveringcompanies where acquisitions are common.

Transport is an important aspect to take account in efforts to achieve sustainable tourism development. If we do not change our behavior regarding travel, the consequences will be significant for the environment. This study examines the various transport operators on the two Swedish ski resorts if their websites and marketing are different from each other in the mode selection. The destinations are Åre and Hemavan Tärnaby. They studied modes are two Swedish airlines, two train companies, three bus companies and three taxi companies.These corporate websites are studied with a content analysis in which the results of the keywords that have been developed are scored according to different categories.

The purpose of this study is to look at the line extensions of the Swedish dairy company Skånemejerier. We have chosen to focus on how trends in ecological products and Functional Food influence the line extensions. The competition in the food sector have made it harder for companies to be seen in the market area and the companies have to make their brands more visible. That is one of the reasons why companies work with line extensions. The study is based on a qualitative approach because we wanted to come closer to our subject in order to establish a greater understanding for the case itself.

This paper aims to investigate the systematic risk exposure of Swedish hedge funds using a modified Fung & Hsieh (2004) asset-based style factor model. The results show that the average Swedish equity hedge fund and fund of funds had a significant positive exposure to the equity market portfolio and the spread between small cap and large cap stocks (SMB) during the sample period. This is consistent with our a priori expectations and previous international studies. We do not find the expected systematic fixed-income related risk exposure for the fixed-income hedge funds and fund of funds in the sample. The empirical material used in this study is taken from a publicly available fund database maintained by the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (Finansinspektionen).

Authors: Lars Johansson & Johan PetterssonTitle: ?There is way to much sports in the athletics? ? A study of Swedish sportsFootball has gone from being a hobby and a popular pastime into a billion-dollar industry, and clubs around Europe are therefore operated more and more like regular companies. Sweden's position in the UEFA rankings is a modest 23 rd place, behind nations such as Austria, Switzerland and Belarus. The economic climate in Sweden is often highlighted as a strong factor. When we started our study we agreed that this could be a major contributing factor to this relatively modest rank, but believed that there were also other factors that played a big role.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate if the companies listed on Nasdaq/OMX Stockholm Large Cap use the earnings management phenomenon Big Bath Accounting to a greater extent when a change of management (CEO) is made.Management tends to use earnings management when there is a bonus plan linked to the result of the company. To gain maximum bonus the management will try to manipulate the result in a way that in a long term maximize their utility. Through the earnings management technique Big Bath the management is given the possibility to take one large cost as a one-time expend, even though the cost is supposed to run over several financial years. This, of course, within the legal framework. A big bath may occur when there is an impairment of goodwill, tangible and/or intangible assets or larger provisions for future expense, or both of them at the same time..

Background: We have identified the combination of Knowledge Management and Human Resource Management as interesting because of this constellation has been mentioned scarcely in previous studies. There also seem to be some interesting correlations with personnel turnover.Aim: The aim of this study is to describe and understand the theoretically best combination of Human Resource Management and Knowledge Management, by creating a model. The model is also going to be tested empirically through consulting firms, to see if they meet the ideal combination. With this model we also want to describe in what way the different combinations of strategies will affect the personnel turnover.Definitions: A huge part of this study concerns the theoretical area Human Resource Management, which we have entitled HRM. Similarly, Knowledge Management has been entitled KM.Completion: The study is designed both as a literature review and as a comparative case study in which empirical data has been collected through qualitative interviews with four Swedish management consulting firms.Results: The best combinations of KM and HRM are according to this study that strategies should consist of a thoroughgoing personalization or codification.

The purpose of this Bachelor thesis is to analyze if there is a correlation between stock prices and the amount of searches of the companies names on Google. The theories used in the study were Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) and Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH). Regressions analysis is used as the statistical method to see if there is a significant correlation between the stock prices and the amout of searches of the company name on Google. The data used were the rate of return of three companies (ABB, Oriflame and Sandvik) on the Nasdaq OMX Nordic stock market, the rate of return of the Nasdaq OMX Nordic stock market index (OMX Stockholm_PI) and the Google search frequency from Google Trends on each company. The result showed no significance and the conclusion of the thesis is that there is no significant correlation between the three studied companies and their search frequency on the search engine Google..