Palm oil has been used in processed food commodities since the 19th century. An increasing demand for regulating and ensuring a more sustainable palm oil production has resulted in various initiatives. However, these initiatives have received critique due to lack of compliance and insufficient revisions of palm oil plantations. The initiatives for creating an ethical, social and environmentally sustainable production are not sufficient for the Swedish industrial users of palm oil. As a result, stakeholders such as Swedish food processing companies, commit to ethical sourcing codes of conduct that go beyond the international palm oil initiatives.

On the night of the 26th December 2011, large parts of southern Norrland were struck by the storm ?Dagmar? that caused serious damage to the forests. In the past 10 years wind damage has become a hot topic after several major storms. Forest companies own 25% of the Swedish forest and thus influenced largely by wind damage. The main purpose of this study was to examine whether forest companies attitude towards preventive wind damage actions were changed after the storm ?Dagmar?. The result was developed by doing interviews with two forestry companies.

Background: The last few years a globalization of the capital market has occurred. This have led to that it is more important for the companies that their financial information can be compared with other companies in order to compete on same grounds. In order to fa-cilitate for the companies within EU to compete with other companies and in order to strive for an internal market EU decided that IFRS should be used by all listed companies within the union.Problem: In 2006 the first financial reports according to IFRS will be published, and then it will be interesting to investigate how the companies have chosen to communicate the transition to its stakeholders. According to IFRS some information is compulsive but the companies have chosen to disclose voluntary information to a different degree.Purpose: The purpose of this study is to describe to what extent the Swedish listed com-panies have reported the transition to IFRS in their consolidated financial statements.Method: In this essay a quantitative method have been chosen in order to find general re-lations. The data collection is done with help of an evaluation model that have been devel-oped for this study.

The Department of Forest Products and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences has received means from Vinnova for a preliminary study of the organisation of logging work of today and how a better logging organisation should be brought about. This thesis reports results from qualitative interviews with nine forest machine contractors regarding the situation of their companies. The interviews have been analysed with respect to the genesis of the companies, which tasks they perform or that they could consider perform-ing, business relationships of the companies, relationships between the different partners of the companies, and the state of competition experienced by the contractors. The companies have developed either from the contractor previously being machine operator employee or from that the contractor in making has owned a machine and needed work. Their primary business is mechanised logging.

The manufacturing industry is currently in a short-term downturn while the competition is increasing. The result of this is that companies must find new ways to bring out their products. Traditional competitive strategies, such as low pricing, is not sufficient today as the customer is inquiring something more than just a good product. Higher demands are presented on an accurate, well functional, communication between customer and companies, as this has become an important strategic factor in achieving long-term profitability.The aim of this independent project was to analyze and evaluate the communication process between a company and its sales companies.In order to illustrate this process, a case study was carried out at Alfa Laval, their sales companies and employees at their distribution center in Tumba. In order to see the differences in attitudes between the management, the sales companies and the employees regarding communication and involvement a gap analysis were used.The theoretical part of the study considers theories about business mission, communication, involvement, quality and creating value.The result showed that a smaller gap exists between the sales companies and the management while a slightly larger one exists between the employees and the management.

The Swedish Code for Corporate Governance was introduced on July 1, 2005. All companies then listed at OM Stockholmsbörsen A-list and those on the O-list with a market value of more than three billion SKr must implement the rules in the Code. The Code includes rules for corporate governance as a complement to the legislation. The Code is based on the principle comply or explain. This means that the companies are aloud to diverge from the rules if they explain why.

Sales is the foundation for all commercial business and companies that have the best sales process in conjunction with efficient deliveries will do well in the long run. The author of this report was tasked by the Organisation in South Africa to study new/alternative ways of attracting Swedish companies to South Africa and sell the services of the Organisation to these same companies (defined as the sales process in this report) by analysing how similar international service companies do the same. A benchmarking process has been conducted with four similar service organizations in South Africa to examine how these companies work in comparison to the Organization. Surveys have been used for purposes of this study, as the methodology is well suited to provide the author a view on the opinions, perceptions and experiences of the respondents.The project aimed to develop new methods to attract Swedish companies to South Africa or improve and streamline the existing methods. The aim was also to develop new ways to sell the organization's services to Swedish companies.The study concludes that there is little focus on marketing of services within the Organisation.

Today, companies work with issues concerning Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). A higher demand from customers and other stakeholders as well as an extended legislation are great reasons. Framework and guidelines for sustainability reporting has been developed which includes indices that companies are able to report. Though, for a long term work with sustainability a functional system and internal tool is necessary. Balanced Scorecard, BSC, is a useful tool and efforts have been made to integrate BSC and CSR with purpose to establish the work with sustainability in a more concrete and clear way.

The workplace has a direct impact on the physical, psychological, economic and social well-being of the workers. A healthy workplace leads to increased health among the employees which also makes the employees more productive (Källestål, 2004). A poor working environment can have negative consequences for individuals, companies and society (SOU, 2009:47).This is a qualitative study that investigates companies? view of health promotion and how they practice health promotion in working life. Five private and five public companies, with representatives from the management were interviewed.

AbstractEver since Sweden joined EU Swedish law has to be compatible with EU law. Swedish law cannot state anything that may restrict the freedom of establishment. This means that companies are free to change their resident within the EU without any restrictions. National rules regarding exit tax states that companies who wants to move their business out of Sweden is taxed as if their assets has been disposed of at the exit time. These rules have been found to restrict EU law according to case RÅ 2008 ref 30.

Since 2005 all companies listed on a regulated stock exchange within the European Union are required to present their financial reports in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and International Accounting Standards (IAS). The purposes of these standards are to accomplish international harmonization of accounting rules to make financial reports more comparable. However, recent research has shown that some firms tend to use goodwill strategically in a business combination by manipulating the acquired assets and consciously allocate the intangible assets to goodwill to reduce the depreciation in the income and decrease costs. This phenomenon may reduce the comparability between financial reports and thus has an opposite effect on the purpose of IFRS and IAS.The aim of this study is to show how the companies involved in this study allocate goodwill strategically. Furthermore, the introduction of the new standards has contributed to that goodwill now is a subject for impairment test, therefore we want to show whether this affected the comparability of the companies in this study.An empirical study was conducted, based on interviews with four Swedish managers.

The workplace has a direct impact on the physical, psychological, economic and social well-being of the workers. A healthy workplace leads to increased health among the employees which also makes the employees more productive (Källestål, 2004). A poor working environment can have negative consequences for individuals, companies and society (SOU, 2009:47).This is a qualitative study that investigates companies? view of health promotion and how they practice health promotion in working life. Five private and five public companies, with representatives from the management were interviewed.

Today we spend a lot of time at our place of work. Changes in the Swedish labour market have caused illness for many people. This has contributed to that many people have been reported sick. The purpose with this study was to investigate and deskribe factors the staff, at a social insurance office, identify as important for health at a place of work. Ten employees at the social insurance office took part in the study.

In this paper Swedish hedge funds and strategies are discussed and analysed. These new financial forms seem to draw recently a huge attention both in media, press and the academic world. The fact is that hedge funds have existed already for a long time but it is still known too little about them. After the introduction of hedge funds, different asset pricing models are discussed including the most basic of all ? CAPM and further Fama and French three factor model as well as the expanding model with conditioning approach.

The purpose of this study are to investigate and describe if companies? sustainability reports differ in substance and quantity between public and Large Cap companies? and if there are any differences between industries. This study will also analyze if companies? size, stakeholder group or profitability have some impact on the companies? sustainability report. The study includes all Swedish public companies and the Large Cap companies.To investigate in line of the purpose this study will measure both the substance and quantity.