This thesis attempts to clarify the impact of cultural differenceson customer expectations of service level. Furthermore, wewant to determine whether or not expectations of service differenough to be quantifiable between two countries, Sweden andthe US, mostly regarded as similar in business practices. The conclusion showed that higher ratings on four of Hofstede?s five cultural indexes were associated with higher customer service expectations overall, and in all four SERVQUAL dimensions. This research contributes to retail internationalization and customer expectations theory.

Title:Pecking-order i små tillverkande företag Level of thesis:Master´s dissertation in banking and auditing Authors:Mathias Klasén and Maria Waderoth Advisor:Joakim Winborg Background:The area of business financing has been well studied during the 1900´s. Many studies and theories are made with big corporations in mind, and the importance of small businesses wasn?t enlightened until the end of the 1900´s. Business financing has created a number of theories, among them Myers pecking-order theory. This theory implies that business managers prefer internal equity in front of debt and external equity.

The purpose of this study was to investigate different relations between the damages of falls and background variables as well as the relation between the falls and the weather condition to later be able to use this report to expand the knowledge among workers at VTI about the pedestrian fall injuries. All of the fall injuries in the data that this study is based on have occurred in Sweden during the time period between January 2003 and December 2011.To be able to answer the questions that this report is based on several statistical methods are used. The statistical methods that have been used during the making of this report are multiple linear regression, binary logistic regression, correlation analysis, association analysis and descriptive statistics as well as visual analysis.The results of the study show that women around menopause age have a tendency to get a big increase in the amount of injuries compared to men of the same age. The study also suggests that men on average tend to have a lower level of injury compared to women.Age also seems to affect both the amount of injuries and the level of injury negatively. The study suggests that the most likely reason for this is both that the intake of ?Fall Risk Increasing Medicine?, which is medicine that increases the drowsiness, is higher among older individuals as well as lower estrogen levels among older women and lower amount of testosterone among older men, which causes a loss of bone density in both sexes.The weather seems to have a strong effect on how many injuries occur but also a noticeable effect on the scale of the injury.

E-business innebär att företag använder Internetteknologier eller nätverksteknologier för att skapa större affärsnytta i deras affärsprocesser. För att kunna genomföra automatiserade affärsprocesser krävs att de olika system som används är interoperabla, d v s kan kommunicera och fungera ihop på ett effektivt sätt. Målet med Web Services är att skapa hög interoperabilitet, vilket gör denna teknik lämplig för e-business. Företag kan specialicera sig på att skapa specifika Web Services. Dessa Web Services kan sedan vara byggstenar åt andra företags tjänster. Det krävs då att Web Services kan integreras på ett bra sätt så att de verkligen bildar en affärsprocess. Därför är även frågor kring hur integration mellan Web Services ska gå till, viktigt ur ett e-bussiness perspektiv. Det vi kommit fram till är att det går att minimera integrationsproblemen genom att anvä nda de mest standardiserade protokollen och följa vissa riktlinjer vid skapandet av Web Services.

Business valuation is something that is carried out on a daily basis and relevant to both small and large businesses. Valuations are often long and complex processes that may be difficult to understand, even for those who have received an education in the field. In this thesis, we try to create a better understanding of how this process works.   Since we are aware of many aspects of the theory behind business valuation, but very little insight into the practical activities, we have chosen a deductive approach, i.e. to go from theory to empirical data.   The conclusion is that the methods presented in the theory is largely used in practice, and that the process of valuation mighty seldom differ between valuations. For the seller to be able to charge a higher value for their companies, it is important to have knowledge of, and review the value-creating factors in the company.

Abstract Title:                               Goodwill ? differences and similarities between how IFRS and U.S. GAAP treats goodwill Level:                              One year master, 15 credits Author:                           Oscar Larsen and Thomas Karlsson Supervisor:                     Leif Carlsson Examiner:                      Cecilia Lindh Year of publication:      2011 The main issue:              What are the differences and similarities of the treatment of goodwill between the U.S. GAAP and IFRS? What can the transition from U.S.

The field of the social economy and of the work integration social enterprises (WISE) in particular, is for many a more or less unknown area. Unlike ordinary enterprises the WISE's are different due to their aim of integrating disadvantaged people through work. In comparison with other small enterprises earlier research has shown that the WISE's are dealing with challenges regarding recruitment, participation, leadership, sustainable business ideas but above all, the access to funding. The purpose of this essay has therefore been to examine and analyze the financial situation of eight WISE's located in the Stockholm County. The results indicate that half of the enterprises perceive their economic situation as very unstable and as an obstacle to their further development.

This study has been assigned by Bengt Hellman who works at the logistic department at IKEA Torsvik just outside of Jönköping. The task has been to develop a new picking strategy for the Oversize area in the CDC-Warehouse. The reason why IKEA wants a new strategy is because they want to minimize the route length for the forklifts when collecting the orders.By evaluating the current strategies on other areas in the CDC-storehouse, study literature within this subject and look at restrictions for the storing of goods, we have analyzed how the Oversize area works today. We compared the gathered information, to how it should be done according to the literature to be able to work out a new functional strategy.Today, IKEA does not have a working strategy for the oversize area because of lack of time and because all the power has been put on other areas were sales rates are currently higher. This have led to lack of organisation at the Oversize area and items are just put were there is space without first analysing were it should be placed.The strategy that we have worked out and introduced to IKEA builds on easiness of understanding the layout, the employees shall know why an item is placed where it is.

Detta examensarbete har genomförts på företaget Navigate Consulting Business Solutions AB, ett konsultbolag som erbjuder tjänster inom affärssystem, såsom val av affärssystemslösning, implementering och förvaltning.Företaget vill utöka sitt framtida affärssystem, Oracle E-Business Suite R12, genom att lägga till tidrapporteringsmodulen Oracle Time and Labor. För att ta reda på om tidsrapporteringsmodulen möter verksamhetens krav och förväntningar är det nödvändigt att företaget får en uppfattning hur systemet möjligtvis kan lämpa sig, innan de bestämmer sig för att implementera.Med detta som bakgrund och utgångspunkt syftar detta examensarbete till att visualisera den tidrapporteringsprocess och de krav som Navigate har för Oracle E-Business Suite R12, genom användning av prototyp.En inkrementell och iterativ arbetsmetod har tillämpats vid utveckling av denna prototyp. Resultatet av detta examensarbete är en interaktiv prototyp över företagets tidrapporteringsprocess. Stora delar av deras krav har visualiserats, och det har totalt producerats femton skärmbilder för att utveckla prototypen. Dessa har kopplats samman och tillförts med interaktivitet genom prototypverktyget Justinmind Prototyper.Trots att det har inneburit en tidskrävande process för utveckling av prototypen har man funnit potentiella fördelar.

Caso Skanska is an incident that occurred in Argentina and regarded corruption and bribes to government officials. This study investigates how this incident could occur and how it can be explained. The theoretical framework used is the dynamic interaction model, stakeholder theory, embeddedness theory, the political perspective and corruption theory. The method used is qualitative and it consists of data gathered through semi-structured interviews in Sweden and Argentina as well as other sources of written information of relevance for the study. The authors conclude that Caso Skanska could occur due to the lack of strong institutions as well as transparency.

Background: Due to an increasing globalization the competition has increased and this has lead to overcapacity and falling prices on markets today. The subject field logistics has during the last decades been given increasingly significance and has become a way to handle the competition. Theories clearly point outthe importance that a concordance exists between logistics and superior strategy but few, if any, authors give further details about how this adjustment should be made. Purpose: The aim of this thesis is with a case study approach survey if the subject field, which describe the importance that logistical solutions correspond with the superior strategy, is known and implemented in a company. We aim to develop the subject field through our empirical findings.

Foreseeing future changes in economic activity is of up most importance to a wide array of actors. The time lag in the presentation of official GDP statistics means that to somewhat accurately capture a tendency of where the business cycle is heading one need turn to qualitative sentiment indicators such as Purchasing Managers? Index (PMI) and official sentiment indicators for valuable clues. This thesis uses in-sample and out-of-sample methods to evaluate how well PMI and official Business Tendency Surveys (BTS) in Sweden and Denmark fair against the year-on-year growth rate of industrial production. Moreover, various Swedish regional sentiment indicators get examined and a case study of the indicator for the Öresund region is performed.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate if a dynamic investment strategy on the Swedish asset market can accomplish better returns then a static investment strategy. The dynamic investment strategy is created by incorporating business cycle predictors and firm-level variables to predict future stock returns. The predictive regression is calculated wih 60 months of observation (1999 01-2005 12) and is then used to estimate future returns for 23 months in the period 2004 01 -2005 11. The structure of the regression, with linear functions of ? and ?, goes back to Shanken (1990) and Avramov and Chordia (2005) has had success with the variables chosen.

Syfte: Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka hur småföretag väljer mellan olika finansieringsformer. Metod: För att uppfylla uppsatsens syfte så har vi tillämpat en kvalitativ metod, där en studie genomförts genom semistrukturerade intervjuer med företagare i fyra utvalda småföretag. Slutsatser: Denna undersökning visar på att småföretag bland olika finansieringsalternativ har mest kunskap om bankfinansiering, varför metoden känns trygg och således ofta tillämpas av småföretagare. Kunskapen om andra finansieringsalternativ är bristfällig, och det anses för tid- och kostnadskrävande att skaffa sig kunskap tillräcklig djup nog för att kunna förankra finansieringsbeslut i. .

Business Intelligence (BI) is a competitive concept for enterprises to consider. The concept is based on the idea of using business data in order to effectively analyze activities within an enterprise in order to enhance decision processes in the organization.The purpose with this study is to help Akademibokhandeln AB to analyze what BI-requirements they may have, and to create a recommendation on what sort of BI-tool that would fit the enterprise's needs.The requirements analysis was conducted with the help of internal personnel. Four different tools on the BI-market have been examined, analyzed and compared: IBM Cognos 8 (IBM Cognos), Microstrategy 9 (MCST), Qlikview 9 (Qlikview), and SAP Business Objects BI (SAP BO). These tools have been compared with the help of two models (BRI and BCI) that is based on the BI-requirements analysis, with the cost aspect taken into consideration in the BCI-model.Using the BRI-model, the comparison results in a technical evaluation. Here, IBM Cognos gets the highest result just ahead of MCST and SAP BO.