Social inequality, economic imbalances and greenhouse gas emissions are some of the greatest risks threatening society today. Society has become more aware of these risks and has started to demand firms to take more responsibility. During the last 30 years firms and mainly large firms has chosen to work with something called CSR. CSR stands for Corporate Social Responsibility which is the work firms engage with to take responsibility for environment and society as a whole. Scientists and business people has taken two sides towards CSR, one side argues that CSR cost more than it tastes and the other side argues that firms which engage with CSR will gain economic benefits.

Title: A study about the purchasing process of ITLevel: Master thesis in Information Technology and Business Administration, 15 hp, EIK024Authors: Emelie Johanson and Mikael LindströmTutor: Peter Ekman, Mälardalens HögskolaKeywords: IT-investment, purchase, decisionProblem: In the last decades the amount of IT investments increased and has become an important resource within most organizations. IT gives the ability to compete and could also be a condition for many to be able to compete. In different businesses it could vary in where they put their focus when they choose an IT investment. This thesis examines how the purchase process of IT looks. How does processes differs in a bigger company versus a smaller company? From these two perspectives this study examined these research questions: Who makes the decisions whether or not an IT solution should be purchased? What aspects decide when companies are to choose between different IT solutions? Where in the purchase process do problems usually emerge?Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyze the purchasing process of IT from a business perspective.

This paper discusses the strategy and strategic change in the Swedish freight forwarding business and analysis factors that influence the forces of the business. Three companies of various sizes are chosen to be investigated as a case study, outline that cost leadership and differentiation are both important strategies for companies to compete in the market. However, companies outpacing competition do not only pursue either of the two strategies, the need the ability to add one (cost leadership) to the other (differentiation) in relationship to environmental change over time..

Background: The devolopment in the exchange market has attract a large number of investors. The information flow is extensive and it might be hard to follow the dynamic market. Some investors therefore choose to place their capital in a stock portfolio which is manged by a professional firm with no influence from the capital owner, this management is called discretionary managing. Purpose: the purpose of the thesis is to examine the working methods and the rationality regarding the management of the discretionary portfolios. The purpose is also to try to examine whether there is a relation between the selected risk, return and fees.

This essay is using theories about social norms, and wage determination to evaluate why there is a gender wage gap on the Swedish labour market. To identify the essence of the gender wage gap investigations on specific jobs where the genders are over-, under and equally represented has been made. Also a poll has been sent out to alumni business economics from School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg to evaluate their labor market from a gender wage gap perspective..

The concepts of environmental scanning and Business Intelligence have gained increased interest over the last years in a number of different organisational contexts. The research in this field has mainly been dealing with methods and issues regarding organisation but the aim of environmental scanning, the forming of new perspectives, has been largely ignored. The purpose of this thesis is to study how Swedish joint-stock banks put environmental scanning and Business Intelligence into practice. First a literature study is made to create a background and to explain the different conceptions. Then I describe the different functions of the different services in Swedish joint-stock banks.

Medieföretaget AB is a Swedish Media Company that covers several different business areas.The company daily produces one of the biggest newspapers in Sweden and publishes editorialnews on one of the country?s most visited news homepage. The company also has smallerfirms that produce new business models. Due to big changes in the media climate over theworld and a new company management team the company in November 2008 started adepartment for innovation. The main purpose of the department was to create a structuredway for managing ideas and to promote innovation.

Background: As a result of the financial markets ever ongoing product innovation a new derivative was introduced in the USA in 1997. A derivative that derived it's value, not from the price of an underlying asset, but instead from a climate factor. It's been known for a long time that revenue in certain industries are affected by weather conditions. The suppliers of weather derivatives claim that these weather sensitive businesses can user weather derivatives in order to lessen weather risk. Purpose: To do a critical evaluation of how weather derivatives can be used by companies as a risk management tool.

The aim of this study is to understand the situation on the Swedish Market for Drugstores and a creation of a new approach to marketing research, based on the thesis? methodological proceeding. With the help of different methodological approaches and different theories the study's purpose will be solved in an uncommon, untraditional way..

The management of information is a significant competitiveness in companies. Companies stored and save information every day, and it is very common to save de information in different sources. This makes de management of information complex. To mange, monitor and analyze the information, companies can use a system called Business Intelligence. BI system is an analytical system that extracts and converts data into useful information that helps employees to make informed decisions.

The purpose of this study is to improve the understanding of the dynamics behind Chinese-Western buyer-supplier relationships. The study takes on a partially inductive approach by commencing with exploratory in-depth interviews. The main body of the study consists of a cross-sectional survey. Data has been collected through an on-line questionnaire. The theoretical review consists of industrial relationships with specific accounts on the role of adaptation, trust and commitment; a stream of literature in cross-cultural relationships deriving from Hofstede?s culturalist legacy with specific reference to Chinese-Western relationships, including studies on relationship bonding, and the role of guanxi.

Background: Liquidity and the management of liquidity are of great importance for companies. Cash management is not a new term, but the need for it has increased recently, for one thing because of the internationalisation and growing harmonisation between the countries in Europe. Netting is a cash management technique, where receivables and liabilities are netted. This technique can be used to release capital and increase the company?s cash flow by reducing the number of transactions in the internal payment system.

ABSTRACT TITLE: Oil price shocks impact on the British and the Swedish stock markets SEMINAR DATE: 2007-06-07 COURSE: Bachelor thesis in Business Administration and Economics, 10 Swedish credits (15 ECTS) AUTHORS: Carl Hersaeus, Sven Piehl Trygg ADVISORS: Hossein Asgharian, Göran Andersson KEY WORDS: Dummy Variables, United Kingdom, Oil Price, OLS, Regressions, Stock Markets, and Sweden PURPOSE: The purpose of this paper is to study whether, and how, oil price shocks have an impact on British and Swedish stock markets. METHODOLOGY: Our paper is based on secondary data, focused on historical spot prices on Brent oil and stock indices from Sweden and UK. We construct dummy variables to register positive and negative disturbances in the oil price. Furthermore we try to find a relation between the price disturbances and the different stock indices. THEORY: We take off from earlier studies, which prove that there is a relation between oil prices and stock markets.

Syfte: Genom att genomföra en studie angående vilka råd i marknadsföring som ges av rådgivare och vilka råd i marknadsföring som småföretagare får vill vi ta reda på vilka kommunikationsproblem i informationssyfte som existerar i en dialog kring marknadsföring mellan nystartande rådgivare och småföretagare. Metod: Vi har använt oss av den kvalitativa metoden med ostrukturerade personliga intervjuer. Vi har intervjuat fyra rådgivare och sex företagare. Slutsatser: Den skilda synen på marknadsföring mellan rådgivarna och företagarna orsakar kommunikationsproblem mellan de båda aktörerna. Kommunikationsproblemen beror till stor del på de olika kunskapsnivåerna..

BACKGROUND The economic crimes related to the taxation authorities (SKM), aim at evading paying taxes and/or wrongly obtaining tax revenue. SKM has noticed that many newly established companies have intended to be carried on, only for a short period of time and with the aim of generating grant-revenues and in the meantime omit to pay or wrongly account for taxes. SKM wants to investigate the possibilities to develop a method of analysis to identify those corporations. PURPOSE The purpose of this essay is to make a survey of, and identify companies, who fail in their obligations concerning income-tax return and paying taxes and charges and to try to see what is characteristic for those companies in order to find out a method of analysis. Further a study of literature will be done especially concerning who will commit economic crimes and the reasons why they do it.