International negotiation is the link between international planning and implementation. The ability to negotiate successfully may very well depend on the efforts being put into preparatory activities, leading to the purpose of this research, to gain a better understanding of pre-negotiation in an international context, by exploring, describing and partly explaining the process. Personal interviews were conducted with two Swedish international Companies to obtain thorough information within the area. The collected data from these two cases are discussed, compared and then finally used to draw general conclusions. The study indicates the different issues that either occur or should be considered prior to the first formal meeting in an international negotiation.

This thesis investigates the effects of active ownership on the return on assets (ROA) of Swedish listed Companies during the years 2003 to 2013. Active ownership is operationalized based on the probabilistic voting model that is used to calculate the minimum amount of shares the largest shareholder needs in order to possess control of a contested vote at the shareholder meeting. We study the three largest lists on the Nasdaq OMX Stockholm, having 1454 observations from 207 Companies to test our hypothesis. The main result from the study is that there's a significant positive relationship between active ownership and ROA during the investigated period. The active owners' relative strength also proves to have a significant positive relationship to ROA..

The food industry is an important part of the Swedish economy, It is the fourth largest industry in Sweden in terms of number of employees and production value. Due to the increasing globalization, the Swedish food industry faces new conditions and challenges. Through the Swedish membership in the European Union in 1995 a whole new era of competition began for the Swedish agriculture and food industry. Markets that previously were closed now opened. In retrospect, it should be noted that the Swedish food industry managed well.

Stjärnägg is a sales organization operating on the Swedish eggmarket, owned by nine Swedish packing Companies. Those nine packing Companies are not just owners of the sales organization, but at the same time competitors since they compete in the market when they do not sell the eggs through Stjärnägg.The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the sales organization from a supplier and owner perspective. To answer the purpose of this study, qualitative interviews have been conducted with the owners of the egg packers. This has been done in order to get as fair picture of the sales organization as possible. From the answers of the interviews, a compilation has been made to be able to give Stjärnägg concrete proposals of improvements in the organization.

The purpose of this thesis is to outline an appropriate model in order for Companies to successfully act and compete physically as wholesalers at the same time as acting on the virtual market by selling directly to the end consumer. The approach of this thesis is hermeneutical and abductive with elements of hypothetically deductive approach. Our research has a qualitative research strategy based on case studies and interviews as well as on secondary data. Interviews were conducted with the case company JaymJay Wear AB as well as with other Companies, so called mini cases. The secondary data consists mainly of textbooks, web sites and journals.

Investor Relations is a function used by Companies to compete for capital by creating relations with investors. It is a young function, earlier practiced by the same people who had responsible for exercising the Public Relations.Investor Relations has evolved a great deal lately but there are still no concrete theories behind the function. The aim though is clear and there are literature explaining how to practice the different parts. The most research within Investor Relations uses the theory of Relationship Marketing. Lately the two authors Hägg and Preiholt have started to examine what they call Financial Marketing since Investor Relations is about relations between actors on financial markets primarily.In this paper, we examine the aspect of information in Investor Relations.

Background: The increasing competition on the market demand both Companies and supply chains to find optimal solutions. The edeavour to reduce inventory levels is a part of this. Earlier, inventory was seen upon as valuable assets, but today they tend to be more and more negative in the eyes of the Companies. Inventory demands capital, handling, and space. Therefore inventory creates unnecessary costs.

During the past years Building Information Modelling (BIM), which is a digital way to work, has begun to spread amongst the parts of the construction process. At the construction phase the larger Companies has started using the new way to work. This expansion has not been developed amongst smaller Companies leading to the purpose of this report, to investigate in which ways the smaller Companies can implement BIM by changing their way to work. The thesis is delimited to work preperations with the objective to define how the work preperations should be structured to enable the implementation of BIM. To achieve the objective of the report, information about the subject has been collected by interviews and literature studies.

The purpose of this thesis is to study the difference in value generation and its drivers between leveraged buyouts and listed Companies. The primary objective is to observe if differences exist. A secondary objective is to understand the differences and attempt to provide an explanation based on earlier research on Private Equity. A selection of large Swedish LBO-transactions, carried out between 1998 and 2012, are analyzed and their value generation drivers subject to comparison with a weighted index of Companies listed on the Nasdaq OMX Stockholm. A clear difference in value creation is observed, both in size and composition.

The purpose of this thesis was to examine the relationship between brands and music in TV-commercials. We investigated why Companies use music in TV-commercials to affect their brands and how music affects the brand?s image. We also investigated how Companies choose music genres for their TV- commercials. A case study based on interviews was conducted with four informants from SAAB, Lowe Brindfors, Riviera and Catt & Co.

Since the Bruntlandreport was published 1987, Companies have shown their environmental commitment through an environmental account. Companies started these accounts because their rivals started having them and today most large Companies have a environmental account or sustainable development report. The information given by the Companies have been seen as slanted, and others see it only as a part of the image production for the Companies. There have been several investigations of the stakeholders of environmental reports and it is not clear who is the primary stakeholder, in other words who actually reads them. All different stakeholders have different views of what an environmental account should encompass.

In recent decades, project based work form has taken a dominant role of work for many Companies. Developments in the field have progressed rapidly and research has contributed to more efficient working practices. This study describes the elements that a project manager should keep in mind when he leads a project without actually being physically present, complex factors occurred and the basic approach to encounter them. The aim of this report is to examine factors that arise in the context of coordination at a distance and how Companies, in their daily work, surpass these obstacles. The study does not include cultural differences, time zone differences and language differences, all very common in project management at distance.

Sustainability is today a current topic and Companies are more or less forced to work with it even though it contradicts the historical role of Companies, which is to generate a profit for shareholders. In recent years there has been a rising interest from banks to work with sustainability but research has shown a growing dissatisfaction among customers even though banks are spending a lot of money and time working with sustainability. This shows that there is an asymmetry between how the banks act and what their customers demand. The purpose of this paper is to create an understanding of how business customers perceive banks´ CSR-reports by investigating customers? interest in these reports.

Purpose: To investigate if Altman´s Z´-score model, which calculates financial distress, can be applied on Companies established in Sweden and if the financial crisis in 2008 made previously healthy Companies go bankrupt.Methodology: Quantitative studies with a positivistic foundation. Empirical data will be collected in order to examine if there is generalizability among the studied objects. Conclusions will be made by comparing the empirical data with the theoretical foundation. Financial distress in firms will be measured.Theoretical perspectives: Altman´s Z´-score model, designed to predict financial distress in private firms.Empirical foundation: A selection of 93 private firms that have gone bankrupt in the years 2008, 2009 or 2010. The firms selected all have a turnover that exceeds 20 million SEK.

Many Companies have historically forced their interests through without any thoughts about the future needs of the humans and the society. In the last few years voices have been raised for a change, Companies need to take their responsibility regarding sustainable development.The purpose of the report is to describe and explain possible relations between sustainabil-ity performance of Companies and profitability, valuation, industry and size respectively.To be able to judge the sustainability performance of the Companies Folksam (2006a) have been used. This is a solid investigation of the Companies listed on the A- and O-lists of the Stockholm Stock Exchange by the end of 2005. The sustainability marks have been com-pared with the chosen key values for each hypothesis respectively. With this quantitative data as foundation, a quantitative approach and a deductive method have been used.In the first area of the investigation, profitability, the authors found correlation for the main hypothesis between sustainability performance and ?Return on Total Assets? through a statistical test.