Title: Competition for small audit firms ? a qualitative study on possible competitive strategies and how the upcoming changes will influence competition on the audit market    Subject: Auditing Tutor: Margareta Paulsson  Authors: Per Dahlström and Martin Holmberg Purpose: The purpose of this study is to develop an understanding how smaller auditing firms use competitive strategies and why. The result aims to work as a support for owners and leaders of audit firms as they make decisions of how to compete in the future. We would also like to explore how smaller audit firms view the change of the mandatory audit, that is, our intentions are also to examine how they think the consequences on the market will be and their view on its affect on the competition of the market.    Methodology: Our methodological approach was characterized by a hermeneutic approach in order to explain and understand why the smaller audit firms do what they do. Our approach is a combination of inductive and deductive as it allows us to develop an understanding of the subject, then gather our empirical data and from that draw valid conclusions.

The furniture retail industry in Sweden has gone trough large changes during the last decades. Today the industry is tough and in the maturity stage where few new companies enter, especially if they do not have a unique offer. The furniture companies have become larger and fewer, the changes have lead to difficulties for smaller and medium sized companies to grow and be profitable.Our purpose is to analyse, evaluate and compare three smaller companies in Stockholm with the intention to find what kind of marketing strategies they are using to survive on the Swedish market. First we interviewed the three companies to see what they do to survive on the market, then we asked 100 persons to fill in a questionnaire to see if they had the same opinion as the companies described.With help from theories we prepared questions which laid the foundation to the empirical part of the essay.The result from this study shows that the three companies differ from each other when it comes to using relationship marketing and placing the customer in the centre. All of them are aware of the importance of doing so, but because of different limits and possibilities they can not fully adjust everything to the customer.

This paper is the result of a study of competition and cooperation in regard to tourism between the five largest municipalities in Norrland in northern Sweden. The municipalities are Luleå, Skellefteå, Umeå, Sundsvall and Gävle. The aim was to study the relation between competition and cooperation between these municipalities. An important theoretical aspect in this study is coopetition, where competition and cooperation occur at the same time. The studies on coopetition in the Nordic kontext is limited and the main literature on coopetition study the relationship between firms. This study however takes a geographical standpoint and aims to fill the gap in the literature on how competition and cooperation are connected to each other between chosen municipalities. To do this the tourism strategies of the municipalities were studied thoroughly. These written strategies provided information about how the municipalities view their competitive advantages and disadvantages and some general information about how they cooperate with the nearest regions. To find out how the municipalities think about competition and cooperation with the other four specific municipalities interviews were made with experts on the tourism field in each municipality. The results show that the municipalities do not have established strategies for how they are to be competitive compared with other specific municipalities. They do not see it as profitable to compete, instead they should complement each other. At the same time however, most of the municipalities mostly cooperate with municipalities in a short distance from them, and due to lack of resources only briefly or not at all with the municipalities studied here..

In a world where digital media is becoming a greater part of people?s everyday and working lives it is plausible to assume that the upcoming generation of pupils expect the teaching media to adapt thereafter. It is this assumption of an increased demand that Natur & Kultur is hoping to be able to meet. This thesis has been a stage in the process of producing digital material in the subject of mathematics for high school students. Specifically the aims of this thesis have been to make a rough description of the largest competitive companies? products within the same market, explore and put together a brief theoretical foundation of contemporary research and produce concrete examples of ideas for digital applications.

The theme of this thesis is citizen participation in the planning- and design process. It turns to everyone that studies landscape architecture or work as landscape architects and I hope that it can function as a ground for discussions as well as a source for inspiration. Rågsved is a suburb south of Stockholm. Just outside the centre of this suburb, a small industrial area called Snösätra, is located. In a few years time the leaseholds for the small industries will expire and the key question is: What will happen then? This is my general concern and it was the main cause for me to start this particular work. How do you attend to a place that appears like blank sheet of paper? To an empty page that can be filled with an infinite number of different formulations.

Today's unsustainable resource use is influenced by many factors. One key factor isproduction methods and patterns. Trough change of production patterns enterprises can bepart of the solution to a more sustainable society. This case study has analyzed environmentalperformance of the printer company Edita Västra Aros Ltd (EVA), who has gained awards forits environmental work, and what driving forces they have had during this work. The survey isbased on a qualitative method and the collected data consists of documents and staffinterviews, which have been analyzed with content analysis.

From the pre-Roman and Roman Iron Age, a number of different fossil agrarian landscapes can be found in southern Sweden - clearance cairn areas, celtic fields, stone-wall complexes and geometrically laid-out strip fields. With two different comparative analyses, this paper tries to explain some of the differences between clearance cairn systems and the other fossil field systemsThe shape of the early Iron Age agrarian landscape varies between different provinces of southern Sweden. At Gotland, celtic field systems were laid-out before 500 BC. In Småland at the same time, areas with clearance cairns were created. How can the difference be explained? The different physical appearance of clearance cairn areas and celtic fields can be explained by the different ways to handle the ard in till and in sandy soil.

Product development is essential for all companies that want to survive in competitive markets regardless of the characteristics of the product that the company sells. Companies that sell products within product categories which can be seen as bad, also need to develop their products in order to remain competitive. If these bad products add a positive attribute, for example that they get organic, a contradiction within the product arises and they get incongruent. This thesis investigates which effects that follow a launch of an incongruent product. The thesis also examines if these effects are affected by the strength of the brand under which the product is launched.A total of 240 respondents participated in an experimental study where product incongruity was manipulated for two different product categories, where one well known brand and one unknown brand were examined in each category.

During the last couple of years many sectors and markets have had an increase in the competitive situation, this has meant that being cost effective have become more essential if organizations want to stay in business and be competitive. Thus, one crucial issue has become how to utilize the resources already available within the organization. Organizations can thoroughly plan and control personnel resources in order to become more efficient. But to become more cost effective also means taking into consideration several key figures, productivity being one of the more important figures.Onninen, a wholesaler which has one of its two central warehouses in Örebro has experienced this issue, i.e. an increase in competitive situation in their market.

Det finns inget som specifikt kan benämnas som antroposofisk landskapsarkitektur. Dock bidrar den antroposofiska helhetssynen till en omsorg om landskapet och en förkärlek att tydligare visualisera samband. Man menar att människan måste ta ett högre moraliskt ansvar för sin omvärld och tänka i kretslopp istället för avfall. Samtidigt finns inom antroposofin en ständig medvetenhet om de estetiska aspekterna på såväl detaljnivå som i det övergripande landskapet. Läran grundades av österrikaren Rudolf Steiner i början av 1900-talet, mycket av hans tankar var vidareutvecklingar av Johann Wolfgang von Goethes filosofier.

Through millennia, humans have shaped the European landscapes. Agriculture, hunting andforestry have influenced virtually every ecosystem on the continent and formed what we todaythink of as the cultural landscape; a mosaic pattern of cropland, fields, pasture and forests. Thepast two centuries, globalization, industrialization and urbanization have come to pose a threatto the existence of these landscapes. European farmlands are now being abandoned at analarming rate, and the associated loss of landscape preservation, biodiversity and ecosystemservices is a concern to the scientific community and public alike.This thesis studies if the implementation of the relatively new conservation strategy rewilding(recreating self-sustaining ecosystems and reintroducing keystone species) can be a part of thesolution to preserve cultural landscapes and biodiversity in Sweden. Through interviewssupplemented with studies of published works, expertise from different fields has beencompiled to provide an overall picture of the capacity of rewildings as conservation method.

The deregulation during the last decade within the airline businesses have called upon a more fierce competition among airlines. This fact forces airlines to continuously focus on service development in order to offer attractive solutions to satisfy customers changing needs and stay competitive. This paper focuses on service development at Scandinavian Airlines. The aim of this case study is to examine the sources of information used in service development and new service development at Scandinavian Airlines. Further the aim is to examine whether information derived from customers can be shown to play a more important role in either service development or new service development.

To succeed, a word that can be interpreted in many different ways. In this thesis the authorshave highlighted the word succeed with success. There has been a case study of twocompanies, which managed to penetrate a competitive market which is still under expansion.These brands are popular and maintain a high standard. Boomerang and Vagabond are twoSwedish companies which not only managed to penetrate the Swedish market, but also aninternational market. These are two Swedish companies which started from scratch as anyother company.

This paper constitutes graduate work at the landscape architecture program at the Department of Urban and Rural Development at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala. The main purpose of this paper is to create a project from an idea to reality. The place for the project is the environment of Icehotel in Jukkasjärvi in the north of Sweden. Icehotel is a unique hotel concept and each winter a hotel, a church and a bar is built at the area of only ice and snow, and each spring it all melts down and returns to the Torne river. During the project a plan for the environment, in ice and snow, will be made and then a part of it will be built in January 2010. The purpose is to improve the outdoor environment with landscape architecture to enhance the experience of Icehotel and create an exciting entrance to the area.

Effects of climate change, urbanization and global homogenization are resulted in the degradation of land and losses of natural habitats. Ecological design integrates nature into urban environment by respecting natural ecological principles and processes and creating resilient urban biotopes which also can be used by local urban communities. The aim of the thesis is to answer the research questions: How ecological design principles can be applied for re-design of Toledo Riverfront (with requirements of the design competition)? and What is the ecological design in landscape architecture? I participated in the USA design competition with the aim to create a vision and redesign of Toledo Riverfront in Ohio State, USA. The site is located in the south point of Lake Erie. As a result of a long industrial activity, riverfront of Toledo had been transformed into inaccessible and abandoned brownfields. In my proposal I applied ecological design principles on three scales: the city of Toledo by reinforcing of ecological connection and creating green corridors along the river; the intermediate scale by suggesting public parks along the river front and on the fine level by proposing detailed design including remediation of the site and use of dredged material.