There is a mutual dependency between the business world and the country?s municipalities. The municipalities are dependent on the companies to create work and tax income while the companies are dependent on the municipalities they are located in to provide good infrastructure among other things.Apart from this the municipalities can work activly with creating a strong brand in the eyes of the companies and many researchers in marketing agree that marketing of places will be more common in the future. Marketing of municipalities is however still a rather new and unexplored area and it is uncertain how and to what extent the municipalities work with this.The thesis is formulated:How are the municipalities working to market towards companies and is it possible to make out any positive change from these marketing efforts?The goal of this study is:Our goal is to examine how the view of marketing of places differs from different municipalities in the Stockholm region, how some of these municipalities work with this and how far they have come in this work.

There is a growing awareness that multinational companies have opportunities to influence political conditions. Ethical activities made by multinational companies and ?Corporate Social Responsibility? (CSR) can therefore function as a positive input in society. The primary purpose of this master thesis is to investigate CSR´s contribution to strengthen human rights, and thereby to democratization. The research questions are listed below:1.

Interest deduction limitation rules have an important function as the regulations prevent the Swedish tax base to decrease. However, the restrictions must not be at the expense of the business environment. Interest deduction limitation rules that do not work in a satisfactory manner are likely to make Sweden a less favourable country to establish in. The first Swedish rules which were aimed to restrict interest deduction threaded into force in 2009. The rules were applicable to intercompany loans related to acquisitions of part ownership rights and the aim was to reduce tax avoidance through corporate group-loans. The rules proved to be ineffective since the avoidance continued and the Swedish rules could not tackle the problem.

How capital structure influences corporate performance and value has been in the interest of researchers and scholars for more than half a century, but an answer is yet to be found. The main objective of the present paper is to contribute with data for this cause and hopefully help to clarify this mystery. The method that was used was by analyzing the impact of debt on profitability and market valuation through linear regression. The study examined 17 Swedish property companies listed on Nasdaq OMX Large Mid and Small Cap over a 6 year period (2007-2012). The authors found a slightly negative relationship between debt-to-equity and profitability measured by return on equity (ROE) as well as by return on assets (ROA).

?Runda Upp? En Corporate-Social-Responsibility-metod med en Positivt eller Negativt påverkan? En kvantitativ studie om ?Runda Upp? ur ett konsumentperspektiv Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka konsumenters intryck av företag som i samarbete med icke-statliga organisationer tillämpar CSR och mer specifikt metoden ?Runda Upp?. Huruvida intrycken blir mer positiva eller negativa eller om intrycken förblir lika då textilföretag använder sig av ?Runda Upp?-metoden som CSR-aktivitet. Vi ämnar även undersöka om metoden påverkar konsumenters köpbeteende.

The purpose with this essay is to explore the importance of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) within the food industry. We have decided to focus on how five different ethical labels are communicated towards students and the standpoint of the study is the students understanding of the communication. The labels that we have chosen to examine in the study are KRAV, Fairtrade, Svanen, Ekologiskt Jordbruk and Rainforest Alliance. The primary research question in the study is? How are the students purchase behavior affected by ethical labels in the food industry??.Throughout the study we will refer to CSR-products as products are stamped with one or several of the named ethical labels.

Bakgrund: Förutsättningar för företag förändras ständigt. Samtidigt har kunder och anställda fått nya betydelsefulla roller för hur verksamheten utformas och vilka värderingar som företaget arbetar efter. Företagen förväntas i allt högre grad ta ett aktivt samhällsansvar, men satsningarna har hittills varit för kortsiktiga och inte visat på några ekonomiska resultat. Samhällsansvaret bör därför ses ur ett långsiktigt perspektiv och förankras strategiskt i företagets affärsidé.Problemformulering: Vilka faktorer är viktiga för att företag ska kunna överföra långsiktigt samhällsansvar till sin affärsidé?Syfte: Att analysera och utvärdera sambandet mellan interna strategier och överensstämmelsen mellan ledning och anställda med avseende på samhällsansvar.Metod: Uppsatsen bygger på en kvalitativ undersökning utifrån en deduktiv ansats.

Background: The design industry is relatively immature in Sweden but large on the international market, where companies have used services from industrial design firms for a long time. Companies incresignly realise that design is an efficient mean to gain competitive advantages on the market. Several design companies fancy growth and to receive a wider market share to expand on the international market. One of them is Design Communicaton who has made a couple of acquisitions, to receive wider comptences and to cover different segments. That has lead to an increased brand portfolio with different subbrands, which can be complicated to handle efficiently in the internal and external communication.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) refers to adjusting corporate goals so that they are not only based on maximizing corporate profits, but include ethical standards on socially desirable behavior (Boatright, 2008). Even though many companies have integrated CSR into their business operations, there are still many issues that are difficult to tackle. Especially Multinational Corporations (MNCs) in the global business environment face many challenging situations due to the fact that they often have linkages to countries where the local government is either unwilling or unable to take care of its responsibilities. MNCs often find themselves with increased responsibilities when they start solving some of the issues that earlier have been the sole responsibility of states. A specific case situation discussed in this paper is related to ?conflict minerals?.

Title: Globalization ? Meeting a new market Author: Anna Nubäck Supervisor: Anders Nilsson Institution: School of Management, Blekinge Tekniska Högskola Course: Master in business administration, 15 credits (FED006) Purpose: The purpose of this essay is partly to create an understanding of the decision to establish a branch in Japan and especially to look at if and how the Swedish company in this study has adjusted its corporate culture to suit the Japanese market. Method: Data is collected thru a number of semi constructed interviews. A first telephone interview was followed by an interview made face to face that was also followed up by interviews performed over telephone. E-mails have been used to clear and correct collected data.

In the recent years auditing scandals all around the world, deficient internal control has attracted a lot of attention. This has contributed to further requirements on insight and internal control. Those scandals have seriously damaged the auditor?s profession and contributed to a reduced trust among the public. Therefore an extensive work to recover and stringed the trust was started all around the world.

I den här uppsatsen har en fallstudie genomförts i syfte att ta reda på hur ett företag iservicehandeln med hjälp av utvalda marknadsföringsstrategier kan påverka konsumenter tillatt välja ett mer hälsosamt alternativ vid inköp av livsmedel, samt om detta är något somefterfrågas av kunderna själva. De teorier som ligger till grund för arbetet är teorier omföretags frivilliga samhällsansvar, även kallad Corporate Social Responsibility, butikenspåverkan på ett köp samt kunders köpbeteende och impulsköp. Syftets företagsperspektiv harundersökts genom två intervjuer med en franchisetagare hos Reitan Convenience Sweden ABoch genom en intervju med verkställande direktör för branschorganisationen SvenskServicehandel & Fast Food. Data från kundperspektivet har samlats in genom enkäter ochintervjuer med ett urval av butikens kunder. För att skapa en helhetsbild av de bådaperspektiven har även en observationsstudie genomförts.

Background: Ambiguity and confusion of ideas within the area of social responsibility have led to that companies not really know how to work with these types of questions. One way for companies to deal with their social responsibility is to affiliate to an initiative that exists and through this show their standpoint. One of these is Globalt Ansvar, a Swedish governmental initiative that is based on Global Compact?s principles and the guidelines of OECD. What does it mean for the companies when showing their point of view? Is this a way to gain legitimacy?Purpose: The purpose with the thesis is to judge if organisations? work with Corporate Social Responsibility gains more legitimacy by affiliating to Globalt Ansvar.Research method: A survey made through telephone interviews with representatives from all of the fifteen Swedish companies which today are affiliated to Globalt Ansvar.Conclusions: In order to give the affiliated companies more legitimacy, Globalt Ansvar has to be a legitimate initiative.

Corporate governance intensified due to the corporate scandals in the USA which led to a new law the so called Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX).In 2005 the "Svensk kod för bolagsstyrning" (The Code) was introduced. The main purpose of The Code is to strengthen the confidence in Swedish companies quoted on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. The Code focuses on the working process of boards. The rules set by The Code places higher demands on the board.  Among many other duties the board has to establish long term operational goals and strategy.

Background: The environment and the design of auditing regulation can vary significantly between countries, which can affect the form, content and quality of the audit report. The purpose of the International Standards on Auditing, ISA, is to facilitate the work for auditors on an international basis. Sweden today follows the RS 600 which is based on ISA 600, which contains standards for when an auditor use work performed by other auditor. In October 2007, came a revised and redrafted version of ISA 600 that will be enforced in Sweden in the audit of the financial year beginning on 1 January 2011. To what degree the new requirements will affect the group audit is clearly dependent on how the reporting, evaluation and instructions between the group auditor and other auditor has been carried out previously.Aim: The aim with this paper is to explain the reporting between the group auditor and other auditor in an international corporate group.