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.

Ett nytt globalt system, inte nytt i tiden, dock i omfattning och påverkan, håller på att förändra maktordningen och de politiska relationerna så som vi känner dem. Detta innebär bland annat att ansvarsfördelningen mellan offentliga och privata aktörer blir mer oklar och tar nya former. Begreppet Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) syftar på det etiska ansvar företag bör ta för sin verksamhet, såväl inom den egna organisationen som i det omgivande samhället. Den frågeställning den här uppsatsen söker besvara gäller varför CSR blivit en allt viktigare del av företagens policy? Uppsatsens fokus ligger på globaliseringsteori och slutsatsen blir att förklaringarna till CSR kan delas in i såväl etiska och praktiska, som kosmopolitiska.

From policy to practice - a study of textile companies view about challenges with implementing CSR policies examine the textile companies awareness of which challenges there are with the implementation of codes of conduct in a global supply chain, as well as to analyze how the companies deal with the challenges. With increased globalization many companies have chosen to outsource entire or parts of the production in various developing and newly industrialized countries. However, the working conditions in these countries do not always fulfill the labor standards that are defined in various conventions. The society began demanding companies to take social responsibility. The social responsibility goes under the term Corporate social responsibility (CSR).

Företag har under den senaste tiden upplevt ökade och förändrade krav från intressenter, vilket kan påvisas genom hur intresset för Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) har intensifierats. Electrolux är ett av de företag som upplevt hur kraven förändrats, vilket i kombination med en miljökrävande verksamhet utgjort utmaningar för företaget. Ett sätt att möta intressenternas krav är genom utökat strategiskt arbete, varpå CSR kan vara ett framgångsrikt sådant tillvägagångssätt. I denna uppsats genomförs en fallstudie av Electrolux där vi ämnar besvara frågeställningen: Ur ett strategiskt perspektiv; Hur har intressenters ökade och förändrade krav påverkat karaktären av Electrolux CSR-arbete mellan år 2000-2015? Studiens analysmodell baseras på; intressent- och legitimitetsteori, Porter & Kramers steg för strategiskt hållbarhetsarbete samt Carrolls CSRpyramid.

Problem: That the stakeholder?s expectations don´t answer to what auditors can and may do have been a problem for several years. This problem was defined for the first time by Liggio at 1974. Since 1974 there have been several researches about the expectation gap for auditors.Purpose: The purpose of our study is to research what the audit effort in HQ Bank means for the expectation gap.Theory: The theories in our study discuss the audit profession, the definition of the expectation gap, how trust develops between individuals, the regulations that the authorities discuss and a review of earlier researches in this subject.Method: We have done a qualitative study in which we interviewed approved auditors at PwC and Convensia in addition we interviewed the chief lawyer at the Swedish financial supervisory authority to answer our purpose.Conclusions: The conclusion of our study is that the expectation gap exists between the auditors and the stakeholders. Another conclusion is that the incidents in HQ Bank have influenced the expectation gap in a negative direction, to reduce the expectation gap we suggest that adjustments of the regulations must be done and that the auditors themselves must inform their stakeholders what auditors can and may do..

Uppsatsens titel: Private Equity ? värdeskapande processer vid buyout-investeringar Seminariedatum: 2008-06-05 Ämne/kurs: FEKK01, Examensarbete kandidatnivå, 15 poäng Författare: Victor Kask, Marcus Löfgren, Petter Werner Handledare: Tore Eriksson Nyckelord: Private Equity, Värdeskapande, LBO, MBO, Corporate Governance Syfte: Syftet är att beskriva och analysera hur Private Equity bolagen arbetar för att skapa värde i sina portföljbolag. Metod: Uppsatsens utformning utgår från en kvalitativ undersökning där informationen baseras på semistrukturerade intervjuer med personer som har olika befattningar inom den svenska Private Equity branschen. Teoriska perspektiv: Det teoretiska ramverket baseras på teorier hämtade från kurslitteratur och relevanta artiklar. Empiri: Det empiriska materialet som är grundläggande för analysen är hämtat från de semistrukturerade kvalitativa intervjuerna.

Syftet med denna studie är att kartlägga i vilken omfattning samhällsansvar är en del av språkreseföretags verksamhet. Studien är baserad på intervjuer med personer i ledande position inom tre språkreseföretag som finns representerade i Sverige. Den teoretiska referensramen består av ett antal kategorier som är baserade på tidigare forskning om ?Corporate Social Responsibility? (CSR) inom olika typer av turismföretag. Dessa kategorier är ekonomisk, miljömässig och social hållbarhet samt drivkrafter och hinder för turismföretags arbete med samhällsansvar.Studien visar att omfattningen av samhällsansvar inom språkresebranschen är varierande.

The recent development in several countries? legislation and best practice recommendations in relation to corporate governance in general and audit committees in particular have affected Swedish listed corporations in the form of the Swedish Corporate Governance Code and the coming EU-directive. This paper aims to discover what factors affected Swedish listed companies to form audit committees when this was entirely voluntary. We collected data from the annual reports of 121 Swedish listed companies and formed eleven hypotheses as to what factors we believed affected the voluntary formation of audit committees based on Agency Theory, economies of scale and circumstances specific to the Swedish environment. We then analyzed the data through the use of a multivariate logistic regression model.

The environmental work of companies has become an incredibly important factor in achieving reduced levels of environmental pollution. For companies the work on environmental issues began in the 1980s. During this time companies also began to show interest for the personnel, an interest that was shown in the form of attempts to disclose personnel information in economics. Earlier this information was separated from the financial information, despite the fact that the revenues are created by the employees.The purpose of this paper is to examine how well companies with a notification or a permit today account for environmental- and personnel information in their director?s report.

Background: The valuation of growing crops is problematic partly due to weather conditions. 2011 showed that of all cultivated crops 42% were autumn sown which makes up a significant proportion of the total arable land in Sweden. This presented an opportunity to investigate more closely the methods and options used in the inventory valuation of biological assets. Problem: What options are there in the valuation of own-produced inventory specifically in the form of growing crops? Objective: This study's aim is to create an increased understanding of an agricultural company's options for inventory valuation of biological assets. In the survey of the options this study has found two main categories: rule-and principle-based accounting. Methods: A qualitative study with an abductive approach.

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.

The cost of capital for traded companies is basically assessed on information from thefinancial market. Small and non-traded companies are lack of this necessary financialmarket information in order to determine an appropriate equity risk premium and tocompute the cost of capital.In the absence of financial information necessary for an external investor, it is difficult toevaluate a non-traded company with the Capital Asset Pricing model (CAPM), which isbased on the financial market information. It measures only the systematic risk, which isthe contribution of one share to the market risk of a portfolio. It is therefore important tofind models that reflect the small and non-traded companies? real business value and theirunique characteristics.

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.

The Ericsson AXE-based systems are programmed using an internally developed language called Plex-C. Plex-C is normally compiled to execute on an Ericsson internal processor architecture. A transition to standard processors is currently in progress. This makes it interesting to examine if Plex-C can be compiled to execute on the JVM, which would make it processor independent. The purpose of the thesis is to examine if parts of the run-time environment of Plex-C can be translated to Java and if this can be done so that sufficient performance is obtained.

Under 1990-talet kom Kaplan och Norton fram med styrningsfilosofin balanserat styrkort som innebär att managers uppmanas att inte enbart ta hänsyn till finansiella mått utan bör använda sig av både finansiella och icke-finansiella mått för att kunna styra företag. Det här konceptet med balanserat styrkort har sedan det togs fram utvecklas och i början av 2000-talet finns den tredje versionen av balanserat styrkort som tillsammans med avancerad teknologi bildar konceptet business performance management. Det innebär att den information som ligger till grund för de rapporter som består av finansiella och icke-finansiella mått hämtas från en central databas i det verksamhetsöverskridande business performance management systemet. En anledning till det är att business performance management knyter samman balanserat styrkort med avancerad teknologi som möjliggör att managers därmed har möjlighet att få tillgång till en gemensam version av verkligheten, det vill säga en gemensam mental bild hur företaget presterar. Dessutom möjliggör den avancerade teknologin att managers oavsett om beslut tas som är strategiska, taktiska eller operativa att de har tillgång till den information som beslutsunderlagen baseras på i rätt tid.Den information som beslutsunderlagen baseras på måste bestå av en tillfredställande god kvalitet för att möjliggöra att managers tar korrekta och optimala beslut.