The problem area was identified due to the fact that research within internal audit is fragmented and insufficient, simultaneously to internal audit becoming more common in the public debate. Crises and scandals in companies such as Enron in the US and Skandia in Sweden have resulted in new regulations regarding how companies should be governed. These regulations have been established in Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) in the US, and in Sweden the Swedish code for corporate governance will be implemented in 2005. The regulations imply that companies must provide sound internal control and to accomplish that, companies should have an auditing and consulting internal audit function. The Swedish code for corporate governance denotes that companies can decide to comply or explain why the code is not complied.

With the introduction of the Swedish Code for Corporate Governance in December 2004, most companies listed on the major Swedish stock exchanges were required to have a nomination committee responsible for, among other things, evaluating the incumbent board and nominating new candidates. This master thesis aims at analyzing the effects of these nomination committees on institutional investors in their corporate governance, through a qualitative study of 13 interviews. We have found that institutional investors have become more active through their participation in nomination committees and that they have gained more influence over the companies in which they own shares. We believe that in reality nomination committees have more influence over the selection of the board than was intended when the Swedish Code was written..

On the 12:th of April 2011, the Swedish tabloid magazine Expressen publishes a story, claiming that Ola Lindholm, presenter of critically acclaimed TV-show ?Wild Kids? has been suspected and apprehended on cocaine allegations. The serious allegation called for Ola Lindholm to defend himself against the allegations. His only public response was a blog-post where he claimed his innocence, albeit with some reservations.  The purpose of this paper is to analyze Lindholm?s rhetorical defense.

Syftet med denna undersökning är att finna en möjlig förklaring till hur det teoretiska området angående corporate social responsibility har utvecklats i ett tidsperspektiv. Uppsatsen undersöker hur definitionen av CSR växt fram och vad definition har påverkats utav. Det andra som studerades var hur ämnet CSR har växt fram. Ser CSR likadant ut idag som det gjorde för femtio år sedan eller hur har det utvecklats?För att göra denna studie, används följande metod.

In December 22, 2010, the hockey clubs AIK and Djurgården played against each other in front of an audience of more than 11 000 people in Ericsson Globe Arena, Stockholm. Although it was one of the biggest games of the year, afterwards no one was talking about the actual game on the ice. The reason; several times during the game, hooligans from both sides started big quarrels and the hockey dome felt more like a war scene than a place for a hockey game. From a branding point of view, and along with similar incidents from the past, the night in December did not create a good situation for AIK and their image.  Therefore, in this essay I want to investigate how AIK communicated through the crisis. I also want to evaluate whether their communication was good or bad from the perspective of different crisis communication theories.The essay?s research questions are:How did media describe the crisis and AIK´s part in it?What effect did AIK´s previous history of similar problem have on the ongoing crisis?How did AIK communicate through the crisis?How was AIK´s image affected by the crisis?What did AIK do well/what could AIK have done better?To be able to answer these questions, several news articles from the sports paper ?Hockeyexpressen? has been analyzed as well as a text from AIK itself.

This paper describes and develops a trade off model of optimal capital structure by Bradley et al. (1984). The model is then tested to examine how changes in corporate tax rates affect the optimal capital structure of firms. Based on theoretical implications of the model, four hypotheses are derived stating that firms? optimal debt-to-value ratio is (1) negatively related to financial distress costs, (2) negatively related to non-debt tax shields, (3) negatively related to firm volatility and (4) positively related to the corporate tax rate.

Hur kan företag via sponsring påverka sin varumärkesimage och hur använder sig företag av sponsring för att stärka sitt varumärke? Syftet är att undersöka hur företag arbetar med sponsring och hur de använder sig av sponsring med intentionen att påverka sitt varumärkes image. Studien ska ge nyanserande och upplyftande kunskaper i våra frågeställningar och ge företagen ökad kunskap om sponsring och hur de själva kan arbeta med att förbättra sin sponsringsverksamhet.Metod: En studie ur ett företagsperspektiv som genomförts på fem fallföretag. Primärdata har samlats in via intervjuer med respondenter från de valda företagen och den sekundära informationen har återfunnits i etablerad teori samt artiklar. Studiens teoretiska referensram är baserad på befintliga teorier inom vårt ämnesområde sponsring och varumärken.Empiri: En presentation av fem företags sponsringsverksamhet och deras syn på hur sponsring kan användas i syfte att påverka företagets varumärkesimage.Slutsats: Företag använder sig först och främst av sponsring för att positivt påverka sin varumärkesimage och för att nå ut till sin målgrupp.

Today, there is no uniform definition of what an ethical fund is. Fund management companies choose themselves what they believe is ethical and not. The lack of the definition makes it difficult for consumers to understand why these funds are special compared to other funds. The purpose of this study is to examine three Swedish companies; KPA Pension, Swedbank Robur and Folksam, to obtain a clearer picture of the concept ethical funds and its definition. The study describes each company's view of Ethics and how they may affect other companies to work for a more sustainable world.

The environmental situation is becoming increasingly critical. The energy sector and other industries have a big impact on our climate and the public is raising their voice for companies to admit their responsibility towards the environment and society. Companies engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and happily disclose their responsible performance in annual reports. But what messages are they conveying in their CSR-reporting, and what attitudes towards CSR can be found underneath the explicit content? The aim of this study is to discover which discourses exist in CSR-reports from Swedish energy companies, and how these discourses operate.

Syfte: Syftet med vår uppsats är att undersöka hur ett företags utbud av egenmärkta varor påverkar företagets image, samt imagens överensstämmelse med företagets profil. Vi vill i vår undersökning gå djupare in på om kunderna upplever att kedjornas EMV ger dem ett mervärde, vilken image kunderna förknippar med livsmedelskedjorna och deras egenmärkta varor, samt om det finns ett gap mellan den faktiska imagen och företagets profil. Metod: För att lättare kunna applicera våra teorier har vi valt att arbeta med två fallföretag, och då ICA och Coop är två av de största aktörerna på livsmedelsmarknaden valdes just dess två företag. Vår uppfattning är att det är lättare att se tydliga mönster i konsumtion och beteende om man studerar två företag som har stor kundmedvetenhet, vilket vi anser att ICA och Coop har. De empiriska studierna består av en kvantitativ enkätundersökning med 50 slumpmässigt utvalda respondenter, samt två kvalitativa intervjuer med EMV- ansvariga på ICA och Coop.

This is an essay about how disabled young people look upon themselves and their handicap. The purpose of the essay was to illustrate how the identy and self-image of young disabled persons is formed during their youth, and also how they experience their handicap during this time in life when you compare yourself with friends and other significant persons.My questions were:1. In what ways is the identity and self-image affected by being handicapped?2. Which experiencies do handicapped young people have when it comes to how other people treats them?3.

Ansvarstagande i företag har fått ökad uppmärksamhet i och med utvecklingen av begreppet Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Intressenter har idag större förväntningar på företags ekonomiska, sociala och miljömässiga ansvarstagande. Risken med CSR är att företag inte gör operationella bidrag mot samhällsproblem utan endast ser detta som ett sätt att öka sin vinst genom att förbättra företagets image. På senare tid har begreppet Socialt Entreprenörskap utvecklats där det främsta målet är det sociala och inte det ekonomiska. Syftet med uppsatsen var att undersöka hur representanter för elbolag yttrar de ekonomiska, sociala och miljömässiga ansvarstaganden i deras respektive verksamheten.

By surveying conceptions of SLU Alnarp?s resources and competence among its students and personnel, this thesis has the purpose of inventing identity, positioning and image of SLU Alnarp. The underlying idea is that the analysis of the opinions of the students and the personnel will provide the SLU management with new ideas and general advice for an innovative strategy for success. Four quantitative interviews with selected representatives from different staff groups were performed. In order to obtain a differentiated view of the employee thoughts and opinions on the university, five persons were selected to be interviewed ? all with different types of responsibilities.

The purpose of this paper was to examine the potential presence of a relationship between the quality of corporate financial disclosure and the volatility in stock price in the Swedish market. This was carried out by investigating the hypothesis that an accurate annual report with high information quality results in a decrease in volatility. Previous studies have been done with this approach and in some cases the above stated hypothesis was found to be true. Thus, in the absence of a perfect efficient market the level of information quality may to some extent explain the volatility in stock price. However, the result of our study gave no evidence in support of this hypothesis.

This bachelor thesis in business economics raises the topic about Corporate Responsibility (CR), this topic is currently being discussed in a variety of channels and today an increasing number of companies are involved in corporate responsibility. How do Skanska work with sustainability and why are they doing this? It is also important to see the results of the work with sustainability will lead to. We will go into more depth in one of Skanska's projects, project M25, to investigate the CR strategies they use and see how they actually work with sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze how and why Skanska is working to implement CR policies in their operations and more specifically from the M25 project in order to achieve sustainable business development.