When a decision is to be made on what long term strategic forest management plan to use, consideration must often be taken to multiple objectives. Such decisions are very complex and a promising approach to handle them is by Multiple Criteria Decision Analyses (MCDA). The study is based on the problem that the MCDA that have been implemented into forest management planning have only had capacity to compare and evaluate a limited number of management plans; which means that there is a risk the most suitable plan is missed. The aim with this study was to test the applicability of combining the MCDA tools: the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) for including consideration to multi-objectives into strategic forest management planning. The study was based on the process of creating and selecting a management plan, using Heureka PlanWise, suitable for all the major objectives found in the forest holdings of a municipality in northern Sweden.

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..

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.

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.

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.

The aim of this study is to investigate how Swedish listed real estate companies use quantitative sustainability measures - mainly sustainability index with a financial focus. Sustainability management is a controversial issue that is used more and more constructive. A sustainable management approach in corporate cunduct is complex and based on a number of aspects of business visions, objectives and daily procedures. The study identifies aspects that are considered relevant in real estate companies where the selection of sustainability indicators is based on the support of scientific research in this field. The study intendeds to clarify how Swedish listed real estate companies have selected aspects and indicators of sustainability management and how these work towards a sustainable development.

This thesis tries to clarify why more houses such as passive houses is not built and at the same time the differences is described with the conventional construction as a starting point. Sweden has set environmental objectives to reduce energy consumption in buildings by 50 percent by the year 2050 compared to 1995. The passivehouse concept could have a significant role, particularly in the reconstruction of buildings with high energy consumption. For sustainable building the passivehouse technology is an economically viable concept while benefiting the environment. Initially an introduction is given of the background to the problem, purpose and objective of the thesis.

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.

In today's globalized world it is essential to achieve goal congruence within a multinational corporation despite the distances between the headquarters and subsidiaries. A case study has been performed to examine how control of sales units within a Swedish multinational corporation is achieved. Otley's framework has been used in the study to provide an overall picture of the control system where the analysis is based on five areas: key objectives and goal evaluation, strategies and plans, target setting process, incentives and motivation as well as information flows. To complement this framework, theories of convergence and divergence by Busco et al. have been used as well as theories of hierarchical control and self-control by Holmström.

Corporate social responsibility, CSR, är ett aktuellt koncept och dess efterfrågan ligger till grund för studien. Konceptet präglas av begreppsförvirring som bidrar till att framställningen av konceptet är intressant att studera. Studien syftar till att beskriva hur managementkonceptet CSR framställs i svensk populärmanagementpress utifrån ett utbudsperspektiv, där förespråkare för managementkoncept är identifierade som drivkraft för adoption. I studien utvecklas en modell för hur CSR-konceptet framställs i populärmanagementpress. Genom modellen kan detta beskrivas och analyseras.

Bakgrund: Vi tycker oss kunna skönja en utveckling i Sverige där potentialen för företagens sociala ansvarstagande ökat till följd av att den traditionella trygghetsgaranten, staten, alltmer dragit sig tillbaka. Samtidigt konstaterar vi att begreppen som behandlar detta område ofta saknar konkreta förslag på vilka aktiviteter som är lämpliga för företag att ägna sig åt. Syfte: Syftet med denna uppsats är att beskriva statens roll och den allmänna opinionen i det svenska samhället vad avser förutsättningarna för företagens sociala ansvarstagande. Genom att företrädelsevis använda teoribildningen inom Corporate Citizenship ämnar vi visa och förklara vilka konkreta möjligheter detta kan innebära för företag verkandes i Sverige. Genomförande: Empirisk data har företrädelsevis samlats in med en postenkät riktad till 3000 individer ur den svenska allmänheten.

Denna studie har som fokus att identifiera de faktorer som påverkade utgångspunkten för den tänkta fusionen mellan svenska Telia och norska Telenor samt fusionen TeliaSonera. Ytterligare skall faktorer som kunde ha underlättat och möjliggjort fusionen Telia/Telenor besvaras. Dessutom skall fusionen mellan Telia och finska Sonera studeras och jämföras med den förstnämnda fusionen för att påvisa vad som gjordes annorlunda under förhandlingarna med Sonera.Detta kommer att undersökas genom ett antal tidningsartiklar kring händelseförloppen samt intervjuer med personer som har kunskap och erfarenhet kring ämnet. De personer som intervjuats är; Lars-Johan Cederlund, ämnesråd/Director på svenska näringsdepartementet, Brita-Lena Ekström, f.d. ekonomijournalist på Dagens Nyheter, Ulf Bäckman, f.d.