The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between Earnings Management (EM) and certain characteristics of management forecasts, among a sample of Swedish listed companies. The forecast characteristics studied are: 1) Forecast venue: How explicitly is the forecast presented? 2) Forecast precision: How detailed is the estimated number? 3) Forecast measure: Which measure(s) are forecasted? We use a sample of 68 annual management forecasts, obtained from year-end reports between the years 2007-2011. EM during the forecasted year (2008-2012) is estimated using the cross-sectional modified-Jones model. The forecast characteristics are then related to the degree of EM during the forecasted period.

This paper examines the concept of heritage and which factors that determines how we evaluate and select what should be considered cultural heritage. This has been examined using a qualitative study involving interviews with seven people working within different parts of the cultural heritage sector. The purpose was to get a picture of what the public sector?s cultural heritage consists of and why so. The research question was: What gives the status of cultural heritage? This was examined by looking at further questions: What defines the concept of cultural heritage? Who decides what should be considered cultural heritage? What is significant when discussing cultural heritage? One conclusion is that the concept itself is experienced as diffuse but that the meaning can be summarized as the traces we leave behind to be preserved by future generations.

This thesis attempts to clarify the impact of cultural differenceson customer expectations of service level. Furthermore, wewant to determine whether or not expectations of service differenough to be quantifiable between two countries, Sweden andthe US, mostly regarded as similar in business practices. The conclusion showed that higher ratings on four of Hofstede?s five cultural indexes were associated with higher customer service expectations overall, and in all four SERVQUAL dimensions. This research contributes to retail internationalization and customer expectations theory.

Author: Niklas JohanssonDirector: Olle DuhlinTitle: In policy and practice ? a study of how the cultural policy have effected the language of two cultural institutions.Background: The swedish cultural policy?s raison d?être is to safeguard all the inhabitants right to experience culture. Since 1997 the development in the field has resulted in an economisation and commersialisation were the culture more commonly is looked upon as a mean of reaching a higher rate of employment or financial growth. The concept of cultural planning and new public management are today part of the cultural pollicy debate which in its turn has effected the goals and ways to evaluate fulfillment.Purpose: The purpose of this study is to show how the cultural policy in the swedish regions effect the language in the annual reports of the cultural institutions and how these documents have developed since 1997. This to further the knowledge of ho wchanges in the cultural policy effects the comunication of the cultural organisations.Method: This is a qulaitative study conducted in a inductivly.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to examine the use of the concept cultural heritage in Swedish governmental cultural policy. Ten official reports, reaching over a time period of seven years (1997-2004) are examined in the following way: What is cultural heritage? What functions/ values does the cultural heritage have? Whose heritage is a cultural heritage? With some simplification you can say that there are two different views on cultural heritage in the documents. The most common way to refer to cultural heritage is a category of chosen historical objects whose preservation is motivated by their function as sources of information and knowledge about the history and development of the Swedish society.

The EU-funded project European Cultural Heritage Online (ECHO) aims to integrateresources from various domains within the field of cultural heritage, and make them availableon the Internet. To accomplish this integration it is necessary to describe the various resourcesin a way that will achieve cross-domain interoperability. This description of digital resourcesis commonly referred to as metadata. The most well known and used metadata standard is theDublin Core Metadata Element Set, a general standard developed for the purpose ofdescribing all types of digital resources. Since the mid-1990's a large number of specializedstandards have emerged in different communities, for example IMDI, designed for detaileddescription of language resources.This thesis aims to examine the possibility of combining a general and a specialized metadatastandard to achieve cross-domain interoperability and at the same time provide a sufficientlydetailed description of language resources for researchers within the field of linguistics.

The purpose of the study is to investigate how board structure influences CEO compensation for companies listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange in 2004. The theoretical frame of reference is based upon the corporate governance theory, the principal-agent theory and previous empirical research in the area. A cross sectional regression analysis is used, where a number of control variables are included and significance tests are conducted. The study is based on information regarding CEO compensation, and possible factors affecting the compensation, from 267 companies listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange A- and O-list in the year 2004. We find that the board structure has no significant effect on the CEO compensation.

The aim of this bachelor thesis is to study how Catalans´ identifications, with respect to their city (Barcelona), their region (Catalonia), their country (Spain) and Europe, are related to each other. Furthermore it deals with whether they use cultural or civic notations when they speak of their identification with the different territorial levels.The thesis is based on a qualitative method with interviews with ten Catalans living in Barcelona, aged from 18 to 58. The result showed that Catalans´ identifications with different territorial levels vary in how they relate to each other. This variation can be classified using three models, namely; ?The Russian doll model? which implies that the identities are ranked hierarchically, ?cross-cutting? that is people can identify themselves with the different levels depending on various situations, and also ?The marble cake model? which means that the different identities are so intertwined that they cannot be separated.

Management control systems are a popular area of research and a lot of new research has been done over the past years. This development has been looking into new situations and circumstances, and interdisciplinary studies are being made to further understand the connection between different fields of study. A new field of study that has grown significantly over the past few years is the connection between management control systems and entrepreneurship. Leading researchers have proposed a number of questions for further research and one of them is the board of directors? use of management control systems in entrepreneurial firms.The purpose of this study was to examine the differences and similarities in the board of directors? use of management control systems between entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial firms.The study was conducted as a deductive qualitative study through interviews with respondents from entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial firms.

Denna studies centrala syfte är att undersöka rollen som informationsteknik spelar samt de problem som inte gå att komma undan i så kallad tvärkulturell och gränsöverskridande samarbete genom att undersöka fallet mellan den svenska staden Borlänge och den kinesiska staden Wuhan. Arbets- och utvärderingsmetoden som används i studien bygger på är den vetenskapliga forskningsansatsen hermeneutik och det innebär utvärdering av intervjuer på ett kvalitativt sätt som handlar främst om observationer, förståelse och sökning efter mönster och samband. Genom detta sätt fick författaren resultat som visar att informationsteknik spelar en avgörande roll för samarbete mellan Borlänge och Wuhan men har vissa barriärer som har svårt att komma undan såsom skillnader och avvikelse i kultur, geografi, tid, språk, arbetsvanor och politik..

Bakgrund:                   För att stärka sin position på marknaden önskar Staples Sweden AB utöka sitt artikelsortiment till att omfatta 1 000 000 artiklar. För att möjliggöra sortimentsexpansionen behövs beslutsunderlag rörande hantering och kostnadsstruktur identifieras.Syfte:                          Syftet med studien är att utveckla en modell vid val och utformning av distributionssätt för att föreslå en distributionsslösning. Syftet är också att genom en kostnadsanalys identifiera orderkostnadsstrukturen för den föreslagna distributionslösningen.Metod:                        Vid genomförandet av studien tillämpades en fallstudiedesign. Det empiriska materialet samlades in genom intervjuer utförda på Staples Sweden AB.Slutsats:                      Vid tillämpningen av modellen som utvecklades i studien framkom att distributionslösningen ska utgöras av direktleveranser, konsoliderade direkleveranser, ?cross-docking?, ?cross-docking? med buffert och traditionell lagerhållning.

This thesis aims to develop a theory in the under researched field of international comparative cultural policy studies. lt does so by combining theories from the fields of political scienceand cultural studies, researching how and to what extent the concepts of culture of different states have an impact on the way cultural policies are constructed.The thesis uses this theoretical development in order to research a specific problem, namely the perceived possibility that Swedish and German cultural structures are slowly converging. Two recent official policy documents from each country are the objects of study. Through comparative idea analysis and with Michiel S. D Vries theories on decentralization, the thesis explains the convergence between the countries by differing cultural views between them.

This thesis deals with cross-country ski clothing for non-competitive women. Women in this category look for different clothing features in comfort and aesthetics than male top athletes, for whom cross-country skiwear today often seems to be designed. In this thesis the demands of these women have been mapped out by an interview with a reference group of users. The ergonomics of exercising in the winter outdoors are naturally a base for the collection. The collection consists of three functional layers of garments.

Being a successful global business player depends on firm?s ability to mobilize its resources worldwide. For this reason getting the right people with the right skills, at the right time, at the right place is crucial and makes expatriation one of the most important issues of today?s business world agenda. In terms of expatriation; national culture provides the context for the whole process.

The aim of this thesis is to map the intellectual base, and identify the general research interests, of Cultural Policy studies. In addition to this the thesis also aims to trace the uses of theoretical and conceptual approaches within the identified research interests. This is done by analysing citations from 130 articles published in the leading scientific journal International Journal of Cultural Policy between the years 2002-2007 using the bibliometric method author cocitation analysis (ACA). The results of the ACA confirm the overall notion that the research field of cultural policy studies is an ambiguous one, even when it?s studied with a quantitative method specialised in uncovering hidden structures within a given field as ACA.