The purpose of this study was to investigate how Swedish retail companies work with CSR internationally.The study also sought to explore the opportunities and challenges that exist, and the stakeholders that motivate companies CSR commitment.The theoretical framework is composed of international CSR guidelines of the OECD and the UN, Carroll's CSR pyramid and three-stage model and Freeman's stakeholder theory. Furthermore a qualitative research approach was applied where four in-depth interviews were conducted with representatives from Axfood, Löfbergs Lila, Oriflame and CSR Sweden.Finally, the study demonstrated the conclusion that the companies CSR strategies are structured in a similar way regardless of the market. CSR attract and retain workers, create a good reputation for brands and results in working conditions, living standards and environmental improvements. Difficulties, however, are the complexity of being able to control each partner and manage differences in language, laws and culture between countries. Finally there are a number of stakeholders that motivate companies to work with CSR, of which shareholders are considered the most important..

This study aims at examining the prospects for a policy transfer of a Swedish municipal environmental policy (that of Växjö) to the French urban commune Blois, for which an ambition of becoming a leading eco-city in France, was declared by the mayor in 2008.In the analysis, emphasis is laid on mechanisms to institutionalize the main environmental policy principles, such as political and institutional structures and processes. Other prospects for an institutionalization of a new environmental policy that are to be investigated are economic structures as well as visions of the different decision-makers concerned. Research methods used in the study are qualitative interviews, document studies and a questionnaire.The findings of the analysis show that today?s prospects for an environmental policy in Blois close to that of Växjö, are clearly limited. The limitations can partly be found in economic structures but these seem to be rather related to a lack of priority amongst actors.

With the expansion onto the international market almost a decade ago, Swedish energy corporation Vattenfall began it's breaking and burning of coal on German soil. Criticism aimed at Vattenfall peaked in the mid 2000s with the revelation of large quantities of carbon dioxide emissions and the re-location of villages and graveyards in German states Brandenburg and Saxony. The purpose of this thesis is to show where the responsibility for these activities lie. By analyzing the history of, and the political debate surrounding, Vattenfall, I will show that the prevailing policies of right- as well as left-wing parties in the 20th century were all, regarding this matter, market oriented. I will also show that these market promoting policies made possible a situation where the transparancy of, and state control over, Vattenfall were close to eliminated.

In this paper Swedish hedge funds and strategies are discussed and analysed. These new financial forms seem to draw recently a huge attention both in media, press and the academic world. The fact is that hedge funds have existed already for a long time but it is still known too little about them. After the introduction of hedge funds, different asset pricing models are discussed including the most basic of all ? CAPM and further Fama and French three factor model as well as the expanding model with conditioning approach.

Abstract This paper seeks to answer how well the unit managers in a community live up to its responsibility for rehabilitation. What opportunities and obstacles center managers feel that they have in the rehabilitation process and their expertise in rehabilitation are adequate. The essay is based on qualitative, in which six interviews were conducted to help capture the Heads of Unit subjective experiences. Five of the respondents are heads of units in the elderly, and an interview with the rehabilitation coordinator of the municipality. Respondents' comments and relevant literature form the basis for this essay.

Our thesis focus on how retirees perceive Tv4s news casts of economy news where we focused on five different aspects: What is the relationship between the news cast and the viewer and how does the viewer express their understanding of the news cast and the way it is constructed? What are the viewers attitude towards the news content and how do they find the news cast useful for them personally?We choosed retirees as our target group due to their vulnerable economic position in today?s society and TV as an important medium for them due to the digital divide. The study was performed with twelve qualitative interviews and one group interview where six retirees took part.We discovered a big interest for economic news in the target group. The majority had a sympathetic view of the news cast they saw but they also expressed skepticism toward the economy segment and/or news castings. The majority expressed a lack of trust for the journalists and the experts brought in to share observations and make announcements, and the financial business overall.

The purpose of this study has been to look into and analyze the view on sex equality in textbooks and teaching media, and teaching of a group of upper secondary school teachers, through a gender perspective. The teachers teach subjects within social- and political science. The two questions that I wanted to answer are: What views do the teachers have on sex equality in their teaching? What views do the teachers have on sex equality in the teaching media (textbooks and other teacher media) which they have access to? Since I wanted to look into the teachers own views I chose unstructured interviews as the method of gather empirical information. To interpret the transcribed texts I chose the hermeneutic view of people as intentional.

Current research shows that the number of door openings during surgery is unjustifiably high. It is the operating room nurses task to ensure a hygienic and aseptic environment throughout the surgery with the goal of minimizing the risk of healthcare associated infection. The study aims to investigate whether the operating room nurse is attentive to the number of door openings during surgery and if the operating room nurse is attentive to the reasons behind the door openings. A pilot study with nine observations was carried out on two smaller hospitals in the region of Västra Götaland. The results showed a significant underestimation of the rated door openings compared with the actual ones.

Det har blivit allt viktigare fo?r fo?retag att arbeta med CSR, Corporate Social Responsibility, och da?rmed ta ansvar fo?r sin pa?verkan pa? samha?llet. Ma?nga fo?retag har dock inte kunskapen eller erfarenheten att arbeta strategiskt med dessa fra?gor utan a?gnar sig mer a?t va?lgo?renhets- arbete. Denna uppsats a?mnar ge nya perspektiv pa? hur fo?retag kan a?gna sig a?t CSR, genom att studera arbetet i Swedbank.

Aim: Based on portfolio theory, which highlights diversification, and CSR, which describes the value of social and ethical responsibility of corporations, this study examines whether there is a difference in risk-adjusted performance between ethical and traditional mutual funds. Ethical funds are limited in their opportunities of diversification and should therefore be limited in their potential perfomance. On the other hand, a focus on social and ethical responsibility can be profitable.Method: The study uses a quantitative approach where we used 25 mutual fund in each category, ethical and conventional mutual funds. The mutual funds and their data has been obtained from www.morningstar.se and www.pensionmyndigheten.se. Historical performance between 2009-2013 were processed to obtain the Sharpe ratio and M2.

Abstract Background: More and more people receiving palliative care in the home, leading to increased responsibility for the next of kin. Being a caregiver and at the same time next of kin is a complex situation for everyone involved. Next of kin´s everyday life changes drastically when everything revolves around the one who is seriously ill.Aim: To describe next of kin´s experiences of being caregivers to a palliative sick person at home. Method: A literature review in which eleven qualitative scientific articles were analyzed and summarized. Results: The results revealed three themes; experience of support, experience of changes in life and experience of strategies.

Title: Overreaction on the Swedish stock market Seminar date:2008-01-30 Course:Nek K01- Bachelor Thesis in Economics (15 ETCS) Authors: Advisor:Oskar Herbe and Ludvig Persson Hossein Asgharian Key Words:Overreaction, Anomalies, Market Efficiency, Contrarian investment strategies Purpose:The purpose of this thesis is to test if the overreaction hypothesis as originally described by De Bondt and Thaler is a good explanation model for the Swedish stock market. Further, our intension is to divide the stock market into three segments by company size, in terms of market capitalization, to control for size effects. Method:We have conducted this study by analyzing Swedish stock data in the period of 1989-2007. Within this time span, using overlapping formation periods, we have constructed two types of portfolios, winner portfolios and looser portfolios. The portfolios represent the 30 per cent best performing respectively worst performing stocks in terms of returns.

In October 2006 the media began investigating the four ministers Billström, Borg, Borelius and Stegö Chilò who were all being accused of miner tax fraud. The two women, Stegö Chilò and Borelius became the primary victims of an extensive media hunt where the media already had made their minds up; the women had to go. The more the women tried to explain themselves, they only seemed to be digging themselves into a deeper hole and ten days into the ?hunt?, the media got their way, the women resigned while the men, even today remain on their positions. What was it then that made the outcome so different regarding the four ministers when the only thing to really set them apart was their genders?With support of theories from Giddens, Habermas and Thompson as well as theories regarding media, gender and the medias ethical responsibility we have in a qualitatively narrative analysis studied 20 articles from Dagens Nyheter and Expressen.

Essay in political science, D-level by Lisa Kringsberg, spring semester 2008.Tutor: Michele Micheletti.?Civil Society in Singapore? can it make democratization possible?The third wave of democratization and the end of the cold war has together increased the interest of the civil society as an impact on democratization. Singapore is a country which is higly-developt in both the socie-economic and economic field. Dispate this Singapore has not yet achieved to become a democratic state. The purpose of this essay is to study how the civil society can affect democracy in a country.

Business is changing and so are society?s expectations. Companies are expected to take responsibility for their trade and the context they are operating in, by looking at socially, economically and environmentally aspects. Many companies handle it by implementing corporate social responsibility (CSR) to their line of action. This is often handled by collaborating with other organisations, such as non-governmental organisations.