The purpose of this thesis was to investigate whether accounting quality is a priced factor by investors. The event studied is the release of year-end result and the release of the annual report. To assess accounting quality a sample of 30 companies listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange during 2003 to 2007 are studied. We assess accounting quality by the absolute size of discretionary accruals using the modified Jones model developed by Dechow et al. (1995).

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to examine whether companies listed at Nasdaq OMX Stockholm (Stockholmsbörsen) sanctioned by the legal unit Nasdaq OMX Disciplinary Committee (Disciplinnämnden), could be distinguished from the remaining companies that have not been sanctioned. As Stockholmsbörsen is the most influential unit when trading shares in Sweden, listed companies need to behave in legal aspects. Actions and decisions that affect investors do also influence the listed companies and their performance. Some companies might be tempted to manipulate financial statements and public information to retain stakeholders; other miss to report properly without being fraudulent. To control this, the legal unit Disciplinnämden is introduced.

The ?good girl? is today an accepted and widespread notion. It is delimited to young girls and women who are characterised to be, for example, ambitious, high performing, working too much and risks developing mental illnesses. In today?s society women are assumed to pursue their career alongside maintaining the main responsibility for the household and family.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the Swedish model with attention to core values over time, as well as, explain recent changes. It examines changes of the social insurance system, with focus on political reforms in the unemployment insurance, health insurance and family policy, during the last two decades. The thesis is empirical but although a discourse amount political theories and normative conceptions.Conclusions are that the normative basis in the Swedish model contains general equally and uni-versally designed rights and consensus on growth and development as well as a strict focus on an employment oriented society. Important values have also been dialogue between actors as well as accountability, even if these facts appear to have declined in recent years.Relating to three leading theories in political philosophy - utilitarianism, Rawlsian communitarian-ism - explores the directions in later year political reforms. The results show that later years changes seem to go in relative strongly utilitarian direction.

The aim of this thesis is to examine librarians' view on the knowledge and competence required at a small public library and how they look upon their education in retrospect. Library education in the 1970's and 1980's was mainly practical, a vocational training, but since 1995 the education results in an academic degree in Library & Information Science. Due to this, we focus on the ongoing generation shift in Swedish libraries as an aspect of knowledge and education. The empirical study is based on interviews with librarians working in minor public libraries. The informants form two groups, based on their education; ?old? ones and ?new? ones.

A prerequisite of an international exchange of information is multilingual tools for information retrieval, such as the multilingual thesaurus. There is an ongoing discussion about the construction of, and the guidelines for, multilingual thesauri. In recent years the praxis as defined in ISO 5964 Guidelines for the establishment and development of multilingual thesauri 1985 has been the topic of a scientific discussion. It has been about how equivalence across languages is to be established when it comes to concepts, terms and relational structures. This masters thesis treats the praxis and practice of multilingual thesaurus construction.

Previous research shows that small workplaces more often discriminate immigrants during the process of hiring new employees than larger workplaces, and usually explains this result by referring to structural factors. At the same time, previous research also shows that self-employees tend to have different personality traits than other people. Could it be the case that the higher discrimination among small workplaces can be explained at an individual level? I examined the hypothesis through OLS-regressions using a survey called Employment, Material Resources, and Political Preferences. The results showed that people working at small workplaces tend to have more negative attitudes towards immigrants than people working at larger workplaces.

As the staffing agency business is rapidly growing and suffering from accidents resulting in higher sick leave than in other businesses, it is of great interest to analyze which responsibilities prevail between the customer companies and the staffing agencies, when it comes to working environment for hired staff.The purpose of this essay is to clarify the distribution of responsibilities between customer companies and staffing agencies, regarding working environment. I would also like to analyze which consequences this distribution of responsibilities may lead to.To be able to answer these questions, I have chosen to use the legal dogmatic method together with the sociology of law method. I have studied legal sources, literature and also interviewed three persons who are active within the staffing agency business; one person from the Swedish Work Environment Authority, one person from the employers? side and one person from the employees? side.The conclusion of my survey is that the SAM-responsibility is divided equally between staffing agencies and customer companies, since the customer company who hires staff is equated with an employer. The employer must also ensure that there is an organized work adaptation and rehabilitation function within the company.

The aim of this thesis is to better understand branding work in government agencies. What can systematic branding work result in, in a government agency, besides a strong brand in itself? Can it contribute to the democratic mission that government agencies have?Based on background information on government agencies, their mission in terms of communication, their particular characteristics in relation to the private sector; brands and how they are developed; as well as theories in organizational communication, and research on the possibilities and risks of branding work in the public sector, a qualitative case study on the Swedish Patent and Registration Office (PRV) was carried out.The case study consists of a study of PRV?s brand platform, their website as well as an interview with the person responsible for developing the platform. The information gathered during the case study indicates that PRV?s brand work seems to have resulted in a number of positive outcomes.

This essay is a discourse analysis of the integration politics of the different parties in the Swedish parliament and the non-parliamentary party ?the Swedish Democrats?, as it is presented on their respective web pages. The overall purpose is to problematize and shed a light on how the current discourse(s) about integration are constituted. Also of interest is how these construct our knowledge and experience of the phenomena. We furthermore want to illustrate the social consequences of such discourses on the construction and organization of identities and groups, and, as a result, the courses of action that becomes available.

Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka de anställdas vid blivande Linnéuniversitetet stöd för fusionen av Växjö universitet och Högskolan i Kalmar. Vidare undersöktes bland annat vilken effekt olika faktorer som information, möjligheten att delta samt tilliten till högsta ledningen hade på stödet för fusionen. En enkätundersökning gjordes med ett slumpmässigt urval med 185 deltagare varav 95 var från Växjö universitet och 90 från Högskolan i Kalmar. Enkäten var baserad på fem mätinstrument: a) Leader-Member Exchange, b) information, deltagande och tillit till högsta ledningen, c) öppenhet för jobbförändringar, d) individens uppfattning av sin egen kunskapsbredd och e) motstånd mot förändring. Resultatet visade att motstånd mot förändring hade negativa samband med information, deltagande och tillit till högsta ledningen.

The use of coaching is fairly up to date in the business world although it?s relatively new.Despite this, there?s a lack of clarity about what coaching is and what it signifies. Our point ishowever not to define coaching. Based on the normative coaching literature, the purpose is,from a critical discourse analysis to explore the power relations that affect the coach andcoached in their relation to each other, so as to be able to criticize managerial coachingrelationship as presented in the literature. This will contribute to enabling for a more opendiscourse.The theoretical image of managerial coaching described by the literature as a democraticexercised leadership by a certain type of behavior and attitudes, will lead to improvedorganizational performance.

This paper is written as an examination paper at the University of Jönköping. The subject is chosen by Peab Sweden in Jönköping with whom further cooperation has been hold. The aim is to compare building methods and building materials in Sweden, Finland and Germany for further inspiration for Peab?s own market.BackgroundThe development of the construction industry develops new materials and methods to the market which has been forced by shorter construction times and the environment aspect. To pursue the development, further knowledge exchange should exist between the countries.

In 1993 the internal market within the European Union was formed and ensured free movement of goods, services, capital and people. This led to the removal of trade barriers between members of the European Union. When opening up for competition, price differences between countries decreased and more jobs were created. A single currency was introduced by eleven countries in 1999 with the goal of reducing transaction costs, eliminating exchange rate risk and to further simplify trade. In 2001 Greece joined the collaboration and introduced the euro.

AbstractThe aim of the present study was to investigate what kind of factors contributed to motivate a group of nurses at a nursing home in western Sweden to to perform their work. Furthermore, the authors wanted to investigate whether the staff nurses felt that the leader helped to increase or reduce the perceived motivation to perform such work, and the way in which staff nurses perceived their relationship to the leader. The study is based on Herzberg's (1959) two-factor theory, Hackman and Oldham's (1980) work designs theory and Leader-member exchange (LMX) theory, and those theories are the basis of the study's structure. The study was of a qualitative property, interviews were conducted with seven nurses and was structured, the questions concerned their subjective experience of motivating factors in their everyday work. The results of this study demonstrated that respondents experienced confirmation, the meaningfulness of the work, work colleagues, beneficiaries of care and residents' families as contributing factors to motivate them in their daily work.