Purpose: To investigate if Altman´s Z´-score model, which calculates financial distress, can be applied on companies established in Sweden and if the financial crisis in 2008 made previously healthy companies go bankrupt.Methodology: Quantitative studies with a positivistic foundation. Empirical data will be collected in order to examine if there is generalizability among the studied objects. Conclusions will be made by comparing the empirical data with the theoretical foundation. Financial distress in firms will be measured.Theoretical perspectives: Altman´s Z´-score model, designed to predict financial distress in private firms.Empirical foundation: A selection of 93 private firms that have gone bankrupt in the years 2008, 2009 or 2010. The firms selected all have a turnover that exceeds 20 million SEK.

The purpose of this study was to examine if there was a relation between birth order, gender and locus of control. There where 162 participants in the study, 44 men, 115 women. Birth order was coded into three levels. There where no significant differences between birth order and locus of control. The result showed that female participants where more external when it came to locus of control.

This paper analyses how Swedish fine-art oil paintings sold at auctions has performed as a monetary investment during the period autumn 1985 until spring 2006. An average price technique as well as a hedonic regression technique, applied to a sample of 19 213 auction sales, is used to construct price indices. The indices show somewhat different results, which is explained by the inability of the average price model to adjust for relative differences in quality between periods. The hedonic regression model on the other hand captures this effect, why the hedonic index is applied in a financial return model. By adjusting for transaction cost, the financial return of an average investment in paintings is calculated.

I denna studie har undersökts personlighet och Health Locus of Control hos 56 kvinnor och män i åldrarna 18 till 65 år, där 30 var svenskar och 26 var tyskar. Undersökningens frågeställning var: Är en eller fler personlighetsdimensioner i Fem-Faktor-modellen relaterade till i vilken utsträckning en individ har Internality, Powerful others eller Chance Health Locus of Control. En NEO-PI enkät och ett Multi dimensionella Health Locus of Control-skalan-formulär administrerades. Resultatet från undersökningen kunde påvisa en signifikant korrelation mellan Openess to Experience och Powerful Others Health Locus of Control samt Conscientiousness och Powerful Others Health Locus of Control. En signifikant skillnad mellan svenskar och tyskar beträffande Powerful Others kunde också påvisas.

The Swedish bank Handelsbanken has, according to their own way of measuring, been more successful than a weighted average of their competitors during the last 38 years. They have also handled the recent financial crisis, as well as the one in the 1990´s, better than most other banks. This paper studies their management control system at branch level in order to identify the controls which have been enforced to ensure that a low risk level is retained in the lending. The controls that have been identified are; (1) A decentralized organization with the offices as profit centers where the manager has restrictions regarding risk level and the results are measured as K/I (cost/revenue). (2) The absence of bonuses and individual follow-up regarding performance measurement.

Hållbarhetsbegreppet har fått allt större betydelse. I bankvärlden, är det inte en fråga om, utan hur ett företag ska arbeta med hållbarhet. För att uppnå hållbarhet är det viktigt att förstå hur en strategi måste genomföras, ständigt utvecklas och kontrolleras, för att resultaten ska följa i enlighetmed de strategiska målen..

The task in this thesis is the steering of one of Saab Bofors Dynamics robots using Sliding Mode Control, a method they never used before. The robot constitutes a system which in addition to perturbations and uncertainties due to modeling imprecision, hold the difficulty of being highly time variant. In order to be able to keep required performance with uncertainties and modeling imprecision present, the use of robust control methods like Sliding Mode Control is necessary. SMC is based on the states of the system being forced to stay on or in the direct vicinity of a hyper plane in the state space which is chosen in a way that gives the system dynamics desired properties. Other advantages with sliding mode are reduced order dynamics on the switching surface and total insensitivity to some uncertainties and perturbations.

The use of temporary workers gives companies the opportunity to be flexible, by avoiding hiring and dismissing workers because of economic conditions and trends in demand. The management control in use at the company has the purpose of influencing employees? behaviour to act in the company?s best interest and towards its goals. The management control should also influence the behaviour of the temporary worker. The companies have to create motivation and commitment among the temporary workers although they are employed by a staffing agency.

The aim of this study is to investigate which management control mechanisms evolve in companies that receive funding from Venture Capital companies and why the management control systems evolve in the way that they do. A case study was performed on three Swedish high technology companies, that all received funding from Venture Capital companies for the first time in 2006. Merchant?s framework, defining all management control mechanisms as either, results control, action control or personnel control, was used to structure the study. Results show that the companies that received Venture Capital all increased the use of management control mechanisms within results control, action control and personnel control.

The purpose with this paper is that trough a description of the management control at Jitech AB find out if traditional management control have been abandoned for benefit for modern management control and in which extent the transition have happened. Further is the second purpose with this paper to find out which decisions that lies behind the design of the management control and how these are in opposition to with the theory..

Title: Nordea Life and Pension during financial crisis Subject: Business administration, Candidate thesis 15 p. Authors: Seyithan Öngörur och Adnan Yari Instructor: Peter Lindberg Date: 2010-01-13 Key words: Nordea, the financial crisis, advice, marketing, customer relationship Purpose: The purpose of the study is to provide an understanding of how the financial crisis has affected Nordea Life and Pensions market growth based on market share. We also want to give an understanding of what factors may be responsible for the outcome that it may be helpful in future financial crises. Method: A qualitative study was the basis for the study, where three interviews were carried out by the respondents from Nordea Life and Pension.  Theory: In this section we have focused on relevant theory and has divided them into different themes, advice, current legislation, marketing, consumption and buying behavior. Conclusion: The study shows that Nordea Life and Pension had a positive growth during the financial crisis and a number of factors are presented that may be the basis for the outcome.Proposal for further research: Since this study was limited to one company it may be intresting to investigate and examine the consuling industry market as a whole affected by the financial crisis. Contributions: This paper has provided an understanding of how Nordea Life and Pensions affected during a financial crisis, based on market share and the factors that may have been the basis for this..

There are many aspects which must be taken into consideration when studying individuals? need of exercise. The study investigates if impulsivity and Health Locus of Control affect the continuity of physical practise. The main presumption was that individuals with high impulsivity, high Powerful Others and high Chance Health Locus of Control, would have a significantly harder time to maintain a continuous physical activity. The survey used two standardized tests to measure impulsivity and Health Locus of Control and in order to be able to measure the insensitivity and the periodicity of physical exercise, a test was developed by the authors.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how the Management Control System is affected by a change in the owner structure from family owned to not-family owned. The study also tries to identify explaining factors behind the possible effects to the Management Control System. The study is based on a comprehensive case study on the company Alcro-Beckers which, in year 2001, was acquired from the owner Lindéngruppen fully owned by Ulf G Lindén. The acquirer was the non-family owned company Kemira OY, a Finnish stock listed group. The empirical foundation mainly comes from interviews conducted with people who were/are directly connected to the company, either as employees or as representatives for the owner.

Since January 1st 2005 all companies listed on a regulated stock exchange within the European Union are required to present their financial reports in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The intention of the introduction of IFRS is to achieve international harmonization of accounting rules in order to make financial reports more comparable between companies from different countries. The purpose of financial reports presented in accordance with IFRS is to provide information that is useful to the users of the information. The aim of this paper is to investigate whether the information regarding goodwill and the goodwill impairment test, presented in accordance with IFRS, in fact is useful to a specific group of accounting information users, namely equity analysts. An empirical study is conducted, based on interviews with seven Swedish equity analysts.

Bachelor thesis, Controller, Program of Master of Science in Business and Economics, School of Business and Economics at Linneaus University in Växjö, Sweden, Course Code: 2FE13E:3, Spring 2012 Authors: Jacob Cedergren, Adam Pettersson, Hampus SkelterwijkSupervisor: Anders JerrelingTitle: The ERP-systems impact of the management control - a case study of VIDA AB Original Title: Affärssystemens påverkan på ekonomistyrningen - en fallstudie på VIDA ABBackground: New technology has given businesses new opportunities to use and store information and the current information systems has changed the way of working in more or less all sectors and operations. ERP-systems have been one of the most important IT innovations in the past decade. The potential of a properly implemented ERP-system is great because it has got the ability to link the company?s different areas together. Despite its many advantages, there are several examples of cases where the acquisition and implementation has been a total failure.