The purpose of this essay is to investigate how well vision and strategies communicates from division level to underlying business unit levels with focus on the Balanced Scorecard Concept. The investigation was carried out within the ANS division and two of its underlying business units at the LFV Group (Swedish Airports and Air Navigation Services). ANS is responsible for the air navigation services in Sweden and the production of the services is carried out of the business units AER (En Route) and ATA (Tower and Approach). With Air Navigation Services means supervision and conducting air traffic mainly within national air space. The purpose of the services is to insure that air traffic could be carried out in a safe way.The Balanced Scorecard was introduced for the first time in the beginning of the 1990´s.

Different groups in the forestry sector were likely to have different views regarding the responsibility for an environmentally sustainable forestry and the benefits of certification and this study aimed to examine the attitudes that existed in the forestry sector to the certification schemes FSC and PEFC. In the study a survey and a questionnaire were sent out to different groups. The investigation was made with respect to three groups: forest owners, forest contractors and employees working with the certification schemes on a daily basis at the forest company Södra. The groups agreed that the owner of the forest had the main responsibility for an environmentally sustainable forestry. The study revealed that all three groups highly valued the environmental aspect of certification.

This study aims to investigate development and reasons behind sustainability reporting in large Swedish companies. By examining 15 companies? environmental and sustainability reports between the years 2000 and 2008, data was collected on matters such as frequency, scope and design. Identified trends were to a large extent in line with previous studies on international development; sustainability reporting is growing in several aspects. The authors have found one major reason for this development to be increasing requirements and expectations from stakeholders and a need for companies to legitimize their actions.

Background: Corporations are established and organized in order to create economic values for their owners and the main aim of every business enterprise is to be profitable and satisfy the financial expectations of their shareholders. However, corporate social responsibility focuses on the ethical aspects of corporate business in order to achieve the balance between the profitability and social responsibility. Nongovernmental organizations through their activities promote the respect for human rights and environmental care within the corporate world. Purpose and Scope: To make an in-depth study about the role of nongovernmental organizations regarding corporate social responsibility in order to increase the understanding of corporate social responsibility. Methodology: We used literature research for our thesis and we analysed the secondary data related to the corporate social responsibility.

Background:Persons living with a mental illness often have to put up with a financial disadvantage. Their ability to work is often limited and because of that they have to rely on the welfare reform to get an income. This income is often low compared to other citizens which by itself is something strongly associated with mental illness. Purpose: The purpose in this study was to describe how people living with a mental illness experience that their economic situation has an impact on their daily life. Method: This study is a literature review containing nine scientific articles from previous research.

Background: To maintain or increase the trust in the market, companies can disclose more voluntary information in the annual reports. According to prior research the annual report is the primary source of information for small shareholders and investors. Thus, it is of interest to investigate why companies chose to report the voluntary information inquired by this group. Purpose: We investigate some company-specific factors to decide whether these determine the extent of voluntary information, particularly inquired by small shareholders and investors, in the annual reports of listed Swedish companies. We also aim to discuss underlying causes for our result.

The purpose of this essay is to examine Prostitutionsgruppens ("Prostitution group") concrete operation, its organisation and how the group have changed since sexköpslagens ("sexbuy law") incorporated.Prostitutionsgruppen was founded in 1981 and have been working against prostitution. Their main goal is to reduce the damage of prostitution. Their work consists of treatment and reaching out to help prostitutes. Another part of their work is to change the public attitude towards prostitution. They act as intermediary of the knowledge they have gained through meeting people in prostitution.I have interviewed one social worker in the group and researched earlier literature.

An efficient market implies that the use of fundamental analysis should not result in excess return, and that any return exceeding the market average can be explained by compensation for risk, accord-ing to The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). The focus of this study is to test whether the suc-cessful investment strategy developed by Piotroski (2000) generates excess return on American data, after risk adjustment by using Fama & French?s (1993) 3-factor and Carhart?s (1997) 4-factor CAPM. Initially we form stock portfolios based on companies characterized by high book-to-market values, additionally, we divide them into different performance classes by ranking them with Piotroski?s (2000) measure of financial performance, F_SCORE.

The aim of this thesis is to describe the development of profitability and capital structure in Swedish quoted companies during the period of 1990 to 2004. Further, the aim is to determine the relationship between profitability and leverage in order to conclude whether the choice of capital structure supports the pecking order theory or the trade-off theory of capital structure. The findings show that return on assets fluctuates between 3 and 11 percent and that return on equity fluctuates between 3 and 22 percent during the period. Further, the leverage and the cost of debt have decreased. This indicates lowered financial risk in Swedish quoted companies in the period between 1990 and 2004.

AbstractFrom 1st of July 2003 it is compulsory for companies with an average number of ten employees the latest two financial years to account sick leave in the annual report.The government?s purpose with accounting of sick leave was partly to evoke an action from the companies? side in terms of motion as an effect due to the awareness of the level of the sick leave. The government was of the opinion that the companies had too deficient knowledge in sick leave and that the knowledge about causes and costs had to increase.In this paper three companies affected by the compulsory accounting of sick leave have been interviewed. The paper defines to only concern private companies. The companies were interviewed in purpose to form an opinion of whether the companies have changed their health promoting actions due to the application of the law.

IKEA is probably one of the most well known Swedish companies in the world. During thepast decades millions of people all across the globe have decorated their homes according tothe style of IKEA. But just exactly how big and influential are they? Many, if not to say all,municipalities in Sweden wants IKEA to establish and build their famous stores in one oftheir towns. But at what cost? When deciding on a municipality to establish in, IKEAnormally tends to have an advantage when it comes to controlling the conditions and terms ofthe establishment.To undertake this dissertation I use a theory based upon the inter-organizational theoriescalled resource dependency theory.

Background: Companies often invest in foreign subsidiaries and that gives rise to translation exposure. Translation exposure arises with the consolidation of the foreign subsidiary and depends on the rate of exchange that are used for translation of the foreign subsidiary. In time several different methods of translation and recommendations has been developed. Companies listed on OM Stockholmsbörsen shall follow RR8. According to RR8 a classification of foreign subsidiaries as indipendent or integral to the parent company determines which method of translation that should be used.

In a time of economic turmoil and financial crisis profitability matters rise higher and higher on company agendas. Many companies are pressured to find profitability to avoid layoffs or even bankruptcy. Profitability essentially depends on the margin on the product or service sold and the costs associated with selling these products or services and hence these areas are of vital importance if companies are to improve profitability. Previous research has focused, for the most part, on product profitability while customer profitability has received less attention. This study is based on a case study of a Swedish publishing house and aims to investigate how the company?s Cost-to-Serve varies between its distribution channels.

This paper examines family owned tourism businesses with a special focus on succession. In Nordic countries tourism has been widely promoted and used in rural development as a replacement economy for ?traditional? livelihoods based on rural production. Because the tourism and hospitality industry, especially in rural areas, is dominated by family enterprises, the topic of succession is of great relevance for tourism and tourism destinations. This paper looks at family businesses? special characteristics, challenges and advantages in terms of ownership structure, lifestyle, motivations, employees and destination impact.

The Swedish road transport sector relies almost completely on fossil fuels. In 2007, as much as 96 percent of the total sales of fuels was made up of petrol and diesel, while at the same time the share of total emissions of greenhouse gases in Sweden that came from road transports amounted to close to 30 per cent. Sweden is by no means worse off than any other European country in these respects. In order to address the questions of high oil dependence and CO2 emissions the European Commission has proposed a reinforcement of the legislative framework, with a 10 percent minimum for the market share of biofuels in 2020. Furthermore, the proposed target is binding for the member states, unlike the current voluntary target of 5.75 percent by 2010. More than doubling the usage of biofuels in only a bit more than a decade will most likely not be possible without policy interventions.