In recent decades, demands has emerged that the companies shall take a greater social responsibility for the impact that they have on their environment and that this impact shall be reported, which is known as Sustainability Reporting. The Sustainability Report is based on a number of general principles that ensure the content and the quality of the Sustainability Report. One of these principles is the principle of completeness. In the research, this principle seems to have been interpreted in terms of number of reported aspects and indicators, which can be a limited view where only the existence of the aspects and indicators is observed. By including the degree of the reporting in terms of full, partial and no reporting as well as a comparison between the real and the alleged reporting, our intention is to extend the principle of completeness and to develop a tool that we also apply through an empirical survey in a particular area.

Background: The last few years a globalization of the capital market has occurred. This have led to that it is more important for the companies that their financial information can be compared with other companies in order to compete on same grounds. In order to fa-cilitate for the companies within EU to compete with other companies and in order to strive for an internal market EU decided that IFRS should be used by all listed companies within the union.Problem: In 2006 the first financial reports according to IFRS will be published, and then it will be interesting to investigate how the companies have chosen to communicate the transition to its stakeholders. According to IFRS some information is compulsive but the companies have chosen to disclose voluntary information to a different degree.Purpose: The purpose of this study is to describe to what extent the Swedish listed com-panies have reported the transition to IFRS in their consolidated financial statements.Method: In this essay a quantitative method have been chosen in order to find general re-lations. The data collection is done with help of an evaluation model that have been devel-oped for this study.

Since 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) and International Accounting Standards (IAS). The purposes of these standards are to accomplish international harmonization of accounting rules to make financial reports more comparable. However, recent research has shown that some firms tend to use goodwill strategically in a business combination by manipulating the acquired assets and consciously allocate the intangible assets to goodwill to reduce the depreciation in the income and decrease costs. This phenomenon may reduce the comparability between financial reports and thus has an opposite effect on the purpose of IFRS and IAS.The aim of this study is to show how the companies involved in this study allocate goodwill strategically. Furthermore, the introduction of the new standards has contributed to that goodwill now is a subject for impairment test, therefore we want to show whether this affected the comparability of the companies in this study.An empirical study was conducted, based on interviews with four Swedish managers.

Since 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) and International Accounting Standards (IAS). The purposes of these standards are to accomplish international harmonization of accounting rules to make financial reports more comparable. However, recent research has shown that some firms tend to use goodwill strategically in a business combination by manipulating the acquired assets and consciously allocate the intangible assets to goodwill to reduce the depreciation in the income and decrease costs. This phenomenon may reduce the comparability between financial reports and thus has an opposite effect on the purpose of IFRS and IAS.The aim of this study is to show how the companies involved in this study allocate goodwill strategically. Furthermore, the introduction of the new standards has contributed to that goodwill now is a subject for impairment test, therefore we want to show whether this affected the comparability of the companies in this study.An empirical study was conducted, based on interviews with four Swedish managers.

Sustainability reporting in Sweden is a voluntary disclosure action for non-governmental companies. Since 2009 all state-owned companies must however publish a sustainability report according to GRI guidelines and with independent assurance statement. Three different sustainability reporting methods are primarily used: (1) Separate Sustainability Report, (2) Sustainability Report included in the Directors? Report, and (3) Sustainability Report forming part of the Printed Annual Report. The aim of this paper is to explore why some companies choose to publish a sustainability report and identify the motivational factors behind this decision, as well as attain an understanding for companies? choice of reporting method.

Företag som upprättar så kallade hållbarhetsredovisningar har blivit allt vanligare. Dock råder det inom forskningen på området en oenighet om vad hållbarhetsredovisning egentligen är. En mängd olika begrepp används om vartannat och några klara definitioner finns inte fastlagda. Syftet med denna studie är därför att göra en kartläggning av de olika begrepp som används inom den globala, akademiska hållbarhetsredovisningslitteraturen för att utreda innebörden av dessa begrepp samt för att utreda hur dessa begrepp förhåller sig till varandra. Studien genomförs med hjälp av en litteraturstudie där 12 artiklar väljs ut genom ett intensitetsurval och sedan analyseras och jämförs med varandra.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate analysts' and investors' possibility to compare different companies' information in accounting for goodwill under IFRS in their annual and semi-annual reports. The study was based on IAS 34 on interim reporting, IAS 36 impairment of goodwill and the comparability requirement of the financial statements. Therefore, the comparability requirements? of the IASB Framework, previous studies on the comparability after the implementation of IFRS and also the relevance of goodwill was studied. We used a qualitative textual analysis to examine whether the recognition of goodwill is considered to be comparable between our sample of companies' annual and semi-annual reports from 2008 and 2009 data.

Sustainability Reporting has emerged and transformed over the past decades as a voluntary practice by companies across industries that desire to show proof of good conduct and environmental; social; and economic responsibility. As industrial food production is one of the largest contributors to contemporary environmental problems, it might be expected that reporting within the industry would be both well established and well understood. Unfortunately, it is neither. In light of the food industry?s considerable environmental impact and the growing popularity of plant-based food as a more sustainable alternative to dairy products, this paper assesses and briefly discusses the Sustainability Reporting of two companies in the plant-based food and beverage industry. The research was designed to compare the practices of Europe-based Alpro and US-based SoDelicious, and this study has two major purposes: to describe the reporting of the case companies and to subsequently compare their practices to the other as well as to global reporting standards. The empirical study in this paper was conducted through content analysis.

The purpose of this study is to increase an understanding of what prevents the mandatory reporting law, based on the preschool staff's approach to mandatory reporting law about child abuse and neglect to social services, and how these barriers affect their decision to report. The study will also understand what preschool staff experience facilitates the mandatory reporting process and what can be done to improve the process even more. The questions of the study were based on the purpose of the study and have been formulated in two questions:What prevents the mandatory reporting law requirements for preschool staff and how can these barriers be removed? What facilitates for preschool staff to be confident in the decision to report child abuse and neglect, to social services?The study used qualitative semi-structured interviews with five people working at the preschool, including two preschool teachers and three childcare workers. An interview guide was designed as a help to answer the questions about what the barriers are and what it is that makes it easier for the preschool staff, regarding the decision to report cases of child abuse and neglect to social services.The results, based on the five interviews , shows preschool staff's thoughts of the knowledge on the mandatory reporting law, the mandatory reporting process, their perspective of the mandatory reporting law and the uncertainty surrounding the mandatory reporting law.The study's analysis consists of the results that have been analyzed using the theory of social representations, in which the analysis shows an understanding of how the preschool staff act and think about the mandatory reporting law requirements based on their everyday knowledge.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the status of Swedish real estate companies in terms of financial health and risk of financial distress. The background is the ongoing financial crisis, which partly can be derived from the American real estate sector. Publicly available accounting information from 16 listed real estate companies has been analyzed for a period of one year using financial ratios covering both the operational and financial activities. We find that the deceleration in the economy and in the real estate sector have forced the real estate companies to make large write downs, in line with the relatively new accounting rules, IFRS. Write downs are likely to reoccur during the following periods and real estate companies will therefore probably be forced to continue to show negative results.

The purpose of this study is to increase an understanding of what prevents the mandatory reporting law, based on the preschool staff's approach to mandatory reporting law about child abuse and neglect to social services, and how these barriers affect their decision to report. The study will also understand what preschool staff experience facilitates the mandatory reporting process and what can be done to improve the process even more. The questions of the study were based on the purpose of the study and have been formulated in two questions:What prevents the mandatory reporting law requirements for preschool staff and how can these barriers be removed? What facilitates for preschool staff to be confident in the decision to report child abuse and neglect, to social services?The study used qualitative semi-structured interviews with five people working at the preschool, including two preschool teachers and three childcare workers. An interview guide was designed as a help to answer the questions about what the barriers are and what it is that makes it easier for the preschool staff, regarding the decision to report cases of child abuse and neglect to social services.The results, based on the five interviews , shows preschool staff's thoughts of the knowledge on the mandatory reporting law, the mandatory reporting process, their perspective of the mandatory reporting law and the uncertainty surrounding the mandatory reporting law.The study's analysis consists of the results that have been analyzed using the theory of social representations, in which the analysis shows an understanding of how the preschool staff act and think about the mandatory reporting law requirements based on their everyday knowledge.

Prior research on the ability of financial ratios to predict bankruptcies has shown a significant difference between the companies that went into bankruptcy and those that survived. This paper investigates whether there is a difference in the prediction ability of financial ratios during the last financial crisis compared to relatively normal macroeconomic environments in which most previous studies have been conducted. We use univariate analysis to compare companies that went into bankruptcy during 2010 and 2011 with companies that remained active. Our dataset consists of 51 failed companies that are matched with 102 companies that remained active. All companies were Swedish limited companies with more than 50 employees and the comparison is made with 26 financial ratios.

Background: Previous studies focused on customer loyalty and customer satisfaction. But no studies focused on the interaction between the financial advisor and their client. Therefore we have chosen to focus on this knowledge gap.Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to illustrate how the interaction between financial advisors and customers affect financial advisory in investment decision making.Method: The thesis philosophy was positivistic because patterns were found with help of a survey. Furthermore is the paper quantitative since the thesis is measurable and it try to explain the interaction between the financial advisors and the clients demographic characteristics and how it influence the financial advice Conclusion: The theories thin-slicing and similarity attraction paradigm may not apply to the interaction between financial advisor and client..

The purpose with this essay is to investigate which factors that are decisive for nurses? propensity for incident reporting. The study uses a descriptive cross-section design. Included are nurses that works at a care unit and who have worked as a nurse for > 1than one year. The survey was sent out to all nurses embraced by the criteria within a subdivision at a hospital in the middle of Sweden.

The association between disclosure level and asymmetric information is a matter of importance andconsiderable interest to the Financial reporting community. The theory in this area suggests that acommitment by a firm to increased levels of disclosure should lower the information asymmetry thuslowering the cost of equity. This theory may be compelling, but so far the empirical results have beenambiguous. Due to increased globalization the demand for high quality accounting standards has risen. In2005 The International Accounting Standard Board launched the standard named IFRS 3.