The work of the board in owner-managed Firms often differ compared to the work of the board in large listed companies. Since the owners are working in different roles, the board in owner-managed Firms might discuss topics outside the typical boards agenda, such as questions relating to ownership structure and operational matters. This thesis examines what external board members can contribute with in owner-managed Firms, and which the most frequent difficulties are for the owners when deciding to recruit external board members. Through qualitative interviews, three owner-managed Firms have been studied, which together with two expert interviews and five seminars, creates the empirics. In the analysis, the empirics are compared to what the earlier theory states.

This is a qualitative study about small auditing Firms and their customer relationships with SMEs. It contains a total of eight interviews, two with audit Firms and six with SME?s.The purpose of the study is to understand how small audit Firms manage their customer relationships and if it exist any expectation gaps between the audit firm and the SME.One of the conclusions is that trust is fundamental and gets stronger over time; it is also linked with the personal relationship between the business owner and the auditor/accountant..

The main intention with this thesis is to investigate the relationship between dividends and investments. We hypothesize that Firms may be forced to cut back on investments if dividends are not curtailed in times of poor annual earnings. According to contemporary theories, we argue that Firms may be reluctant to cut back on dividends even when annual earnings decline and the level of investments will consequently be determined by the financial mobility of companies. The survey is carried out by means of a quantitative analysis, which includes all Firms quoted on the exchange of Stockholm from 1980 through 2000. On the contrary of previous research, we conclude that even Firms with high dividends can be forced to curtail investments if payouts to shareholders are maintained or increased when companies are faced with a decline in annual earnings..

The purpose of this study was to examine earnings quality and earnings management in U.S. ex-post failed Firms. A quantitative study was made, using the Modified Jones Model, to identify abnormal accruals up to six years before bankruptcy. 9 003 continuing Firms and 187 bankrupt Firms, active sometime between 1990 and 2010, were examined. The study concludes that U.S.

Venture capital Firms and private equity Firms have been the subject of much controversy in the last decade. During this period economies throughout the world have seen a steady increase of these types of Firms as owners of companies. In Sweden this has certainly been the case and many argue that this trend will continue to grow stronger in the future. This trend is by many regarded as dangerous and as a threat to the ownership model that has characterized the Swedish economy for decades. Family ownership has been widely regarded as the most beneficial and responsible ownership model in Sweden.

Management consulting Firms are dependent on attracting and recruiting new talents since the human capital has a vital role in these types of organizations. In the following years a new generation, Generation Y, will to a large extent enter the labour market. According to several studies this generation has different characteristics than older generations.This thesis examines management consulting Firms? views of Generation Y and which strategies they use to attract and retain the generation. The fact that the subjects are unexplored led the authors to conduct a qualitative study of seven management consulting Firms through in-depth interviews.

Background: In the current labor and business policy debate in Sweden there is a major focus on the need for it to become easier to set up small Firms, and that it needs to become easier for small Firms to hire staff. In order to set up and run a business, funding is required. Firms can choose to work more or less actively with this issue, but they all need to relate to it. There are basically two ways to fund a business, either through equity or through debt. The ratio between these two sources is called the firm?s capital structure.Purpose: To chart the capital structure of small Firms in Sweden.

This study presents a survey of the capital budgeting methods used in investment decisions by selected Swedish Firms. The study has a qualitative approach where the main goal is to increase the understanding of why Firms use ?incorrect? capital budgeting methods like the payback method despite the well known fact that it is one of the most faulty methods, according to literature in business finance (Brealey. Myers). The study has specially researched the impact of company?s size, investments size, ownership structure, branch traditions and political risks influence on Firms capital budgeting..

Several studies have investigated the relationship between different measures of innovative activity, such as patent statistics and R&D expenditures and some have looked deeper into the differences between large and small Firms regarding number of patents issued per employee or per R&D dollar. In this paper, the objective is to find out if there are any indications of a barrier to entry (due to economical factors, lack of knowledge etc) for small Firms to get into the field of patent handling. The approach is to first set up a hypothesis based on some simple assumptions about how Firms would make decisions about whether to apply for a patent or not and thereafter use econometric methods in an empirical investigation. The data used for this study are figures on number of employees, number of patents granted and R&D expenditures for the Swedish Firms in the pulp and paper industry. The main conclusion is that, based on the analysis of the data from this rather limited group of Firms, no such barrier can be seen..

Swedish agricultural businesses are facing challenges in order to achieve long-term profitability. The opportunity to improve profitability and efficiency on farm level may be enhanced by management. One way to work with leadership is to use Lean. It is a management system that aims to improve competitiveness. Currently, there is a project where Lean is implemented into 100 agricultural Firms.

The aim of this paper has been to investigate how accounting Firms govern their organizations with regards to the complexity in the service that they offer. The service includes the general accounting tasks which through standardization can be cost efficient, the advisory services that entail flexibility, and the relationship with the customer which needs to be taken into consideration when delivering the financial reports. These three components are important but require different approaches when it comes to governing the organization. The conducted case study has shown that the accounting Firms govern their organizations bureaucratically and mainly through behaviour and accounting controls. The advisory services demanded by customers are standardized, not analytical, and therefore do not require the Firms to take flexibility into consideration.

The major difference between venture capital-Firms and other financiers is that their business idea is not only providing capital but also knowledge in business development. The ownership structure of an venture capital-firm can be private as well as public. The Swedish government is today one of the major actors in the Swedish venture capital-industry. The purpose of this study is to shed light on how venture capital-Firms involve itself in its portfolio firm and if this contributes to an increased value of the portfolio firm. We also try to shed light on differences in how a public and a private venture capital-firm gets involved in its portfolio firm and if there is any difference in how they can contribute to added value.We have chosen to interview two public and two private venture capital-Firms and one of their portfolio Firms.

AbstractBachelor Thesis, School of Economics at Vaxjo universityProgram: Enterprising and Business Development, EBD 362, Spring 2006Authors: Jens Asp, Vivianne Holmer, Carl-Marcus WahlstromExaminer: Stig G JohanssonKeywords: Services, cooperation, collaboration, customer offer, knowledgeTitle: Service Firms in collaboration ? A study of the development of small service Firms in collaborationNutek presented numbers during year 2005 witched show that the Swedish service sector, for the first time ever, was greater than the industrial sector. The kind of Firms that develop most is small service Firms without employees. The topic of interest in this bachelor thesis is to study how this kind of Firms can develop. There is a great number of strategic options for Firms to choose.

Title: Market Communication in transformation Authors: Gabriella Holm and Christoffer LarssonPurpose/Aim: The purpose of this paper is to examine how market communication at PR-Firms in Sweden has changed over the first decade of the 21-century. In 2007 social media expanded on the Swedish market. This had implications for the way we are looking at communication and therefore also the PR business and how they are operating. The aim with this paper is to see how social media have affected marketing communication at PR-Firms.Methodology: This paper is based on case studies from Swedish PR-Firms. We used five cases from 2003-2005 and five from 2010-2012.

This paper aims to investigate abnormal returns for rivals to bidder targets in connection with the announcement of the bid. The study is based on 38 bids placed between September 2006 - January 2011 and 137 rival Firms listed on Nasdaq OMX Nordic. We measure cumulative abnormal returns, CAR, for rival Firms through an event study. We find that rival Firms earn significant positive CAR in connection with the announcement of the bid. This is in line with the two-sided signaling effect presented by Akhigbe et al.