Socially Responsible Investments (SRI) and Active Ownership have become increasingly important concepts when it comes to the corporate governance of investors today. Institutional owners highlight the importance of engaging in dialogue, in their pursuit to influence the companies to become sustainable. However, stakeholders and academia are requesting more insight into the workings of these dialogues, concerning their purpose, design and function. This study attempts to increase the existing knowledge of dialogue as a tool for active engagement, used by Institutional Investors in Sweden. The performed study is based on interviews with five public and private Swedish Institutional Investors, an SRI consultant firm as well as representatives from two NGOs.

Problem:How should a smaller investor behave when investing in the stock market and what knowledge should he have about the business he´s investing in? Purpose:The purpose of this thesis is to give the smaller investor a tool for investing in the stock market. The thesis aim to illustrate, through key ratios, what companies an investor should look for when investing in a company. Method:By studying already existing theories and then apply them on the thesis. The theories was then developed and refined to evolve to the finished thesis.

Listed corporations achieve effectiveness through segmentation of investors. Categorization of like- minded investors diminishes goal incongruence. This thesis aim to examine an Investor models accuracy, provided by a Professor Emeritus in Economic Psychology in 2001. This model segments investors as active, passive, speculative and naive investors. This thesis has a demarcation to private investors on the Swedish stock market. It has a deductive and qualitative approach as the purpose is to study the Investor model.

Internet har ändrat bolagens möjligheter att sprida information. Samtidigt har arbetet med finansiell kommunikation gentemot investerare, s.k. Investor Relations, uppmärksammats allt mer inom den akademiska värden. Uppsatsen har syftat till att med hjälp av en egen analysmodell försöka bedöma Investor Relationsarbetet på Internet som bedrivs av de börsnoterade fastighetsbolagen. Denna typ av analys görs bl.a.

Background: The global capital markets have enlarged investment opportunities and thus also the sources of funds for companies which increasingly face global markets for their services and products. Huge capital movements show that investors are constantly searching ways to minimise risk and maximise returns. In the light of the substantial growth of assets in institutional funds, an important question for international finance is the degree to which Institutional Investors have diversified their portfolios internationally. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the international diversification of portfolio investments of Institutional Investors in Japan, the US and the UK and deepen into international diversification in portfolios of Japanese Institutional Investors. Demarcations: Institutional Investors can use their power directly in companies or indirectly through capital markets.

Globalization allows companies to expand and establish themselves in other markets, which can have unexpected consequences for those who are not aware of the controversy or sacrifices that are required, and Gothenburg, Sweden is not an exception. The study has focused on two institutional theories that can explain whathappens when a foreign direct investment takes place, Institutional work and Institutional duality. The study was conducted at Business Region Gothenburg and the interviews took place at department of establishment and investment. The result shows that to overcome institutional barriers they use networking, relations, and marketing of the region of Gothenburg as examples. The paper also argues that by performing some sort of institutional work, institutional duality occurs..

Investor Relations har under de senaste 20 åren fått en allt starkare betydelse för börsnoterade företag. Öppnare marknader och fler intressenter har skapat större krav på företag att tydligt kommunicera sin finansiella ställning. Investor Relations är funktionen i företag som skall möta detta krav. Studier kring asymmetrisk information har visat att skillnader i informationstillgång påverkar aktiepriset negativt. Investor Relations kan motverka denna effekt.

This essay aims to analyse the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, formally called MiFID, andwhether it improves the situation of the investor, the customer, on the market for securities. MiFID isa directive from the European Union and was implemented by the member states in 2007. Besideshaving the objective to harmonise the European financial market, the directive aims to increasecompetition and efficiency among the markets in the member states.After our initial reasearch in the area we choosed to do a textual analysis and divide the content ofMiFID into three main areas: trading venues, transparency and investor protection. These areas aresubsequently analysed in relation to the investor?s situation on the market for financial securities andthe overall question at issue is whether MiFID improves the situation of the investor.

Purpose: To examine how IR-related press releases affect share price for stock companies, and to explore how said companies practice Investor Relations.Methods: The study was conducted using an event study as well as e-interviews. The event study has a quantitative deductive research approach where the market model is used for calculating the abnormal return based on press releases. The e-interviews have a qualitative research approach and follow a semi structured interview guide. The study includes all listed stock companies within the Swedish construction industry and includes press releases from the last decade.Theory: The study is based on the efficient market hypothesis and its semi strong form, theories within Investor Relations and previous research.Results: The event study shows a significant negative abnormal return during a four day period starting the day after the press release event. The negative abnormal return could derive from investor relations being used by companies as damage control, or that the investors? expectations are too high as a result of IR.

The aim with this study was to examine what it is that govern the way that municipalities develop the non-institutional care for youth. An extensive development of non-institutional care for children is a visible trend in municipal social service and probable reasons for this development are, among other things, research that show inadequate results of the institution care and economy. Our main questions at issue were how the municipalities argue the priorities that have been done within their youth care services with regard to the non-institutional care and how they reason considering this? Furthermore we asked why the municipalities have chosen to develop their non-institutional care for youth the way they have and on what grounds they make their choices? This study consists of eight qualitative interviews with politicians and employees in four different municipals along with analysis of relevant documents. We have found that what governs the way that municipalities develop the non-institutional care for youth has to do with that the municipalities found it vital to find alternative solutions to the expensive and ineffective institutional care, that they comprehend that the quality of non-institutional care are higher then of the institutional care and that the non- institutional care is seen as more effective with regards to economic results and achieved treatment results.

This paper investigates the relationship between dividends and institutional and foreign ownership in Swedish firms. We use a dataset which covers the Swedish stock market over the period 1999-2009. The institutional ownership is defined as mutual funds, pension funds and insurance companies and these are analysed separately. The study confirms the expected positive relationship between the level of Institutional Investors in a firm and the size of dividends. We also confirm? the expected negative relationship between foreign investors and the size of dividends paid by Swedish firms.

The purpose of this thesis was to examine relevance of the proposition made by new insitutionalists about institutional and technical environment. This proposition originaly made by Meyer & Rowan (1977) has two core assumptions: The first is that all organizations are controlled by combinations of types of demands; technical demands for efficient production and institutional demands to adept to cultural and normative expectations. The second assumption is that there exists a few organizations dominated almost entirely by one typy of demand. Organizations dominated by institutional demands are said to live in an institutional environment, while technical organizations is said operate in a technical environment. This thesis has examined if these assumptions are still applicable in describing organizational interaction with the environment.

Titel: IR ? förkortad information som ingen förstår?Författare: Louise Davidson & Johan RoothHandledare: Britt BörjessonSidantal: 49 sidor exklusive bilagorKurs: Examensarbete i medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap, Institutionen för journalistik och masskommunikation, Göteborgs universitetTermin: Vårterminen 2008, period 2Syfte: Syftet är att utvärdera Solbergs kunders IR webbplatser utifrån ett användarperspektiv. Med fokus på innehåll, logik/struktur och tillfredställelseMetod: Kvalitativ metod, användbarhetstester med personliga intervjuerMaterial: Användbarhetstester och efterföljande intervjuer med fem test- och intervjupersonerHuvudresultat: Vårt resultat visar att det största problemet med Investor relations webbplatser inte handlar om strukturen eller logiken på sidan. Det är inte heller något större fel på det innehåll som presenteras. Utan det är förståelsen för Investor relations som bidrar till att sidans effektivitet och tillfredställelse inte är så hög.

This thesis examines the subject of change in public administration from an instrumental and an institutional structure perspective. The purpose of the thesis is to examine whether institutional structures affect the development of instrumental structures and if it in turn is possible to affect institutional structures by changing the instrumental structures. This case study is primarily based on a series of deep interviews with senior administrators and politicians within two new administrations in the municipality Karlstad, both which have been created by merging several smaller administrations, but also thorough analysis of several official document such as protocols from the municipal council meetings, Tja?nsterskrivelser and internal PMs.   The result of the analysis indicates that both institutional structures and the forming instrumental structures affect each other and  that their ability to affect each other depends on the dominance over the organization each structure has.  In my specific research case we can see that the institutional structure of the city-technical and housing administration has affected the outcome but the institutional structure of the cultural and tourism administration hasn?t.  While the structural change of the city-technical and housing administration hasn?t effected the institutional structure but the structural change of the cultural and tourism administration has affected the institutional structure of this specific administration..

Social enterprises are increasingly gaining ground as an organisational form in Sweden, however the institutional structures for financing these types of organisations are yet to be established. With its usual origin within the civic society, social enterprises prioritise a higher goal than to maximise economic profit, which often causes these organisations to be dependent upon resources from external constituents within its institutional environment. The aim of this study was to examine how a social enterprise, which derives from the civic society, acts to mobilise resources from constituents in its institutional environment. This was executed through a case study of Jordbro Världsorkester (JVO) - a typical organisation in the civic society which takes the form of a social enterprise - by identifying how assets were used to gain resources in strategic responses to institutional processes and examining how institutional processes affects how JVO acts. Throughout the study, qualitative interviews were conducted with JVO and constituents in its institutional environment and a theoretical framework was developed which explains how capital is used to gain more capital in an emergent strategy of strategic responses as the organisation gets in contact with institutional processes from its institutional environment.