On 1 January 2005, IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards)was mandatory for all listed companies within the European Union. The introduction is to create a transparent and consistent reporting. Mainly to provide companies, investors and financiers the same access to world capital markets. Since the introduction of IFRS, the goodwill value is determined by annual impairment tests. If an impairment of goodwill is a fact the goodwill decreases in value.

In subsequent to Post-colonialism the African nations have dilated into different political directions. While some nations have established well-functioning democracies, others are still under authoritarian regimes. The aim of this thesis is to examine if civil society has an impact on democratic development in West Africa. Therefore the theoretical starting point is Putnam?s theory of social capital, but this study will also examine other possible causal explanations for democratic transition.This study will be based on a comparative analysis of Ghana and Guinea.

IT is often seen as a solution to many problems concerning effectiveness in organizations. Information systems within the healthcare sector is often viewed as medical devices rather than just systems or services. These medical devices are thoroughly regulated by laws, standards and certifications. In this study I participated in an innovative project that aimed to bring new life and use to the old fashioned patient journal by giving it a visual representation through the use of an avatar. I aimed to study the effects of regulators connected with the patient journal as a source of information for the innovative project.

There is an increased pressure for firms to provide the financial market with additional information. Such disclosure is attached with different kinds of costs. In spite of these costs, and in spite of increased mandatory disclosures, firms choose to voluntary disclosure financial information to analysts and others. This indicates that firms also benefit from providing additional information. The subjects of this study is 431 annual reports from firms listed at the Stockholm Stock Exchange for 2002 and 2005 and the objective is to survey factors that can explain variations in firms? voluntary disclosure.

The recent history knows numerous examples of creditor?s inability to evaluate financial solvency of the client correctly. Creditors? risks do not only concern individual relations between the two parties but the economy in general. The standard loan-giving procedure considers evaluation based on a number of financial ratios.

The eighth of august the Olympic games in Beijing started. The chinese regime promised to improve the human rights situation in the country if awarded the Olympic games 2008. The decision to place the games in Beijing arouse severe critique and many questioned how the International Olympic Committe could place the games in a country that so obviously violate basic human rights.The main purpose of this essay has been to analyse what consequences the Olympic Games has given the human rights situation in China. In order to accomplish this I have studied some specific human rights, which I consider to be directly linked to the games. I found that the situation for these human rights has infact worsened since 2001 when China was awarded the games.

The comprehensive purpose of this Master of Science thesis is to examine which fleetmanagement services for engineering vehicles, ?Fleetech? preferablyought to develop inorder to reach a broad market and meet the demands of contractors.Scanty explained, fleet management is the management of a company's vehicle fleet and theservices can include a range of functions such as driver management and fuel management. Inshort the thesis encompasses four sections:1.Survey of the general contractor industry: The survey has been preformed toevaluate the potential size of the market for fleet management services in the generalcontractor industry.2.Needs analysis: The needs analysis aim was to define what contractors tasks andgoals are, and to determine what functions they want and need from a system.3.The use of CAN and the technical premises: The prerequisite for developing asophisticated and generic system is that vehicle data can be accessed from the CANbuss.The use of CAN standards in construction equipment has therefore beenexamined.4.Specification: An explicit set of requirements have been set to be satisfied by a fuelmanagement service, based on CAN standard protocol J1939.Important conclusions: The use of CAN protocol standards are extensive and the prerequisitesfor developing elementary and CAN based services good. The services should be compatiblewith different manufacture?smachines.

Den svenska myndigheten Bokföringsnämnden (BFN) har beslutat att ändra inriktningen på sitt normgivningsarbete och har därför börjat utveckla redovisningsstandarder som ska gälla för olika kategorier av företag. Avsikten med detta arbete är att förenkla och förtydliga reglerna. Under år 2007 har BFN lagt fram ett utkast till ett nytt regelverk som ska gälla för mindre aktiebolag, K2. Internationellt arbetar organisationen International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) på ett liknande projekt som är avsett att användas av små och medelstora företag (SME). IASB:s projekt har som syfte att ta fram en internationell redovisningsstandard skräddarsydd för att möta dessa företags behov.

Sambandet mellan samhällsutvecklingen och de växande miljöproblemen kom i slutet av 1980-talet att få en allt mer framskjuten roll på den politiska agendan i Sverige. I och med att energianvändningen står för en stor del av miljöproblemen har allt fler kommit att inse vikten av att uppnå en hållbar situation för energianvändandet. För att se hur arbetet mot en hållbar energianvändning fortskrider har International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) tagit fram en modell för detta. Studiens övergripande syfte har varit att analysera huruvida Sverige går mot en mer hållbar energianvändning med hjälp av IAEA:s indikatorer. Teorin i studien har baserats på grundläggande miljöekonomiska resonemang.

In this study we examine how the image of women, through framing and stereotyping in interviews, is constructed in the Swedish television morning show Gomorron Sverige on International Women?s Day. Our study is based on qualitative method, using the ECA (Ethnographic Content Analysis) model.Our main theoretical assumptions are that media contributes to constructing the images of reality we see in our heads, and that the images of women mediated through television are stereotypes which are displayed in the presenter?s questions and in the respondent?s answers. By defining the problems related to International Women?s Day, showing causal connections, making moral judgments and presenting solutions, television contributes to the viewer?s perception of what is important, why it is important, what is wrong and how to make it right.Based on our theoretical assumptions we have divided our study into three analytical themes:1.

Värdering till verkligt värde infördes i regelverket 1 januari 2005 i och med införandet av IAS 40. IAS är en förkortning av International Accounting Standards och IAS 40 ger börsnoterade bolag med förvaltningsfastigheter möjlighet att värdera och redovisa dessa fastigheter till historiskt anskaffningsvärde eller verkligt värde. Efter införandet har de flesta börsnoterade bolag valt att redovisa till verkligt värde.För att belysa problematiken med värdering och redovisning till verkligt värde används förvaltningsfastigheter som ett illustrationsexempel. Detta för att se hur kreditinstituten genomför värderingar och hur de påverkas när börsnoterade bolag redovisar till verkligt värde. Syftet med uppsatsen är att utröna om det föreligger några risker när verkligt värde appliceras på förvaltningsfastigheter.Djupintervjuer med tjänstemän på kreditinstitut har genomförts för att bringa klarhet i hur kreditinstituten ser på och hanterar värdering och redovisning till verkligt värde.Kreditinstituten använder sig av värderingsmodeller för att värdera enligt verkligt värde vilket inte är i enlighet med värderingstrappan.

The underlying purpose of this study is to see whether a library focused solely on providing literature in other languages than Swedish serves as a unifying, integrating force, or as an agent for division and exclusion. The study focuses on the International Library in Stockholm. The authors have created a profile of the visitors of the selected library, concerning their characteristics, their library habits and their perceptions of the International library. This profile has then been compared with the staff?s perception of the visitors as a group.

En harmonisering av redovisningsregler håller just nu på att ske i Europa. International Accounting Standards Board, IASB, har utvecklat en standard som ska medför att redovisningen av finansiella instrument ska vara lika och Europaparlamentet har godkänt den för användning inom unionen. Standarden är IAS 39 och från och med den första januari 2005 är koncerner som är noterade på en börs tvungna att redovisa och värdera sina finansiella instrument efter denna. IAS 39 behandlar redovisning och värdering för alla finansiella tillgångar och skulder och är således mycket omfattande. Mot bakgrund av detta blev syftet i denna studie att undersöka vad svenska företag tycker är positivt respektive negativt med det nya sättet att redovisa finansiella instrumenten, samt varför de tycker som de gör.

The existence of social networks on the Internet is today seen as broad, and the number of users of the network is increasing. There seems to be many reasons to which people are using the social networks. Within the network, users can for various reasons create groups with different objectives. One of the reasons is that groups are created in order to influence a company. With a perceived feeling that companies handle the problem differently, we assume the source is the uncertainty about what the groups really are.

The interest in small-scale electricity in Sweden has increased strongly in recent years. The interest is noticeable both among politicians to increase the share of renewables in the energy mix, and among electricity consumers to partially replace purchased electricity with self-produced. This has resulted in a significant increase of electricity production in low voltage grids in recent years, and the trend appears to continue in the coming years. The majority of the new production plants are solar cells, followed by wind turbines, and it is also in these the greatest efforts are made in this paper.Distributed generation is often seen as something positive since it will contribute to reduced transmission losses and reduced voltage drop in the networks, and that it increases the share of electricity from renewable sources. In cases where the grids are not strong enough, or in other ways not adapted to manage the installed production, power quality may be adversely affected.