In the past decade there has been a considerable growth of contingent employment arrangements. In Sweden, the most common among these are the temporary-help service firms. The aim of this study is to investigate how the employees of temporary-help service firms experience their situation as employed by one company and working at another. We have used a qualitative approach to reach an increased understanding for the daily situation of the contingent worker. The essay is based on participant observations and semi-structured interviews with six contingent workers.

The structural rationalization of rural firms in Sweden has led to many new creative ways of developing companies. The agriculture sector is characterized by the need of capital in form of buildings, labor and inventory. The rationalization process has led to free capacity in rural firms when new technology make buildings and inventory not longer necessary for the production process. To get a better cost coverage this free capacity can be used to start-up new business areas that help the rural firm to growth.The study aims to identify factors that motives entrepreneurs in rural firms to develop new business areas. The purpose is also to analyze driving forces that lies behind development of rural firms and the forces that support or not support development in rural firms.The study is built upon five cases that all can be categorized as firms with different size and orientation.

The number of firms adapting the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility is constantly growing. It is no longer enough only to supply your customers with demanded products and services since todays? customers have an increased awareness and are demanding more transparence when it comes to the manufacturing and responsibility for society.Along with a growing interest in social, ethical and environmental matters, many firms have received critique, consequently forcing them to start taking more responsibility for their activities. The clothing industry was among the first to get critized and therefore early in starting their work with CSR.The purpose of this paper is to investigate how firms in the clothing industry work with CSR today, and also how they choose to communicate this work, both internally and externally. The methodology of the paper is qualitative and aims to deeply investigate four different firms, along with an additional interview with a CSR-consult from one of the leading communication-firms in Sweden.The theoretical foundation includes a frame of reference around CSR and the communication thereof, and also a few relevant theories around CSR and business ethics.After analyzing the empirical material the paper have reached a few conclusions.

 AbstractDate:                                  2009-06-03Level:                                 Master thesis in Business Administration, 15 pointsAuthors:                            Branka Milencovici            Deniz SolmazTutor:                                Ulla PetterssonTitle:                                  The Swedish code of Corporate Governance - How the code administers in larger stock firms.Problem:                           The Swedish code follows the value of "comply or explain" when firms depart one or several rules, the reasons should be explained in the corporate report. The code does not include reasons for differences, it's up to the management themselves to take action. Is it possible to see if the code has been administered? Do differences prevent? Which are the most common? Is there any motivation?  Purpose:                           The main purpose with this essay is to study how Swedish firms administer the rules of the code in their corporate reports.Method:                            The method for this study is a deductive and qualitative approach. First we studied theory to understand the subject.

With the introduction of IFRS, the IASB left the previously used method of amortization and instead introduced fair value. Studies show that firms manipulate the value of goodwill based on agency related incentives and opportunities, such as bonus payment, management tenure and acquisition of firms. The responsibility of checking the quality of financial reports, and give other market participants reasons to trust them, is primarily on accountants. The transition to fair value thus creates a problem for accountants to actually check the fair values produces by firms. Our purpose is to investigate whether the working method of accountants is purposeful in order to maintain the credibility of goodwill values.

The structural rationalization of rural firms in Sweden has led to many new creative ways of developing companies. The agriculture sector is characterized by the need of capital in form of buildings, labor and inventory. The rationalization process has led to free capacity in rural firms when new technology make buildings and inventory not longer necessary for the production process. To get a better cost coverage this free capacity can be used to start-up new business areas that help the rural firm to growth.The study aims to identify factors that motives entrepreneurs in rural firms to develop new business areas. The purpose is also to analyze driving forces that lies behind development of rural firms and the forces that support or not support development in rural firms.The study is built upon five cases that all can be categorized as firms with different size and orientation.

The need for auditing originates from the agency problem that arises due to the separation of ownership and control in companies. The purpose of the audit is to increase credibility of the financial statements that management uses to communicate with owners and other stakeholders. In order for the audit to fulfill its purpose a certain level of quality needs to be obtained. The auditor can also be seen as a provider of a commercial service in which service quality is important. Audit quality can thus be separated into technical quality, which is defined as the probability that the auditor both discovers and reports a breach in the client?s accounting system, and service quality, which relates to the provision of services in general.

Background: Enterprises often refer to their employees as ?Our most valuable assets? in annual reports and other written statements. In reality, employees are seen as an expense rather than an asset in annual reports and the voluntary disclosure is often insufficient. Human capital disclosure has been discussed through decades and the latest topic in voluntary disclosure is called integrated reporting. Knowledge firms should disclose more about their employees than industrial companies due to the fact that the employees are a considerably more important asset to these types of enterprises.Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to study the disclosure of human capital, compare the disclosures between knowledge firms and industrial companies, and study the development of the human capital disclosures between the years 2003-2013.

Being a patient in intensive care can be experienced terrifying. Studies have demonstrated the link between unpleasant memories of hospitalization in the ICU and the development of posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, and perception of quality of life in its aftermath. Placed on a ventilator, the patient is exposed to multiple invasive procedures. The aim was to describe critical care patients' experience of being intubated or tracheostomated. Method: Literature review using conventional content analysis.

Management control systems are a popular area of research and a lot of new research has been done over the past years. This development has been looking into new situations and circumstances, and interdisciplinary studies are being made to further understand the connection between different fields of study. A new field of study that has grown significantly over the past few years is the connection between management control systems and entrepreneurship. Leading researchers have proposed a number of questions for further research and one of them is the board of directors? use of management control systems in entrepreneurial firms.The purpose of this study was to examine the differences and similarities in the board of directors? use of management control systems between entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial firms.The study was conducted as a deductive qualitative study through interviews with respondents from entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial firms.

Background: Enterprises often refer to their employees as ?Our most valuable assets? in annual reports and other written statements. In reality, employees are seen as an expense rather than an asset in annual reports and the voluntary disclosure is often insufficient. Human capital disclosure has been discussed through decades and the latest topic in voluntary disclosure is called integrated reporting. Knowledge firms should disclose more about their employees than industrial companies due to the fact that the employees are a considerably more important asset to these types of enterprises.Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to study the disclosure of human capital, compare the disclosures between knowledge firms and industrial companies, and study the development of the human capital disclosures between the years 2003-2013.

Today?s political debate on environmental issues and environmental thinking, alongside the Swedish presidency of the EU and Climate Conferences shows that the environment is an important topic. Environment is important, not only in politics, but also for companies and the demand of environmental strategies and environmental reports has increased. This leads to an increased pressure on firms to begin to report on environmental concerns and to create active systems for environmental thinking.The aim of the present study is to examine why firms in the transport sector, mainly lorry transports, reports environmental aspects and what drives these companies to create these reports.Based on stakeholder and institutional theory we aim to examine to which extent stakeholders affects the environmental accounting and reporting. We also aim to explain how the organization is influenced to incorporate external and societal environmental procedures.

The development of farm-operated biogas plants in Sweden is increasing. This study investigates the process that firms go through in developing such ventures. The aim is to identify obstacles and opportunities that individual farmers have encountered during the implementation process, and through a comparative analysis find similarities and differences between cases. The overall goal is to increase understanding of the factors that influence farmers? development of farm-based biogas production, and more specifically, explore opportunities for support organizations to contribute to the innovation process. Findings indicate that the implementation process has changed over time.

This thesis studies whether private equity owned firms within the Swedish welfare sector distinguish themselves in terms of tax planning and short-termism from a control group consisting of other privately owned welfare firms. For the first time, the comparison is made on the entire welfare sector, between 14 matched pairs within education, health care and elderly care. We use financial metrics associated with tax planning and short-termism in sign tests to examine whether the private equity owned firms differ from our control group. The financial metrics tested are actual and paid tax rates, level of interest, book-tax gap, investments, personnel expenses per employee, and cash earnings. We find that the private equity owned firms in terms of tax planning only differ in the level of interest, while no notable differences are found in terms of short-termism..

The aim of this masters thesis is to examine what political, social and ideological reasons that were the base for the establishment of the Swedish temperance movement. Which judgements within this movement that resulted in the decision to establish publishing firms, how these publishing businesses were organised and what function they had in the literary circuit. The questions are: What principal political, social, economical and ideological reasons were the bases for the establishment of the Swedish temperance movement? How has their need for publishing firms arisen? Which were the publishing firms and who were the publishers? What ideas, purposes, experiences, values and judgements led to the establishment of publishing firms? In the first part of the theory I have used the historical materialism of Karl Marx; in the second part the theory of middle class publicity by Jürgen Habermas; and in the third part I have made a presentation of the literary circuit and how it works according to Marx and Habermas. The method used is an analysis of ideas and ideologies in literature and documents.