Directive 2006/54/EG from the European Union concerns the equal rights between men and woman and the principle of equal rights. The purpose of the directive is that the member states provide the equal rights between men and woman. Affirmative action is one exception from the principle of equal rights which is settled in directive 2006/54/EG, article 3. The purpose for the affirmative action must be to encourage the equal rights between men and women.EU has specific criteria to use affirmative action, which is created by praxis of the Court of Justice of the European Union. These criteria are that the affirmative action must involve an objective assessment, there must be equal qualifications between the person which is affirmative action and the person who is not, the positive action cannot be automatically decisive and this special treatment should be proportionate to the purpose.

Since year 2005 the accounting has changed for public companies because of the new international standards, IFRS. IFRS 3 provides a single international accounting treatment for acquisitions and has broadened the definition of intangible assets. By IFRS 3 goodwill is defined as the excess of the cost of acquisition and is separated from intangible assets. Now goodwill must be annually tested by an impairment test. There are many valuation issues to considerate when it comes to deciding the value of goodwill.

Nowadays, the world around us is changing faster and faster, the globalization is increasing and harder competition puts extra pressure on companies to be more innovative than ever before. One of the fastest changing industries is the IT industry where the actors always have to be up to date to keep their competitive advantage. The authors want to find out what makes some companies in this industry more innovative than others by examining what internal elements that are necessary for innovation. Much research has already been carried out within the field of innovation and especially about innovation management, although less research exists about smaller, non high tech service companies. Therefore the authors also tries to find out how applicable today?s theories are on this special field and thereby fill a smaller gap in today?s research.

Existing studies concerning private labels are unclear as to whether private label manufacturers carry out product development themselves. Furthermore, there is a lack of studies comparing product development processes in private label companies and national brand manufacturers. This study highlights a set of critical product development factors and assesses their prevalence in four different companies in the Swedish retail business. The study is based on a number of qualitative interviews with key personnel responsible for various table fats. Findings indicate two levels of involvement in the product development process on the private label side.

The aim of this paper is to map and analyze what role Swede's played in King Leopold II's colony in the former Congo Free State. Letters and messages that arrived at the Congo Consulate in Sweden between 1895 and 1906 have been used as the paper's primary sources. Application letters from 32 different Swedes, seeking to join the Congo Free State Army, to the General Consul of the Congo Consulate, Hans Hugold von Schwerin, have been used as primary sources, and constitute the basis of the paper's analysis. The letters arrived at the Congo Consulate in Sweden between 1895 and 1906. The applicants were all men of different social classes, and were between the ages of 20 and 30 years old. Their chief reasons for applying were primarily for own financial gain or because they did not get a chance to serve in the Swedish army.

AbstractThe purpose of this study has been to provide a deeper understanding of how companies in the travel industry works with social media and electronic Word-of-mouth (eWOM) by analyzing and investigating social media and eWOM and how it effects customers? expectations on the companies service quality. In connection with the purpose we have chosen the following research questions: 1. In which way can companies in the travel industry interact with their customers participation on the Internet through social media. 2.

 This paper is made on behalf of Statistics and Research Åland, ÅSUB. The aim is to explain the turnover for companies in Åland, with appropriate variables. The main study variables are variables that consist of the Swedish and Finnish activity indices. The study variables also include variables which consist of tourists from Sweden and Finland and the introduction of the Euro in Finland. The data used is from the period January 1996 to June 2008.Different regression models for the turnover are tried and explanatory variables are selected by use of stepwise regression, backward elemination and forward selection. The final model includes activity indices for Sweden and Finland, the introduction of the Euro, tourists from Finland and an autoregressive component of order one .

In the early 1990?s more and more companies of the Swedish public sector were exposed to competition, and this started the debate on how such actions might affect the business and even society.The first chapter examines how the public sector and especially health care, is financed and managed. We also explore what it means to be exposed to competition and find that there are many different ways of exposing the public sector to competition. The study examines dental care as an example of a market with both publicly and privately owned companies. The purpose of this paper is to explore how publicly and privately owned health care companies view their relationship with their consumers.

The purpose of our essay is to find out if there are any strategies for profit transactions in a group. To realise our purpose we conducted two case studies with interviews. But we can not draw any general conclusions.To conduct the research we had to build a theory. In this theory we found motives to do profit transactions and how to do it. We also thought that there had to be some conflicts between the motives and the manager´s interests.In our analysis we found that financing the dividend was a strong reason to make profit transactions between companies in the group.

Sustainability reports are drawn up for the company's stakeholders and declare the company?s corporate social responsibility. Consumers are one of the companies' most important stakeholders for food companies. This study is aimed to describe how consumers perceive sustainability reporting in the food industry and if the application level of the GRI framework has an impact on how consumers perceive sustainability reports. Consumer perception is described in the GRI principles and the basis is the ICA and Coop's sustainability reports, which are two of Sweden's largest food company.

The last decade has created an increasing pressure on companies to decrease their impact on the environment and to increase their effectiveness of recycling the company?s resources, especially for the steel industry. Companies have also started to realize the economic aspects of an effective internal reverse logistics. In the past the value of an effective internal reverse logistic was something that companies tend to underestimate and there are few academic studies done in this area. The purpose of this essay has been to identify key factors to create an effective in plant storage, transport, sorting and handling of returned steel. From these factors a generalized model for creating an effective return steel flow will be developed.

The ISO 9000-series is a set of quality standards created by the International Organization for Standardization. The series is intended to provide guidance to companies in the process of deploying an effective quality management system. The series includes the requirements standard ISO 9001. This standard contains requirements on how a quality management system should be designed and how companies generally must work with quality issues. When a quality management system is introduced, if wanted, a quality certification can be implemented.

Introduction: Bokföringsnämnden started the K-project in 2004. The purpose was to collect rules and standards for different categories of companies in a complete set of regulations. Small businesses were given the option to choose between K3 which is the main regulatory and K2 which is a simplified regulatory framework. One specific difference between the regulations is that companies may not capitalize development costs if the company applies K2, this may causes problems for the companies that can give rise to such costs.Purpose: The purpose is to explain the problems that companies have identified in the choice of regulatory frameworks and the implications that may follow the specific rule in K2 on the company's activities and financial report.Frame of reference: K3 contains definitions and requirements that must be met so development costs can be capitalized in a company. Information presented in the financial statements should be relevant to the reader.

 Today a major part of the energy produced steams from fossil fuels, finite resources, and a change towards an energy sector based on renewable energy is necessary. Sweden is one of the leading countries with regards to investments in renewable energy but most other countries have a long way to go. This makes it interesting in developing renewable energy projects in new markets in countries like Poland where still a lot of fossil fuel is used. Large infrastructure development projects are very costly and therefore external investors needs to be involved. The investors play an important role in changing the usage of fossil fuels towards renewable energy sources.

The DuPont formula is one of the most well known and basic tools used for financial statement analysis and is highly useful for understanding firms strategies and operating environment. Previous studies on American listed companies have also shown that analysis of the changes in the DuPont components is useful in forecasting contexts. In this thesis we test whether disaggregating the change in return on net operating assets provides incremental information about future performance for Swedish listed and not listed companies. We find that the change in asset turnover is a leading indicator of increased profitability for both listed and private companies, regardless of size. We also find evidence that the usefulness of the disaggregation for understanding future performance is greater in capital intense industries and lesser in service industries..