Problem formulation: The awareness and importance of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is growing within both corporations and society at large. The corporate progress in sustainable development can be both profitable and essential for the potential to compete globally. The value of sustainability reporting may differ between industries and companies of different sizes. The demands for sustainability reports are expected to increase. By 2010, no previous survey on sustainability reporting practices had been conducted within Swedish corporations. Purpose: The aim of the current study was to examine sustainability reports within Swedish corporations during 2010 and to compare the findings with preceding surveys to determine differences over time and between corporations.

The function of traditional leaders in the modern states of Africa has been under debate for decades. The dominant research discourse suggests that these institutions should be integrated into the state in order to minimize the amount of parallel political spheres, since the latters are considered to affect state legitimacy negatively. But are the states in a situation where they need to compete with the traditional institutions in order to gain more legitimacy? If so, is the struggle for legitimacy a zero-sum game where there can only be one winner? Or is it possible for these institutions to co-exist or even benefit from each other? The aim of this bachelor?s thesis is to research if, and to what extent, African citizens? confidence in traditional institutions has an effect on state legitimacy. This has been done by statistically analyzing the data from the latest completed round of the Afrobarometer survey, a study that has been conducted in 20 different countries across West- and Northeast Africa.

Agency theory describes the conflict of interest between the principal (stockholders) and the agent (CEO). Aligning the incentives of executives with those of the owners is the most direct way to mitigate the agency problem. If there is no meaningful link between CEO compensation and company performance, it is doubtful that the large sums of assets in public corporations are being managed efficiently. In theory the solution is simple reward the CEO when shareholders wealth increases. The purpose of this paper is to investigate if there is a relationship between company performance and CEO compensation among Swedish companies, in materials and information technology industry.

In this study, emphasis was situated around pupils? expectations regarding body shape and physical proficiency among teachers within the subject of physical education. Additionally, possible outcomes of failure to uphold such demands were put in relation to aspects of legitimacy. To enable such study a qualitative study including semi-structured interviews was conducted and carried through, involving six pupils in the third grade of upper secondary education. The pupils were mainly selected through a convenience sample with.

Theory of mind är att kunna tillskriva andra människor mentala tillstånd som förklarar deras beteenden. Dessa mentala tillstånd kan röra sig om uppfattningar, intentioner eller känslor.    Theory of Mind Scale är en bedömningsskala utformad av Wellman och Liu (2004), som undersöker olika nivåer av theory of mind. Theory of Mind Scale är uppbyggd i skalsteg med stigande svårighetsgrad. Syftet med föreliggande studie var att översätta Theory of Mind Scale från engelska till svenska samt validera bedömningsskalan för barn mellan 3 och 4 år. Studien syftade även till att se om det fanns ett samband mellan dessa barns förmåga till theory of mind, impressiva grammatiska förmåga och impressiva ordförråd.      Valideringen i föreliggande studie visade att skalstegen i den amerikanska originalversionen av Theory of Mind Scale var applicerbara på barnen i föreliggande studie, med undantag för den sista uppgiften.

Since 2003 Saudi Arabia is under attack from domestic Al Qaida-cells which, by random shootings of westerners and bombings of compounds and official state buildings, is trying to challenge the stability of the royal regime. According to Al Qaida, the Royal family is attacked because of their friendly relations to the US and for not implementing Islam in the Saudi society as profound as they ought to. Political analyst finds it obvious that the Islamic Al Qaida-cells by terrorism is trying to erode the stability in the kingdom.An important foundation for stability for any government is legitimacy. The aim of this thesis is to examine the royal legitimacy strategy in the state bureaucracy of Saudi Arabia. The question at issue is: how has the royal family constructed the civil, military and religious bureaucracies to maintain and promote stability and legitimacy?The thesis focuses on the on three different units within these three bureaucracies and it surveys the way they are staffed and organized to strengthen and maintain legitimacy for the royal family.

The aim of the following paper has been to test the democratic peace theory through applying it on the conflict between Russia and Georgia in 2008.  This to either falsify the theory or come to the conclusion that the states? democracy was not satisfactory in regards to the definition of liberal democracy. The questions asked are: Was Russia and Georgia democratic states? Is democracy a protection from war? And which aspects of the liberal democratic theory, if any, were not satisfactory in either of the countries? The results show that the democratic peace theory is valid in this case and that neither one of the states were democratic.

The purpose of this paper has been to follow how a decision made has developed within anorganization. We have intended to find underlying causes for the development in order to contribute to the understanding of the lifecycle of decisions.The decision we have chosen is Gröna Skolgårdar (Green School Yards) within the city of Västerås. This project has aimed to make the school yards in Västerås more green, more beautiful and more useful for teaching.We have used Grounded Theory Method as our foundation, complemented with decisionmaking theory.The work with this paper has led to the conclusion that Gröna Skolgårdar changed over time, and did not turn out as first intended. This has had several couses such as how resources wasdistributed, political changes, and different views of the project.We have learned that over time a decision can take unexpected paths, and we have contributed with an example of how this can happen..

Introduction:By insight in the company and by monitoring the management, the board has an important function in creating trust in governance of the company. Furthermore, the board reduces the asymmetry of information between the owners and the management, which also is the function of the auditor, by auditing how the board governs the company and the accounting. In case the board does not effectively monitor the management, the auditor has to extend its monitoring, which increases the owners agency costs through the audit fee. The board composition can affect how effectively the board practices the monitoringProblem: How is the audit fee affected by the board composition?Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explain how the board composition affects the audit fee.Method: The study uses a quantitative method, where the data was collected from the annual reports of 112 limited companies listed on the NASDAQ OMX Large and Mid Cap lists on January 2, 2012.

The aim of this paper is to clarify the up till now somewhat shady definition of legitimacy, and to investigate what happens to this concept when it is transferred from the boundaries of the nation state to the realms of the international arena. By creating a model of legitimacy from which an institution can be evaluated, the purpose of this paper is to investigate what legitimacy is and how important it is for the actors within the international society. The next step involves evaluating what makes the UN a legitimate institution and how its foundation is affected by the blatant disregard of its authority by one of its? most influential members.The theoretical framework consists of a summary of what contemporary analysts? views of legitimacy are, which I have incorporated into my own institutional model of legitimacy. The role of institutions is central to all aspects of this study.

Service branding is a subject that has been excluded from the traditional branding theory. Our main purpose with this paper is to distinguish what characterizes service branding. To do this, we have looked in to both service marketing theory as well as branding theory. We have also looked at the existing theory concerning service branding. Six qualitative interviews have been performed to explain what characterizes service branding.

This thesis investigates how inventory management is practiced at a Swedish sawmill company, how practice differs from theory in this field and how the company could make more use of this theory. To do this we have performed a study on relevant literature and compared our findings with a field study on Moelven Valåsen AB. Our analysis shows that a large gap between theory and practice exists. We identify several reasons to this, including some sector specific problems when calculating cost rate for timber inventories. Suggestions on solutions to these problems and an example of how a cost rate can be estimated with relatively simple means are presented.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate which the main determinants of capital structure in Swedish listed firms are and to identify which incentives lies behind managers choice of capital structure determinants. Further, the study investigates whether the Post Keynesian theory and theories which incorporate behavioral aspects can be used to explain the capital structure decisions or if the traditional Neoclassical theory give an better explanation. We have used a qualitative method to analyze the determinants of capital structure and the managers incentives behind capital structure decision. We conducted a survey which was sent to 83 Chief Financial Managers and financial executives in Swedish firms listed on Mid Cap or Large Cap. The questionnaire was on-line which enabled for the respondents to quickly and convenient respond.

Much attention has been directed to Charity Foundations and how they use the donations given to them. Donators and external organisations put pressure on and evaluate the performance of Charity Foundations. The purpose of this thesis is to increase the understanding of how Charity Foundations handle the pressure from external parties through a qualitative case study of one Swedish Charity Foundation. The most important external factors have been identified and the accountability relationships between each party and the Charity Foundation have been examined. The empirical material was collected through semi-structured interviews and from written sources.

This thesis paper is based on Ian Manners Normative Power Europe-theory with a focus on EU?s military operation in Somalia. By examining documents from EU institutions in the form of reports concerning EU NAVFOR ? Operation ATALANTA ? EUTM Somalia ? EUCAP NESTOR. This study shows that the Normative Power Europe-theory can get expressed and that the EU continues its normative statements in Somalia. This result is an interesting contribution to the theory of Normative Power Europe witch have gotten a lot of critic about how a military operation should effect and diminish the theory..