The purpose of this thesis is to examine and analyze the characteristics of the management control system private equity firms use to manage their portfolio companies. The thesis takes a share holder value perspective, and it is assumed that the goal of the management control system is to increase the shareholder value in the portfolio company. In a qualitative study two private equity firms and two portfolio companies, one for each private equity firm, were studied in detail. In total, nine in debt interviews were completed. The results from this study suggest that the characteristics of the control system are dependent on the surrounding context; the focus on shareholder value and the specific characteristics of the private equity industry shape the characteristics of the management control system.

The aim of this paper is to examine how the design of management control in a retail trade company affects motivation among its employees. Our purpose is to identify what actions create motivation and how management can benefit by developing and promoting such activity from its high-performing employees. Motivated personnel have become increasingly important in companies today, and companies are increasingly reliant on individual employees? capabilities. The study covers all parts of the management control system, to see how these align to create goal congruence in an organizational context.

Karriärcoaching är en tjänst som ökat kraftigt på den svenska marknaden. Tidigare studier inom området har visat att en stark självkänsla stärker en persons hälsa och underlättar för denne att hantera problem. Syftet med studien var att undersöka om karriärcoaching har någon påverkan på prestationsbaserad självkänsla, känslan av kontroll (Locus of Control) samt självbemästring av tankar och känslor (Self-Efficacy). Genom en enkätundersökning har en grupp som genomfört karriärcoaching jämförts med en kontrollgrupp som ej genomfört karriärcoaching. Ett oberoende t-test gav en signifikant skillnad i Locus of Control (p<.05).

The purpose of this study is to perform an in-depth analysis of what effects a privatization of a service organization has on the management control system within the organization. The paper studies a service organization which provides service for the county council in Östergötland, Sweden. The result is based on interviews with several people, both within the acquiring private company and also within the county council in Östergötland, and analyzed using Samuelson?s (2005) framework from his study ?Organizational, Governance and Control ?. The major finding in the thesis is that the factors that have had the largest impact on the changes in management control are the new owner demands and the degree of operationalization of the overall goal..

The study - Hur skapas en journalist? - examines why so many people choose to turn tothe journalist profession when the conditions for a secure position on the labor market ispoor. The study also highlights how recently graduated journalist perceives their temporary and insecure position on the labor market.The study was performed trough ten biographical interviews with recently graduated journalists. Via the interviews I examined what has formed the individuals to perceive journalism as a rational or pragmatic choice for a career. The study shows that journalists, who come from families with high cultural capital, have been shaped by a particular culture of education, which focuses on education as a step towards selfrealization.

In a time when economic crises relieving one another, it is especially interesting to study how companies choose to finance their operations. Since there is a lack of studies that include banks, and their capital structures, with the rest of the finance market, it is uncertain whether the theories of capital structure are applicable. Therefore, this essay aims to study whether there is any correlation between the two variables debt-equity ratio and return on equity (ROE) for Swedish corporations on the finance market.In accordance with the theorems that the professors Modigliani and Miller filed, in 1958 and 1961, which describes a clear link between debts, increase corporate value through the tax shield and indirectly increased yields. Although these theorems are the foundation of the modern research they focus on perfect markets. Therefore, this paper has also chosen to place great emphasis on theories such as Trade-off and Pecking-order.

The purpose of this essay was to sort out parents attitudes concerning children and their use of smartphones, primarily in regards to the integrity-aspect. I have studied if parents believe that their children should have smartphones, if they want to control their use, how they want to control their use and what implications this might have. I've chosen two methods for my research, one quantitative, online questionnaires, and one qualitative, semi-structured interviews. My base has been previous research in the area, to the extent it existed. My findings suggest that parents, on the whole, are positive to letting their children use smartphones but that they?d like some sort of control over their use.

The purpose of this research is to examine the implications of the provisions in the Swedish Code of Corporate Governance (the Code) concerning auditor attestation of the internal control report. We will focus on how the auditors? augmented responsibilities will affect the efficiency in the audit process.Our research indicates that the main benefit from reviewing the internal control report is achieving more reliable internal controls, which results in greater prevention of misstatements in the financial statements. This will affect the efficiency in the audit process since the auditor can place more reliance on internal controls when performing audit procedures. This implies that the benefits of preventing misstatements could outweigh the efforts and resources spent on reviewing the internal control report..

Background: Despite the time and money invested in relationships with other companies, it is a fact that many of them fail. Considering this, remarkably little research has been done regarding how inter-organisational relationships are controlled, given that control can function as a solution to the problems involved with collaboration, which arise since such a relation exists in the interface between organisational boundaries, where the companies? often conflicting interests and points of view meet. If one part is stronger than the other in a relationship, the weaker however tends to give way for the stronger?s will.

The purpose of this essay is to examine which factors that influence the design of internal control in municipal context and how well it works. We choose seven municipals, where we interviewed the administrative managers, the chairmen of the committees and two persons of the staff in each activity unit. The interviews were performed by telephone, due to the keeping of the essay?s timeframe.The theory in our essay comprises eight hypotheses. These hypotheses were operationalised into different variables aiming to make statistical tests possible.

In this essay I analyze the way my collection of poetry relates to the concept cyclic. What is cyclic and what different interpretations are there concerning the concept? Which other related concepts are there regarding things that seem to reoccur regularly? How does the cyclical, the circular, relate to the linear in regard, for example, to the perception of time? Life often creates the sense that different phenomena and experiences repeat themselves. Different processes are conducted according to regular or irregular cyclical phases, situations seem familiar and events can be relived.         Starting from my writing project Sinnligt kviller, a collection of poems, I discuss these questions in themselves and the impact they have had on my collection. I describe the phenomenon cyclic as a result of the emotions and moods this term creates in a more or less decisive way.         The intention with this paper is to show how Sinnligt kviller offers different perspectives of and reflections upon the various feelings provoked by the cyclic in our lives, feelings that are given my own voice in the literary text under study..

The purpose of this thesis is to examine and present the oportunities of solvingcontrol problems using Modelica. This is done by creating some demonstrationexamples with exercises. These examples should cover as many types of controlproblems as possible. The exercises are aimed for people with basic knowledgein modeling and automatic control engineering but with little or no knowledgein Modelica. There are different types of Modelica implementations and the onesused in this thesis are OpenModelica and MathModelica..

???This study has been made with the purpose of gaining an understanding of how a Swedish company may think and act concerning their internal control. An American body, COSO, have for some time published documents containing guidelines for how companies should go about this process, however, when conducting this study we were not aware of the extent to which companies in Europe and mainly Sweden used them. In order to learn about this, and also to gain an understanding of when these guidelines are appropriate, we conducted a case study with a large-sized, multinational Swedish company. We also conducted an interview with an expert in internal control monitoring, Anna-Clara af Ekenstam of Pricewaterhouse Coopers, in order to get the perspective of the evaluators in this process and to gain some insight as to whether our case is typical in Sweden or not. We found that our company disregards certain aspects of internal control condoned by COSO, while performing better on other dimensions.

This paper investigates and explains the existence of different governance structures in the Swedish film industry. Using a theoretical framework of transaction cost economics, it is shown that trust follows from frequent production projects, affecting the distributors? control of producers, cinemas, video retailers and television. Control becomes more flexible, informal and less time consuming. Furthermore, the control of the distributors? relationship with television and cinemas proves to be multidimensional and affected by transaction activities, as well as by demands from previous parties in the value chain.

Franchise theorists have to a large extent failed to keep up with the actual development in global franchise chains. The recent emergence of fast growing multi-unit-franchisees has fundamentally been ignored, and it has been claimed that the new phenomenon can be regarded as a mere replication of the franchisors? structure and control system into sub hierarchies. This study however, suggests that the reality is more complex. Through conducting case studies of two Nordic multi-unit-franchisees, new theories are built explaining how and why control systems are designed the way they are.