The world has changed its understanding of environmental issues dramatically and more people are showing awareness of social and environmental problems. Various stakeholders have increasingly begun to show an interest in how companies are taking responsibility for their actions. This has led to an improved activity amongst organizations to make their production consequences positive. They work with Corporate and Social Responsibility (CSR). In order to communicate their responsibilities, many companies work with CSR and ethical guidelines.

Title: Global Reporting Initiative - A comparative study on compliance with the initiative's guidelines between Ericsson and Vattenfall.Authors: Peter Leidhammar, Mattias ThorénSupervisor: Bo EnquistExaminer: Margareta BjurkloSeminar Date: 2009-01-14Background and problem formulation: The interest and the requirements that stakeholders have for companies sustainability issues are becoming increasingly important. Thus more companies are increasing their work on their sustainability reports. As there are no laws governing how these are to be designed, standards have been created by various organizations that companies voluntarily can follow. Now, after the Swedish government gave them the directive to follow the GRI's guidelines the Swedish public companies have started to follow this trend. The question then stand how much the private companies' sustainability reports differ from state companies and whether this can be traced to the differences in the companies' ownership and their stakeholders picture.Objective: The purpose of the paper is:· analyze how the GRI's guidelines are followed by the two organizations· highlight differences between them from a theoretical perspectiveLimitations: This paper is limited to two companies, one company owned by the government and one privately-owned company.

Today, social media is used mostly by people in their private life. However, companies are more and more tapping into the area of social media. To this date, mostly B2C companies have been successful in their social media strategies. This qualitative thesis aims to investigate how B2B companies can benefit from using social media as a means to communicate and build relations with their customers. The medtech industry has been chosen as the object of study.Through depth interviews with people in the medtech industry and social media experts, data has been collected in order to answer the questions of (1) how ready customers in the medtech industry are to receive information through social media and (2) how companies can build the best possible social media strategy.

Cost allocation ? a study of how Swedish energy companies allocate costs between electricity and district heating in a combined heat and power plant District heating is today the most utilized alternative for heating in Sweden. In a combined heat and power plant (CHP) electricity and heat are cogenerated. The environmental and economic advantages with this kind of production are high. A problem in a CHP-plant is to allocate costs between electricity and heat since both products are generated in the same process.

The aim of our master thesis is to study the way valuation of real estate is conducted by real estate companies. Furthermore we want to identify the factors that affect the relevance and reliability of the valuation. The reason for this is the introduction of IFRS, in 2005, and the application of the IAS 40 rules stating that real estate are to be recognized at fair value on the balance sheet. To do this we have performed a case study on 10 Swedish real estate compa-nies listed on the Stockholm stock exchange, OMX, Large Cap and Mid Cap list to see how the share value has performed in relation to the reported net asset value since 2005 and how they value their collection of properties. We also studied the assumptions made by real estate company analysts.

Companies today are facing more and different kinds of demands from the society and their stakeholders. It is no longer enough to just deliver the products, and not just the quality of the products that matter. The consumers are getting more conscious about the many ways in which companies affect the society and the environment in which we live. The financial sector, that among others includes stakeholders such as insurance companies, banks and fund companies are starting to realise the importance of the non- financial issues that companies are encountering. Analysing the companies sustainability when it comes to social and environmental issues, has become an increasingly important factor when for example choosing companies to invest in.

Background: Accounting of intangible assets have increased during the last years which have created a debate about if trademarks should be accounted as assets with the uncertainty of the value in mind. Valuation and accounting of trademarks are of interest for accountants and investors. These should be able toget information about the assets that are of importance for the company. A solid brand can be of great value for a company, which should be accounted for. Purpose: The purpose of this master is to examine the function of the brand in the different companies in the study and map the definitions that the different companies have of brands.

?Death in the pot.? The Fruit and Vegetable Preserving industry in East Scania during the 20th century A Company History. At the end of the twentieth century, only one of the six companies previously active in the Fruit and Vegetable Preserving Industry in East Scania survived as an independent company: Kiviks Musterier AB. Actual production remains at two sites only. The aim of this study is to determine the reasons for this development. The companies included in the investigation are AB Bjäre industrier, Gustaf Bong AB, Kiviks Musterier AB, AB Ruuthsbo konservindustrier, Th.

New laws and recommendations within corporate governance during the last years have affected the way board of directors work. The board is said to have and fulfill three roles: a control role, a service role and a strategy role. These roles could be understood by three theoretical theories: the agency theory, the resource dependence theory and the stewardship theory. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether, and if so how, the board work differs between two small firms based on these roles, given that one of the firms is a publicly listed firm and the other is a privately owned firm. Using a qualitative case study as research method we find that the board work differs between the two companies when it comes to these roles.

ABSTRACTTitle: The exact title used in the thesis will be mentioned here.Level: Bachelor thesis in BusinessAuthor: Mattias Lindqvist & Jonas TesfaySupervisor: Peter LindbergDate: 2011 ? JuneAim: In Sweden the representation of women on company boards is discussed extensively. It has also been suggested that regulations such as quotas should be imposed, in hopes of getting the gender balance on the board of directors. Measures such as these have been presented when this problem attacks our democratic values about how a society should look like. The aim is to study and analyze whether there is any connection between the return on assets and the proportion of women on company boards.Method: The paper is made from a quantitative with a deductive approach.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate and analyze how widely and intensive genderequality issues are considered within Swedish companies. Qualitative interviews werearranged with personnel managers within each company, and complemented with aquestionnaire amongst the employees. The collected information was analysed on the basis ofgender theory, organization and change theory, theory of equal opportunities and historicalstatistics. The outcome of the analysis indicates that companies find gender equality of highinterest, and important to address within the daily work. However the analysis also shows thateven though the companies find gender equality important it is only adopted within few areas,and not across all departments.

Today, there are a number of different models and methods used to estimate the equity value of a company. A common tool for valuating stock prices is the usage of different multiples. This is a method used to determine the value of a company, by examining and comparing the financial ratios of relevant peer groups. The disadvantage with this method is that it does not take all the important aspects, such as risk, investments and capital structure, into consideration. However, this study investigates if the key value, called discounted cash flow (DCF), can be integrated with the valuation of the multiples.

There is a mutual dependency between the business world and the country?s municipalities. The municipalities are dependent on the companies to create work and tax income while the companies are dependent on the municipalities they are located in to provide good infrastructure among other things.Apart from this the municipalities can work activly with creating a strong brand in the eyes of the companies and many researchers in marketing agree that marketing of places will be more common in the future. Marketing of municipalities is however still a rather new and unexplored area and it is uncertain how and to what extent the municipalities work with this.The thesis is formulated:How are the municipalities working to market towards companies and is it possible to make out any positive change from these marketing efforts?The goal of this study is:Our goal is to examine how the view of marketing of places differs from different municipalities in the Stockholm region, how some of these municipalities work with this and how far they have come in this work.

The accident frequency in the construction industry has shown a downward trend every year but this trend was broken 2010th. It is often lack of precautionary measures within work environment and safety that is the cause of accidents. The big construction companies understand the importance of precautionary measures within work environment and safety, as they spend a lot of money and time on that matter. By examining the work environment and the safety of the small construction companies you can see how they work. The report will presents how these small companies work with work environment and safety, and also how they follow the safety instructions that are available and how they make use of safety equipment.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study the companies approach to sustainability and to examine the relationship between the report content and the sustainability efforts businesses are making in practice.Method: The study has a qualitative perspective with semi-structured interviews and content analysis as method to collect data. Three companies were interviewed; Tekniska Verken AB, Apoteket AB and Max hamburgerrestauranger AB. The content analysis was used when collecting data from the three companies? sustainability reports.Frame of reference: Legitimacy theory, Stakeholder theory, Institutional theory, the Pyramid of Corporate Social Responsibility.Results: The result showed that all companies are prepared to work for sustainable development and that they view sustainability as an integrated part of their work. The sustainability report is the basis for sustainability reporting, which is a way for companies to demonstrate to their stakeholders what they stand for and what they implement in practice.