Background to problem: Pensions play a big role in people's lives when life expectancy continues to increase. Companies can choose different ways of reporting their pension plans, and within the defined benefit pension plan poses the actuarial gains and losses that can be reported based on three different methods. Only one method will exist from 2013, how will the companies that use the other two handle the new situation?Purpose: Investigate why different companies have chosen to report its actuarial gains and losses along the corridor approach, directly against income or directly in equity. How will the companies that use the corridor method manage the situation when it will only be allowed to report in other comprehensive income as of 2013 and how will this affect them.Methodology: Data was collected through qualitative questionnaires sent to companies listed on Nasdaq OMX Nordic Stockholm, Large Cap and Mid Cap, and a qualitative interview.

The first of May 2005 changes were made in the Annual Accounts Act. The 2006 Annual Report of companies with more than ten employees or assets over 24 million SEK must include environmental information in the directors' report if it affects the company's development, result or position. A survey made by KPMG 2007 investigating the environmental information of companies listed on Large Cap Segment of the OMX Stockholm exchange showed that only a third of the companies, included in the survey, complied with the new law requirements. I have examined how the environmental information in the directors' report is formulated and why the information is formulated in that fashion. I have examined seven companies listed on the Large Cap Segment of the OMX Stockholm exchange. Four companies from the materials sector and three banks from the financials sector were included in the survey.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the information need of the incubators that comes from Chalmers University of Technology and are situated at Chalmers Innovation. It is also of interest to investigate how Chalmers University Library covers this information need. The investigation was carried out using qualitative interviews with representatives of the incubators. They were asked questions about the perceived need of information and which type of contacts they had with the library. The result is that the incubators feel that there is a great need for business information that is hard to find.

AbstractThis is the paper you should read if you want to know more about working in team. Teamwork is a way of working and it increases more and more among societies and companies today, but it is not quite clear what the diffrences is from working in groups. We have in this paper tried to clear out the differences between groups and team, and we have also tried to give an oversight of how to work in team in organizations. Cultures of organizations, leadership and power and also development of qualifications are big parts of an organization´s daily work, and we have explained these concepts from a teamperspective.We have, in this paper, done interviews with people that have been in contact with the central consepts that we use. And then we have analyzed their answers with help from litterature, which we have closely studied, thereafter we have presented our results.

The aim of this thesis is to explore possible differences between public and private companies? way to manage projects. In order to analyze the managerial aspects, we have studied the project of a new payment system implemented at the public-transport organization Upplands Lokaltrafik (UL). The project enables mobile payment by text message (SMS). Most theory concerning the management of projects is developed for private companies.

The global spread of the Internet has enabled busniesses and consumers in all industries to be better informed. Consequently, the buying process has appeared to become different from what tratditional models implies. As the buying behaviour among customers is evolving, selling companies are responding to this change. This thesis evolves around the consequences that the developing relationship between buyer and seller in business-to-business companies has led to. The topic in focus is the buzzword and phenomena "content marketing" with its marketing and selling strategy.

AbstractThis essay is about what rights that a consumer has, after it?s been to a beauty-shop getting a treatment somewhere on her body. We were interested to see what kind of regulations that could be useful if a problem occurred after or during treatment. There are several risks with these treatments.The last decade these kinds of treatments have increased, due to people being vain and so aware about there looks. We started to investigate what type of rights the consumer generally has when it?s about a service.

Certifications is common for IT in relation to individual program languages or program applications. Certifications for educations that endures several years is not as common to see. In this paper the situation for the Systems Science programme is researched, by investigating how the programme looks around in Sweden. Also by using interviews, show how companies and people responsible for the programme in Umeå, think the contact is between them and how the knowledge of the Systems Science students are from the view of the companies that employ them. In the end the conclusions show that there are differences in the Systems Science programme, and that the companies have quite a similar view of what the Systems Science students are good and not so good at.

In a globalized world, competitiveness is based on the high IP (intellectual property) of our export products and innovations are therefore important for new companies to establish and develop. It´s not enough to just have big international companies but it is also necessary to invest in new companies that can be competitive in the future. By helping entrepreneurs with innovation support in the early stages, new technology-based businesses are established and developed. The purpose of this paper was to examine how innovation support in the early stages affects the establishment and development of new technology-based companies. Furthermore, we investigated how this will affect Sweden's international competitiveness.

The Main problem: How small-sized manufacturing companies can create and sustain a stable position in the industry, which leads to profitability.Purpose: The purpose with this essay is to compare two small-sized manufacturing companies, Datek Industrielektronik AB and AB Micatrone to study which strategical resources each company possesses. At the same time analyse if the strategical resources are to be consider as sustainable competitive advantage.Method: A case study has been implemented in two small-sized manufacturing companies. The collected primary data derives from semi-structured interviews.Theoretical framework: The theoretical framework is based on The Resource-based view where the independent variables are the VRIO-model, resource tree and external resources. The dependable variable is sustainable competitive advantage.Empirical foundation: The empirical foundation is based on the compilation of the few conducted interviews with Datek and Micatrone.Results & Conclusion: Datek and Micatrone show both similarities and differences in what creates their sustainable competitive advantage. The management of both companies creates according to the VRIO-model sustainable competitive advantage.

Background and problem: The financial crisis 2008-2009 came out from an over-optimism among those who took the real estate loans in the U.S., and especially so-called subprime loans. After the 2008 financial crisis, it has become a global uncertainty in the financial market with low growth, and even financial crises in the euro countries have appeared. The real estate industry is a capital-intensive industry where companies have a high leverage to implement their investment. This means they have a larger proportion of debt relative to equity than companies in other industries. As investments require a lot of capital, real estate companies become dependent on having a working relationship with both the banks and the capital market.

Background: Today businesses are largely structured in projects and temporary organizations. In many companies, the ability to pursue projects is decisive for the business efficiency and competitiveness. The risk literature do not discuss identification and handling ofproject risk in building- and construction companies to a large extent, which has led us to investigate how project risk can be treated and handled in Swedish building- and construction companies. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to cover and describe business risk in Swedish building- and construction projects with focus on different risks and risk tools, and also to modify a model for evaluating the business risk maturity. Realization: This thesis has both traces of a case study and a cross-section study and examines eight different companies that are active in the building- and construction business.

Swedish listed property companies report their investment properties under the standard IAS 40 that gives the opportunity to value investment properties to either historical cost or to fair value model. One problem with the fair value model is that there is no observable market price since the real estate market is far from complete which means that the price of the asset is hard to determine because of the limited information.IAS 40 gives companies the opportunity to choose between internal or external valuation and this study aims to show how the property companies? values appeared between the years 2007-2011. From the result we will study if there could be a difference in the outcome depending on if the company chose either internal or external valuation.To investigate this we observe all Swedish real estate companies listed on OMX Nordic Stockholm and their financial reports during this period of time and complement this information by interviewing people working with these matters in the property companies. The methodology for the study is therefore partly quantitative and partly qualitative since we collect data both from financial reports and from interviews.

Background: As Porter?s diamond (1990) suggested, the business environment highly influences firms? strategies. Today, most of the companies have to decide their strategy depending from a worldwide business environment. Yet, strategy researches and the growing importance of marketing for business success also show that customer dimension must be taken into consideration. On some markets and in certain industries, the offer is much higher than the demand and then, companies need to attract customers.

In this study, the efficiency of a newly launched predatory mite, Amblydromalus limonicus, has been examined for its potential to use as a biological control agent in cucumber production. A. limonicus can be used for biological control of two thrips species, Frankliniella occidentalis and Thrips tabaci. Field trials were conducted in greenhouses of two conventional cucumber growers in Scania, the southern part of Sweden. The basic control agent used against thrips was the predatory mite Amblyseius swirskii. In selected areas, additional A.