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.

The purpose of this study is to extend the understanding of how professionals in modern organisations want to be managed. We especially investigate professionals changing industries to describe if, and how, aprofessional in this situation is becoming a professional again after the change. This to find connections between intrinsic motivation and attitudes towards professionalism on one side, and applicable managerial methodson the other. Best practice in managing professionals is traditionally considered to be non-invasive methodologies such as indoctrination and training. Beyond that, operational-level management is usually considered to be bound to fail.The analysis suggests the following:? A professional changing industry will become professional again.? The driving force for becoming professional again is the strive for horisontal specialization, induced by higher education.? Management of professionals needs to account for the integrity of the horizontal specialization of the professional.

The purpose of this paper is to apply the Dual-Effect hypothesis in Pritmani, Shome and Singal paper (2003), in order to analyze the exchange rate exposure on firms listed on the U.K. market. The study will examine if the foreign involvement of the firm will affect the share price of the firm.In addition to evaluating the Dual-Effect hypothesis in Pritmani et. al. (2003), we will evaluate the effect of foreign interest rates impact on U.K.

Management control systems are a popular area of research and a lot of new research has been done over the past years. This development has been looking into new situations and circumstances, and interdisciplinary studies are being made to further understand the connection between different fields of study. A new field of study that has grown significantly over the past few years is the connection between management control systems and entrepreneurship. Leading researchers have proposed a number of questions for further research and one of them is the board of directors? use of management control systems in entrepreneurial firms.The purpose of this study was to examine the differences and similarities in the board of directors? use of management control systems between entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial firms.The study was conducted as a deductive qualitative study through interviews with respondents from entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial firms.

The professional football clubs can today be compared with company with profit aim, but the difference is that they also want to achieve sporting successes. In ten years, the Swedish Premier Division´s turnover has more than doubled and because of the strong economic development the license of elite was introduced. The license of elite´s criteria means that professional football clubs must have positively equity and requirements on approved or authorized auditor. Most of the professional football clubs are run as a non-profit association and legislations for these are relatively unclear compared with limited companies. The purpose of this study is to create understanding for how the audit process is implemented in professional football clubs compared with a limited company.

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.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to understand public library users' perceptions of librarians' attitudes to users and professional knowledge. The purpose was also to investigate the relative importance to the user of pleasant or a knowledgeable librarian. As a theoretical framework we use theory from business economy where the experience of the user is in focus. Answers were sought to the following questions: How do users perceive librarians attitudes to users? How do users perceive librarians professional knowledge? How do users want to be treated by public librarians? What kind of knowledge should public librarians have, according to users? We interviewed twelve students in university education that are users of public libraries.

As self-service technologies become more common in service provisions, a deeper understanding is needed of how customer satisfaction is affected by automated service encounters. Drawing from theories of customer satisfaction, human interaction, and the dynamics of complex service provisions, the differences between automated and interpersonal service encounters in the initial part of a service provision are examined in terms of customers? evaluation of the service encounter itself, overall satisfaction, as well as the service encounter?s impact on global evaluations and evaluations of other non-dependant service encounters. The study was performed on people travelling by air on Swedish domestic routes. Passengers were asked to evaluate the airline?s performance on different attributes of the air travel they had undertaken, as well as to form an overall evaluation of the service.

The overarching aim of this paper is to study the professional encounter in its complexity. The requirements for receiving welfare is set by the professional and it's the professionals decision if they are met in the proper manner. This makes the assessment of the clients conditions and the correctness of the assessment hence important. There are several levels which is necessary for the social worker to take into consideration.We have therefore made a socio-analysis by using a theoretical model of Johansson (2006) where he uses the Social Psychology of the encounter to create a model with four levels, which is always present in the professional encounter: structural, positional, relational, and experience level.  Our base was that the one responsible for handling these levels was the professional which led us to search for literature concerning the professional approach.Our study is formed as a qualitative case-study. Our empirical data consist of qualitative interviews with four social workers handling social allowance.The results shows that the complexity of the professional encounter requires a professional approach.

This thesis studies whether private equity owned firms within the Swedish welfare sector distinguish themselves in terms of tax planning and short-termism from a control group consisting of other privately owned welfare firms. For the first time, the comparison is made on the entire welfare sector, between 14 matched pairs within education, health care and elderly care. We use financial metrics associated with tax planning and short-termism in sign tests to examine whether the private equity owned firms differ from our control group. The financial metrics tested are actual and paid tax rates, level of interest, book-tax gap, investments, personnel expenses per employee, and cash earnings. We find that the private equity owned firms in terms of tax planning only differ in the level of interest, while no notable differences are found in terms of short-termism..

The aim of this masters thesis is to examine what political, social and ideological reasons that were the base for the establishment of the Swedish temperance movement. Which judgements within this movement that resulted in the decision to establish publishing firms, how these publishing businesses were organised and what function they had in the literary circuit. The questions are: What principal political, social, economical and ideological reasons were the bases for the establishment of the Swedish temperance movement? How has their need for publishing firms arisen? Which were the publishing firms and who were the publishers? What ideas, purposes, experiences, values and judgements led to the establishment of publishing firms? In the first part of the theory I have used the historical materialism of Karl Marx; in the second part the theory of middle class publicity by Jürgen Habermas; and in the third part I have made a presentation of the literary circuit and how it works according to Marx and Habermas. The method used is an analysis of ideas and ideologies in literature and documents.

The aim of this MA thesis is to examine how users regard and receive the services offered by a specific public library. We also examine what the conception of service means to the users and how they perceive this service being offered by the library. We look upon if and to what extent the service conception depends on contact with the library staff. The methods used are qualitative interviews and analyses of documents directing the library activities. The public library we have examined in this respect is the public library of Västerås.

This master thesis deals with the problem of integrated libraries. The number of integrated public and school libraries has significantly increased over time. These libraries are integrated for different reasons, most often because of economic considerations. The goal of the thesis is to investigate librarians´ understanding and perceptions of the professional role in this type of integrated libraries. I have investigated how librarians see and interpret their own professional role, and what factors influence their perceptions in an integrated library.The three main questions are: How do the librarians explain their professional role in an integrated library? How does their professional role change because of the fact that they work in an integrated environment? What factors, according to the librarians, influence and/or change the professional role mostly? The data has been collected through interviews with eight librarians at integrated libraries.

Title: A study about conditions for leadership in knowledge-intensive firms.Authors: Cecilia Ekström and Niklas SandbergKeywords: Leadership, knowledge-intensive firm, hierarchies, followers.Background: Leadership is becoming one of our greatest social myths and is considered a total solution for many problems that occur in an organization. The view of leadership is usually from a top-down perspective, which contributes to an often underestimated view of the follower. Just as it is important to understand the leader's view of leadership, it is important to understand how employees view the structure from which the leader derives its legitimacy. The existing conditions in knowledge-intensive firms, such as autonomy, place special demands on the formal leadership.Purpose: The purpose of this study takes an employee perspective, to understand what the conditions are for formal leadership in knowledge-intensive firms.Method: A qualitative research method was used and empirical material was collected through interviews with employees in knowledge-intensive firms. The empirical material was analyzed by the respondents? mental images which were set against the theoretical framework of the thesis.Conclusions: The conditions for formal leadership in knowledge-intensive firms make it advantageous to have a leader with a withdrawn role.

This paper examines the professional role of the music journalist and how it has been affected by the expansion of the Internet. The study aims to examine  the profession's outlook and how professional music journalists are working to reach the public with interesting information, despite the fact that the audience of today often can be first to deliver the news. Through qualitative research interviews with three current music journalists the professional role and its development is examined. Based on theories and previous research on journalism, how the media communicates and its importance to society, what it is to be a music journalist and the spread of digitization and the impact of file sharing the results are analyzed. The conclusions of the study are that it isn?t a profession that is disappearing but rather a profession that is working towards a new future.