How debt affects companies is an issue that has received much attention. The fact that researchers disagree can make it hard for companies to choose a financingpolicy that maximizes the value of the firm and its return on equity. In a world with investors that are seeking to maximize profits the value of the firm can be affected differently by different economic conditions. The intention of this study is to answer these issues with quantitive methods, with focus on year 2010 and 2009, where the value of the firm is defined as P/E and P/B ratio. The outcome showed that liabilities only affected return on equity significant in one of four cases, and liabilites didn?t affect the value of companies significantly in any of these.

Internet has opened a whole new world when it comes to marketing. Because of this companies can reach out to a broader consumer audience. The idea to write this essay came to mind, when we were asked to design the website of a new registered company named Artoteket. The company?s purpose is to hire out and market art on the Internet to bigger companies such as banks, law firms and industrial company?s etc.

Study objects: JM, Folkhem and ABB.Purpose: The purpose with this study are to examine how the supplier relations are in the construction branch and compare that result with how the supplier relations are for ABB a production company.Theoretical: The theoretical chapter illustrates important and relevant parts of supplier relations, purchasing and supplier strategies to give good overview. The theoretical review will combine information from different fields to consent with the research problem.Method: A case study has been made on three different companies, one of the companies was active in the production industry the other two were active in the construction industry. Data was mainly collected through semi structured interviews on each of the three companies.Conclusions: The size of the company decided which point of view the company had on purchasing, traditional or modern view. All three companies had a centralized purchasing organization but the construction firms were more decentralized than the production company. The reason was that the construction firms were dependent with more flexibility when every construction project is unique..

In this report a study is carried out with the aim to identify added values of EPC projects implemented in schools in order to increase the interest of EPC projects on the market. The report examines how the planned maintenance, supervision, maintenance and corrective maintenance is affected, how insurance premiums and terms are affected, the indoor environment and how the tasks of the operating staff is changing. A literature study of energy savings, energy use in schools, maintenance and insurance as well as how energy efficiency improvements are related to the Swedish environmental objectives has been made. Visits were carried out in Ludvika, interviews were also carried out with operation technicians and local strategists in Ludvika as well as employees of insurance companies.Schools often have neglected maintenance and problems with ventilation and indoor environment. Schools also have a large energy saving potential due to their low utilization, mainly because they are empty parts of the year.

In recent years, more and more people have started to live double lives. Blogs, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have created conditions so that we increasingly live virtual lives on the Internet. The gathering of people in this way entails both risks and opportunities for businesses. This study aims to explain how the phenomenon of social media has affected trade and service companies in a marketing and communication perspective. The idea for the essay came to us after we had observed how different behaviors in companies? concerning social media could vary a lot, and how we felt that this affected our personal view of the brands.

In relation to the paradigm shift that took place between the marketing mix and relationship marketing, and the emergence of information technology in the 90:s, the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has become a frequently used concept in marketing. Most definitions and approaches have been generated from previous studies, but the concept is still criticized for the number of failed implementation attempts. Along a discussion of the area has an elaborate theoretical foundation remained as the foundation for the study development and utilized in all the sections of the study. The study, with help from Gartner's eight building blocks of CRM, focus on how Swedish medium and large companies work with CRM, and if this is an indicator of the number of failed implementation attempts. The survey consists of two approaches, qualitative and quantitative, to provide both depth and generalizability of the study.

The linear televison have dominated the supply of moving pictures, but this is about to change with the possibility to consume it via the Internet.I n this thesis we have studied how the two Swedish tv-network companies, SVT and TV4 are working with their web TV and if their online services have affected the linear TV. To limit the size of the study we chose two network companies that provide the most popular tv channels and web services in Sweden. To gather data from these two companies we conducted qualitative interviews with people at the networks. We came to the conclusion that SVT and TV4 doesn't find that their web TV services (called SVT Play and TV4 Play) are competing with the linear TV. They rather regard them as assets to broaden their services.

This paper discusses the strategy and strategic change in the Swedish freight forwarding business and analysis factors that influence the forces of the business. Three companies of various sizes are chosen to be investigated as a case study, outline that cost leadership and differentiation are both important strategies for companies to compete in the market. However, companies outpacing competition do not only pursue either of the two strategies, the need the ability to add one (cost leadership) to the other (differentiation) in relationship to environmental change over time..

Globalization and demographic changes are forcing today?s companies to be more competitive in order to reach success. The increasing competition is proving a challenge for companies to recruit and retain competent, talented staff. To meet these challenges, Talent Management was developed during the 1990s and supplies a new and innovative way to deal with personnel management. Due to Talent Management being a relatively new theory, there is at present no generally accepted definition of the theory.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate industrial branding, which as a relatively new concept, both for practioners as well as academia, comprises a less explored application of the brand concept. The theoretical background of the study consists of marketing theory concerning the brand concept, and theory concerning industrial marketing. The empirical foundation consists of case studies of four industrial companies, based on interviews with representatives from the companies. All four companies have engaged in activities which they themselves see as industrial branding. Initially, the study sets out to determine the occurence of industrial branding, according to this study?s definition, and continues to tentatively explore the implications of branding in an industrial context.

The market for management consulting services is changing with an increased level of competition and more specialized service providers. At the same time there is a high level of companies that fail in their efforts to establish themselves on the market. This thesis sets out to give the reader an increased understanding of the complex characteristics of the market for these services, focusing more specifically on which factors that have an effect on the strategy development for companies within the industry. The thesis is also aimed at providing the reader with a deeper understanding of how developing consulting companies can tackle the specific challenges facing them. In order to meet the purpose of the thesis, we have applied relevant theories to a generic strategy model in order to develop a model that is applicable for the management consulting industry.

In this report a study is carried out with the aim to identify added values of EPC projects implemented in schools in order to increase the interest of EPC projects on the market. The report examines how the planned maintenance, supervision, maintenance and corrective maintenance is affected, how insurance premiums and terms are affected, the indoor environment and how the tasks of the operating staff is changing. A literature study of energy savings, energy use in schools, maintenance and insurance as well as how energy efficiency improvements are related to the Swedish environmental objectives has been made. Visits were carried out in Ludvika, interviews were also carried out with operation technicians and local strategists in Ludvika as well as employees of insurance companies.Schools often have neglected maintenance and problems with ventilation and indoor environment. Schools also have a large energy saving potential due to their low utilization, mainly because they are empty parts of the year.

During the last few years the alcohol consumption has increased and is now the highest in 100 years, one usually count that 10 % of the grown up population abuse alcohol and/or drugs and most of them are hidden abusers with families and work. This leads to great costs for the companies. But the much greater cost for the companies are the much larger group of risk abusers. According to the Swedish law the employer has a responsibility for the work milieu and also for the rehabilitate for the employed and drug/alcohol abuse applies to this.I have done qualitative interviews on four companies in the south of Sweden with one representa-tive for the management and one representative for the union. I have investigated their attitudes to alcohol and drugs and how they describe the alcohol culture at the company.The companies define alcohol problems when they are established and obvious and when it is dis-covered they put in resources and because of this they don't work preventive so much.

This study has been carried out in cooperation with Unilever and partly with the EC founded project, Smartdoc IST-2000-28137. In areas of statistics and image processing, both the amount of data and the dimensions are increasing rapidly and an interactive visualization tool that lets the user perform real-time analysis can save valuable time. Real-time cropping and drill-down considerably facilitate the analysis process and yield more accurate decisions. In the Smartdoc project, there has been a request for a component used for smart filtering in multidimensional data sets. As the Smartdoc project aims to develop smart, interactive components to be used on low-end systems, the implementation of the self-organizing map algorithm proposes which dimensions to visualize.

Abstract Essay in political science, C-level, by Patrik Larsson, autumn semester 2007.Tutor: Susan Marton The battle over the agenda-Can media be regarded as an individual political actor? The purpose of this essay is to study to what extent media can be regarded to function as an individual political actor. In other words, do the media have more power over the political agenda than the politicians and do the media influence how the politicians make their decisions. This research is a case study and to be able to complete the intention of this study I have used Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaws theory, the agenda-setting theory. From this theory I have used four aspects to analyse my material which has consisted of editorials from a Swedish newspaper, interpellations and debates that belong to the interpellations. The aspect I have worked with are, how the problem is defined, who is responsible for the problem, what values and which solutions are expressed.  I have used a qualitative text analysis as my methodological approach which means that the results of my study are my interpretation of the material. My conclusions are that the media in this case shouldn?t be regarded as an individual political actor because there is no tendency that shows that the media has influenced the government in their decisions concerning the real-estate tax.