The intrest and development of bioenergy and energy from renewable sources in Sweden has increased rapidly over the last few years. There are a whole lot of alternatives for those who would like to venture and invest in renewable energy production. Production of renewable energy opens up many opportunities for forestry and farming to venture a new branch of production, on basis of the primary production. Several of the new energy sources grows on farmland or in the forest. The opportunities exist in the primary products, as well as in refining and reselling, in the value chain of energy. The starting-point is the Farmer as an energyproducer. This master thesis studies the nature of farmer-own firms, who has invested in production of renewable energy.

In the past decade there has been a considerable growth of contingent employment arrangements. In Sweden, the most common among these are the temporary-help service firms. The aim of this study is to investigate how the employees of temporary-help service firms experience their situation as employed by one company and working at another. We have used a qualitative approach to reach an increased understanding for the daily situation of the contingent worker. The essay is based on participant observations and semi-structured interviews with six contingent workers.

The structural rationalization of rural firms in Sweden has led to many new creative ways of developing companies. The agriculture sector is characterized by the need of capital in form of buildings, labor and inventory. The rationalization process has led to free capacity in rural firms when new technology make buildings and inventory not longer necessary for the production process. To get a better cost coverage this free capacity can be used to start-up new business areas that help the rural firm to growth.The study aims to identify factors that motives entrepreneurs in rural firms to develop new business areas. The purpose is also to analyze driving forces that lies behind development of rural firms and the forces that support or not support development in rural firms.The study is built upon five cases that all can be categorized as firms with different size and orientation.

The number of firms adapting the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility is constantly growing. It is no longer enough only to supply your customers with demanded products and services since todays? customers have an increased awareness and are demanding more transparence when it comes to the manufacturing and responsibility for society.Along with a growing interest in social, ethical and environmental matters, many firms have received critique, consequently forcing them to start taking more responsibility for their activities. The clothing industry was among the first to get critized and therefore early in starting their work with CSR.The purpose of this paper is to investigate how firms in the clothing industry work with CSR today, and also how they choose to communicate this work, both internally and externally. The methodology of the paper is qualitative and aims to deeply investigate four different firms, along with an additional interview with a CSR-consult from one of the leading communication-firms in Sweden.The theoretical foundation includes a frame of reference around CSR and the communication thereof, and also a few relevant theories around CSR and business ethics.After analyzing the empirical material the paper have reached a few conclusions.

 AbstractDate:                                  2009-06-03Level:                                 Master thesis in Business Administration, 15 pointsAuthors:                            Branka Milencovici            Deniz SolmazTutor:                                Ulla PetterssonTitle:                                  The Swedish code of Corporate Governance - How the code administers in larger stock firms.Problem:                           The Swedish code follows the value of "comply or explain" when firms depart one or several rules, the reasons should be explained in the corporate report. The code does not include reasons for differences, it's up to the management themselves to take action. Is it possible to see if the code has been administered? Do differences prevent? Which are the most common? Is there any motivation?  Purpose:                           The main purpose with this essay is to study how Swedish firms administer the rules of the code in their corporate reports.Method:                            The method for this study is a deductive and qualitative approach. First we studied theory to understand the subject.

With the introduction of IFRS, the IASB left the previously used method of amortization and instead introduced fair value. Studies show that firms manipulate the value of goodwill based on agency related incentives and opportunities, such as bonus payment, management tenure and acquisition of firms. The responsibility of checking the quality of financial reports, and give other market participants reasons to trust them, is primarily on accountants. The transition to fair value thus creates a problem for accountants to actually check the fair values produces by firms. Our purpose is to investigate whether the working method of accountants is purposeful in order to maintain the credibility of goodwill values.

This study investigates a method for identifying human capital and its effect on company valuation. We devise a measure for the efficiency of human capital based on the personnel cost. We include all companies listed in the financial and industry sector on Nasdaq OMX Stockholm in an attempt to examine human capital and its effect on firm valuation. Our results indicate that a higher efficiency of human capital has a positive effect on return on assets. However, we find that our measure can be interpreted in two ways; either as a firm?s level of human capital efficiency or its dependency on human capital, to achieve its net sales and revenue.

The Swedish Tax Agency is a government authority whose mission is to collect taxes and fees for financing the public sector and welfare in Sweden. Under the last decade the tax gap in Sweden has been constant and small businesses with a max turnover of 25 millions Swedish crowns are the biggest group in the tax gap. In the government inquiry about abolishment of statutory audit for small businesses (2008) there has been laid some proposals that the Swedish Tax Agency should get new control tools and increased rights to control small businesses tax accounts. In the science some controversies exists about tax authority?s ability to get taxpayers to pay taxes and fees to the society through using deterrence and compellence control methods versus more service? This ground has guided us to our presentation of a problem: ?How the Swedish Tax Agency works with influencing small businesses behaviour through preventive actions and controls?? The purpose of this study is to research and understand how the Swedish Tax Agency works in their control activities to influence small businesses behaviours regarding taxes and fees.

Title: The auditor?s recommendations to small businesses in the choice of K2 and K3Authors: Christopher Dimovski and Dennis Carlsson Published: Spring 2014 Background: The background of this study is the introduction of the new K-regulations. For small businesses, there is a possibility to choose between the rule-based K2 and the principal-based K3. It becomes mandatory to apply the K-regulations from 2014. We want with this study understand and explain the significance of the auditor and its recommendations to small businesses in the choice between K2 and K3. Aim: The aim of this study is to describe how the auditor makes recommendations to small businesses in the choice between K2 and K3 and through that create an understanding of what influence the auditor have when it makes recommendations and at the end contribute to the building of models. Formulation of problem: How can we understand and explain the auditor?s recommendations to small businesses in the choice of K2 and K3?Methodology: We have used a qualitative method where we have interview eight auditors.

The structural rationalization of rural firms in Sweden has led to many new creative ways of developing companies. The agriculture sector is characterized by the need of capital in form of buildings, labor and inventory. The rationalization process has led to free capacity in rural firms when new technology make buildings and inventory not longer necessary for the production process. To get a better cost coverage this free capacity can be used to start-up new business areas that help the rural firm to growth.The study aims to identify factors that motives entrepreneurs in rural firms to develop new business areas. The purpose is also to analyze driving forces that lies behind development of rural firms and the forces that support or not support development in rural firms.The study is built upon five cases that all can be categorized as firms with different size and orientation.

This paper examines how organizations work with their recruitment. The organizations in thispaper are mined in the trade of recruiting and staffing. The paper will further influence howorganizations work or will work with recruiting through social medias. It describes therecruiting process in the traditional way and what costs it brings. The next part is a descriptionof network and the importance of networking in a general way.Our results demonstrate that social medias probably will stay as a complement to other moretraditional methods and will not be an own recruiting method.

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 need for auditing originates from the agency problem that arises due to the separation of ownership and control in companies. The purpose of the audit is to increase credibility of the financial statements that management uses to communicate with owners and other stakeholders. In order for the audit to fulfill its purpose a certain level of quality needs to be obtained. The auditor can also be seen as a provider of a commercial service in which service quality is important. Audit quality can thus be separated into technical quality, which is defined as the probability that the auditor both discovers and reports a breach in the client?s accounting system, and service quality, which relates to the provision of services in general.

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 study seeks to outline the reason why public limited firms choose to bear the cost of auditing despite the annulation of legal requirements. The aim is to provide an overview and a better understanding of the decisions made by such firms. My research work focuses solely on the dentistry branch. Relevant data has been collected through interviews and adequate scientific theories are implemented to canvas and analyse the reality of auditing for public limited firms working with dental services.The background knowledge contains historical aspects and the importance of audit obligations together with the fact that the law no longer regulates these conditions. To begin with, the regulations were institutionalised in order to prevent financial and fiscal criminality and offence, in public limited companies.