The purpose of this thesis was to investigate whether accounting quality is a priced factor by investors. The event studied is the release of year-end result and the release of the annual report. To assess accounting quality a sample of 30 companies listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange during 2003 to 2007 are studied. We assess accounting quality by the absolute size of discretionary accruals using the modified Jones model developed by Dechow et al. (1995).

Today more and more municipalities interact across a wide range of sectors. The reasons tostart interacting are varying and for those who succeed with this form of work, there arebenefits in terms of efficiency and knowledge exchanges. But are the reasons that interactalways obvious? Sweden currently has 290 municipalities of varying size and allmunicipalities have basically the same mission, to deliver services to its residents.Information technology allows municipalities to digitize much of the workload, but theintroduction of the technique is not without problems. For small municipalities, there are greatdemands to deliver reliability and support for their internal and external services.

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to test for the existence of Capital Structure Arbitrage oppertunities in the equity-credit markets. Methodology: The mispricing of Credit Default Swap contracts are calculated and used as input in an Equity-Credit market trading strategy. The returns are then evaluated with a modified Value-at-Risk simulation. Theoretical perspectives: A Merton-based structural model, CreditGrades, is used for credit pricing and a mispricing-convergence trading-strategy between the credit and equity markets is implemented. Empirical foundation: Daily quotes for the Credit Default Swap spread of 37 European firms were collected for a period of two years, as well as equity-prices for the same period and the previous two years, used for model calibration.

As a student during my studies, I have been told about entrepreneurs who have red numbers in their financial statements, and there is a forest machine operator shortage in Sweden. The basic idea of this thesis was to examine the underlying factors that may have caused the problems described above. The aim of this thesis was to investigate the factors that create stress and job satisfaction as a forest machine operator. The study was performed as a comparison between forest companies own harvesting teams and entrepreneur teams to investigate if there are any differences in stress and job satisfaction between the two different types of team. The study was conducted in collaboration with SCA Skog. The material for this study was collected by doing interviews with SCA's harvesting teams. A total of 27 forest machine operators were interviewed, divided into a total of 10 separate harvesting teams. It was very similar between the different type of teams, which situations the operators experienced stress.

Den vanligaste rekryteringsvägen är genom informella kontakter och spontanbesök är den näst vanligaste vägen. Arbetsförmedlingen (AF) som rekryteringsväg minskar ständigt och sociala medier används allt mer som rekryteringsverktyg. Många företag har svårt att rekrytera personal med rätt kompetens. Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka hur och vilka sociala medier som används i rekryteringssammanhang. Forskningsstrategin är en fallstudie av Länsförsäkringar Bergslagens rekryteringsprocess.

The work presented in this report is written at IEIs department on Linköping Institute of Technology. The report aims to increase the assembly efficiency at Wigells AB. The report shall be used as a guide for the implementation of changes at other workstations in the company. Together with Träcentrum in Nässjö, Wigells AB has identified the needs of this study and contacted IEI at Linköping Institute of Technology.In order to implement an efficient assembly line at the company, studies on lean production have been made. This theory has been studied and together with our own views and findings at the company we have analyzed the assembly area.Wigells is a small company that manufactures wood furniture.

The accounting scandals that have attracted attention in recent years have led to internal control becoming a more central part of business activity. Doubts about what firms actually do have increased, all caused by the attention of accounting scandals. To counter this, frameworks and laws evolved and gained a significant role in the organization and its surroundings. The aim of the present study is to find out how four companies in the Kristianstad region are working to ensure its internal control and how they work to minimize risk and reduce uncertainty. We have used a qualitative method and interviewed a person in a senior position in each company.

Holmen Skog has only five out of 70 wood buyers who are women, This report is seen as a step in the process towards gender balance in the company. This is a problem that is equal over the entire forest industry in Sweden. They all think that sexual equal workplaces are very important to remain competitive, see things from different perspectives and development of the company. The survey was done by sending out questionnaires to all women who work and have worked as a wood buyer at Holmen, and as many men of both categories. These four categories became a total of twenty persons. To map the industry another questionnaire was sent out to the six largest forest companies in Sweden. The survey found that female wood buyers not finished their work earlier than men did, as they thought before.

Organizations are about people in interaction. Human itself is complex, and the complexity increases when people are grouped. When creating groups there is a need for a structure, an order between the people in the group. Companies have an organization - riding school is also a company and should have an organization. Many studies have been done related to the riding school but there is no documentation about organizations at riding schools, and a research is needed. The aim of the study was to clarify if riding schools in Sweden has a well considered organization.

Inledning: När företag genomgår rekryteringsprocesser så finns där flera olika strategier attanvända sig utav. Denna studie kommer att skapa en förståelse för rekryteringsstrategiernasom ett specifikt företag som uppger sig jobba enligt Talent Management använder sig av.Syfte: Syftet med denna undersökning är att skapa en förståelse för hur ett företag somuppger sig jobba med Talent Management utformar sin rekryteringsstrategi och därigenomkunna uppfylla ett kunskapstomrum angående rekryteringsstrategierna inomforskningsområdet Talent Management.Forskningsfrågor:Hur definieras talang vid rekrytering i ett företag som jobbar med Talent Management?Hur väljer företag vilka rekryteringsstrategier som är lämpliga?Vilka rekryteringsstrategier använder sig företaget utav?Metod: Denna studie har genomförts med en kvalitativ forskningsmetod som har innefattatsemistrukturerade intervjuer för materialinsamlingen. Intervjuerna och det empiriskamaterialet är insamlat från ett ledande företag inom sin branchen.Slutsats: Denna studie kunde påvisa att de centrala rekryteringsstrategierna i ett företag somuppger sig använda sig utav Talent Management är Head Hunting, Employer Branding,profilering samt talangpooler. Vi kunde även dra slutsatser att samtliga rekryteringsstrategiersom förekommer inom ett företag inte nödvändigtvis behöver tillhöra den rådande uttalademanagementstilen.

This thesis examines the deregulation reform of the Swedish railroad industry, focusing on passenger transport between 1988 and 2005. The purpose of the thesis is to examine the effects from the deregulation reform on prices, market concentration and to determine whether SJ (the state owned incumbent) has been conducting strategic behaviour in order to prevent new entrants to the market. The chosen method consists of interviews with the MD at SJ between 1988 - 1998 Mr Karl-Erik Strand, the transportation researcher at SSE Mr Gunnar Alexandersson. Statistical sources and companies financial reports have also been used. The results that I have found were besides the fact that the market concentration is still significant high and the profitability among the operators low, is that the prices has increased more than CPI during the period but the competitive tendering has resulted in lower government subsidies after the deregulation.

The purpose of this study is to examine in what way a strong corporate culture can have an effect on the ways that individuals perceive their own identity based on different social aspects, thereby meaning the influence of personalities in relation to the environment. In this essay I have used the theory of employer branding in an analysis of the corporate culture at Ikea Barkarby, with the purpose to answer the following questions: How does the relation between the employee and the corporate culture appear from an identity perspective, i.e can an individual?s identity be affected by the influence of a strong corporate culture? If the corporate culture has an influence on the individual?s identity, what rhetorical tools are part of this? How can the surrounding corporate cultures possibly influence the employee?s process of becoming a part of the corporate culture? The method of research that was used in this study is a framing analysis and a semistructured interview method. In the discussion of the influence of social environment on identity I have used the rhetorical term doxa. The material that was examined was an advertisement for employment from the Ikea Barkarby website as well as the response from my interviews of some of the employees.The result of the analysis shows that it is possible for an individual to negotiate with himself about his identity in relation to the actual situation and environment, meaning a possible transformation of the individual?s behavior in different social contexts, in this example the corporate culture at work.

The advancements in digital technology and its availability contribute to the transfer of companycentricproduct development and value creation to networks or communities. It also changes the basisfor creation of customer relationships as described in previous research on Customer relationshipmanagement (CRM). The purpose of this case study was to gain an understanding of how companieslike our case study object Memoto who developed a physical product which gets added-value fromdigital product-related services looks upon product-centered communities as a way of buildingcustomer relationships. How Memoto looks upon incentives for participation in product-centeredcommunities was also examined.Our research indicated that firms in the start-up phase (which Memoto was when this study wasconducted) initially want to have more control over the process of innovation and hence have directcontact with end-customers. The reason for this is because they see a need to define the basis forfurther innovation work.

Ända sedan handeln med finansiella instrument utvecklades under början av 1900-talet har problematiken kring insiderhandel existerat. Denna problematik bottnar i att personer med ett informationsövertag, dvs. insiders kan enligt vissa tidigare utförda studier generera abnormala avkastningar vid exempelvis aktiehandel. Oenigheten på detta forskningsområde är relativt stort. Det skulle därför vara intressant att titta på möjligheterna till abnormal avkastning genom att replikera insiders köp- och sälj transaktioner på den svenska aktiemarknaden.Denna studies frågeställning formuleras således; Kan utomstående investerare generera abnormal avkastning genom att replikera insiders köp- respektive sälj transaktioner på Stockholmsbörsens Small Cap lista?För att svara på denna frågeställning genomfördes en kvantitativ studie innehållande 60 stycken bolag noterade på Stockholmsbörsens Small Cap lista.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how a small company manages its information, primarily the organization of digital documents. The two dominating themes are classification and information politics, the former in the context of a corporate environment and the latter to help us to describe the situation at the company. The method used has involved observation of the company's current computer network structure and also interviews with six employees at different levels in various departments at the company. The result of our investigation has been the realization that, although logical structure is important when organizing documents in a digital environment, it is also necessary to have rules regarding its implementation..