The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between Earnings Management (EM) and certain characteristics of management forecasts, among a sample of Swedish listed companies. The forecast characteristics studied are: 1) Forecast venue: How explicitly is the forecast presented? 2) Forecast precision: How detailed is the estimated number? 3) Forecast measure: Which measure(s) are forecasted? We use a sample of 68 annual management forecasts, obtained from year-end reports between the years 2007-2011. EM during the forecasted year (2008-2012) is estimated using the cross-sectional modified-Jones model. The forecast characteristics are then related to the degree of EM during the forecasted period.

The manufactory industry, due to decline in profit margins, is seeking new business opportunities by moving towards servitization and value-adding services in after-sales. We have therefore conducted a case study to investigate a manufacturing company in their current transformation towards servitization. By studying the management perspective, we aimed to understand how Information Technology, by adding value, could play a role in the transformation process. This study shows that information technology can take an integrating role, by supporting new value-adding services to provider and customer, as well as a co-creating role, where both provider and customer benefits by learning from each other, in the changing work process initiated by new services. The study has also shown that Information Technology, together with organization, information and people, are crucial components in the manufactory industry?s transformation towards servitization.  Furthermore, the study has also shown that the value chain has the potential to drastically change due to the value-adding that the information technology brings to the progress of servitization..

IKEA HaparandaTornio employ some two-hundred people in its furniture retail store.Keeping track of staff statistics and employee information has previously been achievedthrough the use of a basic Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheet. The store?s human resourcesdepartment requested an upgrade to this system with the hope of speeding up andsimplifying the administrative process, as well as to make it easier to monitor HR-relatedtarget statistics. The following report documents the development process of that upgrade ascarried out by the author. The project draws on research in usability design and cognitivepsychology to develop a user-friendly interface.

I will write about product placement in film from a Swedish point of view. This entails writing about Swedish films with different types of product placements, not only how they are done but also discuss how they succeed from a sales perspective. In my earlier work I have written about the product placement of watches. In this thesis I focus on the film series about the Swedish agent Carl Hamilton, since here you can see how Swedish film has developed during the past 30 years with regard to product placements. Both world politics and the concrete placements are illustrated in a clear way.

The purpose of the paper is to explore of what importance network relations are to the small fashion company Clemens en August. Clemens en August is a new German fashion label, which has the goal to become established in the high-end segment. The company uses an innovative sales strategy, directly distributing its products to the end costumer. The theories used will serve as a tool to analyze Clemens en August 's strategy from a network perspective. As the Bachelors thesis nr: 12464 ?Clemens en August ? A Network Perspective?, authors; Malin Elmlid, Biancastella De Angelis and Carsten Juldorf, date of approval 2006-01-11, contains delicate data about the studied company we have decided to classify it as secret.

De fyra svenska storbankerna; Nordea, Föreningssparbanken, Handelsbanken och SEB agerar och värderas internationellt. Värderingarna grundas på bankernas kompetens, resurser och finansiella produkter och framförallt värderas bankernas marknadsandel och befintliga kundrelationer. Den svenska bankmarknaden påverkas av den växande internationella konkurrensen och bankerna måste därför skapa egna eller anskaffa internationellt konkurrenskraftiga finansiella produkter. Syftet med denna artikel är att utifrån den resursbaserade teoriansatsen analysera fallföretaget Sparbanken Finn. Framförallt skall vi applicera ett modulärt angreppssätt på produktion av finansiella produkter; detta för att avgöra den modulära teorins eventuella tillämpbarhet.

The retailing landscape has become even more competitive with an increasing number of store formats. One result of this can be seen within different retail-chains as they launch different formats that operate under the same name. Thus, consumers now have many alternatives and substitutes when it comes to choosing which format to shop from. This phenomenon has led consumes to shop across stores for the same brand. The objective of this study is to explain how consumers respond to various offers in different store formats and to determine whether the results differ if we compare a familiar brand with an unfamiliar brand.

The aim of this study is to evaluate whether the value of occupant load is over or under estimated when the Swedish general value for department stores, 0,5 person/m2, is used for dimensioning shopping centers. The data that was analyzed derives from seven shopping centers and one department store. A conservative method was used to calculate the occupant load factor. The analysis shows that two groups can be discerned: one group that is characterized by a lower occupant load factor that does not exceed 0,3 person/m2, and one group with a higher occupant load factor. Shopping centers with a higher occupant load factor are located centrally in large urban areas.

Several studies shows that dietary supplements do not have any proven effects on health, yet these supplements are increasing in sales. The study aims to find out what attitudes and knowledge people involved in physical activity have towards supplements and which factors influence them to buy supplements. How these factors differ between men and women was investigated. The study is based on answers from 100 collected questionnaires from people who are physically active at several gyms. Of those who participated in the study, 56 percent were men and 44 percent were women.

We have left the industrial society, and instead, we live in a post-industrial knowledge and information society. It is often said that industrial production has disappeared or that it has changed greatly. This means that fewer are employed in the manufacturing sector while the service sector is increasing, resulting in that the boundaries between production and administration decreases. The production goes from mass production to more flexible and specialized solutions. This puts greater demands on the logistics chain that continually need to work to meet customer requirements.

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.

At the time being there is limited experience within turbine decommissioning in Sweden and the economic effects are unknown. Despite this, there are expectations that revenues generated by sales of materials will cover decommissioning costs. The model developed identifies thirteen parameters that vary between different types of turbines and that affect the economic consequences of decommissioning. The three most important parameters are turbine location, tower material, and the scope of decommissioning. Trends in the wind energy industry show that these three factors are developing in a manner that increases decommissioning costs dramatically.

The purpose of our study is to find out if insiders in Sweden generate abnormal earnings through insider trades. We want to pinpoint the cause for abnormal earnings by dividing transactions after company market value, size of the trade and type of insider. A quantitative approach using the market model have been used. We have conducted an event study over two short term event windows. We conclude that insiders in Sweden generate positive abnormal earnings for sales and negative for purchases in our ?long? event window.

This thesis was developed as an assignment from Ludosity Interactive where the goal was to develop a copy of the Xbox Live Indie Games-marketplace from the Xbox 360. Ludosity Interactive had a necessity to easily test a game's attractiveness to potential customers using testing people from outside the company in a simulated Xbox Live Indie Games test environment; excluding this developed system there is no other way to do such an analysis without actually releasing the game on the Xbox Live Indie Games marketplace and then analyze the resulting sales from the product.The finished system had to be similar to the original system to the degree that a user could see past the interface itself and use the system just as he/she would have used the real marketplace. It also had to be easy to change and add games to the system so that Ludosity Interactive easily could show the games and the data that they deemed interesting for their tests. The final product was developed using C#, XNA and XML together with an Agileinspired development method in combination with Pivotal Tracker. This report describes how this product was developed..

This thesis deals with the concept of how price affects demand for a good by estimating various price elasticities of demand for snu sold in Sweden. Information was gathered on price development for snus and cigarettes as well as sales data from Swedish Match, the largest supplier of snus in Sweden. Income-, price- and cross-price elasticities were estimated based on log-log regression. Results show that snus is an inelastic good since the coefficient for price of snus was -0.536. This proved that a 1% increase in price causes a 0.536% decrease in quantity demanded.