The aim of this small thesis is to investigate if the probability of business failure is higher at the time of divestment than at the time of acquisition for portfolio companies that have been subject to private equity ownership. The background for this thesis is the widespread critique aimed at private equity firms, claiming that they increase the risk in their portfolio companies. We have performed a study of 53 buyout transactions, involving Swedish manufacturing companies, covering a time span of 13 years, from 1995 to 2007. We find evidence of an increased risk of business failure for the portfolio companies with a short forecasting horizon (within one year). The absolute increase in the sample is however small.

The increasing holdings by institutional investors have raised concerns about the institutions passive investment strategies and the implications for corporate governance. A way for investors to address moral hazard and opportunistic behaviour of management is to demand conservatism in accounting practices. This paper analyses the relation between institutional ownership and accounting conservatism in the Swedish market by studying firms on the Nasdaq OMX Stockholm over a three-year period. Furthermore, the study investigates whether ownership by institutions with high probability of monitoring managers leads to higher conservatism in financial reporting. To measure accounting conservatism this study uses the asymmetric timeliness measure developed by Basu (1997).

The thesis had its starting point in the first paragraph of the eleventh chapter in the Swedish social services act, which discusses the immediate risk assessments that has to be made when the social services receive a report about a child. The thesis highlights an area that has received a lot of attention in media since the spring of 2014, when an eight year old girl was fatally abused by her legal guardians. The social services had at the time received a report about the girl but it was left unread. This tragic case has brought attention to the routines used by the social services for dealing with reports and risk assessments. This thesis was conducted through individual interviews with social workers working with children and families in the social services, with the aim to acquire an enhanced understanding of how social workers perform immediate risk assessments and what these assessments are based on.

This essay was written at Södertörn University during the spring semester of 2010, in the field of Business Administration, and more precisely within management and organization. The essay is based on a case study of the management of the staff working at the commuter train stations in Stockholm. The study consists of a number of interviews with the management staff and with the personnel working at the stations, where the aim of the study is to describe how management works within ISS Trafficare AB and what the personnel working at the stations think of it. ISS Trafficare AB is the entrepreneur who runs the commuter train stations in Stockholm by an agreement met with Stockholmståg KB.The study is based on information from the interviews with the personnel and other material from ISS Trafficare AB. Research on the area of management have been used to put data into perspective and to further deepen our analysis and conclusions from the case.The essay shows that the management has tried to implement several changes on the organization in order to provide more service to the travelers.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the status of Swedish real estate companies in terms of financial health and risk of financial distress. The background is the ongoing financial crisis, which partly can be derived from the American real estate sector. Publicly available accounting information from 16 listed real estate companies has been analyzed for a period of one year using financial ratios covering both the operational and financial activities. We find that the deceleration in the economy and in the real estate sector have forced the real estate companies to make large write downs, in line with the relatively new accounting rules, IFRS. Write downs are likely to reoccur during the following periods and real estate companies will therefore probably be forced to continue to show negative results.

The purpose of this study was to make a survey of a larger company in Sweden to analyze if it complied to the stipulated Systematic Work Environment Management rules in Sweden. The company chosen was Hennes & Mauritz. The key question was to see if the company was examining and judging the risks, developing handling plans and if they were making yearly follow ups so that problems could be attended to. Further, I also wanted to examine if there was lack of competence within different departments as well as give some substantiate proposals on educations in Systematic Work Environment Management. The method used to investigate this was interviews and observations on how the Systematic Work Environment Management was handled in the company.

This paper intends to examine the knowledge challenges in small IT companies which is going through rapid growth. The movement of information and knowledge is a social and very complex process. The challenge for technology is the social as information and knowledge requires. To believe blindly that technology will solve the problem is what many people think. In order to understand how technology can support information and knowledge management one needs to understand what information and knowledge is.

Organizational change is hard to achieve, but if an organization doesn't change it might risk its own existence. Effective resource allocation and increased control of the internal production are examples of how organizations try to increase its competitive advantage. An ERP system (Enterprise Resource Planning) can help an organization to achieve this by providing management with direct access to a wealth of real-time operating information, streamlined dataflow, and making the company's business processes more effective. Like other IT-related projects, ERP investments are associated with large risks. Many projects failure during the implementation in one way or another.

En sammanfattning av uppsatsen på maximalt 8000 tecken..

En sammanfattning av uppsatsen på maximalt 8000 tecken..

The paper investigates the role of packaging within brand management of FMCG food companies and their attitude towards packaging. This study enhances the understanding of how FMCG food companies actually work and strive to work with packaging..

Vi har funnit att fyra faktorer tillsammans kan bidra till ett ökad CTR. Dessa är: design/utformning, målgruppsanpassning, involvement och varumärkeskännedom.

Tillsammans med en muntlig presentation ingår den här rapporten som examination i kursen Examensarbete i ADB, 20p vid Högskolan i Skövde. Kursen är det sista momentet på det dataekonomiska programmet.Syftet med undersökningen, som genomfördes i samarbete med företaget Arthur Andersen i Stockholm, var att utvärdera om Change Management kan användas som stöd vid införandet av informationssäkerhet i olika organisationer. Dessutom skulle undersökningen visa lämpliga mått för att kunna mäta resultatet av införandeprocessen.Med hjälp av besöksintervjuer av personer med erfarenhet av arbete med informationssäkerhet, gjordes en kartläggning över hur införandet av informationssäkerhet går till idag. Kartläggningen låg sedan till grund för en jämförelse med metodstegen i Change Management. Resultatet av arbetet blev en utvärdering av om Change Management är lämpligt som stöd vid införandet av informationssäkerhet..

The main objective of this thesis is to study the brand manager?s role within a global business to business (B2B) company. In order to meet the main objective we have chosen to study and analyse one global B2B company, Alfa Laval AB, Alfa Laval DK, Alfa Laval PL and its co-partners such as an advertising agency. We have also studied three global business to customer (B2C) companies, Mars, Unilever and Nestlé, to get a picture of brand managers? role and responsibilities within the B2C environment which is already quite far ahead in the development of the brand management thinking..

Many species and hence biodiversity depend on old, large oaks (Quercus robur) with hollow trunks. The populations of oak-living organisms have to migrate to a nearby old oak in order to survive the death of the host. The oak district south of Linköping, Sweden, is unique in area and the number of old oaks. It is anyway doubtful whether regeneration of oak will secure future continuity. Oaks are light-demanding and thrive in open pastures.