The purpose of this study was to examine earnings quality and earnings management in U.S. ex-post failed firms. A quantitative study was made, using the Modified Jones Model, to identify abnormal accruals up to six years before bankruptcy. 9 003 continuing firms and 187 bankrupt firms, active sometime between 1990 and 2010, were examined. The study concludes that U.S.

Venture capital firms and private equity firms have been the subject of much controversy in the last decade. During this period economies throughout the world have seen a steady increase of these types of firms as owners of companies. In Sweden this has certainly been the case and many argue that this trend will continue to grow stronger in the future. This trend is by many regarded as dangerous and as a threat to the ownership model that has characterized the Swedish economy for decades. Family ownership has been widely regarded as the most beneficial and responsible ownership model in Sweden.

Management consulting firms are dependent on attracting and recruiting new talents since the human capital has a vital role in these types of organizations. In the following years a new generation, Generation Y, will to a large extent enter the labour market. According to several studies this generation has different characteristics than older generations.This thesis examines management consulting firms? views of Generation Y and which strategies they use to attract and retain the generation. The fact that the subjects are unexplored led the authors to conduct a qualitative study of seven management consulting firms through in-depth interviews.

Background: In the current labor and business policy debate in Sweden there is a major focus on the need for it to become easier to set up small firms, and that it needs to become easier for small firms to hire staff. In order to set up and run a business, funding is required. Firms can choose to work more or less actively with this issue, but they all need to relate to it. There are basically two ways to fund a business, either through equity or through debt. The ratio between these two sources is called the firm?s capital structure.Purpose: To chart the capital structure of small firms in Sweden.

This study presents a survey of the capital budgeting methods used in investment decisions by selected Swedish firms. The study has a qualitative approach where the main goal is to increase the understanding of why firms use ?incorrect? capital budgeting methods like the payback method despite the well known fact that it is one of the most faulty methods, according to literature in business finance (Brealey. Myers). The study has specially researched the impact of company?s size, investments size, ownership structure, branch traditions and political risks influence on firms capital budgeting..

Several studies have investigated the relationship between different measures of innovative activity, such as patent statistics and R&D expenditures and some have looked deeper into the differences between large and small firms regarding number of patents issued per employee or per R&D dollar. In this paper, the objective is to find out if there are any indications of a barrier to entry (due to economical factors, lack of knowledge etc) for small firms to get into the field of patent handling. The approach is to first set up a hypothesis based on some simple assumptions about how firms would make decisions about whether to apply for a patent or not and thereafter use econometric methods in an empirical investigation. The data used for this study are figures on number of employees, number of patents granted and R&D expenditures for the Swedish firms in the pulp and paper industry. The main conclusion is that, based on the analysis of the data from this rather limited group of firms, no such barrier can be seen..

Swedish agricultural businesses are facing challenges in order to achieve long-term profitability. The opportunity to improve profitability and efficiency on farm level may be enhanced by management. One way to work with leadership is to use Lean. It is a management system that aims to improve competitiveness. Currently, there is a project where Lean is implemented into 100 agricultural firms.

The aim of this paper has been to investigate how accounting firms govern their organizations with regards to the complexity in the service that they offer. The service includes the general accounting tasks which through standardization can be cost efficient, the advisory services that entail flexibility, and the relationship with the customer which needs to be taken into consideration when delivering the financial reports. These three components are important but require different approaches when it comes to governing the organization. The conducted case study has shown that the accounting firms govern their organizations bureaucratically and mainly through behaviour and accounting controls. The advisory services demanded by customers are standardized, not analytical, and therefore do not require the firms to take flexibility into consideration.

The major difference between venture capital-firms and other financiers is that their business idea is not only providing capital but also knowledge in business development. The ownership structure of an venture capital-firm can be private as well as public. The Swedish government is today one of the major actors in the Swedish venture capital-industry. The purpose of this study is to shed light on how venture capital-firms involve itself in its portfolio firm and if this contributes to an increased value of the portfolio firm. We also try to shed light on differences in how a public and a private venture capital-firm gets involved in its portfolio firm and if there is any difference in how they can contribute to added value.We have chosen to interview two public and two private venture capital-firms and one of their portfolio firms.

AbstractBachelor Thesis, School of Economics at Vaxjo universityProgram: Enterprising and Business Development, EBD 362, Spring 2006Authors: Jens Asp, Vivianne Holmer, Carl-Marcus WahlstromExaminer: Stig G JohanssonKeywords: Services, cooperation, collaboration, customer offer, knowledgeTitle: Service firms in collaboration ? A study of the development of small service firms in collaborationNutek presented numbers during year 2005 witched show that the Swedish service sector, for the first time ever, was greater than the industrial sector. The kind of firms that develop most is small service firms without employees. The topic of interest in this bachelor thesis is to study how this kind of firms can develop. There is a great number of strategic options for firms to choose.

Outdoor recreation habits in metropolis and rural areasThis study aims to examine the perception of nature and outdoor recreation habits from an urban-rural prospective. The urbanization process continues in Sweden and the populations of the cities are growing continuously. Trends to build more compact and ?climate smart? reigns and with this a risk that green areas and areas where outdoor recreation can be practiced are situated further and further away from the urban population. Analyzing the responses from a survey made by the research program Friluftsliv i förändring 2007 we have examined if and which differences exists between urban and rural areas regarding their perception of nature, outdoor recreation habits and factors influencing the practice of outdoor recreation.

Title: Market Communication in transformation Authors: Gabriella Holm and Christoffer LarssonPurpose/Aim: The purpose of this paper is to examine how market communication at PR-firms in Sweden has changed over the first decade of the 21-century. In 2007 social media expanded on the Swedish market. This had implications for the way we are looking at communication and therefore also the PR business and how they are operating. The aim with this paper is to see how social media have affected marketing communication at PR-firms.Methodology: This paper is based on case studies from Swedish PR-firms. We used five cases from 2003-2005 and five from 2010-2012.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to examine whether the role of a public library in a rural community is different from that of a town library. To answer this, a case studie of two public libraries has been made. Interviews, collection of documents and observations were carried out on location in one public library located in a rural area, and one public library, situated in a town. A modified version of an analysis model, originally developed by Andersson and Skot-Hansen, was used to analyse the data.

This paper aims to investigate abnormal returns for rivals to bidder targets in connection with the announcement of the bid. The study is based on 38 bids placed between September 2006 - January 2011 and 137 rival firms listed on Nasdaq OMX Nordic. We measure cumulative abnormal returns, CAR, for rival firms through an event study. We find that rival firms earn significant positive CAR in connection with the announcement of the bid. This is in line with the two-sided signaling effect presented by Akhigbe et al.

The rural development programme is a tool for promoting sustainable development in the Swedish countryside. The master plan should, for example, give directions for the national interest and describe how it will follow up national and regional targets such as the EU's environmental quality standards. Because the municipality has considerable freedom to formulate the plan in its sole discretion, and that it contains the municipality's political vision, it is also feasible to make a discourse analysis of the plan text.In discourse analysis, including articles and documents written by Rural Network Working Group on land use planning to be included. The purpose of discourse analysis is to see if there are differences in the way rural areas are described and if there are any flaws in how the designer interprets the rural development programme. Furthermore, the analysis result in tools that are adapted to the standards we create and choose.The standards we have are being designed based on our values, which differ.