Purpose: Aims of this paper is to evaluate a comparative study between China and Russia funds in respect of the risks and returns. We also want to examine what has affected the funds in their respective domestic stock market.                                                            Method: The study is based on qualitative methodology to complement the quantitative survey by first gathering of secondary data from Morningstar, and fund manager´s stories on fund and banking companies' websites.  Primary data is conducted by the interview with fund manager. The sample consists of all land funds for China and Russia has found more than 10 years on the stock market.Results and Conclusion: The survey shows that China funds will generate better in decline than Russia Funds in both return and risk-adjusted Sharpe ratio. Because the China funds had better risk diversification and its holdings spread across different industry area while Russia funds is more directed towards oil and gas industry.

Frigoscandia Freezer AB have seen themselves as an entrepreneur company for a long time, but have lately begun to realise that they have to go against a more administrative era. With that insight they have begun to examine their enterprise in order to achieve this. The division Team Spare Parts has started a project with the intention of checking-up the inventory management, and improving it for the future. To get support for this and other point of views, they decided to let us do our exam thesis as a part of the project.The first part of the thesis deals with the appropriate inventory theory. All calculations in the other parts of the thesis have been based upon this.

Companies constantly strive for the perfect order which enables them to satisfy and retain their customers. This is a difficult process that can be facilitated by using different picking technologies. In this study, a research of the picking technologies Pick-to-Light and Pick-to-Voice have been made to investigate when each technology is suited.In order to collect relevant information and data to be able to answer the question formulation, a qualitative study with interviews have been made. The purpose of this essay was to investigate Pick-to-Light and Pick-to-Voice to see when each technology is best suited and to see what the differences between the technologies are. With our essay we wanted to help manufacturing companies to make the right decisions when implementing a picking technology.The results showed that those picking technologies give companies a higher picking quality and an increased work efficiency since the order picking is faster to perform, and that picking errors are reduced.

In this thesis we will discuss the importance of human resource development in smaller companies and if it will change from when the Swedish economy was in an economic boom and later on came to be in a recession. We choose to use a more qualitative approach for this research in order to conduct a more in-depth study of five smaller sized companies located on Gotland, Sweden. In order to limit our research we had as an ambition to answer these following questions:? What obstacles are there when it comes to human resource development and knowledge transference within smaller sized companies?? What can simplify or enable human resource development and knowledge transference within smaller sized companies?? Does the teaching process change to a more tacit human resource development between co-workers when there is less room for conventional human resource development?The result of the research came to show that the biggest barrier, when it comes to competence development within smaller companies, is time. However, our research also showed that a majority of the companies has changed from a more external educational plan to a more internal educational plan which focuses on keeping the human resource development within the company.

Human Resource Management (HRM) consultants are becoming more common. Simultaneously there is a lack of HRM in small and medium enterprises (SME?s). SME?s states neither to afford, nor have the time to perform HRM in their business.This thesis is a Working Scholarly essay based on qualitative method, based on ten semi- structured interviews.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a concept that is growing increasingly important, with more and more companies acknowledging that they have an obligation to the environment in which they operate. We were interested in inquiring into why companies chose to do so, even though there are no laws that condition them to engage in CSR. One answer to this might be that companies use CSR as a way to distinguish themselves from the competition as well as to gain trust and goodwill from the stakeholders. When it comes to Corporate Social Responsibility, the question is no longer whether or not companies should engage in it, but how they can gain competitive advantage by doing so. This study aims at providing a framework for possible ways of integrating CSR and branding, as well as different strategies for CSR-communication. We also tried to define how, and why, consumers respond to CSR-initiatives.

Today, there is no uniform definition of what an ethical fund is. Fund management companies choose themselves what they believe is ethical and not. The lack of the definition makes it difficult for consumers to understand why these funds are special compared to other funds. The purpose of this study is to examine three Swedish companies; KPA Pension, Swedbank Robur and Folksam, to obtain a clearer picture of the concept ethical funds and its definition. The study describes each company's view of Ethics and how they may affect other companies to work for a more sustainable world.

Corporate Social Responsibility is a concept whereby companies integrate social and environmental concerns into their core business and in their interaction with stakeholders on a voluntarily basis. The purpose with our thesis is to study how Swedish insurance companies work with Corporate Social Responsibility and to analyse the underlying strategies of the companies? social, environmental and economical activities. We will analyse where, how and for whom value can be created with CSR. Where does the value creation take place, how can it be created through these activities and who will benefit from Corporate Social Responsibility? Theories point out that companies need to assemble and value the total package of benefits to be able to create successful corporate initiatives.

The purpose of this thesis is to gain understanding of how companies proactively can manage their reputation. The thesis analyzes three multinational companies in Sweden and uses two theoretical approaches - the reputation risk view and the reputation strengthening view - to gain an overall perspective of how companies work with their reputation. It focuses on investigating which key areas of reputation risk the focal companies identify and how they manage the reputation risks within these areas. Moreover, it examines which stakeholders the companies believe are most critical from a reputation point of view and in what ways the companies work with strengthening their reputation among those stakeholders. In order to find a general approach, the thesis investigates the similarities and differences that exist between the respective companies in the study.

The aim of this thesis is to get an idea of how service companies set their prices. The method used was a case study approach, which was conducted at three real estate companies. The study showed that when setting their prices, the main aspect is their own costs. However, we have found that several other aspects play a big role when setting prices on services in real estate business such as individual customer behaviour and market competition. We have also found that the real estate companies charge very similar prices.

This thesis addresses online marketing within gaming industry. Some customer identifying methods and website development were introduced as well as examined over the Internet. An empirical study focusing on two gaming companies has been carried out. The purpose has been to describe the use of internet by online gaming companies for online marketing. The thesis will focus on finding out how online gaming companies identify their target groups on internet and how they use internet to reach out to their consumers.

The globalization and the realization of a European common insurance market have increased the importance of cross border insurance contracts. Despite that, a gathered set of rules regulating cross border insurance contracts does not exist. The sets of rules within Private International Law which arises today when determining the applicable law regarding cross border insurance contracts are the law of 1993 on applicable law to certain insurance contracts (the law of 1993) and the law of 1998 on applicable law to contractual obligations (Rome Convention). Since the Rome Convention is the only Community instrument which still is in the form of a treaty, work has been done in order to convert it into a regulation, called the Rome-I-regulation. Therefore, the future Rome I-regulation is of importance for the thesis as well since it most likely will replace the Rome Convention.Swedish law is based on the principle of party autonomy, which means that the contracting parties have the right to freely agree on the content of the contract, including the choice of law.

I denna uppsats undersöker jag huruvida CAPM eller APT modellerna ger resultat på den svenska aktiemarknaden mellan 1998 och 2007. Jag undersöker om någon av dessa modeller passar in i den svenska aktiemarknaden och hurdan är resultatet. Det som gör uppsatsen intressant är att jag använder båda modellerna i en och samma studie och jämför resultatet av uppskattningar av modellerna. Som markandsindex har jag använt OMXS30 index och som makroekonomiska variabler i APT-modellen har jag använt inflation, oljepris, industriproduktionsindex och ränta. Resultatet av studien är att med de makroekonomiska variablerna, som jag har använt, ger både CAPM och APT likvärdiga resultat.

New companies go public through Nasdaqs growth market First North constantly. The reasons for going public are many, and the interest at the moment is big. There are different ways to go public, the most common being the traditional IPO. This study is about the companies that have been listed on Nasdaq First North between 2008 and 2013 through traditional IPO, or by RTO (reverse takeover).The differences between these two ways of going public are that the IPOs are reviewed more thoroughly by Nasdaq and the market. This makes the study interesting, as the RTOs go public in a faster way, and avoid the review from outside parties largely.

Today many industrial companies invest a lot of resources on research and development to resist the tough competition on the global market. This leads to a high risk game when the companies start many development projects, with uncertain outcome where some of the projects have to be terminated prematurely. The main purpose with this study is to identify factors, both internal and external, that influence the decision to terminate projects prematurely in Swedish development projects. Factors mentioned in the literature will be compared with case studies on three Swedish industrial companies to demonstrate the most important ones when taking such decisions. First a literature study was made to identify basic terms, a general project model and factors affecting the decision.