To act responsible in relation to environmental, economic and social issues is a trend that is spreading among businesses and their investors. In order to assess business risks, ethical interested investors are calling for open, honest, clear CSR information that can be followed up in corporate sustainability reports. The ability to communicate about risks and to meet investors requests already in the business analytic process can save resources and increase the company?s profitability.The idea that companies should take responsibility for their impact on society from economic, environmental and social perspective is called Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR. In addition to CSR, there is another three-letter abbreviation in this context, PRI ? Principles for Responsible Investment ? which are principles, signed by ethically interested investors.

Companies that invest in e-learning have different expectations regarding the outcome of the investment. According to literature and articles it is common that companies see reduction of costs as the primary benefit with e-learning. Therefore we ask ourselves the question if companies have attained the expected benefit of the investment in e-learning and to what extent cost reduction have been a determining factor in the investments? The purpose of the thesis is to examine if companies that invest in e-learning have attained the expected benefits. We also want to examine what the reason for investing in e-learning is and if cost reduction is the primary reason for investing. The study is founded on a qualitative method that is based on a case study in eight companies.

In September 2008, a proposition to limit auditors? liability for statutory audit was launched by a Swedish Government official report. Auditors? legal liability in this respect has been joint and unlimited for more than 60 years in Sweden. By using a qualitative literature study method, this paper aims at discovering how the proposed change in legal liability affects the legitimacy of auditors in Sweden.

The business world of today is characterized by the fact that knowledge plays a far greater role than it did before in the companies? production. In many companies, the human resources constitute the main part of the total assets. It can for example be the employees? knowledge, competence or power of initiative.

Carbon offsetting means to offset those greenhouse gases that are caused by our actions. The purpose of this paper is to examine how companies are working with carbon offsetting. The focus of the research is how travel agencies and companies that provides carbon offsetting. The writers also highlight the problems carbon offsetting is facing. The study was performed with qualitative methods through interviews with three companies working with carbon offsetting.

In 2011 the International Accounting Standards Board issued amendments to IAS 19 Employee Benefits. The new standard is effective from January 1st 2013 and one of the largest changes in the standard is the elimination of the corridor method. Through the corridor method companies had the possibility to defer actuarial gains and losses resulting from their defined benefit obligations (pension obligations) and leave them unrecognized off the balance sheet. According to the new standard companies reporting under International Financial Reporting Standards will have to recognize all actuarial gains and losses immediately in other comprehensive income. The aim of this thesis is to examine how the financial key ratios of Swedish listed companies will be affected by the elimination of the corridor method.

This paper is about how transport companies in the future will be able to adapt their activity to an environmentally sustainable development without the effect of negative company economic consequences. Today, the environmental threat is a global problem and knowledge about that effluent of carbon dioxide have a negative impact on the climate is generally known. A transport system that works well is important for Sweden, but the sector has a negative impact on the environment. Regulation and legislation for increased environmental requirements often meets resistance and fear that the work will be hampered by increased costs for environmental work that can lead to an international decrease in competitiveness. The transport companies have outside pressure from the society to do something about the environmental issue, however the companies? customers are not ready to pay a higher price for environmental work.

Graphic profiles are a part of companies? brand expressions. The graphical values reflect the brand values the business wants to convey. They consist of different graphic elements such as logo, company sign, colour schemes, templates, rules, fonts, pictograms, formats and references to how different graphic elements should look, for example, business cards, signs and materials for websites. This thesis aims to examine why firms choose to replace their graphic profiles by studying their underlying motivations.

Aim: The reason we made this report were to investigate what companies in Gävle implied was the most important factor for successful sales. The various questions to be answered are: 1. How important is the relationship in B2B? (Business to business) 2. Will VRM change the work with relationships within B2B? 3.

As changes occur more frequently in IT- and software development, it is important for the companies to meet the demands and needs of its customer. The companies have to be able to adapt themselves continuously in order till fulfill its customers changing needs in an effective way, which results in big changes of the companies? structures. The more traditional way of working is often replaced with more alternative approaches as a response to the reputable deficiencies of its predecessors. As an effect of the rapid change and development some companies now see big potential in switching to more Agile and flexible methods and some companies have no choice but to change their way of working.

The purpose of this paper is to compare two different portfolio strategies consisting of insider transactions and stock recommendations and examine whether they posses any information advantage.  The portfolios are balanced once every three-, six- and twelve- months in the period of 2007-2009. Our results show a pattern for these investment strategies. The portfolio consisting of insider transactions generates a positive return in equity in a negative market environment and the opposite reaction in a positive environment. The result for the portfolio consisting of stock recommendations show a positive return of equity in positive environment and the opposite effect in negative environment. The pattern that has been observed can be classified as an anomaly.

Prior studies have shown that earnings management can be used either to inform or to mislead investors about the future performance of a company. However, few studies have examined the impact of earnings management on forecasting return on equity (ROE). The aim of this thesis is to investigate whether the ability to forecast next year's ROE is improved when taking earnings management, measured as discretionary accruals, into account. This is examined by comparing a forecast model that takes the magnitude of discretionary accruals into consideration with a model that does not. The study is based on companies that were listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange during 2002-2012.

Our purpose is to display the meaning of fan clubs and further reveal the potential value of fans. This study has an abductive approach with a qualitative data collection, where empirical material has been collected through a micro netnographic study along with qualitative interviews. IKEA and IKEA Family have been applied together with virtual fan clubs to study the fan club phenomenon. The study is based on prior literature concerning loyalty, customer clubs and brand relations. This theoretical framework was chosen to fulfil the purpose of unveiling the meaning of fan clubs and the potential value of fans.

ABSTRACT This essay is about traffic analysis of Web servers. The purpose is to investigate if companies analyse the traffic on the Web server and if they use this information to create more than simple statistic reports. The questions that we will answer are the following: ? How common is traffic analysis on the Web server among companies? ? Is the Web administrator limited in analysing the Web traffic, if the company has the website on a Web hotel? ? Does the company uses the results they get from analysing the traffic on the Web server for updates and changes on the Web page? To answer these questions we made a questionnaire investigation by telephone interviewing the companies? webmasters. The extent of the investigation was 20 companies in Blekinge. The information we gathered from the investigation showed that it is becoming more common that companies analyse the traffic on the Web page and that they uses the information to more than statistic reports, for example updates and changes of the Web page.

Background: Currently Sweden has the possibility to like other EU countries raise the limits of statutory audit, but have chosen significantly lower limits. The reform was adopted in 2010 and only applies to smaller companies and there is great pressure for the limits to rise in future. This would enable Swedish companies to compete on equal terms in Europe. Aim: The aim of our study is to investigate the impact of the removal of the statutory audit for smaller companies from audit and accounting bureaus perspective and also the possible impact if the limits were to rise. Furthermore we want to explore how the supplies of other financial services have developed as a result of this.