Background for the research problems: Small companies are very important for the economic stability and development, something which the economic crises in recent years have underlined. Therefore it?s important to minimize administrative costs for smaller companies and also in other ways facilitate their further development. For these reasons accounting has been simplified and auditing abolished for smaller companies in many countries. In Sweden auditing for small companies was abolished nearly three years ago.

Det finns många faktorer som påverkar kvaliteten på styrelsens arbete. Tidigare forskning har funnit ett negativt samband mellan värdering av företag och antal styrelsemedlemmar. Då det finns en avsaknad av liknande studier på den svenska marknaden avser denna studie att undersöka sambandet mellan styrelsestorlek och värdering av företag. Vi undersöker 203 bolag noterade på Nasdaq OMX Nordic under perioden 2011-2013 med hjälp av en regressionsanalys. I motsättning till majoriteten av tidigare forskning finner vi ett positivt samband mellan styrelsestorlek och värdering, mätt som Tobin?s Q, för företag listade på Nasdaq OMX Small Cap.

Wind and wind damage has become a hot subject because of the storm ?Gudrun? in January 2005. The main purpose of this study was to establish how the land owners attitude toward preventive wind damage actions was changing immediately after they had been struck by a storm. The result of the study was built on interviews. In springtime 2005 a total number of 20 private land owners were interviewed. Ten of the landowners lived in the province of Småland and ten in the province of Värmland.

Smallholder farmers in Uganda suffer from declining productivity. With a rapidly increasing population, marginal land is taken into production and the current land management leads to loss in soil fertility and escalation in soil erosion. There are studies indicating that the use of agroforestry increases soil organic carbon (SOC) compared to systems without trees. Soils which are high in carbon have many advantages, for example better water holding capacity, which can reduce stress on crops during drought. The aim of this study was to determine the effect agroforestry has on SOC concentration in small-holder farming systems in Uganda. The intended system to study was farms practicing agroforestry methods or not in intercropped plantain (cooking banana) fields.

The aim of thesis was to, through a action research study and through individual interviews with five students, clarify their perspective on educational assistance in high school. The study shows that students prefer teaching in small groups outside of regular whole class because it gives the them access to the factors they consider crucial for a functioning support-time whit a skilled and dedicated teatcher, in a calm and safe environment. Moreover, the students claim the importance of technical equipment especially in the Swedish subject, but also in other subjects. Today the educational assistance varies from an outside-the-class teaching situation to a whole-class situation with teacher support as well as technicaal equipment. When the student were asked to describe the cinditions under which studies can be conducted with the whole class they tried to imitate the learning environment they have in a small group.

Företagen riskerar att utsättas för förlustbringande värdeförändringar i tillgångar och skulder, eftersom de exponeras för olika marknadsrisker som fluktuationer i räntor, växelkurser, råvaru- och aktiepriser. För att skydda sig mot dessa fluktuationer och för att minimera exponeringen av marknadsriskerna, använder företag sig av olika typer av finansiella instrument. IFRS 7 är den standard som behandlar finansiella instrument och riskupplysningar. Standarden infördes år 2007, med avsikten att intressenten ska kunna tillgodoses relevant information om företagets hantering och exponering av finansiella risker.Syftet är att genomföra en studie på finansiella företag inom segmenten Large- och Small Cap och undersöka till vilken grad de efterföljer upplysningskraven beträffande marknadsrisker enligt IFRS 7, samt huruvida det förekommer något samband i upplysningsgrad och Cap-tillhörighet.Studien behandlar samtliga finansiella företag inom Large- och Small Cap-segmenten. Punkter i IFRS 7 som berör marknadsrisker har valts ut och företagens årsredovisningar har granskats för att undersöka upplysningsgraden och om det finns ett samband mellan upplysningsgrad och Cap-tillhörighet. Resultatet visar att företagen inom Large Cap-segmentet upplyste helt enligt kriterierna i 36 fall av 64 och företagen inom Small Cap upplyste helt enligt kriterierna i 9 fall av 32.

This thesis studies the concept of balance in the management control systems (MCS) of a small Swedish company within the IT-sector. The aim is to evaluate the importance of balance and dynamics in MCS and investigate which factors affect them. The frameworks used are Simons (1994) four levers of control, and the five-factor model for balance and dynamics by Mundy (2010). The small IT company - the object of the case study - has grown extensively in the last years and needs to develop more formal MCS without losing efficiency and creativity in their fast-moving industry. The case study reveals that balancing MCS is important also in smaller companies with less formal MCS.

The pupose of this study is to qualitatively study how teachers at a high school work with the schools demokratic mission under the management by objectives and what the policy document says and how the students can partcipate in different issues. My question fomulations are: What does it say in the governing documents about schools democratic mission and student influence? How do teachers concretely work to implement the values of democracy and student influence? How can the class councils used as part of the school's democratic mission? The theoretical frame of the study is about the school democracy mission and the possibilities and limits.  Futhermore a brief review of the fundamental values of the school are presented, followed by how the democratic process works.I used the qualitative analysis in order to find a lot of information about a small amount. Its strength is to convey a lot of information about a small number of observations and if the material is small in size.

In the digital era, new services have entered the public libraries, like seeking information on the Internet, in databases, newspapers online etc. But many citizens do not know that these services exist. The libraries have a democratic responsibility to inform about them. In the county of Östergötland a project started in 2001 where libraries in five small municipalities built websites in which they present all their electronic services available. One of the aims was with the help of different kinds of marketing to reach special groups of people, like adult students, small companies and politicians.

The purpose of this degree thesis is to investigate what the English teachers in an upper sec-ondary school, think about teaching students in ability grouped classrooms. The questions that I have set out to investigate include what the teachers think about ability grouping in English, the school?s current organisation of ability groups, the pros and cons of ability grouping in English, differentiation in teaching and if students get more individualized teaching with abil-ity groups, how the teachers cooperate and what would be the optimal teaching situation in an English learning classroom.I did a lot of theoretical research on the subject and studied old essays on similar subjects. I also did some classroom observations to use as background information for my interviews. I interviewed five teachers of different sex, age, and teaching experience.

This is a master degree thesis at Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) betweenÅngpanneföreningen and Programma. KTH is the examiner, Programma is the client andÅngpanneföreningen is mentor for this project.Programma has a product called TM1800 that has problems with EMC; the problem is thatthis product does only pass the CE-check with a small safety margin. This problem can besolved by reducing the radiation from the electric components in the product or by reducing offix base frame. In this degree thesis the focus is only on mechanical redesign.The main problems right now depends on the long distance between the screws, there is anisolating layer on most of the parts and the forces between the joints are too small. The mainfocus is to solve these three problems.The best solutions are when the whole base frame is more or less redesigned instead of onlyredesigning some of the connection points.

Denna studie syftar till att beskriva problematiken kring finansiering av nystartade tjänsteföretag som saknar säkerheter i form av materiella tillgångar. Våra slutsatser är att samtliga respondenter anser att finansieringsproblematiken existerar och att detta yttrar sig genom att kreditbedömningar blir svåra att genomföra när företag saknar materiella tillgångar att ställa som säkerhet. Två av de företag vi intervjuat har upplevt problem med finansieringsprocessen. De externa finansiärerna anser att problematiken främst yttrar sig för forsknings- och utvecklingsföretag..

Vår uppgift på Valeo Engine Cooling AB i Linköping har varit att förbättra produktionssystemet genom att utveckla internlogistiken mellan lagret och monteringsstationerna samt sättet att lagra material.Valeo är en grupp bildad 1980 genom en fusion av bilkomponenttillverkare. Totalt har Valeo 71500 anställda. De verktyg som Valeo rekommenderar för förbättring av internlogistiken är Small Boxes, Flat Storage och Linefeeder. Användandet av dessa verktyg stödjer de principer som finns inom Toyota Production System och Lean Production.Linefeeder är den person som förser monteringsstationerna med material. Han kör omkring med en dragtruck efter vilken han kopplar på olika vagnar.

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..

AbstractTitle: Message sent ? SUDD AB:s internal communication in the digital age (Message sent ? SUDD AB:s interna kommunikation i den digitala tidsåldern)Number of pages: 40 (44 including enclosures)Author: Lea KaufmannTuthor: Göran SvenssonCourse: Media and Communication Studies CPeriod: HT 2006University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala UniversityPurpose/Aim: Analyze whether a small long distance company such as SUDD AB can obtain a well-functioned internal communication by using new communication technologies.Material/Method: The analysis is based on qualitative interviews with SUDD AB:s complete staff.Main results: Proven that internal communication is a complicated and very important process also within a small company. New communication channels do not necessarily guarantee an uncomplicated and efficient internal communication but the need to collaborate with old-fashioned channels persists.Keywords: communication, information, channels, effects, content, effectiveness.