AbstractLean production has become one common concept within industries to make the work more effective and to meet today?s hard competition. A challenge for Chinese production is the threat from new low cost countries. It will become very difficult to succeed to produce to a lower cost than these countries; this led to that Chinese companies must develop new strategies, according to Lee and Zhou (2000). This will put China in front of new challenges and new strategies can be needed to retain their strong competitive advantages.

Purpose/Aim: The purpose of this thesis is to define and analyse how Swedish record companies work with digital musical content distributors. A more narrow aim is to show how the record companies and with the digital musical content distributors iTunes Music Store and Spotify create incentives for consumer?s to use legal digital music channels through the Internet. To further circle the core of the problem following questions have been asked: How does the record companies provide iTunes Music Store and Spotify with digital content and what is done by the record companies to retain control over the material? How do the record companies view digital musical sales and what incentives are given to consumers to buy music digitally? Finally, What position of power do iTunes Music Store and Spotify have on the digital content arena?Material/Method: The data collected for this thesis is retrieved through personal interviews with representatives from three of the four major record companies Universal Music, Warner Music and EMI and their Swedish branches.Main results: The consumer?s access to digital content through iTunes Music Store and Spotify is of the utmost importance and is a prerequisite.

The enterprises of today are beginning to realize that environmental issues are a important part of their activity. Companies and organizations are expected to a greater extent communicate their environmental work to the world surrounding them in a trustworthy and structured way. Lack of information or information that is incorrect may bring farreaching consequences. Communication is mentioned in several of the ISO 14001-standards. But what is missing is a guideline how companies should act to create and be sure of the quality of the data that can be used in the environmental communication.

AbstractThe OMX Nordic Exchange Stockholm requires all large companies to apply the Swedish Code ofCorporate Governance. A revised code will be applied from July 2008. The purpose of this paper is toidentify the accessibility of information on corporate governance and in particular how the compliance,concerning the Swedish Code of Corporate Governance in the perspective of an internet active generalpublic.This paper is a complete census of the companies at the OMX Nordic Exchange Stockholm whocomplies with the code. Each company website has been visited and a comparison between the sectorsat the OMX Exchange Stockholm has been performed.Results: 96% of the companies present the members of the nomination committee. 94% presents thenomination committees proposal of the company board members, though only 33% of the companies inthe Energy sector.

This rapport handles the presence of two kinds of watermills in the Swedish landscape. The first is a small type with a horizontal shovel blade and the other a bigger kind with a vertical standing shovel scoop. The rapport seeks for information of their capacity and how long they existed as flour producing units. A important issue is how small can a brook be and still run a mill. Finally the reasons for their disappearance in one selected parish is shown..

A positive aspect of globalization, from a western viewpoint, is the growing demand of advanced products in China and other developing countries. The construction industry is thriving in China and Swedish companies have taken part in various projects. However the situation have been difficult for some of the companies. The aim of this study is therefore to investigate how strategic and cultural factors affect the potential for Swedish companies to operate on the Chinese construction market. The theoretical framework of the study consists of Porter?s and Kotler?s theories about strategy, and Hofstede?s, Bjerke?s, and Daun?s research about different cultures.

This study is a part of a Swedish research and development project that is about heat-treated wood and is led by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Luleå University of Technology. Products that are heat-treated already exists on the market, foremost the Finnish brand ThermoWood®, bur the project group want to find out if it would be possible to start a Swedish production with somewhat different applications than what is common today. The heat-treated wood has many attributes that have changed in the heating process. It becomes more biologically durable, it gains stability in form and dimensions and it becomes darker and looses several unwanted extractives such as resin. Disadvantages that can be mentioned are that the wood becomes fragile and the strength properties changes. My main purpose with this study is to look into customer involvement in the early phase of product development. I also want to find out if the customers I interview think that the product is worth working with, which means start a Swedish production.

The management of information is a significant competitiveness in companies. Companies stored and save information every day, and it is very common to save de information in different sources. This makes de management of information complex. To mange, monitor and analyze the information, companies can use a system called Business Intelligence. BI system is an analytical system that extracts and converts data into useful information that helps employees to make informed decisions.

One of the biggest changes which have affected businesses during the last ten years is the accelerating speed at which Internet technology and e-commerce has developed. If Internet earlier was used in the purpose to entertain it is now accepted as an essential business tool and companies are investing more of its resources in e-commerce activities. Everyone ?has to be on the net? today but that implies a challenge in matching e-solutions to the company?s business goals. It is necessary to have clear goals, carry out research and plan a strategy in order to operate an optimal e-commerce website for the company?s needs.The purpose with this dissertation was to see how well companies adjust to new demands in the rapidly changing e-environment.

There are countless methods for companies to use as marketing tools and one method that has become more and more popular is sponsoring. Reasons for companies to use sponsoring as a marketing tool is to be exposed and associated in connection with the sponsored item. Companies also use sponsorship to create relationships with the company's target audience. The use of Internet and Internet marketing has also increased during the last years and this paper examines the combination of these two areas, sponsorship and Internet marketing. A survey that examines the websites owned by companies who also are sponsors, answers the following problem:How do companies communicate their sponsorship on their own homepages?The purpose of this study is to describe how companies use their homepage to communicate their sponsorship.

The forest industry is anonymous among the young people of today. Many youngsters do not know what the forest industry has to offer. As a result of this, many schools and forest have a weak recruitment. This is not a problem for Sweden and the forest industry only, many other businesses companies suffer from in Sweden and other countries in Europe share the same image problem. The interest and values of young people drives them to look for opportunities in other betterknown sectors with better image and reputation. Many companies report having problems with recruiting the best and right employees and fear that the recruiting-problems will increase when the older generation born in the 1940?s will retire.

In today's Sweden there are approximately 23 000 combination companies, and most of them have a connection with the agricultural sector. The most common type of additional operation is some form of contracting.The aim for this degree project is to answer the following question: which problems and key factors exists within combination operations? The main topic will be within coordination and management questions within agricultural companies with an additional operation.Litterateur written earlier within this subject will be used in this thesis. Mainly litterateur which contains information about combination companies and diversification of some sort. There are also other theories used in this thesis such as; resource based theory and decision making theory in order to understand the problems and key factors within combination companies.In order to investigate the aim of this thesis we have chosen to perform two qualitative interviews with the managers of two different combination companies.

The Swedish Code for Corporate Governance was introduced on July 1, 2005. All companies then listed at OM Stockholmsbörsen A-list and those on the O-list with a market value of more than three billion SKr must implement the rules in the Code. The Code includes rules for corporate governance as a complement to the legislation. The Code is based on the principle comply or explain. This means that the companies are aloud to diverge from the rules if they explain why.

Purpose: To investigate whether or not the credit granters believe the quality in audits will deteriorate after the abolishment of statutory audit and, if that is the case, how the abolishment will strike the purpose and goal of accounting.Approach: To answer our purpose we carried out a literature study to later implement interviews with four granters of credits specialised in business accounts.Findings: The process of credit granting will not change after the abolishment of statutory audit for companies still using audit reports. Though, for other companies the process will change dramatically since the lean time of the process will increase. Higher demands will be put on these companies since the reliability in the economic information will decrease when it is no longer being reviewed in the same sense. Though, the credit granters believe that some form of substitute for audit will be demanded in order for the companies to be granted credits from the bank..

AbstractAuthors:Stefan Harrå and Magnus BjörkAdvisor: Markku PenttinenTitle: Accounting Consequences of the change in pension accounting Background to problem: When the revised IAS 19 comes into force January 1, 2013, it means that two of the three accounting principles for defined benefit pension plans are disappearing, including the corridor method. The corridor method has made it possible for companies to defer its actuarial gains and losses. Now that the corridor approach abolished then the unrecognized actuarial gains and losses immediately be covered by equity, which involves very large amounts of some companies. Why the amounts have grown so big is much because of the discount rate. The discount rate is a controversial parameter, and there is disagreement on how it should be fixed.Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to examine the accounting implications this will have for the company applied the corridor method, and if there is some parameters in the actuarial assumption that is more important than others.Methodology: The thesis has mainly been based on a qualitative research through qualitative interviews with a small sample that is affected by this change.