This paper describes and develops a trade off model of optimal capital structure by Bradley et al. (1984). The model is then tested to examine how changes in corporate tax rates affect the optimal capital structure of firms. Based on theoretical implications of the model, four hypotheses are derived stating that firms? optimal debt-to-value ratio is (1) negatively related to financial distress costs, (2) negatively related to non-debt tax shields, (3) negatively related to firm volatility and (4) positively related to the corporate tax rate.

This study examines whether there is an association between the length of the client-auditor relationship and audit quality, using absolute unexpected accruals estimated by industry as a measure of audit quality based on a modified Jones model. The study is motivated by the proposal on mandatory audit firm rotation for publicly traded companies from the European Commission, which is based on the notion that longer auditor firm tenure creates a familiarity threat which reduces the audit quality. Both the relation between audit quality and auditor partner tenure and audit firm tenure is examined in this study, using multivariate regression controlling for auditor type (Big 4 versus non-Big 4), signing auditors (one versus two auditors), firm size, profitability, leverage and age. There is a significant negative relationship between audit quality and audit partner tenure when only companies employing Big 4 is tested, which indicate that auditors constrain managements extreme accounting measures with longer tenure. The results provide no significant evidence of an increase in the absolute unexpected accruals with audit firm tenure, when only Big 4 companies are tested.

The paper evaluates two housing proposals with Space syntax as method. The proposals are very different in a topological sense but are in a configural sense almost the same. This effect is because both proposals connect themselves to the existing configural structure of the city in the same way. Neither of them takes advantages of the most integrated streets in the existing structure and use them to concentrate pedestrian and car flows to the streets or points which are intended to be the most urban areas. The knowledge of Space syntax and this evaluation puts focus on the pour understanding among architects and planners of what effect urban design proposals will have..

Purpose/aim: To investigate individual experiences of how a new communication technology, e-mail, influences a) the structure of the internal communication ? does it for example make networking any easier? ? and b) the form of the persons everyday language.Material/method: A theoretical framework gathered through a literature study and empirical data gathered through interviews with two persons.Main results: Differences and similarities exist between the experiences studied in this paper. The most unexpected result is that the system of e-mail does not seem to be able to create new channels of communication. If anything, it reinforces the structure that already exist. An aspect of decisive importance is the original rules and norms concerning internal communication within the organization..

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the design and function of an engine production management?s control system and its intended function, and to contrast it with the present management control systems in use on an operational level. Interviews conducted with employees from all levels of the engine production are the main source of this study?s empirical foundation. Information has also been gathered from relevant written material such as annual reports, internal documents etc.

The French historian Marc Bloch is considered to be one of the masters of medieval history, particularly his creation Feudal Society has been an essential piece of work for everyone who desires a deeper understanding of the general feudal society. Bloch gives his readers a vivid and living picture of a society so far beyond our present that it is sometimes hard to keep in mind that this society is part of our legacy. At the same time Bloch endows his readers with the special historical outlook he and his successors has developed, the history of the mentalities. By reaching further back in time, to the Roman and Germanic cultures and the manorial system, he proves his point that the feudal society was build on the legacy of older structures and institutions.In the coming study I will disentangle the early feudal structure of power as Bloch has described it in his Feudal Society. The essence of this power structure is to find in the very characteristic tie between two men, the vassalage.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) proposes vibration standards for the evaluation for machine damage due to vibration in rotational machines, where some vibration parameters are given to measure the vibrationgrade. This work evaluates the relevance of the vibration standards in hydro plants that are proposed by the ISO, and also investigates if there are methods used in other countries could have greater importance. Through statistical analysis of collected data we got a better understanding of relation among different vibration parameters, and also the importance of correct choice of the parameters for the evaluation of vibration. We have found that the vibration standards available today in hydro plants are not reliable for the judgment of vibration?s grade.

From 1710 to 1713 the plague raged through the Swedish province of Scania. Other studies have been made on how the disease affected the society during the epidemic. This study tries to focus on the recovery afterwards. How did the population and the farmsteads recover after the plague? Statistics from parish registers and cameral records show interesting patterns in the demography, and that the recovery was far from complete 1720.

I denna rapport undersöks hur elektroniska böcker (eBooks) enligt standarden Open eBook Publication Structure kan komprimeras på ett effektivt sätt. Anledningen till att området valts är att en välanvänd standard för eBooks inte finns för tillfället. Standarden är relativt ny och senaste versionen av specifikationen har kommit ut under 2002. Med i utvecklingen av standarden finns många stora företag som exempelvis Adobe Systems Inc. och Palm Digital Media.

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to investigate to what a few preschool teachers and mother-tongue teachers consider the influence mother-tongue training has on children. The thesis also looks into how these teachers cooperate and view about the mother-tongue training organization structure and what support mother-tongue teachers get in the concerned preschools. More specifically:What influences do three preschool teachers and three mother-tongue teachers consider that mother-tongue training has on the development of the children?Which support do the three mother-tongue teachers receive from the preschool principals and other preschool pedagogues in their work? - Is there any cooperation between them?In what way do the three preschool teachers and the three mother-tongue teachers think that the mother-tongue training organization structure affect the children?s status in the group?Method: In order to achieve a deeper understanding of the context, a qualitative method based on interviews and observations was employed and relied upon. Three preschool teachers and three mother-tongue teachers from two different preschools in the same municipality were interviewed to acquire answers to the questions concerned.Result: The result of this enquiry shows a direct and explicit comprehension that mother-tongue is immensely important for children?s development.

The objective of the study is to map the cognitive structure of Library and Information Science, using a quantitative, bibliometric method. This empirical study shows how co-citation analysis combined with word-frequency analysis can be used to describe the subject content of the field. The research questions to be answered are: -Which clusters of authors can be identified? -How can these clusters be described in respect of their subject content, if the descriptors associated with the authors in the clusters are counted? The results show that the cognitive structure of Library and Information Science can be described by 13 clusters of authors, where each cluster is representing a specific aspect of the subject- domain. For the description of the subject content of the clusters, descriptors DE of the LISA database have been used..

Tourism and Hospitality Management.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine and analyse which effects a service strategy has on the control system of an organisation. The thesis takes a service perspective, and it is assumed that a service strategy gains competitive advantage and that the goal of the service strategy is to increase the customers? satisfaction level. A qualitative in-depth case study was performed on a Swedish beauty company. The organisation?s vertical structure was examined, from central to local level.

In scientific investigations on how organizations can learn from their mistakes the perspective is usually that of the social engineer; the object is to prevent human errors through modeling the system in a certain way. The aim of this paper is to explore the learning process from a different standpoint than those usually applied in organizational learning and error theory. By studying the learning process in Swedish health care I seek to discover how theoretical presumptions affect the outcome in terms of what we actually learn. The theoretical framework draws on two major discussions in contemporary political science; the question of structure and agency and the question of whether to focus on formal or informal structures when explaining organizational behavior.The investigation shows that Swedish health care tend to understand human errors as a result of formal organizational structure. Such a view leads to insufficient explanations to why errors occur but is useful in producing preventative measures.

This thesis discusses main problems associated with dictionary-based Cross-Language Information Retrieval as lexical and translational ambiguity of query terms, translation of compounds and phrases, dictionary limitation. The purpose of the study is to investigate how query structure influences the effectiveness of CLIR regarding performance of three query types: original query, unstructured query and structured query. Query structuring refers to the application of #syn-operator to group query terms. The study comprises an experiment that was performed in the InQuery IR system with TrecUta database that contains 550,000 news articles from different American newspapers. 24 topics were used for the experiment.