The requirement on audit was introduced when ownership was separated from management. The situation that arouse was that not only the owners, but also the stakeholders, required information about the company?s financial position. On this basis the audit would contribute to quality assurance of the financial information. One of the auditor's functions is to assess an ongoing stakeholder opinion.

Background: To maintain or increase the trust in the market, companies can disclose more voluntary information in the annual reports. According to prior research the annual report is the primary source of information for small shareholders and investors. Thus, it is of interest to investigate why companies chose to report the voluntary information inquired by this group. Purpose: We investigate some company-specific factors to decide whether these determine the extent of voluntary information, particularly inquired by small shareholders and investors, in the annual reports of listed Swedish companies. We also aim to discuss underlying causes for our result.

AbstractTime after time the world is struck by humanitarian catastrophes, whether it is through a war or a natural disaster. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to have a functional and effective aid, as it is a matter of life and death. Thereby the actions of the humanitarian aid organizations are interesting. The investigation treats the three specific organizations Star of Hope, Sida and the Red Cross movement and the process from decision to action in times of war. The organizations are different from one another in many areas.

There are experiential products that through a digital transformation wholly or partially have taken new place in our everyday lives. Just a few years ago, we had music on CDs, movies on tape and books in bookshelves. In Sweden, we are now facing a transformation when the e-book begins to take place alongside the printed book.This paper focuses on what values play a role in the attitude towards ebooks among a selected group of Swedish book bloggers. A qualitative content analysis was performed on blog posts concerning the ebook from twelve different Swedish book blogs. The posts were then coded into categories and values.

The NIPF (Non Industrial Private Forest) owners in Sweden have very differentiated goals and needs with their forest. They have different backgrounds and some of them live at their forest estate while other live in an urban environment, and some are economically dependent on their forest estate while others are not. The heterogeneity among these forest owners creates problems for market actors that want to aim marketing messages to catch their interest. This is the problem background to the task that was provided to us as an investigative masters thesis for us. Their request was a plan for ensuring a successful marketing towards different segments of the NIPF owners. We commenced with a literature study based on market information and previously carried out similar investigations. We summarized the most important market information from the literature and created some hypotheses regarding goals and needs of the NIPF owners.

In many of the world's countries, there is a national organization responsible for marketingthat country as a tourist destination. Through their offices, these organizations work towardsthe creation of effective strategies and a deeper understanding of local markets. Usingqualitative methods such as interviews, observations, and thematic analysis, we managed toinvestigate how the Czech and the German national tourist offices operate, and whatstrategies they are implementing to increase the volume of tourism. The study focused on theanalysis and comparison of the organizations' goals and communication channels.The results show that the investigated tourist boards operate in a similar manner with smalldifferences concerning choice of strategies and communication channels. These discrepanciescan be partly explained by differences in the organization's ownership forms and theconsequences that follow that fact.

Since the end of the Cold War, foreign aid donors have been using political conditionality to promote human rights, democracy and good governance in recipient countries. This phenomenon has been analyzed and criticized, but mainly from a strictly empirical point of view. In this paper, the legitimacy of political conditionality is analyzed through a normative perspective based on the extrinsic value of efficiency. If the political conditions don?t result in a democratic development, including respect of human rights and good governance, they can not be justified.With at theoretical focus on the donors, based on the unequal relationship between donor and recipient, I am examining the donors? possibility and supposed will to use political conditions in development cooperation.

Epifytiska lavar utgör en viktig del av floran i den boreala zonen. Några miljövariabler är kända för att styra artrikedomen och artsammansättningen av epifytiska lavar på beståndsnivå, såsom träddiversitet, beståndsålder, fuktighet och trädens barkstruktur. Skogsbränder utgör den viktigaste störningen i boreala skogar men studier på brandeffekter på epifytiska lavar är mycket få. Detta arbete undersökte artrikedomen, diversiteten och artsammansättningen av epifytiska lavar på basala delar av björkar längs en gradient av 30 skogsbeklädda öar som skiljer sig i storlek och brandhistorik i den norra boreala zonen i Sverige. Målet med studien var att undersöka hur lavfloran påverkades av östorleken och miljövariablerna längs gradienten.

Currently there is a controversial debate about that we must reduce our impact on the global warming; therefore both the Government and the local authorities have invested heavily in developing renewable energy in Sweden. The major development on the wind power market can be seen as a result of both the technological development and also on the decision that the Government took in 1996, which opened up the wind power market for private parties.This paper has aimed to examine the types of financial innovations that have arisen from the investments and financing of wind power on Gotland, and what these innovations can contribute to the future development of wind power.The problems that this thesis is based on is; what kind of financial innovations have occurred within investment and financing of wind power? How can these innovations contribute to the continued development of wind power on Gotland? The conclusion of this study shows that respondents and participants have defined a number of financial innovations that have emerged. Where some of the innovations only can be seen as incremental since they are based on continuous improvements, while others can be seen as radical as they are completely new for the context in which they operate. The study has also shown that Gotland has a great potential to produce more renewable electricity, but the development is dependent on the new power lines being built, in order to export electricity to the mainland..

The change of control clause is nowadays a well used covenant in the Eurobond market, with the aims to protect bondholders in case of a leveraged buyout. This thesis intend to evaluate whether the change of control clause is a new phenomenon in the Eurobond market today and to estimate what have been the driven force for the popularity of it. The thesis found that the change of control clause already existed before and thus it is not a new phenomenon. Several factors where found though to explain the extended use of the clause today. Starting in 2005 the LBO activity increased rapidly, exposing almost every company to the risk of LBO.

I Kiruna pågår en omfattande stadsflytt. Hela staden måste flyttas och detta kommer att ske successivt. Att staden måste flyttas beror på de nya malmfyndigheterna under staden. Malmkroppens lutning påverkar marken ovanför i form av sprickbildning. Områden närmast gruvan och vägen till LKAB har redan stängts av på grund av markdeformationer.

Arbetsterapi ämnar möjliggöra utförande av meningsfulla aktiviteter för klienter. Djur ger positiva effekter på människans fysiska, mentala och sociala funktioner som kan öka dennes aktivitetsförmåga, vilket är en förutsättning för aktivitetsutförande. Syftet var att kartlägga forskning kring djur i relation till arbetsterapi samt betydelsen djuren har på individens aktivitetsliv. Metoden var en systematisk litteratursökning som gjordes med 14 valda sökord i sju databaser som slutligen gav 15 artiklar för analys. I resultatet identifierades forskningsområdena djurägarskap och djurterapi.

Heath star moss (Campylopus introflexus) is an alien species in Sweden and is currently classified as composing a "very high risk? of becoming invasive in the country according to SLU, and has in several parts of the world taken over large areas in a short time. The moss is characterized by its preference for disturbed and burned land, something that occurs on the heathland in the Sandsj?backa nature reserve, when burning for nature conservation purposes is carried out annually. Sandsj?backa's heathland is a valuable ecosystem and is one of the few heathlands in a favorable condition that remains in Sweden after strong reforms in modern agriculture in the last century, which led to forest succession of these cultural environments.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the networks of interlocking directors in the 50 largestSwedish companies on the Stockholm Stock Exchange during the years 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005and 2010 and seek explanations for the observed developments.Our findings indicate that the density and concentration of the network has decreased during thefirst ten-year period and stayed constant during the second period. The development of theoverall network is not consistent throughout all corporate groups. Most notablyHandelsbankssfären seems to experience increased density and connectivity whileWallenbergsfären is experiencing the reverse.The changes during the first ten-year period is deemed to come mainly from changes inregulations pertaining to both the opening for international capital investments as well as looserrestrictions on domestic capital investments. These changes have caused decreased concentrationof ownership, as well as the emergence of new owners, which is reflected in the board ofdirectors.During the second ten-year period the changes are more pertaining to the individual boards andboard members, without flowing through into the overall network. Our findings indicate thatthese changes are caused by the increased professionalization of boards and board work, whichhas gained momentum through the creation of the Swedish Corporate Governance Code..

The recent development in several countries? legislation and best practice recommendations in relation to corporate governance in general and audit committees in particular have affected Swedish listed corporations in the form of the Swedish Corporate Governance Code and the coming EU-directive. This paper aims to discover what factors affected Swedish listed companies to form audit committees when this was entirely voluntary. We collected data from the annual reports of 121 Swedish listed companies and formed eleven hypotheses as to what factors we believed affected the voluntary formation of audit committees based on Agency Theory, economies of scale and circumstances specific to the Swedish environment. We then analyzed the data through the use of a multivariate logistic regression model.