Social sustainability is often regarded as a solution to social problems in general. In this study, on the contrary, social sustainability is conceived as a socially constructed concept and the result of a certain way of looking at the world, the human being and the ideal society. The study centers around Kinda municipality in the southern region of Östergötland and a few of its elder inhabitants. What meaning and substance social sustainability is contained with as well as the effects that are produced by these conceptualizations is explored and analyzed. Also, the study examines the encounter between political policy?s and judgments on the one hand and the experiences and preferences held by the municipality?s elder inhabitants on the other..

This thesis investigates management accounting systems in a Swedish health care environment. Through a qualitative case study of an activity-based cost accounting system that was introduced in 1994 at S:t Görans Sjukhus, a large Stockholm hospital, the following questions are addressed: What benefits can an activity-based cost accounting system offer the Swedish health care providers? What are the potential problems impeding the implementation of such a system? Main findings: an activity-based cost accounting system can improve the understanding of where costs are generated in the production processes. Comparisons between alternative production processes are improved, and the data may serve as a basis for internal pricing measures. Concerning the second question, difficulty in reconciliating the principles of economic control with the culture present in a hospital is identified as the main obstacle to a new management accounting system..

In today's society it has become increasingly important for organizations to take into account non-financial values. Sustainability reporting involves reporting the economic, social and environmental aspects of an organization's operations. The trend has been towards an all the more scrutinizing society with an increasing demand for transparency and translucency. A greater focus on environmental issues has also contributed to sustainability?s increasing importance as a topic.

Humanity faces a major challenge with the climate and environmental crisis, largely driven by reckless recourse use and greenhouse gas emissions by corporations. The EU?s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) aims to standardise corporate sustainability reporting, making practices more transparent and comparable. This directive seeks to enhance sustainability practices and guide market forces towards sustainability, supporting the EU?s goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.

In our study the purpose was to examine the influence of Continuing Professional Education on small and medium sized auditing- and accounting practices. The study also aims to analyze possible similarities and differences in how small and medium sized auditing and accounting practices are affected of the requirements regarding Continuing Professional Education. In order to fulfill our purpose in the study we conducted interviews with auditors and accounting consultants on small and medium sized auditing- and accounting practices. Totally did we conduct seven interviews with four auditors and three accounting consultants. The majority of auditors and accounting consultants we interviewed are satisfied with the current requirements on Continuing Professional Education and think they contribute to the increase of quality and status of the work tasks performed by auditors and accounting consultants.

AbstractTitle: Accounting firms´ view on the (new law) in joint-stock companiesCourse: Business Administration, Financial Accounting in Corporations and Groups, Ad-vanced Course, 15 ECTSAuthors: Mikaela Uveby, Shadi Nourbehesht, Almira DizdarevicAdvisor: Kent TrosanderProblem: During the last few years, more importance and emphasis has been put on auditors and accounting in general due to a number of company and business scandals on both national and international levels. The United States as well as the EU consid-ered it a necessity to make regulations stricter when it comes to auditing and ac-counts in order to increase the public trust to accounting. At January 1st, 2007, Sweden also changed its law concerning accounting firm challenges. The new law states that as soon as someone of the auditor?s co-workers assists a client with some part of the basic bookkeeping, the main bookkeeping or the drawing-up of the an-nual account, the challenge situation becomes a fact.Purpose: The purpose of the essay is to examine and inquire into how the renewed law con-cerning accounting firm challenges, that was established and put to action at Janu-ary 1st, 2007, has affected accounting firms.Method: The writers have chosen to complete qualitative interviews in order to get a deeper insight to and an understanding of the topic.Conclusion: One year after the renewal of the law, the writers have reached the conclusion of that the new law has not had a great impact on the accounting firms.

The purpose of this study is, on the basis of institutional theory, to contribute with moreunderstanding about resistance to management accounting change and also to survey reasonsfor the resistance and how to cope with the resistance.The study is a qualitative case study and semi-structured interviews have been used tocomplement the study?s theoretical area, consisting of scientific articles.The conclusion from the study is that resistance to management accounting change can beunderstood and explained by the institutions of each organisation and its underlying structures. Afurther conclusion is, with the structures in mind there are many reasons for resistance and alsomany ways to cope with the resistance. A model has been produced in purpose to createunderstanding and to survey the resistance to management accounting change..

AbstractTitle:Sustainability reporting- For whom and what? What is the opinion of analysts, consultants and fund managers on sustainability reporting?Level:Bachelor thesis in business administration, 15 university creditsAuthors:Nils Johansson and Hannes ThomasfolkSupervisor:Sarah PhilipsonDate:20140108Keywords:Sustainability reporting, value relevance, stakeholder theory, signaling theory.Purpose:The purpose of this paper is to study how different professional groups in the Swedish financial market in 2013 use sustainability reporting and explore how professional groups look at the future development of sustainability reporting.Limitations:The study focuses only on organizations that are members of SWESIF.Method:In this study we chose a multiple case study design, inspired by well grounded theory. The study's empirical data was obtained through ten semi-structured interviews with analysts, consultants and fund managers.Results and conclusions:It was revealed by the study that companies producing a sustainability report demonstrates transparency and are perceived as a company that is aware of risk, both economic risks as well as external risks. The study also shows that among the study's respondents, there is a strong belief that sustainable business in the long term is a good investment. The study also indicates that this is no concrete evidence of an association between the use of sustainability reporting and either increased or decreased profitability.

Background: Charity and other non-profit organizations have traditionally not been subject to any particular regulation enforced by Swedish law. Recently though, accounting standards have been altered which, through the new "Bokföringslagen" as of first of January 2001, have affected accounting standards for non- profit organizations. One of the implications which the new"bokföringslagen"has for non-profit organizations in Sweden is the link which it establishes with other accounting regulations enforced by the "Årsredovisningslagen". This link will, in turn, determine which rules that apply for any particular organization. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to examine how accounting regulations are handled by Swedish non-profit organizations.

The study tries to increase the understanding of the phenomenon known as the Big bath, on the question whether the market accepts Big bath accounting principle or not. Big bath is an accounting theory meaning that a company is likely to increase its impairment in a specific year. This could be as a reaction on a change in the leadership, a depreciation of the result or maybe an external decrease in demand. Through a quantitative survey of the market it is examining whether the companies themselves are inclined to use the procedure and if the stock market accepts it. The study concludes that Big bath similar procedures are a fairly common accounting practice and that the stock market does not seem to mind. .

The purpose of the study is to explore the internal implementation and communication of ecological sustainability within an organization and to identify obstacles and challenges that may arise. To address the study's purpose and research questions, a qualitative methodology and semi-structured interviews were used. Respondents were selected from two different units within a large global organization operating in the automotive industry. The study's findings indicate that the organization's sustainability efforts are extensive and integrated across several departments. It is also evident that sustainability initiatives are primarily driven by upper management within the organization, although there is room for lower hierarchical levels to provide some feedback.

Sustainable development is a concept that has been interpreted in a multitude of ways in different contexts. This essay argues that the discourse of "ecological modernization" has strongly influenced the way in which the concept of ?sustainability? has been constructed in Swedish environmental policy. This interpretation of the concept of sustainability offers the possibility of combining economic growth with ecological sustainability which stands in contrast to the assumptions of Deep Ecology and Green Theory. The aim of this essay is to explore how the concept of sustainability is being formulated in environmental policy both on a national level and in the city of Malmö.Considering these issues in a specific context, this essay focuses on city planning that is as an important instrument to promote urban sustainability both on national and local levels.

The connection between management control systems for controlling sustainability and a firm's motivation for engaging in sustainability is not completely understood (Arjaliès & Mundy, 2013). The aim of this thesis is to develop a more profound understanding for management control in achieving sustainable companies. To do this, we raise the question: How and to what extent do companies use management control systems to achieve sustainability compliance Simons's Levers of Control (1995) are applied to this question in order to get a consistent and thorough insight of management control systems. Hence, a case study of ABB:s work to achieve material compliance in accordance with EU-regulation was conducted. The findings of the case study reveal that ABB uses the regulations as explicit goals and implement them in sustainability procedures.

Presently environmental and ethical matters are in the centre of attention and companies producing sustainability reports have become more common. It has also started to become more and more ordinary to assure these sustainability reports by an external part. However, the amount of assured sustainability reports differs a lot between different countries.There can be several reasons for why the companies chose to get the sustainability report assured. Previous studies state that the choice to produce sustainability reports can be re-lated to theories like the legitimacy theory, stakeholder theory and the agent theory. Other aspects that can affect the decision to construct a sustainability report can according to prior studies be different company characteristics and the national culture in the country in which the company is operating.

The connection between accounting and taxation goes back to the 1920s laws of the named areas. A proposal has now been brought forward, the so-called SamRoB-investigation, which means that the connection between accounting and taxations should be decoupled.The authors? aim with the study is to investigate what a possible decoupling between accounting and taxation, i.e. the formal connection and the untaxed revenues, implicates for the auditor´s work.A research has been done by interviewing two authorized auditors and one authorized consultant of accounting to get a view in how the auditor?s works could be affected.