This thesis focuses on youth unemployment in Finspång, often referred as an industrial community. The theoretical framework of the thesis is based on social constructionism and covers theoretical discourse analysis, intersectionality and social capital. The study is based on qualitative interviews with 7 unemployed individuals between the ages of 19-24 and an interview with an employee at the employment office in the community. The main subject in this thesis is the youngsters experience with unemployment, labour, the employment office, the impacts of social capital and the labour market in the community. The analysis focuses in how the respondents discuss their experienced problems with their unemployment.

Denna uppsats behandlar en undersökning som gjordes efter det att en gymnasieskola i Örebro migrerat från Microsoft Office till Open Office. I studien undersöktes vilka för och nackdelar som lärare upplevde efter migrationen samt vilka problem som uppstod då öppen mjukvara används i en miljö som är dominerad av proprietär mjukvara.Det tillvägagångssätt vi valt är en metodtriangulering där vi samlat in data med hjälp av tre olika insamlingsmetoder, en litteraturstudie, kvalitativa intervjuer och en kvantitativ enkät. Dessa insamlingsmetoder utformades så att litteraturstudien var av bredare karaktär och leder till att intervjuerna blir av mer specifik karaktär som i sin tur ger oss kvantitativa frågor till enkäten.Det vi funnit under arbetets gång är att migrationen lett till interoperabilitetsproblem med existerande proprietära system och även att filer tolkats olika av de båda kontorspaketen. Lärarna såg större skillnader mellan de båda kontorspaketen är vad skolan och kommunen förutsett och tyckte att de mer avancerade funktionerna är svårare att använda i Open Office vi har även sett en efterfrågan utbildning..

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to compare and analyze Malmö Aviation and Rica Talk Hotel's service culture. This is done by examining three themes, the organizations ways of working with training, motivation and empowerment of frontline employees.Method: The essay is a case study-based qualitative research which mainly focuses on semi-structured, qualitative interviews with various people within the two organizations.Theory: The theoretical framework considers theory within two sections. The first section, the organizations importance in service quality, focuses on service culture or service climate and different management strategies. Section two, the employees? importance in service quality, focuses on three themes: training, motivation and empowerment of frontline employeesResults: Both Malmö Aviation and Rica Talk Hotel are companies that put great emphasis on developing and maintaining a quality service culture within the organization.

Background: Knowledge management is a concept that is considered of increasing importance in the developing knowledge society. Previous research in the area has to a large extent been based on large multinational companies. Purpose: The thesis aims to clarify how middle-sized Swedish management consultancy companies work with knowledge management. The thesis intends to use existing theories about knowledge management to explain the effect of size and area of operation on management consultancy companies? knowledge management.

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to compare and analyze Malmö Aviation and Rica Talk Hotel's service culture. This is done by examining three themes, the organizations ways of working with training, motivation and empowerment of frontline employees.Method: The essay is a case study-based qualitative research which mainly focuses on semi-structured, qualitative interviews with various people within the two organizations.Theory: The theoretical framework considers theory within two sections. The first section, the organizations importance in service quality, focuses on service culture or service climate and different management strategies. Section two, the employees? importance in service quality, focuses on three themes: training, motivation and empowerment of frontline employeesResults: Both Malmö Aviation and Rica Talk Hotel are companies that put great emphasis on developing and maintaining a quality service culture within the organization.

The ambition of this project is to make an overview of the Swedish upholstery industry and to make a suitable complement to the Carl Malmsten upholstery collection.The Swedish furniture industry employs about 20 000 people in 815 companies. Totally the branch had a turnover of 17,5 billion Swedish krona in the year 2000. Of these 815 companies most of them are small family driven companies with low-tech industry. 10 % of the 815 companies stand for 60% of the production. These are large-scale companies and have a hi-tech industry, even compared with other types of industries.

The recent accounting scandals in large companies in both USA and Europe, such as Enron and Scandia, have led to a huge debate about the quality of financial reports approved by auditors who, at the same time, offer consultancy service to their audit clients. Many researchers and experts argued that there is a role conflict when an auditor offers consultancy service to audit clients. They argue that the main duty of an auditor is to verify the truthfulness of the company's financial statements. Giving consultancy service to the audit clients will impair the auditor's role to examine the company's books independently because of the economic bond between auditors and audit clients.As a result of the Enron scandal, the legislators in the USA have made restrictions to how auditors provide non-audit service to audit clients. However, the legislators in Sweden, unlike the US, did not choose to introduce such restrictions.

For innovative organizations and companies it is essential to use existing knowledge to avoid spending time and resources on already existing innovations. By using patent information, companies are able to get a picture of what is already done in their area of interest. The main purpose of the study is to examine the information use in small and medium-sized enterprises that are members of the Swedish Inventor?s Association, focusing on patent information. The study examines the use of patent information and which barriers the companies have to patent information.

Property companies? results are affected by unrealized changes in value of properties. Since market values are never completely reliable there is always a risk with revaluation with property´s value. The fair value is determined only when a sale is completed. The paper studies how well the Swedish listed property companies reported under the accounting standard, IAS 40.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to present an overview of the Swedish listed companies and their compliance with the Code and its normative rules for independent decision-making. Methodology: The authors have read and delved into the Swedish Code of Corporate Governance. The authors have chosen to study the enforcement of the code based on independent bracing guidelines. The study was conducted through a combined quantitative and qualitative approach. The study is based on primary data collected in the form of companies' corporate governance reports, which have been supplemented by structured interviews.Frame of reference: Swedish ownership structure and concentrated ownership, self regulation and normative guidelines, institutional theory and earlier research on this topic.Empirical foundations: A comparison of the selected companies has been based on the independence rules of the Swedish Code of Corporate Governance. A specific company has been presented with the company's application of the code, interviews have also been done with this company to increase the understanding of the empirical basis further.Conclusions: There are several flaws with the code and how it is applied today.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the occurrence of Cosmetic Earnings Management (CEM) among Swedish companies. CEM refers to the small upward rounding of reported net income to reach cognitive reference points. Important cognitive reference points are multiples of ten (N*10^x) of reported net income and rounding towards these has been documented in other markets around the world over the last 20 years. The occurrence of CEM on the Swedish market is studied using digital analysis, frequency testing and Benford's law. Firstly, reported net income of publicly traded companies between 1996 and 2010 is examined.

Since 1983 all Swedish companies are legally obliged to allow themselves to be audited. Recently the question of whether small companies should be subject to this or not has frequently been discussed. Many find it superfluous and think it ought to be abolished. In England small companies no longer have to be audited. However, in a study by Jill Collis it has been shown that a large number of companies choose to be audited although there is no obligation for them to do so.

Title: What´s the problem? - A study of revenue recognition in IT-consultant     companiesProblem: How do the chosen IT-consultant companies recognize their revenues? What difficulties do the interviewed companies experience in connection with the revenue recognition?Purpose: The purpose of this empirical study is to study how companies in the IT-consultant industry recognize revenues, and to investigate if the companies perceive any difficulties in connection with the revenue recognition. The aim of the study is to give useful advice and guidelines to companies in the IT-consultant business based on the extracted result. Method: The survey took place in Vasteras and started with a preliminary interview with a certified accountant, who had great knowledge of the subject revenue recognition. Then seven companies from the IT-consultant industry were selected, whereof two took part in semi constructed interviews.  Study of the other five companies? ways to recognize revenue was made through their annual reports.   Conclusion: One of the studied companies recognizes their revenues according to the rules in IAS 18, which is because it is listed on the stock exchange.

Service branding is a subject that has been excluded from the traditional branding theory. Our main purpose with this paper is to distinguish what characterizes service branding. To do this, we have looked in to both service marketing theory as well as branding theory. We have also looked at the existing theory concerning service branding. Six qualitative interviews have been performed to explain what characterizes service branding.

Bankruptcy is a problem for the society in form of high costs for including suppliers, customers, employees, investors, banks, insurance companies etc. The purpose of this study is to confirm or dismiss a bankruptcy prediction model that has been developed in a previous Swedish study, in order to predict bankruptcy with help of specific key figures. The model has only been tested in a larger perspective where the population consisted of all small firms in Sweden, in this study the model´s reliability is tested by that it instead been applied to a minor perspective, where the population only includes Stockholm. With a quantitative approach of 12 different key figures from a total of 60 Swedish smaller registered companies in Stockholm between the years 2005-2007, has been studied. The companies are divided into two groups, companies with good financial health and companies that have ended up in bankruptcy.The results shows that the model is applicable in a smaller population, but some of the key figures do not generate essential or any type of information about bankruptcy, but the majority of the key figures in the model did.