Background: It is necessary for a company to hold some unique and irreplicable competitive advantage in order to be able to succeed in a market. In a market where public procurement is an important part the competitive advantages will be characterized by the fact that some of the participants on the market are public organizations and that their actions as for procurement fall under the legislation LOU. The characteristics of competitive advantage also depend on and change with continuous changes on a market. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to study the competitive advantages that are presenton a current market characterized by public procurement and how these are created. The purposes is also to based on the trends on the market today study and predict the nature of the competitive advantage on the market in the future as well as the changes that we think will occur on the relevant market.

AbstractTitle: The Swedish real estate companies choices of valuation within investment properties and its further effects on the qualitative characteristics of accounting.-A study of the Swedish real estate companies listed and non - listed on the stock market, after the application of the international rule board.Background and Problem: From January 2005, all companies, listed on a stock market within the European Union, are required to prepare their consolidated accounts using common set of International Accounting Standards, IAS/IFRS. In Sweden, this opportunity has also been given to non-listed companies, to voluntary implement these rules in their consolidated accounts. One difference between Swedish accounting rules and contemporary International rules, deals with the accounting treatment of investment properties, which foremost affects the real estate market?s accounts. In contrast to the Swedish Financial Accounting Standards Council?s recommendation RR 24, the new standard, IAS 40, permits a choice between different accounting alternatives.

Background:It is always fascinating to observe the events that affect the stock market, especially as the numbers of influencing factors are so many and various. Political elections are important events in society and affect the corporate environment in different ways depending on which political party that is in power. This brings up the question of whether political elections are important enough to affect the stock market; and it is this question we intend to analyse in this paper.Purpose:The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether political elections affect the stock market and to discuss the reasons for any possible affect that might be found.Procedure:An appropriate and thoroughly tested method to investigate if an event affects the stock market or not, is to do an event study. Subsequently we chose to do an event study on whether the Swedish general elections in 2002 and 2006 affected the Stockholm Stock Exchange. In order to give the analysis more depth we have also chosen to interview people with knowledge of the stock market.

This paper investigates the science fiction novels of Swedish crime writer Per Wahlöö, most famous for his collaboration with his writing partner Maj Sjöwall on the ten Martin Beck mysteries. During two important years, 1964 and 1968, Wahlöö wrote the novels Murder On the 31st Floor and The Steel Spring, set in a near future land ruled by a social fascist power structure where political opposition is eradicated. The pretexted notion of this paper is that these novels consists of extensive quantities of criticism against the Swedish welfare state and the monopoly-capitalistic Swedish press during the sixties. Through the lens of science fiction theory and the notion of the novels as historical sources this paper concludes that PerWahlöö´s science fiction becomes a bridge between the classic Swedish detective novel and the new social critic crime fiction in the style of Sjöwall-Wahlöö and others. The novels are also representations of the historical process in the mid-sixties during the radical turn: the sci-fi novels as social criticism of the contemporary society ? an utopian flare.

As of 1 July 2008 the revised Swedish Code of Corporate Governance applies to all Swedish companies whose shares are traded on a regulated market in Sweden. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate whether the introduction of the revised Code has affected the disclosure practice among Swedish companies. We investigate a sample of 43 small and mid cap companies listed on the OMXS Exchange that has previously not been covered by the regulation. We develop a disclosure index, measuring the disclosure level in annual reports before and after the introduction of the Code. The results from the study show that disclosure level has not increased after the introduction of the Code.

The aim of this study is to explore if and how library managers market their competence in communication with local politicians. It is also our aim to find a definition of the competence of librarians. The report identifies and describes problems and possibilitieswith marketing of competence to politicians on the basis of one Swedish municipality's library managers. In order to fulfil this aim we have used a literature study on marketing, competence, the political process and the librarian profession. We have alsocarried out an empirical study where we interviewed ten library managers in onemunicipality, seven politicians in the same municipality and ten representatives for central professional organisations mainly in Sweden.The results are that most library managers don't market their competence because they don?t believe in marketing competence.

The market of electronic commerce is under constant growth and change. New technology makes it possible for the consumer to obtain digital products in a quick and easy manner. Record companies adjust more and more to this ever changing environment. The purpose of this thesis was to evaluate how Swedish retailers of MP3 work with bundling strategies. A case study was conducted on two Swedish retailers, CDON and Homedownloads.

The competition has increased with the establishment of the new banks and the credit institutes taking on the market, the big banks are no longer alone on the market.In speed with the increased range, have also the marketing and the recruit of new bank customers become more driven.Bank customers with lacks in the Swedish language, is a segment with potential which doesn?t get used by the banks and in turn of that the bank customers doesn?t get their needs satisfied.The purpose with this survey was to analyze if the four largest banks, Föreningssparbanken, Handelsbanken, Nordea and SEB had prepared strategies that were directed to bank customers with lacks in the Swedish language. In those cases the banks had strategies, respective measures were presented.Furthermore the bank customers with lacks in the Swedish language were studied if they experienced that the banks were using measures to satisfy their language needs in contact with the banks and presented the benefit of them.The information about the banks strategies was assembled through interviews with persons from each bank. The bank customers experience was assembled through a questionnaire survey.The result showed that the banks hade different strategies for reaching out to these customers, it was from showing understanding to multicultural offices. Half of the customers appreciated that the banks pressured themselves for them by being patient, explained the services and in some cases had staff that could several language.

The purpose of our master?s thesis is to study the diversity discourse, used in Sweden, particularly the so-called ethnic diversity at the work place discourse.Our aims are to map and analyze the conceptualization of difference used in the diversity rhetoric. We intend to pursue our aim by studying the rhetoric of diversity, used for diversity promotion in the private and public sectors. Also, we will investigate into what conceptualizations of difference are used in the organizations in the name of ?diversity?.

In this thesis an explorative study was undertaken with the aim to study how a number of private care providers, as well as politicians and officials from councils in and around the Stockholm and Uppsala counties, think about the future of the Swedish elderly care from a property perspective, i.e. homes for the elderly. The analysis shows that there is a demand for capacity in 6 out of 16 municipalities, and that the property is an important part of this capacity, and the fulfillment of it. This was mainly due to the cost of capital, but also because of several other factors such as lack of land, a wish to guide the design, ideology, and in many cases a wish to use the property as an instrument of domination to control private health care providers.Also, the property was show to be connected to economic competition, to freedom of choice, and to quality. The problems related to the property in the market for elderly care still remains to be solved.

The purpose of this study is to identify a successful way of expanding a business on a global market, focusing on innovation products. An analysis was also made to see how internationalization theories are useful in businesses with innovation products. Four companies have been interviewed where two of them have innovation products (Proline AB and Q-Med AB) and the others are widely successful in exporting to a global market (Safegate Group and Weda Poolcleaners AB). Furthermore four interviews have been made with support organizations that have great experience in helping companies in this area (Svenska Uppfinnareföreningen, Almi Företagspartner AB, Exportrådet and The Swedish-American Chambers of Commerce).One of the results that can be identified is the diverse view and will to expand the business. The inventor often has a born global strategy in mind whereas the helping organizations rather expand step by step and only to one country at a time.

The aim of this master thesis is to investigate the development on the Swedish book market for the beginning of the 21st century. During the 21st century a lot of things have happened on the Swedish market for library books. Twenty years ago in reality only one company existed that could deliver books with the demanded equipment to the libraries, but in year 2010 there are four companies offering the same service. Other news during this time is bookshops on internet. We found this development interesting and therefore decided to contact the four companies as well as six libraries to find out what they thought of the new situation.

The aim of this thesis is to map important strategies and factors that a firm, in this case Gunnebo Lifting AB can use when establishing themselves at the Russian market. The Russian market is today considered to be an emerging market. Within this study several areas of theory connected to entering new markets have been touched upon. These areas are market analysis, relationships and networking, internationalization processes, distribution chains, export issues and finally cultural distances. The empirical data for this thesis were collected through qualitative interviews.The results that arose when analyzing the theories combined with the empirical data pointed towards five strategies and factors of importance.

Trade is the driving force for economic development. A greater equity in international trade can improve the livelihoods and the well being of producers in developing countries. The small-scale farmers have limited resources and have difficulties to get access to the international market. As a result of this, the Fair Trade movement has been developed and has now formed a trading partnership between the producer and the consumer. This study analyses if the Fair Trade movement can be a way for the workers in developing countries to achieve more justice in their production manner in the international trade of cut flowers and continue to be an important competitor of these products, but with better livelihood conditions. My method has been to do a comprehensive literature study of the Fair Trade movement, in which I describe the certification process, and the market of Fair Trade in Sweden.

Flexible working conditions is used extensively in organizations today as a way tocreate flexibility for the employer. Recently we?ve been reading in the newspapersthat this approach is a growing problem and the EU has warned Sweden twice thatabuse of these forms of employment must be stopped. The Government has recentlysubmitted a proposed rule change to reduce the possibility of stacking one temporarycontract after another. Borlänge kommun makes themselves more flexible with theintermittent employments.