Title: Competition for small audit firms ? a qualitative study on possible competitive strategies and how the upcoming changes will influence competition on the audit market    Subject: Auditing Tutor: Margareta Paulsson  Authors: Per Dahlström and Martin Holmberg Purpose: The purpose of this study is to develop an understanding how smaller auditing firms use competitive strategies and why. The result aims to work as a support for owners and leaders of audit firms as they make decisions of how to compete in the future. We would also like to explore how smaller audit firms view the change of the mandatory audit, that is, our intentions are also to examine how they think the consequences on the market will be and their view on its affect on the competition of the market.    Methodology: Our methodological approach was characterized by a hermeneutic approach in order to explain and understand why the smaller audit firms do what they do. Our approach is a combination of inductive and deductive as it allows us to develop an understanding of the subject, then gather our empirical data and from that draw valid conclusions.

This work studied the information flow and information handling among different parties. The study focused on how educational materials on national tests from The Swedish National Agency for Education is managed by school principals and teachers and how the information is passed on to students. The data material was based on observations and interviews at two different high schools. Six teachers and their classes and principals participated in the study. The Agency was also interviewed.

The RoHS Directive was introduced in order to restrict hazardous substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment, EEE. It currently restricts the use of six hazardous substances/compounds; cadmium, lead, mercury, hexavalent chromium, PBB, and PBDE. The RoHS Directive currently includes category 1-7 and 10 in the categories of EEE listed in Annex 1A to the WEEE-Directive (Waste of EEE). The aim with the report is to investigate and elucidate prospects and obstacles to increase the scope of RoHS. This report mainly considers the inclusion of product categories 8 (Medical Devices) and 9 (Monitoring and Control Instruments).

The thesis strives to answer the question whether there are any differences between how young customers, in comparison with older, are affected by brands when buying different products. The purpose is to get a clearer idea about the brands' importance in the future and in that way also to give guidance to companies about how to best market themselves and there products.To answer the question, an experiment was conducted with 480 respondents taking a survey where they had to rate a product after reading a short text about it. Some of the texts stated that a specific brand was behind the product while some said the product was produced by an unknown brand.The result of the study was that young people showed a greater propensity of rating products with a brand higher than products without brands, in comparison with the older respondents. This gives reason to believe that brands progressively will become an even more important tool for marketers and an unmatched asset for companies in the future..

Vattendirektivets (2000/60/EG) krav på skydd och bevarande av vattenkvalitet i vattenförekomster har kraftigt ökat medvetenheten om vattenhänsyn och vattenvård i det svenska skogsbruket. Världsnaturfonden lanserade hösten 2011 tillsammans med skogsägarföreningarna (Södra skogsägarna, Mellanskog, Norrskog och Norra skogsägarna) vattenhänsynsverktygen NPK+ (Naturvärde, Påverkan, Känslighet och Plusvärde) och blå målklassning som hjälpmedel till skogsägare för att ta och synliggöra vattenhänsynen. Relevansen hos verktygen NPK+ och blå målklassning att identifiera och klassificera vattendrag efter vattenkvalitet undersöktes med antalet fiskarter som indikator på vattenkvaliteten. 55 vattendrag i Krycklanåns avrinningsområde strax utanför Vindeln i Västerbottens inland inventerades med NPK+ och blå målklassning i mitten av september 2011. Fältinventeringsdata analyserades statistiskt med fiskartsförekomst från en tidigare elfiskeinventering i vattendragen.

The securities market was to undergo a major change with the entry of MiFID I in November 2007. EU´s establishment if the directive sets high standards for investment firms to establish internal guidelines in accordance with MiFID I. As right now, the securities market is facing further change with the proposal for MiFID II.MiFID II seeks to overcome MiFID I´s shown deficiencies. The greatest need for change are the rules that secure investor protection, with specific focus on regulation on information service from investment firms to customers. This essay deals with the rules on information service enacted in MiFID I compared to the changes presented in MiFID II to investigate whether the changes could strengthen investor protection as desired.MiFID II is a more detailed framework than its precursor.

This study is an attempt to examine a hospital library's difficulties in reaching customers with consumer health information. The method was a case study of the consumer health service in the hospital library in Västerås, a town in Sweden. Qualitative interviews, observations and written material were used. The approach was from the actor's point of view with the intention to look upon the problem with the eyes of those who work at the hospital with information to patients, that is librarians and medical staff. Theories about marketing in service organizations and how to develop new services were used in the study, as well as theories about communication and different cultures within organizations of different kinds like the library and the hospital.

The purpose of this thesis was to create a communication interface which insures that all the right hardware is in its right place in the IS-node before Ericsson AB delivers it to their customers. One of the first parts of this work was to make sure it is possible to create such an interface for IS. This thesis then explains how to construct an interface that retrieves information from the IS-node into a C#-application. One important part of this project was to collect information and transform it to an XML output with the purpose of then being used in other applications in the future. The application created within the scope of the thesis exports the information retrieved from the IS-node in an XML-file or a text-file.

This report presents an investigation and a new design of Habo Ullspinneris old industrial premises. It is based on the owners visions and wishes, two questionnaires and also considering of the historical value.Habo Ullspinneri was founded in 1882 by Frans August Johansson and was moved to the location it has today, near Hökån in Habo, three years later. The electricity that the machines in the industry needed was extracted from the small river that is placed under the building. In 1960 there was a fire and the result became the end of the industrial activity that had taken place in the building.There is no steady activity in the building at the moment. It is nowadays temporarily used as an agriculture museum and as a store room.

In this study, we have examined how Swedish tour operators are using social media as part of their marketing plan. Our purpose was to find out which strategies they use in the area of social marketing. The companies that were examined were Ving, Fritidsresor and Jambo tours, and the social network site that the research focused on was Facebook. The examination was conducted with a content analysis of the companies' Facebook pages and qualitative, structured interviews with the companies. The aim was to compare the various tour operators Facebook pages in order to get a broader overview of the companies marketing strategies.

This thesis has been performed for the company System Andersson as a part of the bachelors degree in information technology at the School of Engineering in Jönköping. The thesis is based on the development of an iPhone application.System Andersson has an application for Android that is being used for their MPS system (material and production control system). Their customers, however, have also showed interest in being able to use this application for iPhone.The students handle the subject of iOS developing, including the design of the application, the use of the development language Objective-C, the use of the scripting language of Json used for server connections and SQL.The primary goal with this thesis has been to improve the students knowledge in such subjects as application development for mobile platforms, in such areas as Xcode, which is the development platform that Apple uses and Objective-C, which is the development language being used. The result of this thesis is an almost fully functional iOS application, similar to the Android application with some functionality missing..

Farmers Cooperative has in recent years developed from national markets to cross-border, international, collaborations. One example is the merger between the Swedish dairy company Arla and Danish MD Foods, where the companies collectively are sought to reduce transaction costs and thus improve efficiency. The Swedish market for commodities (fertilizers and pesticides) in agriculture has for many years been dominated by a few large players, with little opportunity for grain associations and local grain companies to offer their customers a varied range of commodities with a competitive pricing.To change this state, a majority of Swedish and Danish grain associations and local grain companies have established a trans-national cooperation. Through the establishment of the organization DLA Agro, they offer their customers a good variety of products with competitive prices. This study investigates thus according to the theory of cooperative models to what extent and how the DLA Agro helps to create benefits for the Swedish member companies.

The aim of this study was to examine consumers and producers view on beverages and it?s meaning for Skåne (a region in southern Sweden) and how to create a strong culinary region using beverages. It gets more common to connect food and tourism, where food and beverages can be used to attract visitors. The research methods used were qualitative and quantitative and the data was collected by survey and semi-structured interviews. The respondents weren?t aware of current beverage projects in the region.

This paper is an assessment of whether the Nordic countries constitute an optimum currency area (OCA) or not. Hodrick Prescott-­?filtered data of real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and rate of employment are used to investigate the similarity of business cycles between the target countries through a series of correlation analysis with Sweden as the base reference country and also by using a linear regression model. Additionally there is an evaluation of trade volume and labour mobility between the countries. Our results indicate that Iceland had the least similar business cycles within the Nordic countries and that the area should therefore possibly comprise Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. .

This is a study about how realtors or estate agents market their services in social media. Social media is an upcoming channel in marketing and is becoming more important every day. The user generated content on internet is a new way of communication where companies don?t have to be considered as soulless, if companies use it correctly. This study investigates estate agents efforts to market their services in these channels and how they do it.