Background: Today small business firms represent a considerable part of swedish economy, and the number of Small firms has steadily increased the last ten years in relation to the total employment. The fact that there are firms willing to grow, it ought to be interesting observing their motives of growth, and what kind of strategies that can be identifiable in these firms. Purpose: To examine the motives of growth in small business firms, and to study which growth strategies the firms use when expanding their business. Realization: The study is accomplished through telephone interviews with six small business firms in the province of Jönköping. The firms contain between 10-49 employees.

Entrepreneurial firms face unique challenges in attracting and acquiring human resources due to difficulties associated with resource constraint and organization legitimacy, often described as liabilities of "smallness" and "newness". The aim of this paper is to examine the "smallness" and "newness" challenges met by small entrepreneurial firms, which strategies they apply to counter these challenges, and if these strategies can be explained by the firm's HR philosophy. Since few studies on Human Resource Management (HRM) in small entrepreneurial firms exist, a framework combining theory from the research fields of HRM, entrepreneurship and Small firms has been developed. Employing a qualitative case study design of five small Swedish entrepreneurial firms, our findings demonstrate four "smallness" and "newness" challenges and seven strategies that either counteract or prevent them. Furthermore, results showed that the strategies applied seemed to have no significance with regards to the firm's HR philosophy.

Auditing demands knowledge in many diverse areas. To be able to provide all this knowledge it is necessary for the auditor to have access to persons with special skills. Through these contacts the auditor builds up a business network that brings support in the daily work. Our purpose with this study is to find out how auditor?s network in big auditing firms is organized and to show how they use their network.

Auditing demands knowledge in many diverse areas. To be able to provide all this knowledge it is necessary for the auditor to have access to persons with special skills. Through these contacts the auditor builds up a business network that brings support in the daily work. Our purpose with this study is to find out how auditor?s network in big auditing firms is organized and to show how they use their network.

Management consulting firms are an important part of the knowledge economy and they capitalize on the analytical ability and knowledge of their employees. Much research have been made on large consulting firms and their management of knowledge, but little is known about how small consultancies manage their knowledge. Even less is known about the management of knowledge in small consultancies specialized in change management. These firms rely solely on senior consultants and focus on the human aspect of organizational development. This thesis aims to show how these firms manage their knowledge and also provide an understanding of why.

Background: In the current labor and business policy debate in Sweden there is a major focus on the need for it to become easier to set up Small firms, and that it needs to become easier for Small firms to hire staff. In order to set up and run a business, funding is required. Firms can choose to work more or less actively with this issue, but they all need to relate to it. There are basically two ways to fund a business, either through equity or through debt. The ratio between these two sources is called the firm?s capital structure.Purpose: To chart the capital structure of Small firms in Sweden.

This is a qualitative study about small auditing firms and their customer relationships with SMEs. It contains a total of eight interviews, two with audit firms and six with SME?s.The purpose of the study is to understand how small audit firms manage their customer relationships and if it exist any expectation gaps between the audit firm and the SME.One of the conclusions is that trust is fundamental and gets stronger over time; it is also linked with the personal relationship between the business owner and the auditor/accountant..

AbstractBachelor Thesis, School of Economics at Vaxjo universityProgram: Enterprising and Business Development, EBD 362, Spring 2006Authors: Jens Asp, Vivianne Holmer, Carl-Marcus WahlstromExaminer: Stig G JohanssonKeywords: Services, cooperation, collaboration, customer offer, knowledgeTitle: Service firms in collaboration ? A study of the development of small service firms in collaborationNutek presented numbers during year 2005 witched show that the Swedish service sector, for the first time ever, was greater than the industrial sector. The kind of firms that develop most is small service firms without employees. The topic of interest in this bachelor thesis is to study how this kind of firms can develop. There is a great number of strategic options for firms to choose.

BackgroundA cost that lately has been discussed related to audit is the higher cost for auditing of small stock company. The question is if this cost is higher than the total utility of statutory audit and should it in that case be statutory. SRF says that the condition for small stock companies development is an abolishment of statutory audit. FAR consider that auditing is important for development and continuation.PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate whether there are any winners or losers among auditing firms and accounting firms in Sweden if the statutory audit for small stock companies abolish.MethodThe paper is both a qualitative and a quantitative study that is based on primary data made from an interview and a questionnaire investigation. ConclusionOur conclusion is that the big Winner is the accounting trade.

Several studies have investigated the relationship between different measures of innovative activity, such as patent statistics and R&D expenditures and some have looked deeper into the differences between large and Small firms regarding number of patents issued per employee or per R&D dollar. In this paper, the objective is to find out if there are any indications of a barrier to entry (due to economical factors, lack of knowledge etc) for Small firms to get into the field of patent handling. The approach is to first set up a hypothesis based on some simple assumptions about how firms would make decisions about whether to apply for a patent or not and thereafter use econometric methods in an empirical investigation. The data used for this study are figures on number of employees, number of patents granted and R&D expenditures for the Swedish firms in the pulp and paper industry. The main conclusion is that, based on the analysis of the data from this rather limited group of firms, no such barrier can be seen..

ABSTRACTTitle: First steps towards successful recruitment ? A study about a small Swedish firm?s recruitment strategyCourse: Bachelor Dissertation - LeadershipAuthors: Filip Agby, Damir Macanovic and Thomas MennerdahlAdvisor: Anders BillströmKey Words: Recruitment in Small firms, recruitment strategy, wrong fit recruitment, HRM, right staffProblem enunciation: What pros and cons could the choice of recruitment strategy mean for a small Swedish firm. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to give recruiters a better understanding of how a small Swedish company could use different recruitment strategies, together with systematic preparations, to affect the experienced recruitment result. Another purpose is to study if earlier mentioned international research about Small firms? recruitment strategies is applicable to a small Swedish firm.Theoretical framework: The section initiates by introducing the reader to the subject through describing Human resource management with a focus on recruitment.

The purpose of this study explains the relationship between corporate governance and the auditor's role in Swedish family firms with the definitions micro, small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and how this relationship is affected by the firms strategy. The study is based on a survey sent out to 3000 Swedish SMEs, of which 280 responses from family firms could be used. Our findings showed that the auditor in the family firms didn?t have a specific role or contributed added value to the firm, and that the strategy didn?t affect the outcome. Furthermore, we found correlation between the perceptions of the auditor's role and added value depending on the family firms type of corporate governance.

Social inequality, economic imbalances and greenhouse gas emissions are some of the greatest risks threatening society today. Society has become more aware of these risks and has started to demand firms to take more responsibility. During the last 30 years firms and mainly large firms has chosen to work with something called CSR. CSR stands for Corporate Social Responsibility which is the work firms engage with to take responsibility for environment and society as a whole. Scientists and business people has taken two sides towards CSR, one side argues that CSR cost more than it tastes and the other side argues that firms which engage with CSR will gain economic benefits.

Leaders have many tools in their toolbox when it comes to managing their firms, assuring that they are moving in the right direction. One of these tools is vision. Vision can be a powerful tool for steering a company. But to be able to use it fully, you must also understand how vision is best conveyed to employees and followers. If you understand the vision as a tool, you can fully utilize it.

There will be changes in the accounting regulations in Sweden. Firms will be categorised as K1-K4 firms depending on the size of the company. There will be different levels of accounting in the four categories. Firms will always have the possibility to choose a more advanced accounting regulation than the one they are obligated to due to their size. The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate which factors that influence the management in K3 firms in the choice between the K3 and K4 regulation.