Hur förklarar företag i telekombranschen sina resultat i årsredovisningarna?
En studie över Phonera, Tele2 och TeliaSoneras resultatförklaringar 2001-2007
Previously studies have shown that the way companies explain outcome in their annual report is not totally trustworthy. Studies show that the management has a self serving bias when they explain the result to give a positive image of the company. Our study is based on investigations into this phenomenon in the telecom market in Sweden. Turbulent market conditions with, among other, deregulation of the monopoly of fixed telephony and a huge technical evolution, which has led to an increase in competition, is the reason to why we have chosen to study the telecom market in Sweden. As a benchmark in our study the attribution theory will be used. The attribution theory describes your own or other people?s behaviour or actions. There is a self serving bias in attribution theory that means that there is a general tendency to attribute negative performance effects to external factors and favourable outcomes to internal factors. This tendency has been shown in annual reports. This behaviour has, according to earlier studies, been described as untrustworthy, which is a problem when the accounting information according to IASB has been slanted in order to claim that reliability has been realised.The purpose of this thesis is to describe and increase the knowledge of how companies in the telecom market under a period of change and media attention explain their outcomes in their annual report and as a result maybe identify eventual occurrence of self serving bias.To answer the purpose of this thesis, three companies have been chosen from the telecom market at Stockholm stock market, First North. The companies that have been chosen are Phonera, Tele2 and TeliaSonera. The company?s annual reports have been studied for seven years, from 2001 until 2007. In the annual report we have searched for attributional statements. An attributional statement was defined as ?a phrase or a sentence in which an outcome is linked with a reason or a cause for the outcome?. Every outcome is first valued as a positive or a negative result, depending on how the result is explained, they are classified into internal, external or accounting effects.The conclusion of this thesis is that the companies attribute positive outcomes more to internal than to external factors. The negative outcome is explained with both internal and external factors. The result shows therefore that companies have a self serving bias when explaining their positive outcome which means that the demand for accounting reliability is not realized.