Past research and government reports document that Security Force Assistance (SFA) provided by the United States to partner nations often failed to achieve the desired impact of developing the capacity and capability of the partner to defeat an insurgency and maintain security. A lack of research and available data inhibit the identification of reasons SFA programs fail. In this qualitative phenomenological study, the perspectives of recipients of training were explored to understand the factors that impact the development of capability and capacity as a result of SFA training. The agency theory was applied as the theoretical framework in the study to examine possible conflicting objectives between the United States and the partner nation. The research questions addressed the training effectiveness by exploring the perspectives of Sub-Sahara African soldiers that received training and senior leaders of their army that was engaged in counterinsurgency operations. Data from interviews with 17 soldiers that received training and 5 senior leaders were coded and compared to developed major themes. The results showed evidence of limited capability development but no capacity development as a result of SFA training. The primary reason for the lack of development was that the training provided skills the recipient army was not able to incorporate in its operations or sustain. The results of this study indicated issues that practitioners could address to improve SFA programs and achieve the desired impact. Creating more effective SFA programs will help develop partner nation security forces that can maintain security for their civilian populations in which human development can thrive and eliminate safe havens for terrorist organizations that threaten the United States and its allies.

This dissertation examines whether managers influence corporate boards of directors in their auditor selection, change, and compensation decisions. This topic is important because it addresses concerns that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) is not effective in eliminating managerial influence over auditor engagement decisions and that it may provide a false sense of security to investors. These concerns are based on the implicit assumption that managers prefer weaker governance oversight and lower audit quality. However, empirical research testing associations between managerial influence and audit-related decisions post-SOX is scarce and generally guided by agency theory. Incorporating agency, stewardship, and resource dependence perspectives, I find that managerial preferences for auditor selection are not aligned. Specifically, CEOs positively influence the selection of higher quality auditors, whereas CFOs have the opposite effect. Further, CEOs who hold powerful roles as chairs of their companies' boards of directors appear to mitigate the negative influence of CFOs and inside directors on audit quality. CEOs serving in dual roles also oppose auditor turnover when lower earnings quality prompt higher demand for audit effort. Finally, my study provides some evidence that management exercises downward pressures on audit fees, suggesting that managers utilize their authority beyond the regulations established by SOX to negotiate auditor compensation.

Our planet suffers from severe climate change and environmental issues has never been as important as it is now. Countries and communities come together to get involved in environmental questions and to work against a sustainable future. Companies are also expected to take act on this concern and incorporate sustainability into their business practices. To account for this, company’s disclosure a sustainability report and the numbers of companies that do so has increased rapidly the last years. From 2011 to 2013 there was almost a 50% increase of submitted sustainability reports. Since then, sustainability reporting has gone from optional to mandatory as a new law came into place in 2016. However, as companies start to disclosure sustainability reports more than ever before, new issues have arisen. The lack of regulation means that there is no guarantee for quality in the report and studies has shown that the stakeholders demand higher quality and more transparency of the sustainability report. Thus, it could be of importance for companies to produce reports of better quality in order to meet the demands of their stakeholders. Retaining a good relationship is crucial and it affects the growth of the company as it affects competitive advantage and the possibility to manage risks. Previous literature has found evidence that stakeholder pressure has influence on the transparency, which has similarities to quality, of the sustainability reports globally. With this thesis we aim to contribute with additional information to existing literature with a new geographical area, Sweden. We also aim to contribute to understanding of how quality of the sustainability reports can be determined. The critical assessment of the sustainability reports from each stakeholder becomes more important and previous literature has shown that different stakeholders have different effect on transparency in the sustainability reports. First and foremost, the purpose of this thesis is to investigate if the pressure from different stakeholder groups has an effect on the quality of the sustainability report. We intend to do so with the following research question: Does stakeholder pressure have an effect on the quality of sustainability reports? The companies will be split into four different groups based on the industry the company operates within and the sub-purpose is to see if there is any difference in the impact on the quality of the sustainability reports between the different groups. The quality will be determined by adherence level to the GRI G4 framework, how many other standards and guidelines the report is in compliance with and the existence of external assurance. The population is the 127 companies who has their reports available in the GRI database. We have conducted a quantitative study using a linear regression analysis on those 127 companies. The results led us to the conclusion that the relationship between stakeholder pressure and the quality of the sustainability reports cannot be explained by the model used in this thesis. A two-sample t test was conducted for each group of industry to see if there was any difference of the mean of quality if the companies was represented in the industry or not. The results showed us that the mean of the quality was higher for the companies operating in an environmentally sensitive industry.

Background: CEO duality has been a highly discussed topic for the last 20 years. The trend shows that more and more companies and countries move towards a separation of the roles of CEO and chairman of the board, but the empirical results show little evidence that this is beneficial for firm performance. The two main accepted theories explaining if CEO duality has a positive or negative effect on firm performance has been the agency theory and the stewardship theory Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explain CEO duality´s effect on firm performance based on the agency and stewardship theory by analyzing and comparing the U.S. as an agency country versus Sweden & Japan as a stewardship country. The study also aims to contribute with evidence if a stewardship country as Sweden instead would benefit from a CEO duality board structure.   Method: To be able to fulfill our purpose was a deductive approach used for this study. A quantitative empirical method is used and data for the various dependent, independent and control variables were collected in order to get the results needed to be able to give answers to the stated hypotheses. The data collection consists of data from a total of 200 firms. 100 firms were collected from the U.S. market in order to represent the agency theory where 50 had a CEO duality board structure and 50 without. Furthermore, data from 50 Swedish non-CEO duality companies and 50 Japanese firms with CEO duality were collected as the stewardship country. The data was obtained between the years 2016-2020. Conclusion: The result indicates that CEO duality on some performance variables have a negative impact on firm performance. Contrary to our first hypothesis, our results suggested evidence that CEO duality had a negative effect on firm performance in the stewardship country (Sweden & Japan). In line with our second hypothesis, our results also suggested that CEO duality also had a negative impact on firm performance in the agency country, USA. Although not all performance variables were significant, the thesis could not provide any support for the stewardship theory explaining CEO duality relationship on firm performance.

This study deals with the critical analysis of sustainable investments and, therefore, ESG practices on financial performance during the year 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit the financial market. The analysis examines sustainable investments in terms of their actual sustainability, risk, and earnings potential. For an improved tangibility of the findings, the overall market of the developed countries is represented by the two sample indices MSCI World and its sustainable benchmark MSCI World SRI. The analysis focuses on performance, volatility, and gross returns. Additionally, the knowledge of three financial experts supplements the analysis and connects the findings with their professional experience. The interview questions focused on the transparency and traceability of a sustainable investment product, the movement from shareholder-value to the stakeholder approach, the risk of sustainable investments, and the return analysis. The analysis shows that the Covid-19 pandemic has influenced the behavior of investors through the increasing importance of social and environmental topics. The analysis determines that intransparency and greenwashing of sustainable investments pose a danger to investors and are favored by a lack of legal framework conditions. Furthermore, the results reveal that ESG engagement reduces the agency problem and can be considered a stakeholder issue. An examination of market data shows that sustainable investments have a lower extreme risk and are thus subject to lower fluctuations in value during the year of the pandemic. In addition, sustainable investments show an abovemarket average development of value growth and gross returns. The conclusion is that sustainable investments are still in the development stage and need quickly binding legal regulations. Nevertheless, the lower risk, the above-market average performance, and the increasing demand point to a long-term establishment of sustainable investments in the market.

Warranty is a contract between a seller and a buyer. A warranty is also a signal for quality that can be utilized both by the seller and the customer. Even though the warranty is mainly something that is positive, a warranty also incurs risk to the warranty provider. The warranty cost can range from 2 - 15% of the net sales of a product which means that the warranty cost could potentially affect the company a lot. In order to handle such a risk, forecasting is a necessary tool. Forecasting is no exact science, and it’s impossible to forecast the exact future value due to uncertainty. Factors such as the quality of the product affect the cost of the claims, but unpredictable factors such as fraud, human factors and sales delay must also be considered. Forecasting error affects the warranty provider because the forecast sets the warranty reserve, which should cover the costs of the warranty claims. Overestimations and underestimations of the reserve have negative consequences for the company. The purpose of this study is to forecast a warranty reserve using a quantitative approach, in order to gain insight in to which model that could be best suited for complex products. The models that have been tested originate from causal and time-series methods, where the models tested consider different aspects of the data. The primary data used comes from archive data and to determine the forecast error, error measurements have been utilized. The time series method exponential smoothing Holt’s- Winter’s method was the one that performed best considering the error measurements. From the models tested, it has been shown that a more complex model does not necessarily mean a more accurate result. To be able to decrease the forecasting errors, a model considering unpredictable factors such as fraud could be the answer which makes it interesting to investigate. / Garanti är ett kontrakt mellan en säljare och en köpare. En garanti används ocks. för att signalera kvalitet vilket kan vara användbart för både säljaren och kunden. Även då garanti främst är något positivt innebär garanti ockå. en risk för den som erbjuder garantier då kostanden att erbjuda garanti kan sträcka sig mellan 2–15% av nettoresultatet av försäljningen va en produkt vilket betyder att garanti kan påverka företaget mycket. Man anv.nder sig av prognostiseringar för att kunna hantera den risken garantin bär med sig. Prognostisering är svårt och det är omöjligt att prognostisera det exakta framtida värdet på grund utav osäkerhet. Faktorer så som kvaliteten av produkten påverkar antalet och kostnaderna på garantianspr.ken men oförutsägbara faktorer så som bedrägeri, mänskliga beteenden och fördröjning av försäljning av produkter måste också tas i akt. Prognostiseringsfel på verkar den part som erbjuder garantin då prognosen används för att lägga undan monetära medel till garantireserven för att täcka garantianspråk. Underestimat och överestimat har negativa konsekvenser för företaget. Ändamålet med denna studie är att prognostisera garantireserven med hjälp av kvantitativa metoder för att få en inblick i vilka modeller som fungerar bra för en komplex produkt. Modeller som har testat kommer fr.n tidsserie metoder och kausala metoder, då de olika metoderna tar hänsyn till olika aspekter i data. Primärdata som används kommer från arkivdata och för att kunna bestämma felen på de prognoser som gjorts används fel mått. Tidsserie metoden exponential smoothing Holt’s-Winter’s var den som gav bäst resultat på fel måtten. Resultatet av modellerna som testats visar på att en mer komplex modell inte behöver vara den som ger bäst resultat. För att kunna minska på prognostiseringsfelen kan en modell som tar hänsyn till oförutsägbara faktorer så som bedrägeri vara lösningen vilket är en intressant sak att undersöka.

This thesis examines the relationship between corporate liquidity and dividend policy. The corporate liquidity is measured by proven liquidity ratios and the dividend policy is divided into cash dividends and share repurchases. In order to examine the possible relationship between corporate liquidity and dividend policy, public European firms are examined. Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the UK are selected based on the similarities in the regulation and market structure in the countries. The thesis aims at furthering the knowledge on the role played by corporate liquidity for dividend policy. In our ambition to investigate the before-mentioned relationship we use a panel data set over five years extracted from Datastream. Any newfound evidence on the subject can help investors, creditors, and other stakeholders in evaluating firms based on their liquidity.  We used a deductive quantitative method to analyse the chosen relationship. The study concluded a significant relationship between corporate liquidity and dividend, although negative as opposed to our expectations. With regards to share repurchase, no significant effect was found from corporate liquidity. Free cash flow on the other hand appears to have a positive effect on the amount of share repurchases carried through. We discuss mentioned relationships and attribute them to the mature firms in this sample and the liquidity levels of mature firms.The theories supporting these findings are Agency Theory, Pecking Order Theory, Shareholder Theory, Stakeholder Theory, Liquidity Preference Theory.

This thesis investigates the relationship between sustainability performance and ownership structure, measured using the ESG (environmental, social and governance) rating and ownership structure divided into four different ownerships (family/founder, institutional, corporate and governmental). In the pursuit of analysing the relationship between the ESG rating and the ownership structure, this study investigates publicly listed companies within the Nordic countries.This thesis has the aim of examining if a publicly listed company can use sustainability ratings and ownership structure, to understand broader market dynamics and help the manager thru this maximise firm value. Results from this could help them and the public in decision making processes around sustainability initiatives and how these characteristics influence the Nordic market dynamics, by having a better understanding of how the ESG ratings are prioritised among different ownership structures. This knowledge would allow management and the public to better understand how the ESG rating affects firm’s sustainability value as well as how market dynamics of this information is related to the market as a whole and direct competition.Using secondary data collected from Refinitiv database and Nasdaq, this thesis is a deductive and quantitative research that analyses companies for the target year 2020. In addition, this research can be considered to be a historic study.The findings of this research indicate a causal relation between sustainability performance and ownership structure, leading to the conclusion that a different ownership structure might influence and lead to a different score on the scale of sustainability performance. Furthermore, the findings indicate that the governmental ownership structure has the highest positive effect on sustainability performance.Concluding with discussing how this research contributes to the current field of knowledge on the topic through analysing the results using the legitimacy, shareholder, stakeholder and agency theory. The results are aligned with the legitimacy theory on ownership structure and the stakeholder theory. Additionally, the shareholder and the agency theory help with explaining why some structures put less value on sustainability performance than others.From the results one can conclude that sustainability performance is of importance to a varying degree among the different ownership structures. This tells us that there is still a gap in understanding why different ownership structures engage in different sustainability initiatives and future research is needed to examine why different structures engage in it over others.

The 2008-2009 global financial crisis resulting in some banks collapsing has raised questions about the corporate governance of financial institutions. Some bank managers lack an understanding of the role of corporate governance in preventing bank failures. In this multiple case study, data were collected through interviews and triangulated with annual reports to explore the strategies some bank managers need to improve their understanding of the role of corporate governance in preventing bank failures in Zimbabwe. The 7 study participants were purposefully recruited from a larger population of 19 bank managers responsible for corporate governance and compliance operating in Zimbabwe between 2009 and 2015. This study was grounded in the concept of corporate governance using the agency theory. The central research question explored strategies bank managers can employ to improve their understanding of the role of corporate governance in preventing bank failures in Zimbabwe. The transcribed interviews were coded to generate themes and validated through member checking. Four themes emerged from the research: the need for improvement on compliance to corporate governance policies and regulations, recruitment of qualified and competent directors who should be independent non executive in majority, risk management and internal control, and training, education, and awareness of best practices. This study may have a positive social impact in that a stable and profitable banking environment creates and sustains employment and results in an improvement in the individuals' standard of living.

Executive compensation and its issues are a very sensitive subject, to be taken with apinch of salt, but it is above all a fascinating subject, which deserves a more globalunderstanding from people. Our study thus aims to determine to what extent executivecompensation and its structure, which may seem complex at first glance, play a role inthe risk aversion of executives. Our study demonstrates that there are more predominantexternal factors than compensation that influence an executive's risk aversion.Previous literature contains and exposes a large theoretical framework in our researcharea about risk aversion, and some factors that could have consequences on it. However,it has never been estimated and conducted through the interviews of people that candescribe the phenomena they have to deal with on a daily basis: executives andCompensation & Benefits Specialists. The emphasis on the practical point of view theycould provide was a key point of our approach.This thesis was directed with a qualitative study to understand perception and explainingfactors on the value of risk aversion by top managers. The semi-interviews completedgave data from various points of view in terms of roles in the company, sector of activityor country of the firm. Established from our review of previous research, the interviewguide evoked seven main themes to enable us to answer our research question.Literature search permitted us to highlight how risk aversion could be seen as a parameterthat needed leverage from the principal, rooting on the agency theory and its solution,with the optimal contract. We identified factors that could impact the risk aversion ofmanagers on top of the executive compensation. These four factors: innovation,information sharing, temporality and external factors went under analysis, linkingprevious studies and our data to explain, evaluate and understand how they couldinfluence risk aversion.Our study brings a real added value to the previous research. Indeed, on the theoreticallevel, our study allows us to know that it is not compensation that has the most prominentleverage effect on the risk aversion of executives. Beyond this theoretical benefit that thisresearch brings, it also brings a practical benefit since it will allow the managers of listedcompanies to better understand the stakes of a compensation structure, in particular thatof risk aversion. It provides companies with the keys to conceptualizing a compensationstructure in accordance with their culture and long-term objectives.