abstract: 现今的理论研究及实践表明，供应链上各个企业进行协调运作的基础是节点企业间有效信息进行高效传递。但供应链上下游企业在合作过程中通常存在信息不完全对称现象、牛鞭效应等问题，供应链中信息传递的实时性及真实性受到较大影响，这也是导致供应链管理整体效率不高的原因之一。因此，供应链伙伴间信息共享问题已是国内外学者普遍关注的焦点。本文旨在针对目前我国家居供应链企业间信息沟通不畅、信息共享不充分的问题及其理论研究的不足，来开展针对影响家居供应链企业间信息共享因素的实证研究。本文基于家居供应链这一特殊的行业供应链，建立基于家居供应链企业间信息共享关键影响因素理论模型，通过实证方法来寻找影响供应链企业间信息共享的关键因素及其具体影响程度。 在已有文献的基础上，本文提出信任、共同愿景、信息技术能力、渠道权力结构与信息共享间影响关系的概念模型，并对长三角及珠三角地区家居供应链经销商企业进行问卷调查研究。最后在回收的 164 份有效问卷基础上通过数据分析来验证假设。研究结果显示：(1)不论是家居工厂与经销商间还是家居卖场与经销商间，信任对共享信息的内容和质量都有显著正向影响。(2)家居工厂与经销商间的共同愿景对彼此间信息共享内容有显著正向影响作用，但对信息共享质量作用不明显。而家居卖场与经销商间的共同愿景对信息共享的内容和质量都有正向影响作用。(3)经销商的信息技术能力对双方间信息共享的内容和质量都有显著影响，同时，还能促进家居工厂与经销商之间的信任，间接影响双方的信息共享程度。(4) 家居卖场与经销商间的渠道权力对双方间的信任程度有显著影响，而对双方间的信息共享没有直接影响。 本研究主要研究贡献在于：发现影响家居供应链信息共享的关键因素，弥补了现有文献对中国供应链企业信息共享影响因素研究的不足，特别聚焦于家居供应链；从供应链上下游整体角度出发，探讨了中国情境下信任、共同愿景、信息技术能力和渠道权力结构与信息共享之间的作用机理。 / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Business Administration 2019

Magister Philosophiae - MPhil / Task based language instruction has generated some debate among researchers. Some argue in favour of task based language instruction by claiming that tasks focus learners' attention on meaning and thus facilitate second language acquisition (Prahbu, 1987; Pica and Doughty, 1986; Pica, Kanagy, and Falodun,1993). Others argue against task based language instruction and call into question the concept of comprehensible input, the idea upon which the whole task based approach is based (Sheen, 1994).

Background: The audit report has for a long time been the subject of discussion with basis in the financial scandals that resulted in reduced confidence in the audit. Earlier changes have taken place over the years without standard setters succeeding in satisfying users' need for information. This has resulted in a decision from the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board to implement changes which include more entity-specific information. These changes are intended to make it easier for users, but since standard setters have previously overridden users' needs, it is appropriate to question whether the changes this time will have a significant impact on users’ decision making. Furthermore, research about the changes has been contradictory if they are of significance to users. The users this study is focused on is creditors. Purpose: The purpose of the study is to understand how the changes in the current audit report are perceived by the users and the underlying factors to these perceptions. Method: For the empirical basis, a qualitative approach has been used in which semi-structured interviews have been conducted with 10 respondents from the corporate sector at bank. The respondents are business advisors, credit analysts, managers and customer managers. Conclusion: The study’s result show that the changes in their entirety have not affected respondents’ decision making to a great extent. Although the entity-specific information has been shown to facilitate the users needs and reduced the information gap, the changes in general have had a slight practical impact. It is explained by the fact that most respondents do not work with listed companies and therefore are not affected by key audit matters. These respondents wish a similar section for the companies they are responsible for. Regarding remaining changes, more standardized text has been added, which means there is still information the users lack. Information the users lack is mainly entity-specific information regarding these changes, as well as specific information about the audit. It is therefore necessary to refrain from standardized language also in the other sections of the audit report. The standard setters are moving in the right direction in providing users with entity-specific information but have not effectively managed to reduce the information gap so far. The study also shows that the changes have not had any significant impact on the respondents’ confidence in the audit.

The previous audit report gained a lot of criticism since it contained to much standard text that failed to convey valuable information for users. This lead to IAASB implementing a new standard, called ISA 701-KAM, which was implemented by all listed companies in the end of 2016. The purpose of KAM is to make the audit report less standardized and instead provide transparent and entity-specific information. However, there are those who believe that the confidentiality duty, which is prerequisite to be able to perform an audit, can stand in contrast to the new standard.  In order to investigate this issue, we have interviewed auditors to get their view of how they have implemented and applied KAM in the audit report. Our results show that auditors are skeptical in regards to the audit report being as entity-specific and transparent as IAASB expect it to be, since there exist an underlying fear of overstepping TCD.

With the rise in popularity of ancestral research many people have had to search for some records abroad and are therefore reliant on access to archives in more than one country. One of the countries heavily reliant on archives abroad is Australia, a multicultural country that received many British settlers from 1788. The purpose of this master thesis is to understand the importance of accessing this archival information between Australia and England and how the international gaps between countries can make ancestral research difficult. The theoretical starting point for this study is Saar’s (2017) three genealogical dimensions which I will use to analyse the responses gained from the relevant actors within the field such as archivists and librarians, when trying to find out what can be done by them to help understand and bridge the gaps in ancestral research between countries. All data has been collected through online interviews with both Australian archivists and some selected libraries that have archival holdings. The results of the study show that Australians studying family history rely on access to England’s records because their pasts are otherwise incomplete without them. Not only this but there is a need to understand their own story in Australia’s complicated history. The study also shows that ancestral research needs both archivists, genealogists, librarians, and other history sleuths who can find and connect the information.

Ekonomisk information är användbar för samtliga företag och deras intressenter som beslutsunderlag och för att ge information om företagets ekonomiska ställning. Företag måste ta hänsyn till de olika intressenternas informationsbehov och intressen med den ekonomiska informationen för att kunna förse samtliga intressenter med relevant information. De anställda är en intern primär intressent som har väsentlig betydelse för ett företag. Dock har tidigare forskning mestadels fokuserat på företagets kommunikation av den ekonomiska informationen till de externa intressenterna. Därför är det intressant att istället studera hur kommunikationen av ekonomisk information till de anställda ser ut och om de anställda har tillräcklig kunskap angående den ekonomiska informationen. Syftet med denna uppsats blir följaktligen att skapa en förståelse för hur kommunikation av ekonomisk information ser ut internt i företag. Syftet uppnås genom kvalitativa intervjuer med både sändaren av den ekonomiska informationen samt de anställda, alltså mottagarna. Studiens resultat visar att det föreligger ett kunskapsgap på grund av den bristande interna kommunikationen av ekonomisk information. Detta har sin grund i att de anställda har begränsad kunskap angående den ekonomiska informationen och sändarna av den ekonomiska informationen inte alltid tar hänsyn till de anställdas kunskap. Resultatet visar också att det föreligger ett informationsgap även om de anställdas informationsbehov av den ekonomiska informationen anses vara uppfyllt. Detta beror på att det överlag inte finns tillräcklig med förståelse vad ekonomisk information innebär och därav uppstår ett informationsgap då de anställda inte förstår vilken ekonomisk information som behövs för att tillgodose deras intressen. / Economic information is useful for all companies and its stakeholders for decision-making and to provide information about the company’s financial position. The company has to consider the different needs of information and interests of the various stakeholders with the economic information in order to provide relevant information to all stakeholders. Employees’ are an internal primary stakeholder that plays an important role within a company. However, previous research has mostly focused on the company's communication of economic information to external stakeholders. Thus, it is interesting to study how communication of economic information to employees looks like and if employees have sufficient knowledge about the economic information. The purpose of this paper is to create an understanding of how communication of economic information looks within companies. The purpose is achieved through qualitative interviews with both the sender of the economic information perspective and the employees', the receivers. The result of the study shows that there is a gap of knowledge due to the deficient internal communication of economic information. This is due to the fact that employees have limited knowledge about the economic information and the senders of the economic information do not always take into account the employees' knowledge. This is because there is generally insufficient understanding of what economic information means and therefore an information gap arises because employees do not understand which economic information that is needed to satisfy their interests.

The primary purpose of the present study is to compare the effectiveness of the jigsaw task and information gap tasks in understanding new words and retaining them. Sixteen pupils aged between eleven and twelve were involved in the study and divided into two groups. They were allocated either a jigsaw task or an information gap task. This study consists of a pre-test, immediate post-test, delayed post-test as well as a questionnaire. The pupils were required to carry out the chosen tasks, tested immediately and then one week later. The results of the questionnaire are also discussed in order to establish the pupils’ attitudes towards their allotted tasks.   The results revealed marginally higher scores in the immediate post-test for pupils performing the information gap task in terms of recognizing the meaning of words. However, this advantage disappeared when it came to the depth of vocabulary knowledge and word meaning retention. Pupils performing jigsaw task outperformed group B in productive vocabulary knowledge and their retention. The gain in vocabulary among pupils who performed the jigsaw task is most evident in the delayed post-test. This result is consistent with the pupils’ assertion that they enjoyed doing the jigsaw task more than the information gap task. To sum up, the jigsaw task best promotes pupils understanding of words and their retention.

Abstract A housing society’s annual report is referred as the main document in which buyers can obtain information about the housing society’s financial position. However, previous research shows that households find it difficult to understand the financial information in an annual report.  In addition, the investigation on strengthened consumer protection in the cooperative flat market (SOU 2017:31) shows that buyer’s in Sweden have insufficient ability to understand the risks combined with a tenant-owner acquisition, which could have far-reaching consequences. One reason why households do not understand the annual report can be that the report does not contain sufficient descriptive information, which can demonstrate a prevailing information gap between the producer of information and its receivers. The purpose of this study is to create an adjusted annual report based on information from interviews with interest organizations for housing societies, and then examine whether a buyer’s financial understanding can be increased based on the expanded information in the adjusted management report.  In this study, qualitative interviews with individuals at different interest organizations to housing societies have been conducted, which has resulted in relevant information being added in a housing society’s management report, hoping to make the annual report more understandable. The adjusted annual report has then been tested in a quasi-experiment. In the experiment, participants in an experimental group received the adjusted annual report while participants in a control group received the original un-adjusted annual report. The participants in respective group then responded to questions about which extent they considered to understand the information in specific annual report. The results for each group have then been analyzed to measure and compare the understanding between both groups to see if there is a connection between extended information and increased understanding in an annual report. The result of the completed experiment showed that the average understanding of the annual report’s content was 81 percent higher in the experimental group compared to the control group. The conclusion is, therefore, that there is a connection between expanded information and increased understanding of the information in the adjusted annual report for the participants in the experiment. / Sammanfattning En bostadsrättsförenings årsredovisning ses som det huvudsakliga dokument där bostadsrättsköpare kan erhålla information om föreningens finansiella ställning. Ändå uppvisar tidigare forskning att hushåll har svårt att förstå den finansiella informationen i en årsredovisning. Dessutom påvisar utredningen om stärkt konsumentskydd på bostadsrättsmarknaden (SOU 2017:31) att bostadsrättsköpare i Sverige har en bristande förmåga att förstå de risker som ett bostadsrättsförvärv medför, något som kan få långt gående konsekvenser. En av anledningarna till att hushåll inte förstår årsredovisningen kan vara att rapporten inte innehåller tillräckligt med beskrivande information, vilket kan påvisa ett rådande informationsgap mellan utgivaren av information och användaren. Syftet med studien är att skapa en justerad årsredovisning utifrån information som intervjuer med individer hos bostadsrättsmarknadens intresseorganisationer genererat, för att sedan pröva om det går att öka en bostadsrättsköpares finansiella förståelse utifrån den utökade informationen i den justerade förvaltningsberättelsen. I denna studie har kvalitativa intervjuer genomförts med individer hos intresseorganisationer till bostadsrättsföreningar vilket har resulterat i att relevant information utökats i bostadsrättsförenings förvaltningsberättelse i hopp om att göra årsredovisningen mer förståelig. Den justerade årsredovisningen har därefter prövats i ett kvasi-experiment. I experimentet fick deltagarna i en experimentgrupp ta del av den justerade årsredovisningen medan kontrollgruppen fick ta del av den ojusterade årsredovisningen. Därefter svarade deltagarna på frågor om i vilken grad de ansåg sig förstå informationen i specifik årsredovisning. Resultatet för respektive grupp har sedan analyserats för att mäta och jämföra förståelsen mellan de båda grupperna för att se om det finns ett samband mellan utökad information och ökad förståelse i en årsredovisning. Resultatet av det genomförda experimentet visade att den genomsnittliga förståelsen av årsredovisningens innehåll var 81 procent högre hos experimentgruppen jämfört med kontrollgruppen. Slutsatsen är därmed att det finns ett samband mellan utökad information och ökad förståelse av informationen i den justerade årsredovisningen för experimentets deltagare.

This study comprised an information audit of certain micro enterprises of Umkhanyakude District Municipality in northern KwaZulu-Natal. The purpose of this study was to investigate the information needs, information resources available and the information gaps that exist in these enterprises. The Umkhanyakude District Municipality consists of five local municipalities, but this study focused mainly on two, Jozini and Mtubatuba, because of their large number of local economic activities compared with the other local municipalities. The study primarily used questionnaires to collect data. These questionnaires were administered in the two municipalities identified. The results of the study revealed that technical information relating to business and financial management were the highest ranking information needs indicated by the sampled enterprises. Legal and business management information was the second most-needed information for these enterprises. The study also revealed a correlation between the academic level of the entrepreneurs, the type of business that the entrepreneurs operate and the kind of information they needed. The information resources that these enterprises had and used included newspapers, business magazines, market research documents and government documents. Based on the responses of the respondents, a gap was identified. This includes the lack of relevant sources of information that meet the respondents' information needs. This study also revealed that there are a number of institutions that provide information for these enterprises, such as community libraries, government information centres, bookshops, government offices and so on. Although these information resource institutions exist within the district municipality, these enterprises also have other information needs. This therefore led the researcher to conclude that these information resource structures are not providing their services according to the needs of the community at large. Based on the identified gaps the researcher recommends a participatory proactive approach. This approach uses participatory development communication platforms for the district municipality, the information resource institutions and local enterprises. The district municipality needs to have a platform which will identify information needs, gaps and pportunities for local enterprises. The information resource institutions need to provide platforms where they can assess the information needs of their customers and also have a customer management feedback system where they can assess whether they are responding to the customer needs. Finally, the micro enterprises need to use existing platforms to make the municipality and information resource institutions aware of their information needs. These platforms could include local and presidential izimbizo where the government comes to the people to address their concerns and issues. The approach recommended by this study is part of a development communication approach where participatory two-way communication platforms are used to bring about development. Copyright / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Information Science / unrestricted

This master thesis project aims to evaluate the importance of availability of operating partners for foreign investors as they decide whether or not to make an investment on the Swedish market. The study will also evaluate if the cooperation with operating partners could contribute to a reduction of the information gap between foreign investors and the Swedish real estate market, and if that could ultimately lead to an increase in the inflow of foreign capital to Sweden.  The study includes a literature review where relevant theories for the research question is accounted for as well as an overview of the Swedish real estate market. The study also includes economic statistics and transaction data from reliable sources, as well as an empirical analysis with semi-structured interviews that were conducted with a number of prominent actors within the real estate sector, both in form of representatives from larger global consultant companies and well- known operating partners. All the interviewees were selected because they were considered to be most useful for the study, with substantial knowledge and experience of the real estate business and market.  The study shows that an operating partner could make it easier for a foreign investor to enter the Swedish real estate market. This is much thanks to the market specific competence which the operating partner firms possesses, making it possible to estimate the right risk component as well as understand the specific market. This could make a foreign investor more competitive on the Swedish real estate market which have a great amount of strong domestic investors. The access to good market specific competence however only seems to have a marginal impact on whether or not an foreign investor chooses to invest in Sweden, this since there are other factors that has a considerably larger impact when investors makes that decision. The scale of the market is one of the most important factors when foreign investors decide whether or not to invest in Sweden. Even though an operating partner might not increase the foreign investments to Sweden there still is a pronounced shortage in the supply of such firms today since there is a large demand from foreign investor for this type of market specific competence. The number of operating partners will most likely increase in the future since the model creates an alignment of interest between the parties. If a foreign investor is good at utilizing local expertise, and uses a good model for alignment of interest, a combination of a global and local view of the market is obtained. This makes it possible for larger foreign investors to create a structure of a larger international portfolios, but still with attention to local details. From this it can be concluded that an increased supply of operating partners in some sense should have a positive effect on the Swedish economy as a whole. / Detta masterprojekt syftar till att utvärdera vikten av tillgängligheten av operativa samarbetspartners för utländska investerare när de ska besluta huruvida de ska investera på den svenska marknaden eller inte. Studien utvärderar om ett samarbete med operativa partners kan bidra till att minska informationsgapet mellan utländska investerare och den svenska marknaden, och huruvida ett samarbete även skulle kunna leda till ett ökat inflöde av utländskt kapital till Sverige.  Studien innehåller en litteraturstudie där relevanta teorier för forskningsfrågan redovisas samt en översikt över den svenska fastighetsmarknaden. Studien innehåller också ekonomisk statistik och transaktionsdata från tillförlitliga källor samt halvstrukturerade intervjuer som genomfördes med ett antal framstående aktörer inom fastighetsbranschen, både i form av representanter från större globala konsultföretag och välkända operativa partners. Intervjuobjekten valdes ut eftersom de ansågs vara mest användbara för studien, med stor kunskap och erfarenhet av verksamheten och fastighetsbranschen. Studien visar att en operativ partner skulle kunna underlätta för en utländsk investerare att etablera sig på den svenska fastighetsmarknaden, mycket tack vare den marknadsspecifika kompetens som operatörsföretaget har, vilket gör det möjligt att uppskatta rätt riskkomponent såväl som förstå den specifika marknaden. Detta kan göra en utländsk investerare mer konkurrenskraftig på den svenska fastighetsmarknaden som till stor del domineras av starka inhemska investerare. Trots detta har tillgången till god marknadsspecifik kompetens endast har en marginell inverkan på huruvida en utländsk investerare väljer att investera i Sverige eller inte, eftersom det finns andra faktorer som har en betydligt större inverkan när investerarna fattar det beslutet. Marknadens skala är en av de viktigaste faktorerna när utländska investerare överväger om de ska investera i Sverige eller inte. Trots att en operativ partner inte nödvändigtvis ökar de utländska investeringarna till Sverige finns det idag en uttalad brist i utbudet av sådana företag i och med att det finns en stor efterfrågan från utländska investerare för denna typ av marknadsspecifik kompetens. Antalet operativa partners kommer sannolikt att öka i framtiden eftersom modellen skapar en likriktning av parternas intressen. Om en utländsk investerare är bra på att utnyttja lokal kompetens och använder en bra modell för likriktning av intressen, erhålls en kombination av en global och lokal syn på marknaden. Detta gör det möjligt för större utländska investerare att skapa en struktur av en större internationell portfölj, men fortfarande med uppmärksamhet på lokala detaljer. Av detta kan man dra slutsatsen att en ökad tillgång på operativa partners i viss mening kan ha en positiv effekt på den svenska ekonomin som helhet.