This study focused on Corporate Community Involvement Disclosures (CCID), a theme usually disclosed under Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosures (CSRD) in annual reports. The primary aim of the research is to investigate the genuineness and raison d'être of CCID in annual reports. To do this the researcher adopted a holistic approach employing an extensive theoretical framework, which integrates Legitimacy, Stakeholder, Agency, Signalling and Semiotics theories and asking three main research questions. Firstly, what are the motivations for CCID in annual reports? Secondly, what is the information content of CCID in annual reports? And lastly, how real is CCID in annual reports? That is can CCID be read and construed as a real measure of corporate community development (CCD)? Using content analysis and a quality score index the study examined a panel dataset covering the period from 1999 to 2009. The data was collected from a sample of 803 annual reports of 73 UK companies taken from the FTSE 350 companies and cutting across all ten industries of the Industrial Classification Benchmark (ICB) Index. Generally the study is more of a quantitative study with hypotheses developed and tested with panel data regression models in order to provide answers to the three research questions. However, due to the sensitivity of the third research question, in addition to panel regression, the researcher performed a qualitative analysis of question three using semiotics. The study provided evidence to show that CCID as disclosed in annual reports have an undertone of reputation/impression management like other CSR disclosures (CSRD). The community activities reported do not seem to address the expectations of the local communities per se; rather the disclosures seemed to be targeted at a wider stakeholder group that is likely to offer immediate reward for such disclosures. Similarly result from semiotic analysis revealed that signification of reality is either doubtful or unreal for most companies sampled. The study is unique as it is the first to explore the reality of CCID as it appears in annual reports using a combination of a panel study approach and semiotics. In addition a major contribution of the study is that it explored the ways in which multiple theoretical underpinnings can inform research by developing a CCID Meta-theory model and thus provided a robust and enriched analysis and unique insights into the CCID phenomenon.

This dissertation analyses the survival strategies that wealthy people in Mexico City have designed and implemented to protect themselves from kidnapping with special focus on household employment relationships. This particular crime has demonstrated a particular evolution in the last 20 years that deserves analysis. Once a political crime, it became an economic crime that at first only targeted wealthy individuals and then over time began targeting working class victims. Based on extensive qualitative fieldwork in Mexico City which included a year in the field, 78 interviews with employers, employees, kidnapping victims and members of the police forces and justice system and the creation of a news reports database this thesis presents a detailed history of the evolution of kidnapping in the period 1968-2009. This is followed by an in depth analysis of the strategies elites use to protect themselves from this crime. Special attention is focused on the hiring process of household employees, namely drivers, as evidence suggests that most kidnappings are organized or facilitated in some way by a close collaborator of the victim. The hiring process is approached as a problem of trust. Signaling theory is the main framework used for the solving of this problem, as well as some ideas found in transaction cost economics, namely vertical integration. The results point towards strategic behavior from the actors involved that seeks to minimize the risk of being kidnapped for the employer. Signaling helps us uncover the specific mechanisms by which employer establish their prospective employees’ trustworthiness. The use of informal social networks made up of strong ties is one of the most salient mechanisms used to guarantee honest employees and this, together with a composite set of properties is signaled throughout. This thesis contributes to the literature on crime in Latin America as well as to the sociological literature on signaling, a branch of analytical sociology.

Based upon two years of ethnographic fieldwork in London, England, which incorporated nearly 200 interviews with gang members, gang associates, and police officers, among others, this thesis addresses three questions presently unresolved in the street gangs literature: What is the business of gangs? How are gangs organised? And how do gangs recruit? With regard the business of gangs, this thesis illustrates how recreation, crime, enterprise, and extra-legal governance represent sequential stages in the evolutionary cycle of London’s street gangs. Gang member testimony emphasises how gangs typically begin life as neighbourhood-based peer groups, but also how, in response to external threats and financial commitments, gangs grow to incorporate street-level drugs distribution businesses that very much resemble the multi-level marketing structure of direct-sales companies. People join gangs to make money, achieve status, and obtain protection. Gangs engage in turf wars, acquire violent resources, and develop hierarchical structures in order to maintain provision of these desirable goods and services. Gang organisation, in turn, becomes a function of gang business. To better understand the nature and extent of gang organisation, this thesis moves on to discuss the presence of subgroups, hierarchy and leadership, pecuniary and non-pecuniary incentives, rules, responsibilities, and restrictions, and consequences for absconding within gangs. It further presents how, in order to convey reputation and achieve intimidation, gangs seek association with elements of popular culture that help promote their image. Finally, through the novel application of signalling theory to the gang recruitment process, this thesis demonstrates how gangs face a primary trust dilemma in their uncertainty over the quality of recruits. Given that none of the trust-warranting properties for gang membership can be readily discovered from observation, gangs look for observable signs correlated with these properties. Gangs face a secondary trust dilemma in their uncertainty over the reliability of signs because certain agents (e.g., police informants, rival gang members, and adventure-seekers) have incentives to mimic them. To overcome their informational asymmetry gangs thus screen for signs that are too costly for mimics to fake but affordable for the genuine article. The thesis concludes with a discussion of gang desistance and intervention in the context of escalating youth violence in London.

'Thieves-in-law' (vory-v-zakone in Russian or kanonieri qurdebi in Georgian) are career criminals belonging to a criminal fraternity that has existed at least since the 1930s in the Soviet Gulag. These actors still exist in one form or another in post-Soviet countries and have integrated into transnational organised criminal networks. For reasons yet to be explicated, thieves-in-law became exceptionally prevalent in the Soviet republic of Georgia. Here, by the 1990s, they formed a mafia network where this means criminal associations that attempt to monopolize protection in legal and illegal sectors of the economy. In 2005, Mikhail Saakashvili, the current president of Georgia claimed that 'in the past 15 years ... Georgia was not ruled by [former President] Shevardnadze, but by thieves-in-law.' Directly transferring anti-organised crime policy from Italy and America, Saakashvili's government made reform of the criminal justice system generally and an attack on the thieves-in-law specifically a cornerstone of the Rose Revolution. New legislation criminalises the possession of the status of ‘thief-in-law’ and of membership of criminal associations that constitute what is known as the ‘thieves’ world’ (qurduli samkaro). Along with a sweeping reform of the police and prisons and a ‘culture of lawfulness’ campaign, Georgian criminal justice reforms since 2003 may be seen as the first sustained anti-mafia policy to be implemented in a post-Soviet country. It also appears to have been very successful. The longevity and sudden decline of the thieves-in-law in Georgia provides the main questions that the following study addresses: How do we account for changes in the levels of resilience to state attack of actors carrying the elite criminal status of ‘thief-in-law’? How has this resilience been so effectively compromised since 2005? Utilising unique access to primary sources of data such as police files, court cases, archives and expert interviews this thesis studies the dynamics of changing mafia activities, recruitment practices, and structural forms of a criminal group as it relates to changes in the environment and, in particular, the recent anti-organised crime policy.

In this thesis, I report the results from the first randomized field experiments conducted in collaboration with party-affiliated candidates and campaigns in the United Kingdom. The papers presented as part of this thesis test both the limits and possibilities of campaign influence, in a partisan political environment. During election campaigns parties provide signals to voters, voluntarily or involuntarily imposing a structure, and thereby constraints, on individuals’ electoral decisions. By integrating insights about heuristic and social decision-making into the experimental campaign literature, I formulate testable hypotheses about the direct and indirect effects of party cues on campaign mobilization and persuasion. The first paper, The Heuristic Function of Party Affiliation in Voter Mobilization Campaigns, addresses how the provision of party cues, used during campaign phone calls, affects turnout among party supporters, opponents and unattached voters. The second paper on Household Partisan Composition and Voter Mobilization, explores the spillover effects from the previous experiment, testing whether campaign-induced mobilization between household members is conditioned by the partisan composition of a household, and the partisan intensity of a campaign message. Paper three investigates if candidates who are Reaching Across The Partisan Divide can win over supporters of rival parties. In the fourth paper, I test if Impersonal, But Noticeable methods of voter contact, such as door hangers and text messages, affect the turnout decisions of partisans and unattached voters. The final paper, The National Effects of Subnational Representation, highlights the importance of local party organization for the outcomes of national elections. The results of this thesis show the electoral consequences of direct and indirect interactions between campaigns and voters of different partisanship, and point to strategies that allow constituency campaigns to successfully navigate challenging partisan environments.

<p>Dividend policy has significant impact on the company's capital market, in particular the dynamics of the price of its shares. Dividends represent cash income of shareholders and to some extent, signal them about success of the firm they have invested. From that point of view dividend policy has crucial impact on investment decisions.</p><p>Numbers of valuation models based on dividend payouts exist in the financial theory and they imply importance of dividends in making investment decisions. Alternatively some authors argue that role of the dividends is overestimated, as investors do not separate dividends and capital earnings. I believe that dividend policy has broad influence not only on share valuation, but also on capital structure of the company and its stock market liquidity.</p><p>Study intended to discover if dividend payouts and future earnings can be predicted based on stock market liquidity and capital structure. I have analysed 72 companies associated with Nordic information technologies market and tried to find main characteristics of dividend policy adopted in those companies. I have divided my research question into three parts and studied hypotheses which are associated with the research question.</p><p>I found relationship of dividend policies with future earnings growth power, firm capital structure and market liquidity. As a result of my study I have observed financial statements data and obtained the following outcome: (1) with stable dividend policy, payout ratio is positively related to the future earnings growth rate (2) companies that have less liquid stock markets are more likely to pay dividends (3) companies with low leverage ratios have more probability of paying dividends. Also I have found that historically low payout ratio is harbinger of low or even negative earnings growth rates.</p><p>I believe that based on findings mentioned above, effective investment policy could be created. For the investor who favours to invest in company with high earnings growth perspectives and receive high dividends in the future, results of the study could be interesting. According to the results of the research, for “dividend preferring” investor, funds should be invested in the company with constantly high payout ratio, low stock market liquidity and debt-to-equity ratio below 1. In that case the probability of meeting investment expectations would be much higher.</p>

Dividend policy has significant impact on the company's capital market, in particular the dynamics of the price of its shares. Dividends represent cash income of shareholders and to some extent, signal them about success of the firm they have invested. From that point of view dividend policy has crucial impact on investment decisions. Numbers of valuation models based on dividend payouts exist in the financial theory and they imply importance of dividends in making investment decisions. Alternatively some authors argue that role of the dividends is overestimated, as investors do not separate dividends and capital earnings. I believe that dividend policy has broad influence not only on share valuation, but also on capital structure of the company and its stock market liquidity. Study intended to discover if dividend payouts and future earnings can be predicted based on stock market liquidity and capital structure. I have analysed 72 companies associated with Nordic information technologies market and tried to find main characteristics of dividend policy adopted in those companies. I have divided my research question into three parts and studied hypotheses which are associated with the research question. I found relationship of dividend policies with future earnings growth power, firm capital structure and market liquidity. As a result of my study I have observed financial statements data and obtained the following outcome: (1) with stable dividend policy, payout ratio is positively related to the future earnings growth rate (2) companies that have less liquid stock markets are more likely to pay dividends (3) companies with low leverage ratios have more probability of paying dividends. Also I have found that historically low payout ratio is harbinger of low or even negative earnings growth rates. I believe that based on findings mentioned above, effective investment policy could be created. For the investor who favours to invest in company with high earnings growth perspectives and receive high dividends in the future, results of the study could be interesting. According to the results of the research, for “dividend preferring” investor, funds should be invested in the company with constantly high payout ratio, low stock market liquidity and debt-to-equity ratio below 1. In that case the probability of meeting investment expectations would be much higher.

This thesis examines the nature of mass factionalism and rebellious alignment during the Chinese Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1968. This period in Chinese history presents an internecine mass conflict that boasts the largest political upheavals of the 20th century. The most puzzling question of the explosion of this intense rebellious rivalry lies in the mechanisms and processes of insurgents’ political choices: Why did people join and affiliate with different insurgent groups? What decision did people make and what were their reasons? In conventional social structural analyses of contentious politics, mass actors’ decisions are affected by functionally differentiated interests inherent in their pre-existing social positions. This model defines mass rebellion and factional alignment as a form of interest group politics, attributing political choices to participants’ pre-existing sociopolitical status quo and thus pits different social groups against one another. As a result, similar occupational and status groups in the previous hierarchical structure would make similar political choices that lead them to form well-defined competing factions. In contrast to this static structural interpretation, I propose a contextual process model to analyze processes of political division and factional contention within political movements. With a case study of Guangzhou, I argue that rebellious alignment was rooted in their political interactions in a rapidly evolving phase of the conflict, rather than rising from the tensions that existed between different socio-economic layers of society. During the times of radical instability such as the Chinese Cultural Revolution, political ambiguity and contingency were the defining characteristics. In such unstable political environment, the basic elements of the movement changed so many times: each phase of the rebel movement projected itself by means of different actors, agendas, targets, and so on. Consequently, individual rebels observed their embedded local political environment, interpreted it, and subsequently chose a course of action in a dynamic process. In this regard, mass actors from identical social strata in the previous hierarchical structure would make different political choices and tactically choose their factional camp.

Syfte: Att undersöka samband mellan finansiellt trångmål och val av frivillig revision för små svenska aktiebolag. Metod: Studien använder en kvantitativ metod med en deduktiv ansats. I en tvärsnittsstudie har sekundärdata om svenska aktiebolag samlats in från databasen Retriever. Den oberoende variabeln trångmål har operationaliserats utifrån två olika definitioner. Dessa har testats separat mot den beroende variabeln revision genom binär logistisk regression. Resultat och slutsats: Analysen visar att det föreligger ett signifikant positivt samband mellan revision och trångmål utifrån den definition av trångmål som utgår från att ett företags rörelseresultat före räntor, skatt, avskrivningar och goodwillavskrivningar (EBITDA) understiger dess utgifter för räntekostnader. Det finns däremot ett negativt samband mellan revision och trångmål för den definition av trångmål som utgår från att ett företags aktiekapital är förbrukat till mer än hälften. Detta resultat är dock svårtolkat eftersom signifikansen varierar beroende på hur extremvärden hanteras. Det positiva, signifikanta samband som studien har funnit är överensstämmande med tidigare forskning som tyder på att företag i finansiellt trångmål är benägna att välja frivillig revision. Forskningsbidrag: Studien jämför hur flödesmått och kapitalmått påverkar sambandet mellan trångmål och frivillig revision genom att undersöka dessa mått i separata regressioner. Vidare undersöker studien data från ett stort antal små företag och vad vi vet är detta den första studie som undersöker sambandet mellan trångmål och frivillig revision utifrån ett svenskt perspektiv Vidare forskning: Det behövs mer forskning om hur kapitalmått påverkar samband mellan trångmål och frivillig revision. En detaljerad jämförelse med en finsk studie som funnit ett negativt samband mellan trångmål och revision skulle vara av intresse. Även en longitudinell undersökning för att undersöka möjliga kausala samband vore intressant. Ett annat möjligt forskningsområde är att undersöka om små företags val av frivillig revision påverkas av deras val att anlita en redovisningskonsult. / Aim: To investigate the relationship between financial distress and voluntary audit for small Swedish limited companies. Method: The study employs a quantitative method with a deductive approach. In a cross-sectional study, secondary data about Swedish limited companies has been collected from the database Retriever. The independent variable financial distress has been operationalized according to two different definitions. Separate binary logistic regressions have been conducted to test the two definitions of financial distress against the dependent variable audit. Results and Conclusions: The analysis shows that there is a significant relationship between audit and financial distress according to the definition of distress based on a company’s EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization). But there is a negative relationship between audit and financial distress according to the definition of distress based on a company’s forfeited share capital. However, this result is difficult to interpret because the statistical significance varies depending on how outliers are handled. The significant, positive relationship that the study has found confirms previous research saying that companies in financial distress are prone to choose voluntary audits. Contributions: The study compares how a flow measure and a capital measure influence the relationship between financial distress and voluntary audit by exploring these measures in separate regressions. Furthermore, it investigates data from a large number of small companies. To our knowledge, this is the first study investigating the relationship between financial distress and voluntary audit from a Swedish perspective. Suggestions for future research: More research about how capital measures influence the relationship between distress and voluntary audit is needed. A detailed comparison with a Finnish study that has found a negative relationship between distress and audit would be of interest. A longitudinal design in order to investigate possible causal relationships would also be interesting. How various levels of threats influence the choice of voluntary audits for companies in distress is also worth continued studies. Another possible field is to examine whether the choice of employing an external accountant affects the choice of voluntary audit for small companies.

Titel From then till now - A study of changes in sustainability reports from 1998-2019. Level Bachelor thesis in Business Administration Authors William Johansson, Johan Finn Rydberg, Thom Werner Tutor Esbjörn Segelod Date 2020-06-09 Keywords Sustainability, Sustainability reports, Signalling theory, Stakeholder theory, Business emissions, Equality, Corruption, Donation, Business Research, GRI, CSR, CSR history, Voluntary disclosure and Legitimacy theory. Research Questions How have the sustainability reports changed in different GRI frameworks and how have it affected companies in different branches, depending on pages and line of business between 1998–2019? How have the word in the categories: environment, social and economic responsibility changed in companies sustainability reports between the years 1998–2019? Purpose The purpose with this study is to examine how businesses sustainability reports associated with energy-, automotive- and forest and paperproduct have effected their sustainability reports from an environmental, social and economical perspecitve from year 1998–2019. Method The method of this study is a quantitative method with a content analysis that consists of 75 sustainability reports in total where 62 of these 75 reports was used. These 62 reports are coming from 25 different companies associated to energy-, automotive and forest and paperpoduction. The study was made of sustainability reports from the year 1998 to 2019. The result of the study encoded to a scheme of code. Conclusion The conclusion of this study shows an increase of the sustainability reports in all three branches. The most of the words shows an increase from 1998-2019. / Titel Från dåtid till nutid - En studie om förändringar i hållbarhetsredovisning mellan åren 1998–2019. Nivå Kandidatuppsats Författare William Johansson, Johan Finn Rydberg, Thom Werner Handledare Esbjörn Segelod Datum 2020-06-09 Nyckelord Sustainability, Sustainability reports, Signalling theory, Stakeholder theory, Business emissions, Equality, Corruption, Donation, Business Research, GRI, CSR, CSR history, Voluntary disclosure och Legitimacy theory. Frågeställningar Hur har företags hållbarhetsredovisning påverkats av förändringen i GRI:s ramverk, mätt i antal sidor samt branschtillhörighet mellan åren 1998-2019? Hur har begrepp inom miljö, socialt och ekonomiskt ansvar förändrats i företags hållbarhetsredovisningar mellan åren 1998–2019? Syfte Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur svenska företag i branscherna fordon, energi samt skog- och pappersproduktion har påverkat sin hållbarhetsredovisning utifrån miljö, socialt och ekonomiskt perspektiv, mellan åren 1998–2019. Metod Studiens tillvägagångssätt är kvantitativ metod med innehållsanalys som var tänkt att bestå av totalt 75 stycken hållbarhetsrapporter men endast 62 stycken kunde användas. Dessa 62 rapporter kommer från 25 olika företag som tillhör energi, skogs- och pappersproduktion och bilbranschen. Studien använde sig av hållbarhetsredovisningar från 1998–2019. Resultatet kodades därefter i ett kodningsschema. Slutsats Den slutsats som kan uppsatsen visar är att en ökning av antal hållbarhetsrapporter har ökat i alla tre branscher. Även de flesta orden påvisar en ökning under 1998–2019.