SMEs are established as an important cornerstone for the Swedish economy, due to the amount of people they employ and the economic activity they present. Due to a changing world SMEs are faced with new competition from foreign firms. In order to counter the new environment, an option for the firms is to move abroad, to internationalize. Furthermore China is established as an attractive country for SMEs to expand into, due to the major economic growth. During internationalization the Swedish agency for regional and economic growth identified SMEs to experience a lack of knowledge and capital, which hinders them in their expansion. The paper observes how four different Swedish SMEs, with activity in China moved abroad and how the mentioned lack of capital and knowledge was bridged. A theoretical framework is acquired through established research questions which are meant to analyze the problem description. The firms are identified as Swedish SMEs. In order to acquire empirical data, face to face interviews are conducted with the identified Swedish SMEs. Through the interview the empirical data is gathered, at which point, the paper analyzes the empirical data using the problem statement and the theories previously derived. The paper establishes that the experiential knowledge is the major influence on the resources committed by the firm. The amount of resources committed influences the type of entry mode as well as the accompanied advantages. In affect all firms have limited knowledge and ergo their resources committed are limited. This paper draws the conclusion that due to this, the firms were all able to finance their internationalization and no capital gap was experienced. The firms which were interviewed held experiential knowledge within the firm except one case where it was bridged with the assistance of a consultant. The experiential knowledge is held by individuals and has had a deep impact on the manner of the internationalization. It is identified that the personal relationships between individuals is shown to be of great importance to the firm. The knowledge constraints were bridged by the individuals’ experiential knowledge.

In our study the purpose was to examine the influence of Continuing Professional Education on small and medium sized auditing- and accounting practices. The study also aims to analyze possible similarities and differences in how small and medium sized auditing and accounting practices are affected of the requirements regarding Continuing Professional Education. In order to fulfill our purpose in the study we conducted interviews with auditors and accounting consultants on small and medium sized auditing- and accounting practices. Totally did we conduct seven interviews with four auditors and three accounting consultants. The majority of auditors and accounting consultants we interviewed are satisfied with the current requirements on Continuing Professional Education and think they contribute to the increase of quality and status of the work tasks performed by auditors and accounting consultants. Respondents also stressed the importance of Continuing Professional Education to maintain and develop the skills among employees. Our respondents prefer two forms of Continuing Professional Education, namely intensive seminars and topical courses. Demand for intensive seminars and topical courses will probably continue to increase, given that these two forms makes it possible for small and medium sized practices to keep current in a time efficient and economical way. Our findings also show that auditors prefer a training where they start out as beginners and end as an expert. On the other hand accounting consultants focus on training that is practical and provides direct benefit to the everyday work.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an important subject in business administration, and has been for many years. Over the past few years it has been become an increasingly debated topic. The CSR subject mainly focuses on multinational enterprises (MNEs), resulting in a research gap concerning CSR in small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). SMEs outline the majority of all companies on the European market; therefore, it is empirically interesting to further investigate how SMEs perceive CSR commitment. The purpose of this dissertation is to explain how CSR commitment of internal and external stakeholders influences CSR commitment in SMEs. The research was conducted with a quantitative survey. The data collected with the survey was tested and analyzed with both an explanatory and exploratory research strategy. Explanatory research was performed in order to test the derived hypotheses and explain the research question. Exploratory research was then performed in order to provide a further understanding of how SMEs view stakeholders and their CSR commitment. These two research strategies revealed that internal and external stakeholders influence CSR commitment in SMEs. However, SMEs perceive some stakeholders similarly because of their relationship with the company. There are three main concepts of CSR commitment: environmental, social and financial responsibility. Results showed that financial CSR is considered distinctly different from the two other measured CSR concepts. The theoretical contributions may be of importance to owners of SMEs and MNEs in order to gain a deeper understanding of CSR as a subject. Also, findings can help scholars interested in further researching CSR commitment in SMEs. The methodological contributions of this dissertation are of relevance for future research on the subject, since the developed instrument for measuring CSR commitment was successful. Without an established measure for this area, this instrument enables further development and thereby more valid research regarding CSR commitment and SMEs.

Befintlig forskning på området har dragit slutsatsen att Knowledge Sharing är av stor vikt för ett företags framtida överlevnad och att små och medelstora företag i många fall inte tagit de åtgärder som behövs för att främja en ökad kunskapsdelning mellan medarbetarna. Studien belyste därför Knowledge Sharing inom små och medelstora, projektbaserade företag. Syftet med studien var att öka förståelsen och bidra med kunskap gällande hur medarbetarna inom små och medelstora företag arbetar med och kan stimulera Knowledge Sharing. Forskningsansatsen var en kvalitativ design med semistrukturerade intervjuer där utgångspunkten var att studera Knowledge Sharing utifrån medarbetarnas inställningar och erfarenheter. Studien visade att den praktiska delningen av kunskap inom små och medelstora företag skedde genom informella metoder såsom möten och personlig kommunikation. Den explicita kunskapen föredrogs att delas genom personifiering och dialog. Det ansågs generera djupare kunskap att dela genom personifiering än genom kodifiering. Individer vill dela expertis naturligt, och den bästa organisatoriska policyn kan vara att skapa tillfällen för människor att diskutera och utbyta kunskaper. Bonussystem för att motivera de anställda till att dela kunskaper i högre utsträckning fanns implementerade inom vissa utav de undersökta företagen. Medarbetarna drevs dock av andra motiv för att dela kunskap än rent monetära incitament. Kunskapsdelningsbeteendet motiveras av delarens önskan att hjälpa andra och bidra till organisationen. Andra starka motiv till Knowledge Sharing var att dela kunskap för att i sin tur få kunskaper returnerade och att det var roligt. / Research has concluded that Knowledge Sharing is essential for a company's future survival and that small and medium-sized enterprises have not taken the necessary steps to promote greater Knowledge Sharing between employees. Therefore the study highlighted Knowledge Sharing in small and medium-sized, project-based businesses. The aim of the study was to increase the understanding and contribute knowledge regarding how employees in small and medium-sized businesses are working with and can stimulate Knowledge Sharing. The research approach was a qualitative design with semi-structured interviews where the starting-point was to study employees' preferences and experiences of Knowledge Sharing. The study showed that the practical sharing of knowledge within small and medium enterprises was through informal methods such as meetings and personal communications. The explicit knowledge was presented to them by the personalization and dialogue, rather than by monologue. It was considered to generate deeper knowledge by impersonation than through codification. Individuals want to share expertise naturally, and the best organizational policies may be to create opportunities for people to talk and share knowledge through dialogues. Bonus systems were implemented to motivate employees to share knowledge in some of the surveyed companies. Furthermore, employees were motivated to share knowledge by other motivations than purely monetary incentives. Knowledge Sharing behavior was motivated by the desire to help others and contribute to the organization. Other strong motives to Knowledge Sharing was to share knowledge in order to, in turn, get knowledge returned and that it was fun.

The business environment is changing rapidly, becoming very competitive and challenging for all firms, and particularly for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). As innovation and new product development represent valuable sources for SMEs’ future sustainability and development, making these processes more effective is essential. Previous literature, with the focus on large firms, underlined the importance of efficiently managing the early period of new product development (NPD), as this can reduce the product’s time to market and increase its performance. For this reason, contributing to a developed understanding of the challenges of medium-sized firms in managing this phase, the fuzzy front-end (FFE) of NPD, is the aim of this study. The theoretical framework of this study combines prior theories that relate to the difficulties, shortcomings, challenges that SMEs meet during the whole NPD process, including FFE, and theories that resulted from research on FFE in large firms. The structure is based on four elements referring to managing the idea generation process, new product development team, evaluation of product concept feasibility, and the organization of FFE. A qualitative strategy and a research design with two case studies on high-tech, medium-sized manufacturing firms were used in reaching the purpose of this study. This methodology choice reflects the explorative purpose of this research. The empirical data are mainly primary data, collected during three interviews with development managers and a product developer, completed as well with secondary data like general company information, collected from companies’ websites. The analysis of empirical findings revealed some relevant conclusions, which can bring value to the research area, and also to the practice. Our findings show that lack of communication with customers during the whole FFE phase, collecting limited or inaccurate information to be processed during this phase, finding the right formalization degree of FFE activities, determining the complexity of the product concept, and assessing external technology and expertise, represent the main challenges faced by medium-sized firms in the FFE of NPD. The study’s practical relevance consists in the advices and solutions suggested to managers for overcoming the challenges of the FFE phase and improving their results in the development projects. The theoretical implications reflect the importance of organizational size variable in association with the challenges of FFE. The sample of only two cases and the quality of the empirical data collected from two high-tech Swedish manufacturing firms which have a large focus on innovation are the main limitations of this study, as these medium-sized firms have gained some experience to face the specific challenges of FFE of NPD and the data they provide may be influenced by this aspect.

 This thesis aims at investigating how the supply chain management (SCM) practices of large enterprises (LEs) are utilized on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This has been argued by many authors as a gap in previous literature. Take the view from SMEs, the research questions are: Is it possible to increase the performance of SMEs in the supply chain of LEs? and How does the supply chain strategy of LEs and business strategy of SMEs match? They are all answered by an explorative case study research. A mature supplier in production services for its large customers is used as case in this exploratory case study. Semi-structured interview was carried out as the main way to collect necessary data, besides documentation and observation. The study presents the existing interaction and problems with the SME, encountered how it formulates business strategy and the lessons that can be learned. The research shows that communication is a key tool ensuring the efficiency of supply chain cooperation as perceived seriously by the SME. Besides, group communication is becoming more popular and efficient for partners in the supply chain due to the participation of multiple staffs in the projects and the issues need to be discussed and agreed among them. Although LEs have good impacts on SME’s performance, for example in delivery proportion and technical ability, the deeper kinds of interaction such as exchange of personnel, committed resources investment was not found in the cooperation. Generally, the SME perceives that the usual difficulties they confront are less bargaining power, barriers to satisfy new demands from customers and the changing in customers’ decisions. By carefully analyzing the characteristics of the SME, we suggest possible solutions such as being more active in deeper kinds of interaction with LEs, increase negotiation skills, constructing a separated unit responsible for SCM and establishing a long-term business strategy to ease these difficulties. Taking business strategy of SMEs as an object of the research, we found main parameters the company cares about to formulate its business strategy. Comparing with literature, we suggest the company paying attention in activities of competitive market as well as the ways to take advantage of supply chain management strategies of LEs when SMEs building their business strategy.

Background: Development of technologies and worldwide reductions of trade barriers during the last decades increased competition and the need to offer high-quality prod-ucts and services for a reasonable price. Particularly, the service sector increased in size and variety of outputs. The development of the information technology segment has de-termined the market environment. To be able to compete in this global market offshore outsourcing of IT functions can be a valuable tool if handled in the right way. Small and medium sized enterprises can profit from service offshore outsourcing although studies show that this type of organizations fail in their outsourcing initiatives in an above aver-age rate as a result of deficits in risk management, precisely in risk identification. Aim: The aim of this Master Thesis is to analyse the specific characteristics of small and medium sized enterprises in order to find out how they impact the different stages of the service offshore outsourcing process. Theory and empirical data helps to spot strengths and weaknesses of these organizations in order to find a solution to a better risk identification process which then might lead to increased success in offshore out-sourcing of services. Definitions: Service offshore outsourcing refers to the purchase of a service (which may have been produced in-house before) by a firm from a supplier located in a differ-ent country while the supplier and buyer keep their respective initial locations. Risk is the potential that a chosen action or activity leads to an undesirable outcome. Risk iden-tification, the first part of risk management (followed by risk assessment and prioritiza-tion), is defined as an analysis of potential risk factors to the success of an endeavour. Completion and results: Specific characteristics of small and medium sized enterprises play a significant role in the risk identification process of service offshore outsourcing. By being aware of these risks and acting according to minimize them, harm can be pre-vented. Especially, a well-designed service offshore outsourcing contract, regular com-munication and personal relationships could be an advantage to overcome the draw-backs of small size, high dependency, need for flexibility and lack of resources.

With the increasing understaning of the need for sustainable development, many are finding that existing systems of governance are not sufficiently complex to solve the environmental crisis (see Glasbergen, 2011; Brown et al., 2009). As a result, the recent years has seen the rise of public-private participation, strengthened by the endorsement of the concept by the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002 (Andonova, 2010). In Europe, the concept of collaboration between state and private sector has been further endorsed by EUCETSA and former SWENTEC. Using a literature review to establish a theoretical basis, the study then embarks on a qualitative case-study of regional environmental technology networks. This study investigates the motivations causing the companies and networks to go into partnership with one another, and whether these motivations conflict. It also aims to find the perceived benefits of cooperation and the perceived end goals. The study finds that motivations for entering into partnership often seem to be business opportunity-oriented, although elements of risk, values, legal compliance and using existing capabilities also play a large role.

The purpose of this thesis is to describe the behaviors that multinational corporations(MNCs) and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are taking for carrying outcorporate social responsibility (CSR) under the context of sustainable development.Besides, the factors which drive and influence the performance are further exploredand discussed.The thesis is to be analyzed by means of a literature review, qualitative case study,semi-structured interviews, within case study and cross case study.By adopting these methods, the thesis shows that both MNCs and SMEs are aware ofand actively shouldering CSR in spite of different contents and approaches. MNCs areable to integrate economic, environment and social values into CSR strategy whileSMEs focus more on economic values. Competitive pressures, social expectations andinternal governance system are the main drivers of MNCs. By contrast, owners’ desiregives rise to the performance of carrying out CSR strategy by SMEs.It is suggested that a new domain of CSR namely, political social responsibility isfound through the study. It demonstrates that MNCs with the state-owned nature haveparticular missions and responsibilities to serve the country and society, which is notcommon but exists in the world.

The large accounting scandals in the early 21st century had large impact on the future discussion regarding the importance of auditor independence. This led to stricter auditor independence rules in Sweden as well as internationally. Small and medium-sized enterprises frequently hire their auditor for consulting services. A long and close audit-client relationship is common for small and medium sized enterprises. This is considered to be a threat towards the auditor independence. The purpose of this thesis is to examine whether Swedish small and medium sized enterprises, who are required to be audited, are aware of the auditor independence regulations. The thesis further aims analyze if the regulation of audit independence is as necessary for small companies as for large companies with additional number of shareholders. A qualitative study has been performed where data has been collected through 102 telephone interviews with small and medium-sized companies. A questionnaire consisting of both multiple choice and open questions has been used for the interviews. The collected data were compiled in SPSS which generated graphs and tables that then were analyzed. Small and medium-sized companies believe it is important that the auditor is independent towards their company. On the other hand, management in Swedish small and medium-sized enterprises has no direct knowledge of what the auditor independence regulation implies. / De stora redovisningsskandalerna i början av 2000-talet fick stor betydelse för den kommande diskussionen angående vikten av revisorns oberoende. Detta ledde till strängare regler för revisorerna i Sverige såväl som internationellt. Revisorn fungerar i många små och medelstora företag som en ekonomisk rådgivare. Små företag har ofta en lång och nära relation med sin revisor. Detta anses vara ett hot mot revisorns oberoende. Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka om revisionspliktiga små och medelstora företag är medvetna om reglerna gällande revisorns oberoende. Uppsatsen avser vidare att analysera om reglerna för revisorns oberoende är lika nödvändiga för små företag som för stora företag med en stor andel aktieägare. En kvalitativ undersökning har utförts där data från 102 telefonintervjuer med små och medelstora företag har samlats in. Ett frågeformulär med både flersvarsfrågor och öppna frågor har legat som grund för undersökningen. Den insamlade datan sammanställdes i SPSS vilket genererade grafer och tabeller som sedan analyserades. Små och medelstora företag anser att det är viktigt att revisorn är oberoende gentemot deras företag. Å andra sidan har ledningen i svenska små och medelstora företag ingen direkt kunskap om vad revisorns oberoende reglering innebär.