This dissertation is concerned with a primary and two secondary research issues. The primary issue pertains to the existence of a two-stage auditor switching decision process; that is the auditor change and the auditor selection stages. The two secondary issues concern the relative influence of variables within their respective decision stages. External auditors are engaged not only to comply with the Corporations Law requirement and Australian Stock Exchange membership conditions but also to reduce the degree of information risk assigned by financial statement users to financial statements prepared by auditee management. The decision to switch auditors may cause financial statement users to assign a higher degree of information risk to financial statements, i.e., the indirect costs of switching auditors. A substantial increase in these indirect costs may have occurred as the average rate that Australian publicly listed companies switch auditor has increased in recent years. However, prior research has provided inconsistent and inconclusive evidence with regard to the variables that influence auditees to switch auditors. To avoid mis-perceptions by financial statement users about the newly appointed auditors' attestation of the financial information prepared by auditees, a greater understanding is needed of the auditor switching decision process to assist in mitigating these indirect costs of switching auditors. In prior research the underlying suggestion why auditees switch auditors is the development of a mis-match of audit services demanded to the services supplied by the incumbent auditor. To overcome this mis-match, auditees after deciding to change auditors then select a specific audit firm that offers suitable services and possesses suitable characteristics. A suggested reason for the inconsistent findings of prior research is that there are two decision stages (auditor change and auditor selection) in the auditor switching decision process and past studies have examined, intentionally or otherwise, different decision stages. From a two decision stage perspective, there are three additional explanations for the inconsistent findings of prior research. These explanations are 1) the inappropriate use of surrogate measures for the decision stage studied, 2) the misuse of the terms auditor change, auditor selection and auditor switching, and 3) the inappropriate research methodology and instrument design employed. This absence of a 'shared agreement' among researchers about the two-stage auditor switching decision concept and misuse of terms may have confused not only researchers but also survey participants and readers of auditor switching literature thus contributing to the inconsistencies in prior evidence as well as perpetuating the inconsistent results where the readers are the future researchers. A review of the literature identified five characteristic variables of the incumbent and replacement audit firms that influence the auditor switching decision. Four variables (disagreements between auditees and auditors that result in, or are caused by, the issuance of a qualified audit report and recommendations from three external sources) in addition to the five incumbent auditor characteristics were found to influence only the auditor change decision. In addition to the five replacement auditor characteristic variables, a further five variables, involving audit firm image creation or other promotional activities, have been found to influence the auditor selection decision stage. A primary and two secondary problems regarding the auditor switching decision process are addressed (1) How and to what extent does the impact of the five auditor characteristics on Australian auditees' decisions to change auditors (to terminate the incumbent auditor's appointment) differ from that on auditees' decisions to select the replacement auditor? (2) How and to what extent are the nine variables used by Australian auditee management in the decision to change auditors (to terminate the incumbent auditors appointment)? (3) How and to what extent are the ten variables used by Australian auditee management in the decision to select a replacement auditor? The provision of evidence to support the two-stage auditor switching decision process may be achieved by jointly examining and identifying significant differences in the perceived influence of auditor characteristics across the two decision stages and a comparison of their rank order of influence within each stage. Three empirical models are constructed to investigate these three research questions. Using the MANOVA (within-subjects) design, the first model is to analyse each respondent's perception of the level of influence of each of the five auditor characteristic variables across the two decision stages. The second and third empirical models are using an one-way ANOVA design to test the influence of each of the respective independent variables (i.e., nine variables for the change decision and ten variables for the selection decision) on the respective dependent variable (i.e., the change decision or the selection decision). Fifty-three usable responses were received from Australian companies identified as voluntarily switching auditors for the reporting year ended 1990 and/or 1991. The data collected for analysis were provided by company executives of these companies. The major findings of this study are: 1) Two of the five auditor characteristics, 'level of audit quality' and 'suitability of non-audit services', differed significantly in their level of relative influence across the two decision stages. Furthermore, there was some support in the results for a perceived difference in the influence of a third auditor characteristic, 'size of audit fees', across both stages. 2) Significant differences were perceived in the level of influence of variables on the auditor change decision stage. The six most influential variables were the higher audit fees, the auditor's offices were not located near the auditee's geographically dispersed offices, the incumbent auditor's lack of industry specialisation, a higher audit quality was not provided, the non-audit services offered were unsuitable, and director's recommendations. 3) In the auditor selection decision stage, significant differences were perceived in the level of influence of variables. The six most influential variables were the lower fees, the recommendations of business colleagues, a higher quality audit can be provided, the suitability of range of non-audit services, the closeness of the auditor's offices to the auditee's geographically dispersed operations, and the availability of industry specialisation. 4) A comparison of the rank order of influence of auditor characteristic variables within each decision stage found variances exist for two variables 'closeness of auditor's offices to the auditee's operations' and 'the level of industry specialisation' across the two stages. 5) The significant difference in the level of influence of characteristics of the incumbent and replacement auditors in the first finding suggests that auditors are not perceived as providing homogeneous services. Furthermore, from the significant difference in these auditor characteristic variables within each decision stage in the second and third findings imply that the auditor characteristics of an auditor are not perceived as homogeneous. The following major conclusions are drawn from this study. The evidence from these major findings support the existence of a two-stage auditor switching decision process. The results also show that auditor switching decision makers' perceptions of the variables that influence auditor switching vary across the two decision stages and with the auditor change and auditor selection decisions. Finally, because the characteristics of the auditors vary in their perceived influence across both stages and within each decision stage, these variances suggest the auditor characteristics supplied are perceived to be heterogeneous. This perceived heterogeneity permits audit firms to differentiate their services offered and requires auditees to employ a two-stage auditor switching decision process.

Training is essential to the growth and economic well-being of a nation. This need for training pervades all levels of industry, from a national level where a country’s well being is enhanced by training, to each company where productivity is improved, down to the individual whose skills are enhanced and as a result improve their position in the employment marketplace. The Australian Bureau of Statistics report ‘Training and Education Experience –Australia’ (ABS 1993) indicates that training in Australia is undertaken at a significant level with some 86% of employers undertaking some form of training. This is slightly higher in the Finance industry at a little over 89%. On the job training is undertaken by 82% of employers and off the job training is used by 47% of employers. In 80% of the off the job cases these courses were conducted in a conventional manner using an instructor. The remaining 20% of cases were either self paced (14%) or instructor based (6%). These latter cases could involve Computer Based Training (CBT). The report, referred to in the last paragraph, also indicates that a significant aspect of business in Australia is that 95% of businesses have less than 20 staff. This poses significant problems in that the ability to deliver effective training is limited. With businesses as small as these their size does not permit them to carry specialist training personnel so this role falls to the senior staff. These people already have a full workload and their ability to be able to take on training duties is limited. In addition these people were employed for their technical skills, not training. It may be that their ability to fill the role of a trainer is not good and as a result the training may not be very effective. In addition, small business has difficulty in releasing staff for training, The difficulties faced by small business were recognised by the Australian National Training Authority in their 1995 report which indicated that there was a need to develop a ‘training culture’ among small business employers. The authority made a commitment to provide flexible delivery strategies. This includes Computer Based Training (CBT). CBT has existed since the 1970’s. It came on to the scene with a flourish and tended to provide ‘page turning’ programs or ‘drill and practice programs’. In limited areas this form of training became popular but its popularity waned in the 80’s. With the advent of better graphical displays, larger and faster memory, and improved programs in the 1990’s the quality of CBT today is superior to those offered in the 70’s and has greater appeal. Today, still photographs and video clips can be displayed and made interactive. Because of this CBT is making a comeback and starting to have a greater impact. The insurance industry covers a wide range of companies in Australia, these companies vary in size from companies with employees in the thousands to companies with less than five staff. While the needs of the employees of each are similar the ability of these companies to deliver the training varies significantly. Any training can be divided into two parts. Internal or on the job training and external. External training deals with those aspects that concern the industry as a whole whereas internal training affects the individual company. Internal training would deal with matters like company procedures, company products and the like. External training deals with matters such as legislation, products generally, and the like. In the insurance industry the major problem arises with the small companies. Insurance companies would tend to be large in size and able to cover their training costs but the insurance brokers who would make up, numerically, the major number of companies would have a significant number of companies that fall into the 20 staffer less category. In fact many would have a staff of less than 5. While CBT can benefit all companies it is these small companies that could benefit from it the most. This thesis examines: • The place of CBT in training, its cost and effectiveness. • The incidence of CBT in the insurance industry and how the industry determines its effectiveness. • If a program that meets an industry need is able to be produced at a realistic price?

After the operation of medium-power and low-power radio stations being made to public access, the competition among broadcasting companies has reached its peak. As a result, considerable quantities of so-called ¡¥medicine-selling¡¦ broadcast hosts extensively stimulate the audience to buy advertised products by molding the settings. This research intends to study how broadcast hosts; as the main characters in broadcast programs, mold the settings by means of charisma, styles and techniques. Furthermore, this research intends to explore how the application of settings inspires audience¡¦s purchasing desire. The following three questions are designed to meet the research purpose. 1. Which techniques are used by broadcast hosts to mold the setting in the act of marketing merchandise? 2. Which interaction patterns are used by broadcast hosts to mold the setting in the act of marketing merchandise? 3. Which methods of molding the setting are used by broadcast hosts to serve the purpose of marketing merchandise? The author has adopted in-depth interviewing as the main method for this study, and interviewed five broadcast hosts from five different broadcasting companies. The analysis of these interviews has revealed that broadcast hosts don¡¦t necessarily need to exaggerate the effectiveness of the merchandise to increase sales. As a matter of fact, since the audiences¡¦ level of education has ascended, the old-fashioned hawking way is not that well-adopted nowadays. It is found that the relationship between the host and audience is similar to the one shared among family. That is to say the audiences¡¦ purchasing behavior results from the trust and dependency on the hosts. The audiences not only buy the medicine, but also seek empathy from the hosts. In addition, the exaggeration of effectiveness and gift give-aways are not the most effective ways any more. It is also found that phone-in are the fastest way to mold the interactive setting, and the host sharing personal experiences is the most effective way to increase sales.

Today, maintenance is a big part of the daily life on board ships. It is also one of the bigger expenses a shipping company has and without any loss of quality tries to run as economically advantageous as possible. In the hunt for economical savings the shore-based industry has subsequently applied the use of condition based maintenance, CBM, were a component is maintained according to its actual state. This leads to a reduction of maintenance costs since no parts are unnecessarily replaced. However, within the maritime sector a periodical maintenance is still the most commonly used maintenance system.The purpose of this paper is to chart the factors that are the reason for the low implementation of CBM on board the Swedish merchant fleet's ships. The investigation was carried out according to the qualitative method. Three shipping companies were interviewed, all carrying slow speed, two-stroke crosshead engines.The result from the interviews were evaluated and analyzed and the contributing factors of the low implementation of CBM on board has been identified.The result of this paper shows that the unique conditions on board ships reduces the advantages, normally received in the shore-based industry by using CBM. / Underhåll är en stor del av vardagen till sjöss. Det är även en av de stora utgiftsposterna för ett rederi och utan att tumma på kvaliteten vill man bedriva detta så ekonomiskt fördelaktigt som möjligt. I jakten på besparingar har den landbaserade industrin mer och mer övergått till ett tillståndsbaserat underhåll, s.k. condition based maintenance - CBM. Då bedrivs underhållet utifrån en komponents faktiska tillstånd. Detta leder till minskade underhållskostnader eftersom komponenter inte utbytes i onödan. Inom sjöfarten är dock det periodiskt baserade underhållet fortfarande dominerande.Syftet med denna undersökning är att kartlägga de faktorer som ligger till grund för den ringa utsträckningen av tillståndsbaserat underhåll, CBM på den Svenska handelsflottans fartyg. Undersökningen utfördes enligt den kvalitativa metoden. Tre rederier intervjuades, samtliga med fartyg i oceantrafik där framdrivningsmaskineriet består av långsamtgående, 2-takts tvärstycksmaskiner. Intervjuerna utvärderades och analyserades varpå de bidragande faktorerna till den begränsade användningen identifierades.Resultatet av undersökningen visar på att de unika förutsättningar som råder på ett fartyg minskar fördelarna, som man normalt erhåller med CBM inom den landbaserade industrin.

This thesis are investigating production companies in Sweden and how they are working with new technology, such as web TV, mobile TV but also how they handle their business models and if they are working with other financial forms to reach revenue. All the interviewed companies said that they worked with their business models but not to the extent that they should, and this is a side effect to the risk that it might involve. They do work with the new opportunities that are given to them but are afraid to take too big of a risk. The market seems to be on the upswing and they are getting a larger marginal to the distributors and are able to take bigger risk and develop new ways to reach out with their productions.

Customers are no longer what they use to be in the past, they are now highly educated, more specialized and more highly influenced by global culture than ever before. For businesses to be able to win the heart of customers, they need to do extra because these customers are the pillar that holds the organizations. One of the method to achieve this is called Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The focus of CRM is about managing customer knowledgem to better understand and serve them. The purpose of this study is to explore how e-business organizations use CRM in a B2C setting, and we did that from online fashion retail companies' perspectives. Our study has explored how how CRM objectives are described and how CRM is managed. To answer these questions, relevant literature was reviewed which resulted in a conceptual framework that guided the data collection. We carried out a multiple-case study with two fashion retail companies, one located in the UK, and the other in Sweden. Data was collected through a telephone interviews with high positioned employees who have experience working with CRM and related subject.

This thesis set out to investigate the relationship between political regime type, and FDI inflow. The academic field has seen a fair amount of research in recent years, but this is usually limited to the likes of democracies and autocracies. I argue that many countries are neither of these two, but find themselves in a political unstable gray zone in between, called hybrid regimes. This thesis draws on a comprehensive dataset ranging from 1980-2010, and by way of time-series cross-section analysis; it sets out to explore the attractiveness of hybrid regimes in relation to FDI inflow. The findings indicate that unstable political regimes do attract MNCs, but that they usually are dependent on natural resources. Hybrid regimes receive more FDI inflow than autocracies, but less than democracies. The thesis also find that the region Africa is special in that hybrid regimes are the biggest recipient of FDI inflow, with natural resources being the main factor. The findings support the former literature saying that democratic conditions attracts MNCs, but also question the alleged democratic transition taking place in a growing oil-dependent world.

Problem: That the clients expectations could be influenced by the relationship either positively or negatively. The relationship phases were redefined by Ruyter and Wetzels in 1999 describing the relationship in depth. Purpose: This paper’s purpose is to identify if there are any patterns in the relationship phases regarding the expectations and to discover how high expectations every phase has. Method: We have chosen positivism as our research philosophy and used a mix of a qualitative and quantitative study where we interviewed eight micro-company managers in Sweden. The paper is based on a deductive approach where we try to validate theories that have already been made. Theory: Our study contains theories discussing the audit profession, relationship phases, and the role of auditors, rules to keep an auditor unbiased, expectations on auditors and how an auditor can keep his objectivity, impartiality and independence. Conclusions: The conclusions of our study are that the expectations vary depending on which relationship phase they are in. Another conclusion is that the communication itself could be a major factor in building their relationship. We noticed that there were patterns between the two.

Background Synergies or rather the absence of synergies has been blamed for many failures in regards to mergers and acquisitions. Still, there are companies using mergers and acquisitions as a natural part of their growth strategy, indicating that these organizations manage to handle synergies efficiently. Purpose The purpose of this study is to analyze synergies in regards to mergers and acquisitions in technical trading companies to learn about success factors. Method Because of synergies’ complexity this study has used a qualitative approach. The empirical findings have been compiled by semi-conducted interviews with company representatives from the organizations regarded in the study. Conclusion The conclusion points at several success factors in regards to synergies and mergers and acquisitions. However, the three most important were found to be; the entrepreneurship and human capital, the corporate head’s knowledge, the experience and selection capability and the inclusion of acquisitions (developed from the urge for growth) in their business models.

¡@For engineering and construction companies, EPCK Projects which include engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning are the most difficult and complex project type for execution, due to the facts that those projects cover all project aspects (E, P, C and K), and are involved by the most amount and variety of stakeholders, especially EPCK projects for the oil refinery and petrochemical plants, which are combined with the most engineering variables and challenges, and could not be handled without care, even for the worldwide renowned engineering companies. ¡@ ¡@The key project control targets for EPCK projects are quality management, time management, cost management and HSE management. Based on PMBOK, project management includes five Project Processes, i.e. initiating, planning, executing, controlling and closing processes. Among the five processes, planning management is the most important one. If planned well in advance, project could be executed orderly as scheduled. Project Management Knowledge Areas include integration management, scope management, time management, cost management, quality management, human resource management, communication management, risk management and procurement management plans. The integration management is the most important knowledge area, while time management and cost management equally take second place. ¡@ ¡@During the execution of EPCK Project, besides meeting the codes/regulations, specifications and standards, time management and key milestones achievement for meeting contract requirement are most challenging. ¡@ ¡@With regard to shortening the design schedule or changing the design process to meet the EPCK project targets, CTCI¡¦s R&D department had already provided some counter strategies for reaching the targets, but yet provided no solutions to the shortages of the pipe fittings and flanges encountered during pipe prefabrication stage, which every project, not only in domestic but also in overseas, needs to face with, and this issue needs to be further studied in order to find out the improving strategies, which constitute the main topics of this study. ¡@ ¡@The main target of this case study is to solve the shortages of piping fittings and flanges frequently encountered during the project construction phase. For solving this issue, through collecting the execution data of the past domestic oil refinery and petrochemical plant projects of the latest 5 years, sorting out and analyzing the data, this study found out the causes and the counter strategies to shorten total project execution time and meet contract requirements. ¡@ ¡@This case study also used the EPCK P-Project as a pilot project for implementing the new strategies, compared the results with the actual data of the past domestic oil refinery and petrochemical projects, either completed already or currently on-going, explored the differences and did the difference analysis accordingly so as to verify the study results, and hopefully these study conclusions could be used as the reference materials for business process re-engineering in the future, and help the engineering firms to accomplish the mission of sustainable operation.