With  the development of Chinese  economy  and market,  the Chinese brand  is going out  of China, more  and more  overseas Chinese  enterprises  have  attracted  attention outside of China. Among all these overseas Chinese, a group of people called Wenzhounese, famous for Wenzhou Model they created in China, bought back the dynamic industry cluster in regions in Italy. Blooming Chinese  brands  are  increasing  in  the corner  of  streets  and  their  industrial  clusters  range  from  leather  shoes  and  bags  to electric parts, apparel and so on. The purpose of this study is to explore whether the Chinese Wenzhounese immigrant companies in Italy perceive that they have particular common problems and/or benefits in branding themselves in Italy. Through analysis of the role of the brand management in these companies under the context of European/developed market, we aim to find which internal and external factors influence these obstacles and opportunities.

The purpose of this study was to investigate, through a qualitative survey, the need of knowledge and strategy in organisations today and tomorrow. The empirical investigation is built on a semi structured interview that was conducted on nine different companies in Gislaveds community. The companies were from three different branches namely: tree, metal and polymer. Three interviews were conducted in each branch. The result from the interviews showed that the globalisation had put the companies under hard competition which had made the need for rationalisation and effectivness more apparent. Having said this, the demands on the organisation and the individuals within it will constantly increase. In order to enhance the individuals and the organisation there are an increased need for flexibility and openness and the responsibility and authority must be with in the individuals in the organisation. Our work show that the individuals with in the organisation shall be some kind of “superhuman” that can perform most of the tasks in the organisation, he or she should be flexible and open minded. Our findings shows the way an organisation can create this “superhuman” and what an organisation needs to do to become a learning organisation.

Purpose: Only 60 percent of the newly started companies survive their three first years. The purpose of this report is to obtain a deeper understanding regarding how newly started companies work with their positioning and if there are some kind of a relationship between positioning and the survival rate of newly started companies. Research questions: Do newly started companies know what position is? Do they incorporate positioning in their day to day marketing? Approach: We have used a hypothetical-deductive way of reasoning and a qualitative study to gather the information needed. We have through interviews asked our questions to six newly started companies in three different cities. Findings: In our essay, we reached the conclusion that newly started companies do not spend sufficient time or energy on positioning their products. The companies interviewed only market their product as a good product. They did not highlight or position the product as having additional benefits in comparison to similar products and the companies included in our study did not have a positioning strategy. Conclusions: We would like to advice all newly started companies to look into the competitive advantages they can gain through their positioning. We would also advice them to develop a positioning strategy giving them a clearer understanding of how to communicate their uniqueness to their customers. Value of research: Only 60 percent of the newly started companies survive their three first years. In our study we researched newly started companies work with positioning and we looked at the relationship between positioning and the survival rate among newly started companies. Our conclusion in this study is that the companies did not have a positioning strategy. This can be one reason why the survival rate among newly started companies is so low and we find this interesting issue for further research. Key words: positioning, marketing, newly started companies

The purpose of this Bachelor Thesis is to study performance measurement within two lo-gistics companies and how they balance financial and non-financial performance measures. The study takes a qualitative approach to find out how, and also why the two selected logis-tics companies handle performance measurement the way they do. Current discussions on the topic of performance measurement involve whether smaller companies can benefit from measuring non-financial aspects of its business and develop measurement systems such as the Balance Scorecard, or whether this is a waste of a small companies’ scarce resources and is something that can best be utilized by larger companies with more resources. Some au-thors argue concerning performance measurements that size influence the firm’s controlling systems, as larger firms tend to rely more on formal administrative control while small and medium sized companies could therefore be seen as having a more informal administrative control. According to the initial survey done in this study company size seemed to be re-lated to the extent which companies were involved in performance measurement. The two logistics companies participating in the main study are Hemglass and Kronans Droghandel. KD work deliberately with performance measurements based on long-term thinking in connection to their strategy while Hemglass doesn't work with these issues to the same extent. In accordance to our findings in this study Kaplan & Norton (1996) state that the major expected benefits and reasons for using both financial and non-financial measures materialize when the relationships between the two are understood. These rela-tionships can be hard to establish, some links are more obvious than others, but if this can be managed the performance measurement efforts will be more fruitful.

Capital-importing countries face a trade-off between the need to attract new investment and the desire to extract gains from investment already obtained. This dissertation analyses the developing countries’ taxation and nationalization of direct investment from the late 1960s and onwards. In contrast to previous work, it is considered that the developing countries compete with each other in their interaction with multinational enterprises. Using sequential bargaining games, two theoretical chapters determine the distribution of gains from direct investment through taxation and nationalization. One chapter adds external effects on the environment, casting light on when and why host countries may accept pollution as a price for obtaining direct investment. Finally, model based tests explain which countries nationalized in the 1970s, and why the nationalization policy was largely discounted in the late 1970s. The study suggests that host country policies which manipulate the behavour of multinational enterprises do not normally prevent direct investment from being undertaken, or distort the pattern of investment. Policies which interfere with ownership, on the other hand, may prevent and distort direct investment. Two states may be distinguished. The first, in which many countries nationalize, applies to the early 1970s. The second, in which few countries nationalize, has prevailed from the late 1970s. The findings of the study yield certain policy implications. The risk of a wide spread return to nationalization subsequent to an investment revival may not be curbed by the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), established as a member of the World Bank Group in 1988. A solution is likely to require measures that alleviate the developing countries’ acute scarcity of foreign exchange. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögsk.

Asian companies have turned to be multinationals. Many factors could be the reasons of this phenomenon, these days, cooperation strategies, especially, co-branding is an issue. Therefore, this study pursues to study which contexts Asian companies face and how Asian firms use co-branding. This study will study three cases: LG-PRADA, Sony-Ericsson, and Lenovo-IBM of co-branding. This research will analyze each case company’s portfolio with regional matrix and study how company use co-branding with co-branding typology. After reading this paper, readers can have an integrative view over Asian companies’ contexts and its co-branding strategy as its growth strategies.

Det pågår en intensiv debatt i Sverige om revisionspliktens vara eller inte vara i små aktiebolag. Sverige är ett av få europeiska länder som fortfarande har kvar en lagstadgad revisionsplikt för samtliga aktiebolag, och debatten är även av än mer intresse när Svensk redovisnings- och revisionsstandard alltmer anpassas till internationell standard. Ett medlemsland i Europeiska Unionen har möjligheten att undanta små aktiebolag från revisionsplikt. Men på grund av rådande regler i Sverige ska alla aktiebolag följa samma regler, något som ifrågasätts i debatten. Debatten om revisionsplikten är aktuell och viktig eftersom ungefär 200 000 aktiebolag skulle påverkas om revisionsplikten skulle tas bort. Det övergripande syftet med uppsatsen är att bidra till debatten om revisionsplikt för små aktiebolag, genom att gå bakom “ja- och nejdebatte.” Vi kommer att beskriva och förklara attityderna till revisionsplikten, samt till de existerande redovisningsreglerna hos mikroföretag i två olika branscher. För att uppfylla syftet har vi genomfört en kvalitativ studie. Vi har intervjuat ägarna till sex mikroföretag från två olika branscher, nämligen organisationskonsulter och byggnadsentreprenörer. De viktigaste slutsatserna från den här studien är, att oberoende av deras respektive attityd till revisionsplikten är det ingen av respondenterna, som skulle vilja ta bort revisionsplikten för små aktiebolag. Vidare uppfattar respondenterna inom byggnadsentreprenörsbranschen redovisningsreglerna som mer komplicerade än respondenterna inom organisationskonsultbranschen och en förenkling av reglerna skulle inte förändra någon av respon-denternas attityd till revisionsplikten / There is an extensive debate going on in Sweden about the being or not being of the statutory audit for small limited companies. Sweden is one of the few European countries that still have a statutory audit for all limited companies, and the debate is even more of immediate interest when the Swedish accounting and auditing standards are converging more and more to international standards. A member state in the European Union has the possibility to exempt small limited companies from the statutory audit. But due to the current regulations in Sweden, all limited companies are to follow the same rules, which is questioned in the debate. This debate is a current and important issue due to that approximately 200 000 limited companies would be affected if the statutory audit would be abolished. The overall purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the debate about the statutory audit for small limited companies, by moving beyond the “yes and no debate”. We will describe and explain the attitudes towards the statutory audit and the existing accounting regulations among micro companies in two different business sectors. In order to fulfil the purpose, we have conducted a qualitative study. We have interviewed the owners of six micro companies from two different business sectors, namely organizational consultants and building contractors. The main conclusions from this study are that independent of their respective attitudes towards the statutory audit, none of the respondents would like the statutory audit to be abolished for small limited companies. Further, the respondents within the building contractors business perceive the accounting rules as more complicated than the respondents within the organizational consultants sector do, and a simplification of regulation would not change any of the respondents’ attitudes towards the statutory audit.

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Companies need different information about their operations, so that they can make better decisions and be more effective in the business world. One way to obtain that information is through looking at how costs are assigned to different cost objects, such as products or services. Of special interest is the allocation of indirect costs, because if these costs make up an important part of an organisation, then grasping them will help the firm be more competitive and respond better to customers and their needs. One method of allocating indirect costs is called activity based costing, or ABC, and it looks upon what activities that are being performed by a company, how much they cost based on resource usage, what drives the costs, and most importantly, it assigns these ex-penses to products/services. The aim of this thesis has been to investigate whether the ABC method can be applied in an event organising company. In order to reach the purpose we have used the example of Elmia AB, an event and trade show organiser situated in Jönköping, Sweden. The focus of our investigation was exhibition stands used in trade shows. We have come to the conclusion that activity based costing is applicable when it comes to event organisers in the sense that it is possible to identify major activities and depict re-sources. However, problems emerge when trying to estimate costs of resources because it is hard to know in advance what customers want, and therefore one cannot clearly distin-guish or set fixed and variable costs, nor can one easily cope with problems of unused ca-pacity, that is resources that are supplied but not used. This is especially the case with cus-tomised exhibition stands. The process is somewhat easier when it comes to standardised offerings, because they are less complicated since they are already set and cannot be much altered by the customers. Furthermore, cost drivers can be applied in this setting, at least theoretically because they provide help in determining what processes the customers might find important. On the other hand, they might be rather difficult to measure. Finally, the actual assigning of costs to cost objects is hard, because for the complex solutions, one cannot easily find common activities across different stands, but this can be easier to do when exhibition stand pack-ages are standardised and demand is better traceable. We have based our results on one company as a generalisation of event organisers as a whole, and we can argue that the example that we have chosen can be a good representa-tive of this particular branch of the service industry, because it shows how important indi-rect costs are to this dynamic business and also it reveals the importance of customers and their role when applying activity based costing to the environment. However, in order to have a complete conclusion with respect to our aim, more research is needed in other event and trade show organising firms because there are company specific situations in terms of size, structure, culture, etc, of a company that makes ABC a special case that changes ac-cording to different objectives of different users.

Aim: As a result of growing globalization and competition the issue of internationalization is becoming more and more important and relevant for companies all over the world. With fading barriers to trade, investment opportunities and technological innovation, more and more companies see new openings for increased profit and growth by going international. During the last number of years new Swedish fashion brands and clothing companies have entered the international market, and Swedish clothing in general is gaining wider interests outside Swedish borders. Due to this I found it interesting to look at how Swedish small and medium-sized clothing companies start their international expansion, particularly in terms of market selection and choice of entry mode. Polarn O. Pyret (PO.P) is a Swedish clothing company and one of the leading concepts for children wear in Sweden. PO.P has successively expanded internationally and is becoming bigger and bigger. The company was therefore a good source to gain a deeper understanding of the internationalization for Swedish clothing companies. Method: This thesis has a descriptive and exploratory purpose and a qualitative approach. Furthermore, a single case study strategy has been used. The data is collected both from primary resources such as interviews by mail, face to face and phone, while secondary data is collected from homepages and annual reports. For the analysis a within-case data analysis has been made. Result & Conclusions: The main finding for this thesis is that PO.P does not follow the traditional Uppsala model for internationalization. PO.P seems to penetrate new and more distant market stepwise while gaining more knowledge and experience about internationalization, but only by the use of franchising. The motivators to go international for PO.P can be described as proactive as growth and profit are the main motivators, instead of reactive such as demand from someone else. The result also implies that market condition in terms of competition and growth potential, in addition to socio-cultural factors play an important role in the internationalization process for PO.P. It seems that it is important for PO.P when selecting the right market for internationalization, that the market is close in geographical distance, in addition to low psychical distance, as the customers in these markets can more easily understands the brand and the concept, due to similarities in culture, climate and development. PO.P is using a combination of wholly owned concept stores and franchise stores in Sweden and master franchise agreements internationally. By using franchise agreements PO.P does not have to be responsible of all the risk and they can easily gain experience by the franchisee. Using master franchising can on the other hand also give them less control over the activities in the markets abroad.