Previous research on the tradeoff between operating and financial leverage has come to contradicting results, thus, there is no consensus of opinion regarding van Horne’s tradeoff theory. This study investigates whether there is support for the tradeoff theory on a sample of 347 Swedish, listed firms. Unlike previous studies, we employ a method with direct measures using guidance provided by Penman (2012), rather than using the more common degree of operating and financial leverage as proxies. During the time period 2006-2011 we find a statistically significant negative relationship of 0.214 using an OLS regression with financial leverage as the dependent variable, giving support for the tradeoff theory. The adjusted explanatory power (adjusted R2) is however rather low, despite adding four control variables, reaching only 7.4%.

Com o mercado cada vez mais competitivo, a visão das empresas de gerir o negócio com foco nos processos faz com que seja necessária a estruturação dos sistemas de custeio e a gestão de custos através de indicadores de desempenho operacional para apoiar a tomada de decisão estratégica. Neste sentido, o estudo desenvolve uma análise dos processos de produção com o objetivo de estruturar um sistema de custeio e a gestão de indicadores de custo para uma empresa do setor sucroenergético. O trabalho se inicia com uma revisão teórica, destacando os elementos principais de sistemas de custeio (princípios e métodos de custeio) e a importância da gestão destes custos através dos indicadores de desempenho nos processos produtivos. Posteriormente, realiza-se a identificação dos processos de produção, com a apropriação específica de custo de cada atividade, consolidando o custo total de produção e identificando anomalias que causam perda de rendimento desses processos e que podem ser controladas através da gestão de indicadores. O estudo finaliza com algumas considerações sobre a utilização de sistemas de custeio e de indicadores de processos de produção, apresentando recomendações para estudos futuros. / With the market increasingly competitive, the vision of the company to manage the business with a focus on processes makes it necessary to structure the costing systems and cost management through operational performance indicators to support strategic decision making. In this sense, the study develops an analysis of production processes with the aim of designing a costing system and management cost indicators for a company's sugarcane industry. The work begins with a theoretical review, highlighting the key elements of costing systems (principles and costing methods) and the importance of managing these costs through performance indicators in production processes. Subsequently carried out to identify the production processes, with the appropriation of specific cost of each activity, consolidating the total cost of production and identifying abnormalities that cause yield loss and that these processes can be controlled through management indicators. The study concludes with considerations on the use of costing systems and indicators of production processes, presenting recommendations for future studies.

Com o mercado cada vez mais competitivo, a visão das empresas de gerir o negócio com foco nos processos faz com que seja necessária a estruturação dos sistemas de custeio e a gestão de custos através de indicadores de desempenho operacional para apoiar a tomada de decisão estratégica. Neste sentido, o estudo desenvolve uma análise dos processos de produção com o objetivo de estruturar um sistema de custeio e a gestão de indicadores de custo para uma empresa do setor sucroenergético. O trabalho se inicia com uma revisão teórica, destacando os elementos principais de sistemas de custeio (princípios e métodos de custeio) e a importância da gestão destes custos através dos indicadores de desempenho nos processos produtivos. Posteriormente, realiza-se a identificação dos processos de produção, com a apropriação específica de custo de cada atividade, consolidando o custo total de produção e identificando anomalias que causam perda de rendimento desses processos e que podem ser controladas através da gestão de indicadores. O estudo finaliza com algumas considerações sobre a utilização de sistemas de custeio e de indicadores de processos de produção, apresentando recomendações para estudos futuros. / With the market increasingly competitive, the vision of the company to manage the business with a focus on processes makes it necessary to structure the costing systems and cost management through operational performance indicators to support strategic decision making. In this sense, the study develops an analysis of production processes with the aim of designing a costing system and management cost indicators for a company's sugarcane industry. The work begins with a theoretical review, highlighting the key elements of costing systems (principles and costing methods) and the importance of managing these costs through performance indicators in production processes. Subsequently carried out to identify the production processes, with the appropriation of specific cost of each activity, consolidating the total cost of production and identifying abnormalities that cause yield loss and that these processes can be controlled through management indicators. The study concludes with considerations on the use of costing systems and indicators of production processes, presenting recommendations for future studies.

Com o mercado cada vez mais competitivo, a visão das empresas de gerir o negócio com foco nos processos faz com que seja necessária a estruturação dos sistemas de custeio e a gestão de custos através de indicadores de desempenho operacional para apoiar a tomada de decisão estratégica. Neste sentido, o estudo desenvolve uma análise dos processos de produção com o objetivo de estruturar um sistema de custeio e a gestão de indicadores de custo para uma empresa do setor sucroenergético. O trabalho se inicia com uma revisão teórica, destacando os elementos principais de sistemas de custeio (princípios e métodos de custeio) e a importância da gestão destes custos através dos indicadores de desempenho nos processos produtivos. Posteriormente, realiza-se a identificação dos processos de produção, com a apropriação específica de custo de cada atividade, consolidando o custo total de produção e identificando anomalias que causam perda de rendimento desses processos e que podem ser controladas através da gestão de indicadores. O estudo finaliza com algumas considerações sobre a utilização de sistemas de custeio e de indicadores de processos de produção, apresentando recomendações para estudos futuros. / With the market increasingly competitive, the vision of the company to manage the business with a focus on processes makes it necessary to structure the costing systems and cost management through operational performance indicators to support strategic decision making. In this sense, the study develops an analysis of production processes with the aim of designing a costing system and management cost indicators for a company's sugarcane industry. The work begins with a theoretical review, highlighting the key elements of costing systems (principles and costing methods) and the importance of managing these costs through performance indicators in production processes. Subsequently carried out to identify the production processes, with the appropriation of specific cost of each activity, consolidating the total cost of production and identifying abnormalities that cause yield loss and that these processes can be controlled through management indicators. The study concludes with considerations on the use of costing systems and indicators of production processes, presenting recommendations for future studies.

No description available.

Background: Consumers are aware of and care for the environment, which has led to a need for transparent and sustainable fashion products. This results in that companies need to create transparent and sustainable communication strategies to gain the consumers’ trust. In order to strengthen trust among consumers, brands needs to tell stories that are credible and create emotional bonds. A few fashion companies has taken this transparency further through implementing cost transparency in their business model. This means that they as opposite to traditional retailers reveals its costs and margins in order to justify the product price and communicate this through storytelling towards the end consumer. Purpose: The purpose of this research is to present how fashion companies that today work with cost transparency disclose this information, what parts of the cost structure they do not disclose and how it is communicated through storytelling. This paper will focus on companies that communicate cost transparency to the end consumer online and how they do this through their company websites and their online shops. The research will add to the existing literature which has until now concentrated on transparency from an ethical supply chain perspective and price transparency. Methodology: This research is a qualitative study where a comparative research design is chosen. A multiple-case study is chosen where primary data regarding cost transparency and storytelling is collected from three company websites. The data is later analysed back and forth with concepts presented in the theoretical framework in order to analyse how fashion companies work with cost transparency and storytelling. Findings: The research shows that all three cases choose to display transparent cost information related to direct material costs and manufacturing costs as well as a price comparison with traditional retail brands. Meanwhile the less recognisable costs such as the indirect costs related to running the business were not included in the cost breakdown information. The cost transparency narrative is used in storytelling to educate the consumer where all three cases tell a story where they function as the hero, meanwhile the traditional retailers represents the villain. Managerial implications: From a company perspective, everything related to adding a value to the product is seen as part of the cost structure. Hence, in order to keep the consumers’ trust and stay relevant, it is seen that companies are advised to tell stories that transparently gives the consumers the full picture of the cost structure.

Internet of things (IoT) which was once a vision is now reality in many sectors. Platform in the IoT ecosystem plays an important role in service provisioning journey by creating business value for the actors and enabling data management for the user. Service provisioning on IoT platform are application centric and is more focused on vertical development. Amalgamation of services, applications in IoT platform is the key in bringing data and society together. Interoperability and scalability is posing as hindrance for this hypothesis. On high level, identifying the cost drivers in these IoT platforms can be key for an actor to bring this hypothesis to reality. This work is one such attempt in providing cost breakdown and identifying cost drivers in IoT platform. A generic framework is proposed which dimensions the platform hardware and software to apprehend the design, development and operation cost of services considered. The framework is designed to proffer three deployment cloud strategies, On-premises, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS). Three business use cases are tested on this framework to arrive at the cost structure, which in turn states the cost drivers. The results suggest storage, hardware replacement and software development are major chunk of cost in the structure driven by devices/sensors in the platform and message transmission rate from those devices. Additionally, a suggestion of deployment strategies are made on each use cases to avail cost efficient services. / Internet of Things (IoT) som en gång var en vision är nu verklighet i många sektorer. Plattformen i IoT-ekosystemet spelar en viktig roll i researrangemanget genom att skapa affärsvärde för aktörerna och möjliggöra datahantering för användaren. Tjänsteleverantörer på IoT-plattformen är applikationscentriska och är mer fokuserade på vertikal utveckling. Sammanslagning av tjänster, applikationer i IoT-plattformen är nyckeln till att föra data och samhället samman. Interoperabilitet och skalbarhet utgör hinder för denna hypotes. På hög nivå kan identifiering av kostnadsdrivarna i dessa IoT-plattformar vara nyckeln för en aktör för att få denna hypotes till verklighet. Detta arbete är ett sådant försök att tillhandahålla kostnadsfördelning och identifiera kostnadsdrivare i IoT-plattformen. Ett generiskt ramverk föreslås som dimensionerar plattformshårdvaran och programvaran för att fånga konstruktions-, utvecklingsoch driftkostnaderna för betraktade tjänster. Ramverket är utformat för att erbjuda tre implementeringsmolnstrategier, lokala, infrastruktur som en tjänst (IaaS) och plattform som en tjänst (PaaS). Tre fall för affärsanvändning testas enligt denna ram för att komma fram till kostnadsstrukturen, vilket i sin tur anger kostnadsdrivarna. Resultaten tyder på att lagring, hårdvarutbyte och mjukvaruutveckling är en stor del av kostnaden i strukturen som drivs av enheter / sensorer i plattformen och överföringshastighet för meddelanden från dessa enheter. Dessutom görs ett förslag om distributionsstrategier för varje användningsfall för att utnyttja kostnadseffektiva tjänster.

The purpose of this master thesis is to address two main ways of dealing with used textile material in Czech Republic. It compares textile material as a component of a household waste with textile material as a component of a segregated waste. The main question that the thesis and the research done within it addresses is whether the costs, associated with textile waste management coming as the result of administrative tools and legislative action plans mounted to it, are not too high. Based on a calculated model of cost structure of both above mentioned variants their comparison could be performed. Analysis of its results pointed out, that under certain given conditions and assumptions the system of segregated waste collection is, despite its higher costs, effective. The outcome of this master thesis is proposed possible scenarios used to optimize textile waste management in the context of economic science methodology, available data and primary research questions.

This thesis is a techno-economic study focus on the IoT connectivity service field. It describes the specifications of LPWAN, LPLAN, and Cellular-IoT technologies. The analysis method of dimensioning and cost structure calculation of IoT network is enhanced from previous wireless network research, which is also a research gap in the telecom industry. By using this method, the dimensioning results and cost structure performances can be obtained when having the inputs of the scenario. The results are compared among SigFox, LoRaWAN, NB-IoT, LTE-M, EC-GSM-IoT, and WiFi-HaLow. Furthermore, we find out the cost driver of different technologies. When it comes to different actors, a new market entrant or an incumbent, the strategies taken by the actors are compared. They are building own sites or leasing sites from other actors, even reusing sites if possible. The contribution of this thesis is pointing out the dimensioning and cost structure calculation method of deploying IoT connectivity. Another contribution is comparing the cost performance and figuring out the cost driver. SigFox is costefficient for low capacity scenario, while LTE-M is of good cost performance for high capacity cases. The cost driver is operation and maintenance cost and site build cost. By leasing and reusing sites, the site build cost can be largely reduced. / Denna avhandling har ett ekonomiskt och tekniskt perspektiv på anslutningstjänsten IoT. Den beskriver specifikationerna för LPWAN, LPLAN och Cellular-IoT teknik. Analysmetoden för dimensionering och beräkning av kostnadsstruktur av IoT-nätet har förbättrats jämfört med tidigare trådlös nätverksforskning, vilket i sig är ett område som saknar tillräcklig forskning inom telekombranschen. Genom att använda den här metoden kan dimensioneringens resultat och prestandan av kostnadsstrukturen erhållas när indata finns tillgängligt för olika fall/scenarion. Resultaten jämförs bland SigFox, LoRaWAN, NB-IoT, LTE-M, EC-GSM-IoT och WiFi-HaLow. Dessutom hittar vi kostnadsdrivaren av olika teknologier. När det gäller olika aktörer, en ny marknadsaktör eller en etablerad aktör, jämförs de olika strategier som aktörerna använder. De bygger egna basstationer eller leasar basstationer från andra aktörer, och i vissa fall även återanvändning av basstationer om så är möjligt. Denna avhandling bidrar till att peka ut beräkningsmetoden för dimensioneringen och kostnadsstruktur av att bygga ut IoT-anslutningar. En annan slutsats är jämförelsen av kostnadseffektiviteten mellan olika teknologier och att komma underfund med kostnadsdrivaren. SigFox är kostnadseffektiv i fallen där kapaciteten är låg, medan LTE-M har bra kostnadseffektivitet i fallen där kapaciteten är hög. Kostnadsdrivaren är driftoch underhållskostnad samt kostnad för konstruktionen av byggplatsen. Genom att leasa och återanvända basstationer kan kostanden för konstruktionen av byggplatsen minskas till en stor del.

A diploma thesis is dealing about cost method of valuation for passive family houses, which popularity is growing. Aim of the thesis is determinate amount of share cost structure of real buildings and compares it with valuation decree. First part of this thesis analyses issue of passive houses as well as cost method of valuation issue. There are three family houses valuated by detail itemized budget. Than share cost structure is confronted and evaluated by valuation decree no. 441/2013 Sb. As well thesis shows basic specifics of passive houses valuation. Also thesis brings answers for economical questions. For example how much passive house costs or how much is passive house more expensive than usual house.