In 2008, a financial crisis struck the world economy, causing a risk of a potential system-crash. In order to stabilize the financial system within Europe, European Banking Authority (EBA) presented new guidelines (GL44) as a way, among others, to increase the transparency among financial institutions. As a result of GL44, Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) implemented new regulations, with minor adjustments and amendments. At present, the guidelines are weeks from being completely implemented, thus meaning that the financial industry is able to start seeing the changes from the regulations.The authors have chosen to conduct a study regarding how the banks have been affected from the external authority demands during the previous recession.The focus of the study has been on three of Sweden’s four large banks, which are considered systematically important, as well as one niche bank.The study showed that the work in board and top-management was affected by external demands from authorities. The attention on business development was disturbed during the recession since more focus was put on controlling factors such as compliance, risk management and internal audit as well as on board composition and board competence.

The main aim of this study was to investigate the perceptions of stakeholders regarding reputation in schools in Fezile Dabi district. A qualitative approach was used. Multiple sources of data collection included semi-structured interviews, documents and visual data in the form of photographs. A literature review revealed that reputation management is imperative for schools to survive and continue existing. Determination of factors that contribute to good reputation and those causing bad reputation is important before school managers can embark on reputation management. Reputable schools attract more learners and resources because of the culture of learning and teaching in these schools. Four sites were purposefully selected and twenty internal and external stakeholders participated. The research sites were made up of two primary and two secondary schools all Quintile 1 and 2 schools. The study revealed that factors contributing to good reputation in the participating schools included: effective teaching, emotional appeal, clean physical surroundings, good leadership and management, involvement of parents and effective financial management. It was found that all participating schools had good academic results and received awards in sport and music, involvement in extra-curricular activities was regarded as a norm in these schools, thus they were boasting of high enrolment of learners. There were however, causal factors to bad reputation such as external factors- lack of leadership and management at district level and lack of skills regarding dealing with media. Internal factors included misbehaviour of learners and ineffective management. School managers in these schools were not creative and innovative in the use of strategies to strengthen reputation in their schools. The focus was only on effective teaching and extra-curricular activities. No new strategies were adopted by school managers to adapt to the changing school environment to ensure continued reputable schools. / Thesis (MEd (Education Management))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2013

Abstract: There is an ongoing debate on whether risk-taking incentives align risk-averse managers’ interests with those of shareholders or whether such incentives lead to excessively risky firm and leverage policies. In this study, we shed light on this debate by using CEO risk-taking incentives, measured by the sensitivity of CEO wealth to changes in stock return volatility (Vega), and explain how Vega affects firms’ security issuance and repurchase activities. In general, we find that a higher Vega increases (decreases) the likelihood of debt issuance (share issuance) and it decreases (increases) the propensity of debt retirement (share repurchase). However, in high-levered firms, the positive effect of Vega on debt issuance and the negative influence of Vega on debt retirement are diminished. One the other hand, for equity issuance and repurchases, high leverage does not seem to alter the impact of Vega. These findings have three main implications: 1) in general, CEO risk-taking incentives (Vega) do affect the financing decisions of firms by increasing firms’ degree of leverage, (2) when existing leverage is high, CEO risk-taking incentives do not seem to induce CEOs to take excessive financial risks through debt issuance, but such incentives encourage them to continue repurchasing shares that would lead to even higher debt ratios and non-operational risks, and (3) firms with high Vega do not seem to adopt target debt ratios. JEL Classification: G30, G32, J33

In recent years, e-commerce has grown and spread to different markets. One of these markets is the toy market. This growth has created a need of expanding the loyalty research to the context of e-commerce. The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the understanding of the concept loyalty by identifying what loyalty building factors in Swedish online toyshops matters to the customer and how the customers utilize the factors. The collection method was semi-structured group interviews in order to explore the respondents’ experiences with online toyshops in Sweden. The findings suggest that eight factors influences loyalty in online toyshops. The factors were divided into internal- and external factors. The internal factors consist of convenience and children’s involvement. The external factors are product brand image, website attributes, delivery, service quality and security concerns. These external factors were found to affect company brand image. Depending on the customers’ preferences the factors are playing different roles in the customers’ life. The limitations of the study are few participants, risk of being biased because of the theory and many interpretations of the empirical material. The practical implication is that the companies can use the findings to understand their customers and that a theoretical development has been made. The original value of the study is that this kind of research has not been made in the context of online toyshops before, in the best of our knowledge.

Primary care based physical activity interventions have been shown to be efficacious when delivered under controlled research conditions, over the short-term. However, few studies have evaluated the long-term sustainability of these health interventions utilizing methods to determine external validity. Our own research group conducted the ENCOURAGE project, which enabled previously sedentary individuals (Age, 51 ± 1 years; BMI, 35.2 ± 0.8) to increase their total physical activity by 104 minutes a week. Although the ENCOURAGE project has now ended, a number of stakeholders are utilizing project outcomes to inform best practice within their respective organizations. The purpose of this thesis project was to use the RE-AIM framework to evaluate the external validity of the ENCOURAGE project, and to describe the stakeholders’ perceptions regarding the long-term sustainability of the project utilizing methods from a stakeholder analysis assessment. Results from the RE-AIM evaluation suggest that three of the five dimensions of the framework were met, notably: Reach, Adoption and Implementation. Therefore, the ENCOURAGE project generated a moderate level of public health impact. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight key stakeholders who were involved with the design, development or implementation of the project. Although the ENCOURAGE project was not adopted into the health care system, it left notable implications on the recognition of physical activity in primary care, and the delivery of physical activity services in primary care. Furthermore, the project was able to influence the primary care providers’ perceptions about physical activity, community-based programing and health policy. These positive changes observed at the individual, organizational and system-level are sustainable over the long-term. / February 2017

This paper introduces a model framework for dynamic credit rating processes. Our framework aggregates ordinal rating information stemming from a variety of rating sources. The dynamic of the consensus rating captures systematic as well as idiosyncratic changes. In addition, our framework allows to validate the different rating sources by analyzing the mean/variance structure of the rating deviations. In an empirical study for the iTraxx Europe companies rated by the big three external rating agencies we use Bayesian techniques to estimate the consensus ratings for these companies. The advantages are illustrated by comparing our dynamic rating model to a naive benchmark model. (authors' abstract)

Abstract Purpose - The purpose of this research aims to explore the consumers’ behaviors in multicultural context, for low product involvement. Design/Methodology/Approach - Researchers of this study had chosen a qualitative research which is in accordance with the purpose. Eight interviews were led with respondents from seven different nationalities having lived in multicultural environment. The goal was to analyze which behaviors come up when consumers are guided by six particular external and internal factors in their consumption (namely culture, reference groups, situational factors, personal needs and motives, attitudes and consumer orientation towards multiculturalism). Findings - Firstly, findings showed that consumers are guided in their behavior by the six mentioned factors in multicultural context for low product involvement. Secondly, six consumers’ behaviors, guided by external and internal factors, have been found during this research. Research limitations/Implications - As this research is qualitative, not all the aspects of the topic were explored. Another exploratory research could be led to detect other behaviors or other factors guiding consumers’ behaviors in multicultural context. There is also a need for a quantitative research in order to confirmed findings. Thus thanks to this study, marketers have now a broader view on consumers’ behaviors in multicultural context, especially for low product involvement. Originality/Value - This study is one of the first research conducted about consumers’ behaviors in multicultural context. Researchers deepened the existing literature by exploring and bringing possible consumers’ behavior’ in multicultural context for low product involvement. Existing literature was not as specific as this one concerning factors guiding consumers’ behaviors in multicultural context, as well as concerning low product involvement.

The Equipment Controls and Electronics section (EN-STI-ECE) at CERN is developing a high precision piezo-actuated rotational stage for the UA9 crystal collimation project. This collaboration is investigating how tiny bent crystals can help to steer particle beams used in modern hadron colliders such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Particles are deflected by following the crystal planar channels, "channeling" through the crystal. For high energy particles the angular acceptance for channeling is very low, demanding for a high angular precision mechanism, i.e. the rotational stage. Several control-related issues arising from the complexity and operational environment of the system make it difficult to design a controller that achieves the desired performance. This thesis investigates different control approaches that could be used to improve the tracking capability of the rotational stage. It shows that the IRC method could be used to efficiently control the rotational stage. Moreover it shows that a harmonic cancellation method could be used to increase the tracking accuracy by canceling known harmonic disturbances. The harmonic cancellation method (the RFDC) was implemented in this thesis and proposed as an add-on to the present control algorithm.

The literature presents us with two distinct, and at times opposed, approaches to strategic management: the use of strategic choice and determinism. This research shows that these approaches can actually be considered as two distinct variables, which create a space or framework in which it is possible to identify, according to the available different amounts of strategic choice and determinism, the four different ontological perspectives of determinism, hard incompatibilism, libertarianism and compatibilism. According to the literature, within each ontological perspective of the strategic choice/determinism framework, companies use different levels of strategic choice and determinism to produce organizational outcomes. This research provides empirical evidence of the real life existence of these ontological perspectives, in which companies’ performance of revenues is driven by a different amount of strategic choice or determinism according to the perspectives in which companies operate. This research also shows that other important performance indicators, such as EBITDA, depend only on deterministic variables, while ROA depends neither on strategic choice nor on deterministic variables. These findings suggest that future research could increase our knowledge on the internal environment of companies, as it could do from the hard incompatibilist perspective, which was not possible to study thoroughly within this research. The research conclusions provide several contributions to both academic knowledge and practice.

The EU has experienced several terrorist attacks by Islamic fundamentalists since 2004 on its territory. Terrorism is threatening the fundamental rights that EU is based upon and has become not only a question of security but also a question of internal and external border security. This study seeks to examine the measures taken to fight terrorism by the EU and to see how terrorism has affected the security-, foreign-, and defence policies. The study is a theory consuming qualitative case study with both a descriptive and explanatory approach. The theoretical framework that the study is based on are theories about normative power, soft power and hard power but also the discussion about the external and internal security problem. The EU have taken several measures and policies in the fight against terrorism. The measures and policies are all influenced by the three theories in some way. The result of the study shows that EU has went from using only soft instruments and normative ways in the fight against terrorism towards harder instruments even if they still are using soft instruments in a harder way.