En akties pris påverkas av många olika faktorer. Såväl företagets verksamhet som externa faktorer har betydelse för akties utveckling. Denna studie undersöker specifikt huruvida en oren revisionsberättelse påverkar priset på aktien. Vår problemformulering lyder: Påverkas aktiekursen av informationen i ett noterat aktiebolags orena revisionsberättelse? Syftet med vår studie är att redogöra för hur aktiekursen påverkas då ett noterat aktiebolags revisor skriver en oren revisionsberättelse. Studien visar också vad som eventuellt kan förklara denna påverkan. För att besvara vår problemformulering har vi undersökt de aktiebolag noterade på Stockholmsbörsen som har orena revisionsberättelser. Genom en kvantitativ studie har vi sedan studerat om, och i så fall hur, aktiemarknaden påverkas när ett bolag offentliggör sin orena revisionsberättelse. Studien präglas av ett positivistiskt synsätt, med vissa inslag av hermeneutik, då vi utifrån en större mängd observationer har undersökt sambandet mellan aktiekurs och en oren revisionsberättelse genom att testa våra hypoteser och ge en förklaring till det undersökta. Det hermeneutiska inslaget visar sig i den förståelse vi har försökt skapa för att förklara de samband som föreligger mellan den orena revisionsberättelsen och aktiekursen. Det deduktiva angreppssättet bygger upp vår studie, då vi utgår från en redan befintlig teori. Bland tidigare genomförda studier finns det både de som hävdar att vad som står i revisionsberättelsen har betydelse och påverkar aktiekursen och de som menar att det inte spelar någon roll. Denna studie är genomförd enligt en s.k. event study-modell där vi har beräknat abnormala avkastningar och genomfört hypotestest för att undersöka om våra antaganden om att den orena revisionsberättelsen har en negativ påverkan på aktiekursen är sanna och signifikanta. Vi har även genom att ställa upp diagram där vi gjort skillnad på olika orsaker, branscher, etc. försökt se om vi kan få någon förståelse för sambandet mellan den orena revisionsberättelsen och aktiekursen. Vi har ej sett några statistiska bevis för att det faktiskt existerar ett samband mellan en oren revisionsberättelse och aktiekursen. Detta hypotestest till trots har vi genom diagrammen kunnat se att aktiekursen påverkas olika beroende på innehållet i revisionsberättelsen. Vi kan se att anmärkningar och kommentarer som rör värderingar av tillgångar är vadsom har den mest negativa effekten på aktiekursen under vår tidsperiod. Studien visar att aktiekursen har störst negativ utveckling i bolag som sysslar med konsultverksamhet och att de negativa effekterna på aktiekursen är högre om den orena revisionsberättelsen är oväntad. Vi kan även se att de bolag som har en anmärkning i sin revisionsberättelse har en kraftigare negativ avkastning på sin aktiekurs, än de bolag som har en eller flera kommentarer. Samt att de bolag som har fler än en anmärkning har ett kraftigare fall på sin aktiekurs än de bolag som endast har en anmärkning. Vidare verkar det som om att marknaden justerar sig innan revisionsberättelsen blir offentlig. Detta tyder på att informationen läcker ut tidigare, eller att informationen ges innan tidpunkten för hela revisionsberättelsens offentliggörande.

The purpose of an audit is to improve the performance of a company. By analyzing its current performance parameters the needs can be diagnosed as well as new opportunities and challenges. Different theories on organizational management will be discussed as well as current used audit methodologies seen from a marketing perspective. An explicit aim is to find the links between performance parameters and the appropriate tools in meeting the founded needs. A case study, using the described methodology, is analyzed to give a practical example. The method was mainly “learning by doing”, the case study foremost. As the tools which each management consultant use in detail is not published, starting out by what is described in literature made a first practical iterative step in the process. The authors own development in creating this tool has foremost been to integrate the two (the Balanced Scorecard and Three levels of performance). They complement each other well as the later makes it possible to obtain a structural approach (as is highly convenient in large organizations), the former has a clear and consistent parameter coupling between cause and effect in business processes.

Tidig upptäckt och intervention är av stor vikt när det gäller att komma till rätta med alkoholproblem. För att identifiera vilka som har alkoholproblem använder man sig inom vården av screeninginstrument. Dessa screeninginstrument kan distribueras på olika sätt, till exempel som enkät eller som intervju. Tidigare forskning har kommit fram till motstridiga resultat gällande vilket distributionssätt som ger den mest tillförlitliga informationen. Syftet med föreliggande studie är att undersöka om det finns skillnader i svar till följd av distributionssätt. Här undersöks enkät- respektive intervjumetod. De screeninginstrument som används i studien är Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test och CAGE. Undersökningsdeltagare var 47 studenter vid Stockholms respektive Uppsala Universitet. Samtliga deltagare gjorde både enkät och intervju. Resultatet visade ingen signifikant skillnad mellan de båda distributionssätten avseende totalpoängen. Däremot fanns en signifikant skillnad mellan de båda distributionssätten i en enskild fråga på Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test.

Recent financial crises and accounting scandals resulting from perceived audit failures have given rise to increase criticism in the manner which accountants and auditors respect their professional code of ethics. As a consequence, the SEC rules in 2000 limits the services auditors are allowed to provide to their clients and also set limits on fees for internal audit services. In addition to this, they called upon all firms to disclose all fees paid to auditors for both audit and non-audit services. This thesis investigates whether the provision of Non-Audit Services is associated with auditor’s independence evidence from the earnings management perspective proxy by discretionary accruals. I began this study by examining the relevant textbooks and related articles of accounting and auditing. Furthermore, the hypotheses and research model are proposed based upon related accounting and auditing theories. The data for this thesis were manually collected from the NASDAQ OMX website from the annual financial reports of 107 Swedish public listed firms in the Stockholm Stock Exchange. The selection of these companies was based on their capitalization i.e., Large, Medium and Small size firms. In this study, quantitative research method has been used to explore the relationship between provision of NAS and auditor’s independence with the help of statistical soft wares (SPSS and Excel) for data analysis. My research outcome provides evidence that the amount of non-audit services rendered by a firm’s external auditors is not associated with earnings management; therefore, the auditor’s independence is not compromised for providing NAS to their clients. This no association is an indication that, the auditor’s independence is strengthened during the provision of non-audit services a result consistent with that of prior researches (e.g., DeFond et al. (2002); Crabtree et al. (2004); Chung & Kallapur (2003)). I also found out that, the provision of audit services is not associated with earnings management, an indication of no management discretionary accruals. Therefore, the auditor’s independence is not compromised when providing a joint audit and non-audit services. These results provide an insight concerning the perceptions of auditor independence and also afford empirical evidence regarding the role that non-audit and audit services fees plays in establishing confidence among the users of firms’ annual financial report.

The goal to satisfy the energy demand, global warming and other environmental effects has prompted the urgency to shift energy generation systems to more affordable and sustainable methods, with the goal of phasing out the traditional-conventional systems to environmental friendly and sustainable generation systems. This campaign also calls for a more energy conscious society aware of its energy demand and promoting energy efficiency so as to minimize the demand through reduced wastages. For the later to be achieved energy systems should be understood in organization and this involves performing energy audits. This paper discusses the energy audit of Nchanga mine, Nchanga mine is located in Chingola town in the Copperbelt province of Zambia, and has operations involving underground mining, copper leaching, open pit mining and concentrate extraction. The Objective of the study was to perform a preliminary Audit; to understand the energy scenario and identify areas were savings could be realized. The problem however was that constraints on time could not allow a detailed analysis hence the scope was strictly on a preliminary audit study with minimal details on economics of measures and no analysis of investment cost. The method used for this analysis was the top down approach and the processes were divided into support and production processes to establish the energy balance. Nchanga mine has an annual energy use of about 656 GWh with an average maximum demand of about 88.6 MW. The total cost was about US. $ 34 million with maximum demand (MD) covering about $ 22 million and the rest was energy costs. This was obtained from analysis of energy bills from April 2011 to March 2012. The energy measures analyzed were according to the cost; cost influenced and non-cost influenced. The non-cost influenced measures gave a saving potential of about 15.6 MW ($ 3.9 million) on MD and 46 GWh ($ 818,800) on energy, giving a total electricity cost saving of about $ 4.7 million. The cost influenced measures gave a saving potential of about 12.7 MW ($ 3.1 million) on MD and 12 GWh ($ 213,600) on energy, giving a total electricity cost saving of about $ 3.4 million. These measures have a potential to reduce the overall MD by 28 MW (32% reduction), realizing an annual saving of about $ 7 million, and the overall energy use by about 58 GWh (8.8% reduction), which is an annual saving of about $ 1 million. This gives the total saving on the electricity bill of about $ 8 million that is about 24% reduction on the electricity bill with regards to last year’s expenditure.

Introducing sustainability policies in the cement industry involves changing not only production technologies, but the organizational culture of a mature industry that is characterized by huge CO₂ emissions and significant environmental impacts. This research attempts to understand the transition process of the industry and its employees as the process is taking place. The actors involved are strongly influenced by often contradictory forces: On one hand the naturalized market dynamics in the context of the automobile dependent society and widespread networks of highways and other concrete structures, and on the other, the growing concern of preserving resources for future generations as a shared responsibility that raises awareness of the negative environmental impacts of cement production. The fieldwork component of the project was comprised of two complementary parts: First, an ethnographic study of how the abstract goal of becoming sustainable is given meaning as it is implemented in Cemex, one of the largest companies in the cement industry at the global level. Second, an analysis of the audit culture mechanisms present in the production of knowledge among experts involved in designing sustainability assessment mechanisms for infrastructure projects. The latter component took place among experts in the academy and in the Texas Department of Transportation, which represents at the same time a regulating force and a key client of the cement industry. To present the findings, I approach the subject of sustainability as a construction project where cement and sustainability act as boundary objects between multiple communities (Star and Griesemer 1989) at the same time that sustainability is being constructed. I attempt to present the interactions as an institutional ecology with multiple actors and layers of meaning which are interdependent. The work first describes the prevailing landscape of the urban environment pointing to the influence of aesthetic discourses through the course of history from modernism to brutalism and place-making as well as to the prevailing regulatory, geographic and cultural conditions. Here, the landscape is taken as the point of departure where the construction project of sustainability is to take place given that its characteristics allow certain constructions of sustainability while thwarting others. I consider the built environment to be the response to the surrounding conditions that constitute the landscape and to the prevailing preferences of key players. To follow, I describe the main actors who participate in the construction of sustainability including internal and external stakeholders. I take these groups as members of the construction crew of sustainability presenting their interests as they relate to the triple bottom line and to their affiliation to multiple publics (Warner 2002). Next, I turn to the accreditation mechanisms and the dynamics followed by experts and their interlocutors defining the blueprints which the cement industry must follow while sustainability is being constructed within the company and in dialogue with stakeholders. These blueprints are the result of negotiations between experts in industry, government and academy and portray the influence of audit culture, the widespread trust in quantification and the importance of the efficiency paradigm as described by informants. Afterwards, I focus on the construction of sustainability project that takes place within the cement company where multiple avenues are followed to complete the building of sustainability as a material object, combining the blueprints defined by experts as they are translated into concrete demonstrations of sustainability with the subjective interpretations of actors within the material constraints set by concrete and the plasticity of sustainability. While this is the institutional response to comply with sustainability expectations, the final construction of sustainability needs to include the construction of the sustainable subject where individuals incorporate into their mindset sustainability considerations. As the last part of the work, I discuss the emergence of sustainable subjectivities among key participating members of the construction crew of sustainability taken as employees and other stakeholders, presenting the distinct logics followed by individuals while becoming committed to sustainability. Finally, I present the conclusions of this constructive analysis. Foucault’s (Burchell, Gordon, and Miller 1991) concept of governmentality and Strathern’s (Strathern 2000b) analysis of audit culture frame this study, offering a common thread that transforms the need of corporate legitimacy into a process of accountability and transparency that resembles Rose and Miller’s (Rose and Miller 2008) description of the neoliberal rationalities of government. Paradoxically, sustainability as an ideal is transformed into an established system that tends to be mechanical. For this to occur, experts shape the meaning of sustainability and determine the parameters that must be met, creating metrics and certification processes that define a set of procedures that track and evaluate sustainability performance, hence defining what practices are selected by cement companies to demonstrate their sustainability credentials, and how these are implemented. Furthermore, both sustainability and cement are vibrant matters (Bennett 2010) with an agency of their own which introduces further constraints into the construction of sustainability process and influences the pace of change. However, the process of becoming sustainable is far from homogenous since each individual relates to sustainability according to the gamut of personal ethical convictions, affective needs, aesthetic preferences and gender perceptions which vary among many factors, including social class, geographic region, educational level and gender. Hence, it is not suitable for a single definition even when subjected to seemingly objective standards. In addition, in the case of employees, the interaction with different groups of stakeholders raises awareness about particular interests also influencing the meaning making process for each of them. Hence, the making of sustainable subjects not only involves the creation of specific regulatory practices tied to the emergence of a greater concern for social and environmental challenges but also the particular context of the individual. Even in this highly structured environment, the affect/emotion dynamic strongly shapes the interpretation and the weight that sustainability eventually gains. The material expressions of sustainability mediate the process and materialize morality at the same time (Verbeek 2006) given the underlying ethical position that sustainability as an idea conveys. As sustainability is becoming widely adopted and introduced into the conscience of more people, it is also being transformed into a numerical parameter that makes possible the perpetuation of market efficiency parameters. Capitalism is thus legitimated through the meta-narrative of sustainability as the triple bottom line that promises to fulfill the desire of progress for all while not really transforming the life-style and consumption patterns of today. As the concept of the triple bottom line enables sustainability to be adopted by key economic, governmental and NGO actors, it also contributes to the naturalization of market forces and profit oriented priorities making it difficult to re-orient human activities towards more environmentally friendly and socially inclusive models of community organization.

Building energy consumption has presented itself as one of the biggest proportion inenergy industries. Focus could really be placed on this field with a view to conservingenergy. One popular way to achieve ideal energy identification is to conduct an energyaudit. An energy audit is of interest in pinpointing energy losses. For small households,it could be a way of reducing energy spending, while for large companies it could beone crucial way to decrease energy expenditure and improve efficiency in operation.The Brynässkolan has been in use for many years and performing the audit is anattempt to increase its energy efficiency and ultimately cut down cost. Byinvestigating the school building’s climate envelope and lighting and measuringventilation unit we gained knowledge about its energy losses. We came up with someenergy-saving plans, among which some are inapplicable, the others are feasible.Finally some constructive suggestions are presented to the school administration.

Students of Ludvigsbergsskolan have complained that it was cold in classrooms during winters, but actually the energy consumption (electricity and district heating) of the school has been already very high. So energy audit is required and aim of this project is to find out how to improve the indoor climate of Ludvigsbergsskolan(http://www.skola.gavle.se/ludvigsberg/) which is located in Valbo, a city on the Sweden east coast and at the same time. Achieving this goal is not by increasing district heating demand but by some energy audit methods. Front part of the building has 2 floors, and the left part has one floor. The whole building is composed by classrooms, offices, gymnasium and dining-room. First, data related to energy is collected, such as installed power of facility, power utilization factor and the running hours of these facilities. Then, calculation can be taken to decide if the building is working properly and healthy. At last, present and discuss the situation, suggestions to improve energy condition are offered. Total demand of District Heating in year 2006 is 1088 MWh, and electricity is 304 MWh. Problems for this school need to solve is too cold in winter and to hot in summer. In this article some suggestions are made to save the energy consumption and work out the indoor climate problems. After all processes is done and evaluated 10 MWh electricity and more than 300 MWh district heating could be saved.

No description available.

Typical energy audits are sufficiently expensive and time-consuming that many owners and managers of buildings are not willing to invest the time and money required for a full audit. This dissertation provides a methodology to identify buildings with large potential energy savings using limited information, specifically, utility bills, total area and weather data. The methodology is developed based on the hypothesis: if a commercial building is properly designed, constructed, operated, and maintained, the measured energy consumption should approximately match the simulated value for a typical building of the same size with the most efficient HVAC system; otherwise, there may be potential for energy savings. There are four steps in the methodology: 1) testing to determine whether the utility bills include both weather-dependent and weatherindependent loads; 2) separating weather-dependent and weather-independent loads when both are present in the same data; 3) determining the main type of HVAC system; 4) estimating potential energy savings and recommending an energy audit if appropriate. The Flatness Index is selected to test whether the utility bills include both weatherdependent and weather-independent loads. An approach to separate the utility bills based on thermal balance is developed to separate utility bills into weather-dependent and weather-independent loads for facilities in hot and humid climates. The average relative error in estimated cooling consumption is only 1.1% for 40 buildings in Texas, whereas it is -54.8% using the traditional 3P method. An application of fuzzy logic is used to identify the main type of HVAC system in buildings from their 12-month weatherdependent energy consumption. When 40 buildings were tested, 18 systems were identified correctly, seven were incorrect and the HVAC system type cannot be identified in 15 cases. The estimated potential savings by the screening methodology in eight large commercial buildings were compared with audit estimated savings for the same buildings. The audit estimated savings are between 25% - 150% of the potential energy savings estimated by the screening procedure in seven cases. The other two cases are less accurate, indicating that further refinement of the method would be valuable. The data required are easily obtained; the procedure can be carried out automatically, so no experience is required. If the actual type of HVAC system, measured weather-dependent, and weather-independent energy consumption are known, the methodology should work better.