Title: Sustainability accounting - A qualitative study about the understanding, usefulness and relevance of sustainability reporting based on an employee perspective. Problematization: There has been previous research about sustainability reporting through an external point of view. There is however a gap in research about sustainability reporting from an employee perspective. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to develop a better comprehension of how employees perceive the information presented in sustainability report and if they feel that the report is aimed for them or external stakeholders. Frame of reference: This episode began with previous research about the three qualitative characteristics that are used when creating a financial report. The framework of GRI is also presented. Lastly the stakeholder theory and stakeholder dialogue are introduced. Method: This study has a qualitative approach where 10 semi-structured interviews have been held to collect data. Research: The employees have a better understanding of the information related to the social and environmental issues. Furthermore they only consider the information regarding the environment to be useful in their daily work. The employees believe that the environmental and social part of the report is relevant while the economic could not be assessed by the employees. Conclusions: Diagrams, thorough explanations and knowledge of the subject increased the understanding of the report. The economical part can be further understood if there is more extensive content. The information becomes useful when they can directly use it in their daily work and when they feel that the information is aimed for them. They need to receive the information through meetings for it to be useful for them. They had little previous knowledge of the economical part and were there for not able to assess the relevance of the report's content while the environmental and the social area were relevant because the content has currently been highlighted in newspapers and debates.

Les opérations de rénovation en France sont aujourd'hui en plein développement et devraient à l'avenir se multiplier en raison d'un contexte socio-économique favorable.Cependant, aux opérations de rénovation restent associées l'incertitude et l'insécurité juridique. En effet, cette notion hétérogène de "rénovation" n'est pas définie juridiquement. Pour l'heure les différentes branches du droit immobilier l'appréhendent diversement par le prisme des notions se rapportant aux travaux sur existant qui dominent dans chacune d'elles.Ainsi, à l'opération, qui d'un point de vue matériel est unitaire, correspond, d'un point de vue juridique un régime éclaté.Cette situation nécessite un approfondissement destiné à mettre en adéquation le droit au fait. Une notion de rénovation d'immeubles peut-elle émerger des profondeurs juridiques ? Dans l'affirmative, quelle serait sa place, son rôle et sa fonction en droit immobilier ? / The renovation operations in France are now under development and expected to multiply in the future due to socio-economic environement.However, at reneval operations are associated with the uncertainly and legal insecurity.Indeed, this notion of heterogeneous "renovation" is not defined legally. At present different branches of real estate apprehend diffrently through the prisme of concepts related to the work on existing dominant in each.Thus, the operation, of a material point of view, is unitary, corresponds to a legal point of view, a regime erupted.This calls for a deepening align the right to the point. A notion of renovating buildings may emerge forme the dephts it legal ? If yes, what is its place, role and function in real estate ?

Devido aos enormes impactos socioeconômicos e ambientais que a indústria da construção civil tem na sociedade, existe a necessidade de se aumentar a eficiência do processo construtivo. O comissionamento surgiu nos Estados Unidos no final do século XX e serve para verificar e controlar a aderência do sistema construtivo considerado ao seu propósito em todas as etapas de sua vida útil, tendo como objetivo principal atender aos requisitos do proprietário e às normas legais.O objetivo deste trabalho é propor um processo de comissionamento para sistemas hidráulicos prediais, e por meio desta proposta difundir o uso do comissionamento. A norma americana sobre o assunto dá o subsídio necessário e, a partir de suas determinações, é proposta uma rotina de execução do comissionamento, para garantir que todos os aspectos relevantes do sistema construtivo em questão sejam respeitados. As normas brasileiras aplicáveis aos sistemas prediais de água servem de base para a adaptação do processo ao mercado brasileiro. Uma aplicação piloto foi feita para exemplificar parte da aplicação do processo proposto, em um empreendimento na cidade de São Paulo. O resultado esperado é uma rotina de uso do comissionamento para os sistemas construtivos hidráulicos. / In light of the huge economic and socio-environmental impacts produced by the construction industry in society, it is necessary to increase the efficiency of the construction process. The commissioning process has emerged in the United States in the late twentieth century and proposes planning and control for building system considering all stages of the lifetime of the project, with the main objective to meet the owner\'s requirements and legal standards. This work intends to study the application of the commissioning in hydraulic building systems of multipavimentos buildings.The objective is to develop a specific commissioning process for hydraulic systems to demonstrate the applicability to all systems and through this knowledge spread the use of commissioning.This work also deals with the commissioning process of building systems and its place in the production chain of Construction.In the absence of a specific brazilian standard, the american standard on the matter will be investigated and, from the stand-point of its determinations, a routine of commissioning will be shown to ensure that all relevant aspects of the construction system in question are respected. The applicable Brazilian lawson hidraulic sistems will be researched insearch of an adaptation of the process to the Brazilian market. A pilot program will be conducted to check the adhesion of the process during the implementation of one project in the city of São Paulo.The expected result is a routine to the use of commissioning for hydraulic building systems.

The lack of timely reporting of commercial fisheries landings interferes with effective management of fisheries in United States Virgin Islands (USVI). Federal law requires that landings be limited to prevent annual catch limits (ACLs) from being exceeded. Previous attempts to predict total landings have used historic data from prior fishing seasons to predict future landings rather than leveraging available in-season data to provide a more real-time prediction of landings. This study presents an in-season model that predicts total landings using partial reports from the current fishing year. This estimate of total landings, including error bounds around that estimate, can then be compared to the ACL established for the species to estimate potential deviations from the allowable landings and adjust effort accordingly. The performance of the model was tested in a retrospective analysis on historical commercial landings data. Differences between predicted and observed fishing year landings by defined cut-off dates were used to identify reasonable deadlines for fishery managers to begin making reliable predictions on total annual landings. On average, predictions can be made with less than 9% error with at least four months of partial data, and with less than 5% error with at least seven months of partial data. This model's in-season predictions should be useful to managers to prevent ACL overages, and to guide fishers in their application of effort within and among components of the fishery, for example, to shift effort from one fishery management unit to another in response to excessive landings.

保險為具有持續性及高度社會性之經濟制度，且與國家經濟有密切關係，台灣壽險業近年來快速成長，社會大眾的資金也大舉流入保險公司，因而保險公司的經營穩定度不但影響消費大眾的權益，也影響台灣經濟的穩定性。 本研究以HHM實證模型，將這一些不容易讓人看得懂的財務數據，轉換為一種容易瞭解的經營穩定度評等，利用台灣壽險業89年至98年的財務業務資料，主要以89年至98年期間進行logistic迴歸分析，並再細分為89年至93年及94年至98年等2個子期間進行實證，發現影響台灣壽險業經營穩定度的一致性主要因素為公司規模、投資績效、營業淨利、保險槓桿等四個變數，而且都是正向影響。另89年至98年之10年期間logistic迴歸分析結果較2個子期間更為顯著，代表10年較長觀察期間所得到的結果，優於5年觀察期間的結果，且過去會顯著影響壽險公司經營穩定度的變數，在未來未必仍持續有顯著影響。 根據本文實證發現，建議主管機關未來於修正「人身保險業辦理資訊公開管理辦法」時，能於財務業務指標中納入投資績效、營業淨利、保險槓桿等3項財務性指標，並考慮要求壽險業將辦理財務再保險的相關資訊及對財務報表的影響予以公開揭露，以利消費大眾瞭解壽險公司真實的財務狀況。 / Taiwan’s life insurance industry has experienced a rapid growth and numerous premiums flowed into life insurance companies during recent years. Therefore, the operating stability of life insurance companies affects not only the interests of policyholders but also the economic stability of Taiwan. For a better understanding of financial reports to general public, this study adopts HHM model to transfer financial data of life insurance companies to a rating regarding operating stability. The empirical financial data of Taiwan’s life insurance industry are mainly from 2000 to 2009 and we arrange a whole period as well as two sub-periods for logistic regression analysis. We find that, the factors that significantly and positively affect Taiwan life insurers’ operating stability are firm size, investment performance, operating margin and insurance leverage. With respect to logistic regression analysis, we also find that, the results of a whole period are more significant than those of two sub-periods. According to our empirical findings and toward a fully disclose to general public, we suggest that the competent authority bring investment performance, operating margin and insurance leverage into financial ratios, and ask life insurance companies disclose their transaction information and financial impact of any financial reinsurance by amending the “Regulations Governing Public Disclosure of Information by Life Insurance Enterprises”.

<p>CEO compensation is a relevant topic in today's society that touches both political and economic questions which are of interest for the whole general public. It affects people indirectly through CEOs actions and how these actions affect company performances. Due to the fact that there is a financial crisis, this thesis has its aim to catch some light over CEO compensation and its relation to company performances, if there is one.</p><p>The purpose was to investigate if we could find a relation between CEO compensation and company performances by using variables which we considered significant for this study. These variables are collected from each company's annual reports and which we have chosen to focus on the two past years 2007 and 2008, as it is the most recent data. For the principle of our thesis a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods was applied, to best suite the purpose. When finding a sustainable and significant result, regressions of different variables from the annual reports were drawn and the outcomes of these were interpreted and analyzed. Our findings show that turnover is the only variable which indicated any significant p-value in the regressions drawn. Of all regressions three show significance and all arerelated to turnover. Given these results we can conclude that the other variables are not related to the CEO compensation in this case study.</p>

<p>Background</p><p>Strategy forms an inevitable part of a company’s existence, whether explicitly formulated or implicitly acted on. Today, there are many ways to find information about companies and their strategic directions, for example in the non-financial sections of annual reports. However, the future actions and strategic choices tend not to be spoken of explicitly or in terms of strategy concepts or typologies. Thus, the presentation of strategies in annual reports may differ in terminology from the conceptions and notions as presented in strategy concepts. This implies a challenging base for analysis and will inevitably create an interesting situation if one wants to map out a company’s strategic direction with these reports as basis. Annual reports could also possibly constitute a cross-over between the theoretical realm and the business world, which might allow the drawing of parallels between theoretical concepts and espoused strategic actions.</p><p>Purpose</p><p>The purpose of this thesis is to provide an overall image of strategy in the heavy electrical engineering industry in the time period of 1987 to 2002, using the non-financial information in annual reports as the single source for identifying and classifying companies in terms of strategy.</p><p>Mode of procedure</p><p>Annual reports from four large companies in the heavy electrical engineering industry have been studied with a grounded approach of textual analysis. The case study was conducted with an inductive starting point, and covered a vast amount of empirical material. Key features of strategic directions, on the corporate and business level, were derived from the empirical material as well as from strategy literature, and these features then served as base for further analysis and conclusions.</p><p>Results</p><p>All four studied companies displayed different strategic phases on the two levels. However, inconsistency and a multitude of comments sometimes obstructed the identification of distinct phases. On an inter-company level, the European companies tended to have more features in common than the American ones. Furthermore, specific characteristics have been identified for each company. Finally, each of the four case companies was classified in terms of generic strategies. The classification of the companies showed that a multitude of strategic typologies was applicable during the studied time period, some recurrently and others in unique periods.</p>

In society today large corporations are striving to regain the trust, which has been lost dur-ing the many accounting scandals that occurred lately. As a response to minimize the con-flicts countries have introduced codes of corporate governance. It is common knowledge that a company’s stakeholders and shareholders have different knowledge and interest in the company and the annual report is the agent’s main communication channel towards the principals. The Swedish code of corporate governance was implemented in July 2005 in an attempt to reduce the information gap between the managers of the company and the own-ers. The purpose of this thesis is to examine if and how the Swedish code of corporate govern-ance has affected the content in annual reports in Sweden. We will evaluate and explain why listed companies have changed the information provided in their annual reports from the year 2001 prior to the codes existence, during the code’s implementation in year 2005, and after the implementation in 2006. A deductive method created our research model, which was used as a tool to gather the empirical findings. Agency Theory, Institutional Theory and the Swedish code constitute the foundation for our evaluation of 65 companies’ annual reports from three individual years. Once our research model was created, an explorative and inductive method was used analyse and interpret the empirical findings. Our conclusion is that corporate governance information in annual reports has increased, and the implementation of the Swedish code of corporate governance has affected the in-formation provided to the shareholders. Between 2001 and 2005 a rapid growth in infor-mation can be view, while only minor improvement can be found between 2005 and 2006. The Swedish code has been successful in its implementation as stakeholders and share-holders have received more information from the annual reports. However, we are ques-tioning the Swedish code for its extensive dimensions. Some areas of the Swedish code are provided with sufficient guidelines, while others would bring with it improved information to the shareholders by more detailed instructions. Many of the investigated companies have had their corporate governance information reviewed by an external auditor in 2005 and it is unexpected to see that this has been excluded in 2006. The examined companies provide information regarding many of the Swedish code’s rules, but we found the information re-lated to internal control, managing director and attendance at the general meeting insuffi-cient.

CEO compensation is a relevant topic in today's society that touches both political and economic questions which are of interest for the whole general public. It affects people indirectly through CEOs actions and how these actions affect company performances. Due to the fact that there is a financial crisis, this thesis has its aim to catch some light over CEO compensation and its relation to company performances, if there is one. The purpose was to investigate if we could find a relation between CEO compensation and company performances by using variables which we considered significant for this study. These variables are collected from each company's annual reports and which we have chosen to focus on the two past years 2007 and 2008, as it is the most recent data. For the principle of our thesis a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods was applied, to best suite the purpose. When finding a sustainable and significant result, regressions of different variables from the annual reports were drawn and the outcomes of these were interpreted and analyzed. Our findings show that turnover is the only variable which indicated any significant p-value in the regressions drawn. Of all regressions three show significance and all arerelated to turnover. Given these results we can conclude that the other variables are not related to the CEO compensation in this case study.

Background Strategy forms an inevitable part of a company’s existence, whether explicitly formulated or implicitly acted on. Today, there are many ways to find information about companies and their strategic directions, for example in the non-financial sections of annual reports. However, the future actions and strategic choices tend not to be spoken of explicitly or in terms of strategy concepts or typologies. Thus, the presentation of strategies in annual reports may differ in terminology from the conceptions and notions as presented in strategy concepts. This implies a challenging base for analysis and will inevitably create an interesting situation if one wants to map out a company’s strategic direction with these reports as basis. Annual reports could also possibly constitute a cross-over between the theoretical realm and the business world, which might allow the drawing of parallels between theoretical concepts and espoused strategic actions. Purpose The purpose of this thesis is to provide an overall image of strategy in the heavy electrical engineering industry in the time period of 1987 to 2002, using the non-financial information in annual reports as the single source for identifying and classifying companies in terms of strategy. Mode of procedure Annual reports from four large companies in the heavy electrical engineering industry have been studied with a grounded approach of textual analysis. The case study was conducted with an inductive starting point, and covered a vast amount of empirical material. Key features of strategic directions, on the corporate and business level, were derived from the empirical material as well as from strategy literature, and these features then served as base for further analysis and conclusions. Results All four studied companies displayed different strategic phases on the two levels. However, inconsistency and a multitude of comments sometimes obstructed the identification of distinct phases. On an inter-company level, the European companies tended to have more features in common than the American ones. Furthermore, specific characteristics have been identified for each company. Finally, each of the four case companies was classified in terms of generic strategies. The classification of the companies showed that a multitude of strategic typologies was applicable during the studied time period, some recurrently and others in unique periods.