French SMEs within the medical technology industry follow an internationalization pattern which cannot completely be explained by traditional internationalization models. Going abroad is not a strategy to overcome challenges inherent to the medical technology industry. Instead, it is the positive consequence of their merge with internationalized firms, or an opportunity offered by their network.

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries are reported to encounter difficulties in accessing to formal external financing resource. Banking systems in this category of countries are either under-developed or newly reformed. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether SME financing in China, measured by SMEs per capita, is affected by local bank competition, measured by number of banks per capita or share of foreign banks. Control variables such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP), level of infrastructure and geographic location are also included in the regression models. The main findings are that: when disregarding the ownership of banks, bank competition has positive impact on SME financing across Chinese provinces, although the relationship is non-linear; and foreign banks do not significantly influence SME bank financing in China. The first finding generally support the conventional theories of industrial organization and the second one offers the basis for further arguments about the role of foreign banks in financing SMEs in China.

Background & Problem discussion: Recently, there has been an increased interest in topics such as immigrant entrepreneurship. Considering that most of the research until now is done in America with American examples, it would be beneficial if such results are verified or refuted in other countries as well, such as Sweden (Brundin, Bögenhold and Sundin, 2001). Overall, businesses ran by immigrant entrepreneurs are creating job opportunities and encouraging Europe’s economy, even though exposed to limited immigration policies and unpleasant public opinion (Halkias et al., 2007). Immigrant entrepreneurs are not a new phenomenon in Sweden and according to Hammarstedt (2004) immigrant self-employment compared to native small-businesses has increased throughout the years, and therefore an important role in the integration of immigrants was made possible by the self-employment sector as a source of employment. Rather than that, most of the research done in this topic by many researchers has been focused in factors triggering immigrant entrepreneurs to start a business, but less researchers were focused in understanding the challenges they face and strategies they adopt in order to survive. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to identify challenges that immigrant entrepreneurs face while starting and running their businesses and analyze how they are interrelated and how do immigrant entrepreneurs cope with them in the setting of a medium-sized town in Sweden. Jönköping as a medium sized town in Sweden is our context. Theoretical framework: The literature used in this study covers studies conducted in different context such as: American, European and Swedish. The conducted studies involve case studies in different context done with immigrant entrepreneurs are mainly about the challenges they face and the strategies they adopt as solutions to those challenges. Such theory helped us identify common challenges among immigrant entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, considering that the existing literature does not explicitly discuss the role of the context (metropolitan, large city, medium-sized town, small (rural town), local community etc), we have to inquire especially into that and use our own data to build a supplementary theory. Method: The method used in this study is a qualitative approach but also with some minor elements of a quantitative approach (the use of the questionnaire during the interviews asked from the respondents to rank the challenges and therefore helped to find out the most significant challenge among them). Considering that generally our study followed a qualitative approach, we have conducted ‘face-to-face’ interviews. There were eight semi-structured interviews. All of the interviews were tape recorded. Conclusion: The findings of this study showed that challenges faced by our respondents were: start-up finance, finance for growth, access to markets, lack of language skills, lack of marketing/sales skills, lack of management skills, access to technology, lack of education, lack of visitors to Jönköping, maintaining customers, Swede’s negative views on immigrant businesses, awareness of food among customers, and competition. However, the four most significant challenges among them were: access to markets, start-up finance, lack of language skills and finance for growth. Besides that the findings show that the strategies that are adopted by immigrant entrepreneurs that we interviewed include the following: use of personal savings, use of personal networks, bank loan, enter low market barriers, scanning the market beforehand, asking help from their customers about language barriers or taking a language course before starting, among others. The findings showed that the context is important to a great extent but besides context, in order for the immigrant venture to occur it matters to a great extent, who the individual entrepreneur is and what business idea he/she develops. In addition, they are key factors contributing not only to the immigrant venture occurrence, but also to the success of the business.

Abstract The interest in China today is enormous, and media talk about successful firms and entrepreneurs that engage in business with China. This positive image has created a general per-ception that China offers the moon and the stars for Swedish micro and small sized enterprises (MSEs). We still believe that there are many opportunities to extend or build busi-ness upon import from China. However, we question media’s communication that import from China is a straight way to success. If this is an accurate picture of the situation, what is it that makes Swedish companies hesitating about establishing import business from China? The purpose of this thesis is to identify the reasons for Swedish MSEs to engage in import from China, as well as recognizing the problems they experience. We will by analysing the underlying factors of the problems describe different ways to handle these issues. We have chosen a qualitative approach with semistructured, deep-going interviews, which we have carried out on six companies that have gone through with the import process from China. The empirical findings will be the base in order to verify the theories on this subject. We have come to the conclusion that there is a division between production companies and trading companies when it comes to the reason to start importing. Trading firms generally follow the opportunities while production companies are forced to take action because of push effects. Also, the hype about China has helped in choosing China before other countries. The companies in this thesis have generally no trouble in finding a supplier but rather to find suitable suppliers. The major problems in trading with China are quality and delivery, which many companies handle by shortterm procedures like over-explicitness, constant reminders and increased specifications. They argue that these problems depend on lack of understanding, variation in outlook, different behaviour, as well as pride and attitudes among the Chinese. However, we believe that these issues have their roots in culture, linguistics and different views of how relationships should be considered. Thus it would be a more long term solution to handle the underlying issues which in the extension is a more successful way of importing from China.

The business climate of today, with increasing globalization, has resulted in structural changes in the commercial and industrial sectors. As a result, many large companies have moved their production abroad. Therefore the smaller companies have become increasingly important for growth and employment nationally. Small businesses are a significant contributor to the well-being of nations and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play an important role for Sweden, both in terms of economic contribution and employment. Success has been discussed and investigated for a long period of time and the question is how it should be defined and measured. Many theories have been produced including different definitions and research methods. For this thesis, however, success is defined as the growth and financial performance of a firm measured in volume growth, relative change in net turnover, and value growth, relative change in equity. As a side condition, profit margins must be positive for a company to be classified as successful. This thesis hence aims to determine which factors influence the success of small and medium-sized enterprises in Sweden and how they influence the success of these enterprises. Eleven manufacturing SMEs, seven successful and four unsuccessful, were investigated and analyzed separately and then compared with one another in an attempt to determine which specific factors contributed to their respective performance. The four unsuccessful companies were included in the investigation for comparison to be able to identify the specific factors for successful companies. The analyses resulted in the following areas: Organization, Vision and Strategy, Characteristics of the CEO, Core Competences, Recruiting, Product Development and Innovations and Market. Among these factors Vision and Strategy, Core Competences and Customer Interaction were identified as the factors that have the greatest impact on success. Additionally, two clear relations between factors could be determined, i.e. between Clear vision and strategy and Defined culture as well as a relation between Flexibility and Customer Interaction. The conclusions are generalizable to all manufacturing SMEs in Sweden since the sample selection is representative for the target population. Furthermore, the success factors could be applied to companies abroad as well if the business climate and the conditions are similar. Whether the factors can be applied to firms that act within different SNI-codes (Swedish Standard Industrial Classification) besides manufacturing is yet to be proved. For further research we suggest a deeper investigation, where the information is obtained from more than one sources within the company. Also, the external networks of the company could be of interest to interview. Other aspects to investigate further would be potential differences between small and medium-sized firms and whether or not the results are applicable for other industries.

SMEs are established as an important cornerstone for the Swedish economy, due to the amount of people they employ and the economic activity they present. Due to a changing world SMEs are faced with new competition from foreign firms. In order to counter the new environment, an option for the firms is to move abroad, to internationalize. Furthermore China is established as an attractive country for SMEs to expand into, due to the major economic growth. During internationalization the Swedish agency for regional and economic growth identified SMEs to experience a lack of knowledge and capital, which hinders them in their expansion. The paper observes how four different Swedish SMEs, with activity in China moved abroad and how the mentioned lack of capital and knowledge was bridged. A theoretical framework is acquired through established research questions which are meant to analyze the problem description. The firms are identified as Swedish SMEs. In order to acquire empirical data, face to face interviews are conducted with the identified Swedish SMEs. Through the interview the empirical data is gathered, at which point, the paper analyzes the empirical data using the problem statement and the theories previously derived. The paper establishes that the experiential knowledge is the major influence on the resources committed by the firm. The amount of resources committed influences the type of entry mode as well as the accompanied advantages. In affect all firms have limited knowledge and ergo their resources committed are limited. This paper draws the conclusion that due to this, the firms were all able to finance their internationalization and no capital gap was experienced. The firms which were interviewed held experiential knowledge within the firm except one case where it was bridged with the assistance of a consultant. The experiential knowledge is held by individuals and has had a deep impact on the manner of the internationalization. It is identified that the personal relationships between individuals is shown to be of great importance to the firm. The knowledge constraints were bridged by the individuals’ experiential knowledge.

Modern mines require systems that quickly deliver backfill to support the rock mass surrounding underground openings. Cemented Paste Backfill (CPB) is one such backfilling method, but concerns have been raised about CPB’s liquefaction susceptibility especially when the material has just been placed, and if it is exposed to earthquakes or large mining induced seismic events. Conventional geotechnical earthquake engineering for surface structures is now relatively advanced and well accepted, and so the objective of this thesis is to consider how that framework might be extended to assess the liquefaction potential of CPB. Seismic records were analyzed for earthquakes and for large mining induced events. Important seismological trends were consistent for rockbursts and earthquakes when the signals were recorded at distances as proximate as one kilometre, suggesting that the conventional earthquake engineering approach might plausibly be adapted for such design situations. For production blasts and for more proximate locations to rockbursts, much higher frequencies dominate and therefore new design methods may be required. Monotonic triaxial tests conducted on normally consolidated uncemented mine tailings demonstrated that the material is initially contractive up to a phase transition point, beyond which dilation occurs. Most importantly the material never exhibits unstable strain softening behaviour in compression, and only temporary or limited liquefaction in extension. The addition of 3% binder results in initial sample void ratios that are even higher than their uncemented counterparts, and yet the material friction is slightly enhanced when tested at 4 hours cure. These results suggest that the flow liquefaction phenomenon commonly associate with undrained loose sand fills will not occur with paste backfill. Cyclic triaxial test results analyzed in terms of number of cycles to failure for a given cyclic stress ratio exhibited a trend consistent with previous tests on similar materials. However, the addition of 3% binder and testing at 4 hours cure resulted in an order of magnitude larger number of cycles to failure – a surprising and dramatic increase, suggesting good resistance of the material to cyclic mobility. Future research is recommended to build on these results and develop more robust methods for liquefaction assessment of CPB.

In our study the purpose was to examine the influence of Continuing Professional Education on small and medium sized auditing- and accounting practices. The study also aims to analyze possible similarities and differences in how small and medium sized auditing and accounting practices are affected of the requirements regarding Continuing Professional Education. In order to fulfill our purpose in the study we conducted interviews with auditors and accounting consultants on small and medium sized auditing- and accounting practices. Totally did we conduct seven interviews with four auditors and three accounting consultants. The majority of auditors and accounting consultants we interviewed are satisfied with the current requirements on Continuing Professional Education and think they contribute to the increase of quality and status of the work tasks performed by auditors and accounting consultants. Respondents also stressed the importance of Continuing Professional Education to maintain and develop the skills among employees. Our respondents prefer two forms of Continuing Professional Education, namely intensive seminars and topical courses. Demand for intensive seminars and topical courses will probably continue to increase, given that these two forms makes it possible for small and medium sized practices to keep current in a time efficient and economical way. Our findings also show that auditors prefer a training where they start out as beginners and end as an expert. On the other hand accounting consultants focus on training that is practical and provides direct benefit to the everyday work.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an important subject in business administration, and has been for many years. Over the past few years it has been become an increasingly debated topic. The CSR subject mainly focuses on multinational enterprises (MNEs), resulting in a research gap concerning CSR in small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). SMEs outline the majority of all companies on the European market; therefore, it is empirically interesting to further investigate how SMEs perceive CSR commitment. The purpose of this dissertation is to explain how CSR commitment of internal and external stakeholders influences CSR commitment in SMEs. The research was conducted with a quantitative survey. The data collected with the survey was tested and analyzed with both an explanatory and exploratory research strategy. Explanatory research was performed in order to test the derived hypotheses and explain the research question. Exploratory research was then performed in order to provide a further understanding of how SMEs view stakeholders and their CSR commitment. These two research strategies revealed that internal and external stakeholders influence CSR commitment in SMEs. However, SMEs perceive some stakeholders similarly because of their relationship with the company. There are three main concepts of CSR commitment: environmental, social and financial responsibility. Results showed that financial CSR is considered distinctly different from the two other measured CSR concepts. The theoretical contributions may be of importance to owners of SMEs and MNEs in order to gain a deeper understanding of CSR as a subject. Also, findings can help scholars interested in further researching CSR commitment in SMEs. The methodological contributions of this dissertation are of relevance for future research on the subject, since the developed instrument for measuring CSR commitment was successful. Without an established measure for this area, this instrument enables further development and thereby more valid research regarding CSR commitment and SMEs.

Modern mines require systems that quickly deliver backfill to support the rock mass surrounding underground openings. Cemented Paste Backfill (CPB) is one such backfilling method, but concerns have been raised about CPB’s liquefaction susceptibility especially when the material has just been placed, and if it is exposed to earthquakes or large mining induced seismic events. Conventional geotechnical earthquake engineering for surface structures is now relatively advanced and well accepted, and so the objective of this thesis is to consider how that framework might be extended to assess the liquefaction potential of CPB. Seismic records were analyzed for earthquakes and for large mining induced events. Important seismological trends were consistent for rockbursts and earthquakes when the signals were recorded at distances as proximate as one kilometre, suggesting that the conventional earthquake engineering approach might plausibly be adapted for such design situations. For production blasts and for more proximate locations to rockbursts, much higher frequencies dominate and therefore new design methods may be required. Monotonic triaxial tests conducted on normally consolidated uncemented mine tailings demonstrated that the material is initially contractive up to a phase transition point, beyond which dilation occurs. Most importantly the material never exhibits unstable strain softening behaviour in compression, and only temporary or limited liquefaction in extension. The addition of 3% binder results in initial sample void ratios that are even higher than their uncemented counterparts, and yet the material friction is slightly enhanced when tested at 4 hours cure. These results suggest that the flow liquefaction phenomenon commonly associate with undrained loose sand fills will not occur with paste backfill. Cyclic triaxial test results analyzed in terms of number of cycles to failure for a given cyclic stress ratio exhibited a trend consistent with previous tests on similar materials. However, the addition of 3% binder and testing at 4 hours cure resulted in an order of magnitude larger number of cycles to failure – a surprising and dramatic increase, suggesting good resistance of the material to cyclic mobility. Future research is recommended to build on these results and develop more robust methods for liquefaction assessment of CPB.