In 2008 there was an expectation that the statutory audit would be abolished in Sweden within a few years. We surveyed audit firms in April 2009 in order to observe their strategic actions when facing this expected major deregulation of their market. We found that the firms appeared to be rather slow in strategic change, one reason being the presence of a strong profession; another, more speculative, reason being their belief in their strong auditing product and brand name; and a third reason being their present client base who needed to satisfy their major stakeholders, such as the state and the banks, through the audit. The agents of change, if any, appeared to be the audit chain firm and the firm partners.

In recent years, the local government sector in European countries

has undergone important changes involving, among other things, the

externalisation of local public service provision through various forms of

corporatisation, public-public collaboration, public-private partnerships and

contracting out. An important consequence of these institutional changes has

been the recasting of local governance systems through the need for increased

cooperation between public and private actors. This article addresses these

matters with comparative reference to the experience in Italy and Sweden. In

doing so, it considers local governments in their constitutional and legal

contexts, leading to more detailed discussions of their externalisation initiatives

and resultant organisational forms and governance arrangements. Issues of

ownership have been important concerning the significance of ‘community’

and ‘place’ in the management of public affairs.

The demand for information and transparency from listed corporations

has recently increased. In spite of an increased demand for mandatory disclosures

from regulators, corporations choose to voluntarily disclose additional information

in order to satisfy demands from the capital market. However, the extent and

content of information in those voluntary disclosures vary across corporations. The

aim of this study is to explain the variation in the content of information in voluntary

disclosures by listed corporations. The analyses are based on data collected

from 431 annual reports from corporations listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange

during the years 2002 and 2005. The findings support explanations from agency

theory and positive accounting theory that size and the debt ratio are positively

correlated with the content of information in voluntary disclosures. Corporations

with a high share of management ownership disclosed less information than corporations

with a low share of management ownership. The study also shows that

variations in voluntary disclosures can be explained by factors derived from institutional

theory and ‘international capital market pressures’. The results indicate that

foreign ownership and international listing to some extent have a positive effect on

the content of information in voluntary disclosures. Industry was another factor that

had a significant influence on voluntary disclosures. One important finding is that

regulation to some extent can stimulate voluntary disclosures; our results did not

indicate an ‘unintended chilling effect’ due to too much regulation. In general, the

corporations disclosed more voluntary information after the introduction of IFRS.

Positive accounting theory and institutional theory are used in

conjunction in order to explain accounting choice. The theory is applied on

IAS 36 (impairment of assets), and tested on a sample of listed Swedish

corporations. We find that the choice is mainly induced by agency and general

business factors and to a slighter degree by institutional factors. Especially, we

find that institutional influence will be stronger when it is in the interest of

important stakeholders; that impairments can be used as a mean of signalling

trust to absent owners and that the institutional element of tradition cannot be

tested separately from the agency element of opportunism.

ej tillämpligt

We present a contingency model where factors belonging to the environment, to the corporation and to the management control system of the corporation are expected to influence the functional emphasis put on the budget, i.e., the function of coordination, responsibility, evaluation put on a budget. Through a test on 111 Swedish corporations we find indications that the budgets major functional orientation is coordination and it is mainly driven by external factors, such as turbulence and competitive intensity. We conclude that corporations, at least inSweden, have reasons, although limited to coordination, to use budget.   

We argue that humans have at least three basic instincts, the instinct of selfishness, of belongingness and of duty. We explore the instinct of duty through describing its origin in Kantian moral thinking and through extracting some implications of duty through analysing three persons and their actions. We believe that we make duty a reasonable category of human action, if not an instinct of humans, using evolutionary arguments in order to support our thesis. We indicate opportunities of empirically studying duty through offering testable hypotheses and suggestions of empirical design. Thus, we claim that management science can include Kant and action due to duty in the arsenal of explanations of human behaviour.

Studies of audit costs have focused on the audit market and on the organisational costs related to the production of audit. Audit is, however, an activity that is oriented towards the principal of the organisation, and could therefore be expected to vary according to the relationship between the agent and the principal, and vary according to the organisation of the principal. This is the governance issue of auditing. We hypothesize that audit costs are used mainly as a signalling device by agents and as a means of reducing conflict among agents when communicating to principals, be they citizen, the state, the mass media or interest group. Our model of determinants of audit costs is tested on data from Swedish municipalities, thus extending the study of audit costs to political organisations in a Scandinavian institutional set-up. The test supported the ordinary propositions of organisational and market determinants, as well as the proposition of the principal, thereby suggesting that audit could constitute a signal that can me managed.   

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Globalization involves the internationalization of corporate governance mechanisms. We propose that internationalization of governance mechanisms is related to improved performance. For example, recruiting top managers from an international arena will enlarge the market for managerial labor, presumably putting more pressure on the present incumbents, and increase the probability of finding an adequate new manager. A test on a sample of listed Swedish corporations indicates that the proposition in general could be rejected. Our interpretation is 1.) that mechanisms with governance functions have several functions of which governance is but one, and 2.) that governance mechanisms cannot be analyzed in isolation, since they are included in a coherent corporate governance strategy.

The aims of the compendia can be summarised as to offer an eclectic integrated model of corporate governance which attempts to embrace essential economic phenomena from all the major parts of the capitalistic world. As such, we will try to explain the functioning of the corporation and factors influencing it, and we would feel content if the arguments presented here would help the reader to learn a satisfactory introduction to the field of corporate governance; to gain a multi-faceted opinion on the subject; and lastly to be motivated to learn more and to apply or change the theories and the models presented here.

Ownership influence both level and composition of executive compensation. We develop this thesis through adding identity of the owner and its capacity to create a governance strategy to the traditional ownership concentration measure. Through a test on Swedish listed corporations 2008 we find that the identity of the owner, i.e., the strength of governance, influences the level of compensation and the concentration of ownership influences negatively the propensity to use options. We interpret it as a sign of options being less an incentive instrument, aligning the CEO’s interest with the absent owners interest, but more an indication of CEO strength and an instrument of recruitment.

Applicants for habilitation to Associate and Full professor in Economia Aziendale has during two years been evaluated by a commission, containing four Italian professors and one international professor. Me, being the international evaluator, present here some of my observations and impressions from the evaluation and present some reflections about the evolution of the Italian academic system and the subject, Economia Aziendale. My main conclusion, that the tradition of the subject is, at least in the short run, at threat due to the push towards internationalisation, could be regarded as rather pessimistic. But it is also a call for governed development, which should benefit all of us in the area, the whole international community. 

The understanding of the board of a corporation and its behavior is limited, despite the board’s societal

importance. We present a contingency approach to the board’s functional emphasis, considering a

fourth function in addition to monitoring, decision making, and service or resource provision. The

additional function is conflict resolution (or principal identification). The approach contrasts with

mainstream research by assuming that the firm is a nexus of investments, avoiding the empirical

assumption that the shareholder is the sole principal. We derive propositions that are not restricted to

any empirical category of a corporation, and address praxis implications for managing functional

disharmony.

The paper is dealing with the threat towards university standards inSweden, when the university system is facing a decreasing demand on education. We claim that there is a pressure towards higher grades and less working load on the students. The effect could be a slight decline of prestige for universities, but a step decline in academic standards at the university colleges since they have weaker academic traditions, staff and students, and experience a stronger political pressure from the local community. The reasoning is made with resonance from a case describing experiences from an accounting programme produced at a university college.

De svenska universiteten tar intesitt ansvar att utveckla revisionen. Ochtyvärr är efterfrågan på en kritisk akademisklärarkår svag, särskilt från destörre revisionsbyråerna. Detta skapargrogrund för traditioner som integagnar professionen och dess möjligheteratt uppfylla sitt samhällsansvar

Få belägg finns för att CSR ger vinst och ur ett strikt marknadsliberalt perspektiv är det oansvarigt att dela ut ägarnas pengar till filantropi. Det skriver professor Sven-Olof Yrjö Collin. Själv hoppas han dock på ett uppsving för den företagsform som ser samhällsbidrag som en självklarhet.

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We develop the concept of family through using insights from evolutionary psychology, stressing genetic kinship, i.e., blood relationships. We apply the family concept on the functional emphasis of family firm’s boards. Testing the hypotheses on a convenient-sample of 68 small and medium sized Swedish family firms, we find indications of blood relationships influencing the functions of the board. We suggest the development of the family conception according to these lines, where blood and the basic characteristics of nepotism are constitutive.      

The board of directors at the family firm is often dominated by family members. While research has acknowledged the presence of the family, it has neglected the actual family composition of the board and the effects it has on the board's activities. We study the family composition of the board through using insights from evolutionary psychology, stressing genetic kinship. We present a model where the contingency of genetic relationships of the family directors influences the functional emphasis of the family firm's board. Testing the hypotheses on a convenience sample of 68 small and medium-sized Swedish family firms, we find indications of genetic kinship influencing the functions of the board. We suggest the development of the family conception along these lines, where the importance of kinship ties and characteristics of nepotism are explored. The practical implication is a recommendation for families to have a conscious strategy to manage nepotism.

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a concept of auditor as consigliere in family firms, that captures additional functions to monitoring, those of advice, mediating, and conveying.

Design/methodology/approach

The concept is tested through a survey conducted on 309 Swedish auditors.

Findings

The data indicate that the consigliere role is generally not emphasized, indicating that auditors primarily perform the monitoring role of the audit. However, the authors do find indications of the auditor performing the consigliere role, through performing the advisory and mediating functions and, to a smaller degree, the conveying function.

Research limitations/implications

The survey is limited in response rate and in separating governance situations from consigliere functions.

Practical implications

With reservation for professional independence, the auditor as consigliere could be part of the governance of the family firm, but should be trained for this activity.

Social implications

Regulators should pay attention to the consigliere role when, for example, stipulating compulsory rotation of auditors.

Originality/value

The paper shows that the auditor is more than a monitor in family firms. The consigliere role, even if not at all dominating, has to be considered, at least in family firms.

We develop the concept of family through using insights from evolutionary psychology, stressing genetic kinship, i.e., blood relationships. We apply the family concept on the functional emphasis of family firm’s boards. Testing the hypotheses on a convenient-sample of 68 small and medium sized Swedish family firms, we find indications of blood relationships influencing the functions of the board. We suggest the development of the family conception according to these lines, where blood and the basic characteristics of nepotism are constitutive.      

Every country would like to retain citizens with high action capacity and education. Ukraine is experiencing a mobility pattern that can be termed a Female drain. Through a sample of students from Sweden and Ukraine, we find that females have higher mobility preferences than males. Our results shows, however, that Swedish females lack an emigration preference, while Ukrainian females have a very high preference for emigration. We believe that Female drain is not solely induced by opportunities of individual wealth, but is driven by needs that can be satisfied by a welfare state directed towards childcare and female work opportunities.

Ownership influences both the level and composition of executive compensation. The present study examines this by adding identity of the owner and the owner's capacity to create a governance strategy to the traditional ownership concentration measure. Through a test on Swedish corporations listed as on 2008, it is found that the identity of the owner influences the level of compensation, and the concentration of ownership negatively influences the propensity to use options. This is interpreted as a sign that options are not so much an incentive instrument, aligning the CEO's interest with the absent owners' interest, but more of a recruitment instrument and an indication of CEO strength

With the purpose of explaining professional audit costs in Swedish municipalities, we hypothesised that audit costs are partly driven by various signalling and monitoring incentives in order to manage stakeholder relationships. Our model of the determinants of audit costs was tested on data from Swedish municipalities, thus extending the study of audit costs to political organisations in a Scandinavian institutional context. The test supported to some extent the traditional propositions of organisational complexity, risk and market determinants, as well as the proposition of the political environment. Our results indicate that audit costs are used to signal accountability, thereby suggesting that audit as a signal could be managed without managing professional auditors.

Shareholders are not identical, but differ in their objectives and actions. One difference is the level of delegation of the principal functions to the board, which we suggest can be observed through the level of directors’ compensation. We analyze the difference in board compensation through the concept of governance strategy and suggest two distinct categories of shareholder strategies: the company governance strategy and the financial governance strategy. These strategies create different distributions of governance costs, which we separate into principal costs and agency costs. We claim that the financial governance strategy adopts a higher level of delegation, which implies that the principal costs are assumed by the corporation and that agency costs are higher. This in turn can explain the higher compensation for the directors of the board compared to compensation under the company governance strategy. We test our hypothesis using a three-year panel of Swedish listed corporations and find that shareholders pursuing a financial governance strategy are associated with higher levels of board compensation. These findings suggest the existence of differences in governance strategies, reflected in governance costs through board compensation, among different types of shareholders in a corporation.

University training influences students' moral orientation through selection, including the self-selection by the student's entry and exit, and through education, i.e., they are influenced by what they are taught and by the people they interact with. By applying a cross-sectional design, including first, second and third year students, we surveyed the moral orientation of 296 Swedish university students enrolled in different business programs, one being a program of accounting and auditing. We found a university effect, most strongly in selection, but also a slight education effect, whereby students in the accounting and auditing program increased significantly more in idealism compared to the other business students. We believe this indicates that the university contributes to developing the moral standards of students.

This paper contributes to the study of efficient governance of public–private partnerships (PPPs) through an inductive comparative case study of threeriding schools in Sweden. Each school is a three-party PPP between a private firm, ademocratic nonprofit association, and a municipality. The results indicate thatefficient PPPs mixing private, collective, and communal interests can be establishedthrough an adaptive governance strategy. The private firm can shield the democraticassociation from market influence through adapting to market conditions; themunicipality can create a governance strategy; and the democratic association canfocus on providing riding services and fostering democratic governance.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how internationalisation of corporate governance mechanisms influences firm performance.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on the data collected from annual reports of the year 2004, from all 239 Swedish corporations listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, on which a quantitative analysis was performed.

Findings – The findings suggest that internationalisation of corporate governance does not have a straightforward influence on firm performance, which can be due to: the fact that mechanisms with governance functions have several functions, of which governance is but one; and the fact that governance mechanisms cannot be analyzed in isolation, since they are included in a coherent corporate governance strategy.

Originality/value – The paper is the first to investigate the corporate governance mechanisms' internationalisation issue.

Municipal corporations can be seen as a method of disintegrating municipal operations, but retaining control through those corporations. We assume that the municipal influence of the corporation can be described through the concept of governance strategy. Through a case study of seven corporations in one Swedish municipality, we found that emphasis was put on corporate strategy as a governance mechanism and that the board only retained a latent capacity. Furthermore, financial control and executive compensation were hardly ever used as governance mechanisms, which led us to formulate the ‘chamber concert’ hypothesis: the use of governance mechanisms is influenced by traditions, norms, knowledge and governance needs.

Municipal corporations exist in an institutional twilight area, being both private and public, a

characteristic, which presumably would be reflected in their choice of accounting standards. The

literature of accounting choice does not, however, live in a twilight area, but is fragmented into two

main divisions: positive accounting theory (PAT) and institutional theory (IT); only in a very fewcases

do the theories meet or cross-fertilize.We use both theories in this paper and derive hypotheses from

them to explain accounting choices made by municipal corporations. Through testing the hypotheses

on a sample of 545 Swedish municipal corporations, we indicate the empirical relevance of both PAT

and IT. We conclude by suggesting an integrative approach of PAT and IT in an eclectic alternative.

A theory based on the demography of top management teams is used to explain membership turnover in two Swedish business groups, network analysis being used to define group membership. The results suggest these business groups possess a combination of financial and industrial experience as a group resource and the socialising strategy of control as a force counteracting the conflict-producing force of heterogeneity. An organisational demographic perspective focusing on opposing forces of heterogeneity and homogeneity is developed. It is shown that the perspective can be applied both to formal organisations and to informal ones such as networks.

We present a model of supervising bachelor and master theses that we have developed at Kristianstad University in Sweden. It emphasizes 1.) engagement, in that the research engaged supervisor becomes engaged in both the subject of the thesis and the students writing it; 2.) the Humboldt principle, in that teachers and students collaborate for mutual benefit; 3.) the Socratic method, in that the supervisor drives students’ learning through posing questions. The model implies intense and frequent supervision, seminars with students as opponents and respondents, and finally, popular presentation, where the results are presented for an educated public. The examination of the theses have the double function of securing high standard examination and to develop the staff in their supervisory and examinatory skills. The direction of the supervisory team is mainly made through common norms, such as a thesis have to be driven by theory, methodological pragmatism implying that the problem, not the authors preferences, determine which analytical method to use and empirical orientation, that theories needs to be tested or evaluated. The model described has shown good results, both in national evaluations and through number of scientific publications.

The demand for information and transparency from corporations has increased over the

last few years. Today, there are other information dissemination channels besides annual

fi nancial statements. One important channel is the Internet. The aim of this study is to

explain the extent and content of social disclosure information on corporations’ websites

.

The empirical data in this study is based on annual fi nancial statements and such websites.

A multi-theoretical framework is used in order to explain the extent and content of social

disclosures on corporate websites. The fi ndings support the positive correlation of size and

profi tability with the content of social disclosure information on these websites. In general,

State-owned corporations disclose more social information on their websites than privately

owned corporations do. There are signifi cant differences between different industries. This

is true regarding not only the extent of social disclosures, but also their content.

A code of corporate governance was introduced in Sweden in 2005. Although the code is mandatory, a company is allowed to override specific rules if it openly discloses the deviation and explains why it does not comply. The aim of this study is to explain how the governance structure, operationalized as the ownership structure, the board and the auditor, affects companies’ propensity to deviate from the Swedish Code. The empirical data in this study are based on the 2010 annual reports from 193 companies listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange and data from the Swedish Corporate Governance Board. The findings show that concentrated ownership, smaller boards with directors with long tenure and audit firms with a high proportion of employees compared with partners increase the likelihood of deviance.