Browsing by Author "Carlsson, Jacob"

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Family Firms and Disclosure Tone - A quantitative study on the impact of family ownership on disclosure tone
(2015-06-29) Carlsson, Jacob; Sörenson, Karin; University of Gothenburg/Department of Business Administration; Göteborgs universitet/Företagsekonomiska institutionen
Background: Qualitative disclosures in annual reports, i.e. disclosure narratives, such as the CEO-letter, are important complements to the quantitative aspects of corporate disclosure. How readers perceive the narrative information, and thereby how they perceive the firm’s performances and image, may influence investors’ business decisions. Since there are few or no explicit rules as to what narrative disclosures should cover and how it should be written, firms have the possibility to influence the readers perception through tone management. If a family holds a high degree of voting shares in a firm, it can obtain and maintain considerable control and may thereby also have the ability to influence disclosure practises. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to test whether there is a correlation between the degree of family ownership in terms of voting rights and the tone used in the disclosure narratives. Furthermore, the study seeks to test if having a family member as CEO and/or chairman of the board affects the tone used. By testing for these correlations, this thesis seeks to investigate if family ownership has an impact on the tone used in disclosure narratives and thereby tell if family firms are more or less inclined to use tone management. Delimitations: The scope of this study focuses on the annual reports of 100 companies noted on the Swedish stock exchange, Nasdaq OMX Stockholm. This thesis concerns the narrative parts of the annual reports, more specifically the CEO-letter. The annual reports studied are from the year of 2013 and published in Swedish. Methodology: This thesis takes on a quantitative approach. Tone in CEO-letters have been quantified through word counts based on positive and negative words occurring in a pre-set wordlist. The firms studied have been dichotomously segmented into family and non-family firms and further divided into two groups; (1) family firms where a member of the controlling family holds the position as CEO and/or chairman of the board, and (2) non-family firms or family firms without a family member as CEO and/or chairman. The hypotheses have been tested through statistical tests of differences and correlation. Findings and Conclusions: The empirical results indicate no statistically significant correlation between the degree of family ownership and tone in CEO-letters. However, the results suggest a tendency for firms that are considered family firms to present a slightly less positive tone than non-family firms do. Furthermore, when a member of a controlling family serves as CEO or chairman of the board, the tone used in the CEO-letter tends to decline further. Although the empirical evidence of the associations were not statically significant, a different definition of family firms or a larger sample may change the outcome of the tests and thus, further research is therefore necessary in order to make a general conclusion on the impact of family ownership on disclosure tone.
Tools for Sustainability Management Accounting: A survey of the frequency and purpose of using tools for sustainability management accounting in Swedish listed companies
(2017-08-08) Carlsson, Jacob; University of Gothenburg/Graduate School; Göteborgs universitet/Graduate School
Sustainable business operations are essential as organisations have a central role in creating economic, environmental and social welfare. Organisational performance on sustainability matters is further increasingly becoming a question of survival since the reputation and legitimacy of companies is largely based on how it performs in environmental and social areas. It is therefore relevant to assume that businesses need to have management accounting tools to be able to efficiently incorporate sustainability dimensions into corporate practices and to evaluate the environmental and social impact of their businesses. Further, there is a discussion on weather sustainability accounting tools actually are contributing to sustainable development or if the use of such tools instead redirect attention away from the central issues. While research has been conducted on numerous issues regarding external sustainability accounting and communication, little in-depth knowledge has been obtained regarding the practices that are taking place within companies. Thus, the purpose of this thesis is to study how frequently tools for sustainability management accounting are being used by Swedish listed companies. Further, this paper seeks to research for what purposes the tools are used. The analysis is partly based on three contingency factors; industry, size and strategy, which are used to investigate if and how these factors affect the frequency of use of tools within three dimensions; environmental, social and integrative. A web-survey of Swedish listed companies was conducted. The findings were analysed by descriptive and inferential statistics in combination with comments from the respondents collected in the questionnaire. The frequency of use of formal sustainability management accounting tools was found to be quite low indicating that sustainability issues are not very well integrated into the accounting systems of Swedish listed companies. Nevertheless, the usage varied a lot among firms and most of the companies claimed to use at least one tool in each category; environmental, social and integrative. The tools were found to be mostly used for external reasons such as monitoring internal compliance and external reporting and to a lesser extent for internal decision-making purposes. In addition, the frequency of use was found to be significantly related to company size. Industry belonging affected the use of environmental tools but not social and integrative. Finally, weak correlations were found between company strategy and the use of the three categories of tools.
Verklighet och vision hos Michel Houellebecq
(Humanistiska fakultetsnämnden vid Göteborgs universitet, 2004) Carlsson, Jacob