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The relationship between the client and the auditor could explain variance in audit quality. We propose a complimentary explanation, with a focus on the governance of the audit firm. Audit firms are governed by partners and its partnership structure. We explore theoretically how the number of partners and especially, how the partnership concentration, i.e., number of partners/number of auditors and experts in an audit firm, influence the audit firm and the audit quality. We find that both number of partners and partnership concentration influence the partners and the organisation towards more commercial actions and reduce the audit quality, but only to a certain level. Our policy recommendation is that regulators should not only focus on the relationship between the client and the auditor, for example NAS and rotation of auditors, but also on the governance of the audit firms.

Corporate governance (CG) needs to acknowledge the intentional part of governance, where an actor of governance uses the set of corporate governance mechanisms in order to influence the agent to create a performance that will satisfy the interest of the principal. This paper offers a conception of this activity through the concept of governance strategy. The concept is derived within the context of agency theory and applied to two empirical organisations seldom investigated in CG research: the organisation of a riding school in a democratic not-for-profit association and the organisation of multinational corporations in a business group. ; The project is financed by The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation. An earlier version was presented at the Academy of Management Conference, Atlanta. Georgia, August 11-16, 2006. The paper has benefited from comments by Elin Smith, Kristianstad University.

Cross-sectional comparisons of costs for municipal services have become more and more common. This article aims to show that these comparisons do not give a true and fair view due to lack of harmonisation in the accounting standards within the local government sector. The article is based on a survey of Swedish water and sewage enterprises. Emphasises has been put on transactions that affects the cost of depreciation and cost of capital tied up in assets.

Ever since Adam Smith there has been a contention that dispersed ownership in a joint stock company is accompanied by low firm performance. This belief has reached its theoretical hights in agency theory. The aim of the paper is to show that mthe contention has to be developed in order to be more attuned with empirical data. It will be argued 1.) That the influence of ownership structure upon performance is mediated through mechanisms inside the firm, the strategy being the most prominent; 2.) That performance has to be divided into profit and risk, and into firm performance, using accounting data, and market performance, using share market performance data; 3.) That the ownership structure is not exclusively a factor that influences the firm, but that the firm and its strategy influence the ownership structure through attracting certain shareholders and repulse others; 4.) That ownership structure is but one mechanism of several corporate governance mechanisms and that performance is ultimately influenced by the mix of the mechanisms; and 5.) Those institutional differences, such as culture, traditions, legislation and history, influence the opportunity set of corporate governance structures and therefore the relative importance of ownership structures in influencing the performance of the firm. A data set from Sweden and from the hard years of 1990 is used in order to empirically support the statements.

The paper is dealing with the threat towards university standards in Sweden, 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. ; The paper has been presented at the 19th Business Administration Conference (NFF), in Bergen, Norway, August 9-11, 2007.

The aim of the paper is to contribute to the study of efficient governance of PPPs through an inductive three case study analysis. The main conclusion is that efficient PPPs can be formed through adaptive governance by the resource priding partner, aimed at producing efficiency through specialisation, where the strategy is based on an intimate understanding of the partner's market conditions and developed in the understanding that the strategy can influence the entrepreneurial spirit of the partners.

Cross-sectional comparisons of costs for municipal services have become more and more common. This article aims to show that these comparisons do not give a true and fair view due to lack of harmonisation in the accounting standards within the local government sector. The article is based on a survey of Swedish water and sewage enterprises. Emphasises has been put on transactions that affects the cost of depreciation and cost of capital tied up in assets.

A theory based on property rights, predicting relationships between corporate governance mechanisms and corporate entrepreneurship, is developed in order to explain the entrepreneurial propensity of democratic member-based associations. The theory is tested on riding school associations. The findings indicate that the risk attitude of an association is influenced by the size of the market for managerial labour and the methods used in order to develop the manager of the organisation.

A taxonomy of corporate governance structures based on equity and debt financial interest is offered as an alternative to the conventional emphasis on ownership concentration. Hypotheses on the association between the proposed governance structures and the strategic variable of diversification are formulated and tested on a sample of 73 large Swedish corporations. The theory explains significantly a tiny bit of the variance in diversification, something the conventional theory limited to ownership structure considerations was unable to do.

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.