Board and management in limited companies

Enterprise
An enterprise is defined as an organisational unit comprising all economic activities engaged in by the same owner. Hence, an enterprise is a legal entity covering one or more productive units.

Organisational structure
Structure registered in CRE. In this statistics, public limited companies and private limited companies are included.

Public limited company and private limited company
These are organisational structures in which none of the owners have personal responsibility for the company's liability. The owners' responsibility for the company's debt is restricted to the share capital. A private limited company cannot, unlike a public limited company, receive share capital from the public.

All public limited companies must have a general manager and a board with at least three members. Private limited companies must have a board with one or more members and may have a general manager.

Roles
Roles used in this statistics are chairmen of the board, deputy chairman and board members (i.e. board representatives), as well as general manager in public and private limited companies.

Employees
The number of employees comprises all employees with a payroll or expenditure allowance above NOK 1 000 per annum (A-Scheme Register).

National background is the person's own, their mother's or possibly their father's country of birth. Persons without an immigrant background only have Norway (000) as their national background. When both parents are born abroad they are in most cases born in the same country. In cases where the parents have different countries of birth the mother's country of birth is chosen

The Standard Industrial Classification (SIC2007)

Classification of enterprises by size Group

Classification of Organization form

The Norwegian Standard Classification of Education (NUS2000)

Name: Board and management in limited companies
Topic: Establishments, enterprises and accounts

Division for Business Dynamics Statistics

National and county level

Annual

Information on the population is temporarily stored in the program language SAS and long term as text files. StatBank is updated each year.

Purpose

The purpose of the statistics is to give an overview of who the board representatives and the general managers in existing limited companies are. The statistics is categorized by sex, age, level of education and country background (immigration category), the size of the enterprises and their economic activity.

History

The aim was to use different data sources in Statistics Norway to establish a statistical basis, which would make it possible to focus on new aspects of establishments/enterprises by describing those who establish, own, run and manage enterprises.

The first publication for limited companies as of January 1 was for the year 2004 and for new limited companies for the year 2003. The last publication for new limited companies was for the year 2013.

The first publication focused on women and immigrants in personally owned enterprises and the board representatives in public limited companies. The background for this statistics was a law proposal for a minimum of 40 per cent of both men and women on the boards of public limited companies. The last publication on gender balance on boards of public limited companies was in July 2008, half a year after the required minimum of gender balance had taken effect.

The users of this statistics are public authorities, research institutions, students, industry and commerce, and the media.

Principles for equal treatment of users in releasing statistics and analyses

No external users have access to the statistics and analyses before they are published and accessible simultaneously for all users on www.ssb.no at 8 am. Prior to this, a minimum of three months' advance notice is given in the Statistics Release Calendar.

The figures for levels that are presented will deviate from the number of legal units in the Central Coordination Register for Legal Entities, and may on an industrial level deviate from what is presented in the structure statistics. The deviation in relation to the Central Coordination Register for Legal Entities is mainly caused by the fact that it comprises all legal units, including those that are not conducting industrial activities, and that CRE controls to find out whether an enterprise has activity or not.

The statistics on ownership and roles may also deviate from Statistics Norway's other statistics on enterprises. The reason for this is that these statistics only include enterprises that have physical persons who fill roles in the enterprises.

The population differs from the one used for enterprises. The statistics includes all limited companies that are registered in the Enterprise Register (FR) and are active as of a certain date.

Statistics on enterprises comprises all industries according to the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC2007), except for public administration and defense, and primary industries. These are directly taken from the register and have to be registered in the Enterprise Register. This method is used until public administration and primary industries are included in the enterprise statistics.

The statistics is based on the Central Register of Establishments and Enterprises (CRE), information on roles from the Central Coordination Register for Legal Entities and population register data. The Division for Labour Market Statistics provides the number of employees.

Information about roles from the Central Coordination Register for Legal Entities provides a survey of all physical persons and body cooperates that have roles in the Norwegian business enterprise sector. The physical persons are registered by a national identity number or with a D-number, while the body cooperates are enterprises that are registered by organisation number. No one can register an enterprise in CRE without also registering roles. The different types of organisational structures have different requirements concerning the roles.

Information about the physical person is updated continuously, and information is checked with the Central Population Register every 24 hours.

Statistical Population Register
The statistics is based on population register data. Since 1946, each municipality has had a local population registry that registers all residents in the municipality pursuant to the Population Registration Act and its regulations. The population registries receive reports of births, deaths, marriages, divorces, migration etc. from various sources.

Population's level of education

The level of education register is originally based on information from the 1970 Population and Housing Census. Each year, the database is updated with new information on completed degrees in Norway. Education completed abroad and supported by the State Education Loan Fund is included from 1986 onwards. Statistics Norway's special surveys Education Completed Abroad from 1990 and 1999 have also been used to update the database. The Health Personnel Register (HPR) and National Certificate Database (NVB) have been used as additional data sources since 2001, and the Norwegian computer system for cases involving foreign nationals and refugees (UDB) since 2008.

The National Education Database (NUDB) was created in 2002 and contains individually based education statistics dating back to 1970. Each year the database is updated with records of current students and completed educations for the previous academic year. Course codes from the completed educations are used to update the population's level of education where applicable. If an individual has completed two courses of the same level, the one with the highest class level is chosen. Specific fields of study are chosen over general fields and newer courses are counted before older courses. Credit points have also been used to determine education level since 1999. Between 1999 and 2004, a tertiary level education was attained with a single year full-time loading of 60 credit points. From October 1, 2005, 120 credit points are required to attain a tertiary level of education.

The statistics uses only administrative data and already existing statistical registers.

The Central Register of Establishments and Enterprises (CRE) is a comprehensive register. Its quality is ensured in relation to population and basic characteristics like addresses, legal form and industry codes.

The quality of the population of active enterprises is taken care of among other things by directly contacting units in connection with the data collection for the SBS and through links towards administrative registers in the monitoring system for establishments in the CRE.

The quality regarding the industry code for establishments and enterprises is continuously taken care of. This takes place by contacting the enterprises in SN's SBS-surveys, through administrative sources such as the National Insurance administration's annual check, and in other ways through direct contact with the enterprises, and furthermore with the help of statements of purposes with the Central Coordination Register for Legal Entities.

The statistics is published every year so that the results are comparable. In StatBank, the results are to be found for the whole country and by county.

Enterprise statistics
The statistics is based on statistical and administrative sources. Several administrative sources are instrumental in the work of updating the CRE, and are used both to define the population and to collect characteristics and information: the Central Coordination Register for Legal Entities, the VAT Register and the A-Scheme Register are used to collect information about the units. This may cause register errors that can affect the uncertainty of the statistics.

A possible source for errors is out-of-date information caused by lags in the registration. Such lags are caused by the fact that changes are often registered some time after they have occurred. The consequence is that the registers are not always up-to-date, which can lead to outdated information being used as a basis for the statistics.

In connection with new registrations, the respondent is to state whether this is a new activity or a change in ownership. In cases where such information is lacking, a duplicate check against existing enterprises is carried out in order to identify possible ownership changes. All changes are not intercepted in these routines, and the number of new establishments is assumed to be somewhat high in relation to the number of new registrations. Furthermore, there are many newly established enterprises that do not start up any activity.

Population statistics
The quality of the data from the Central Population Register is generally very good for statistical purposes, however one relevant complaint is delayed reporting. Delayed reporting can lead to some events being registered and counted in the wrong year.

The Central Population Register consists of persons with a Norwegian national identity number or a D-number. Some of the persons with a D-number are persons living abroad while working in Norway. These persons will not be issued with a national identity number, but persons immigrating to Norway will get a national identity number after a period of time. It can therefore be difficult to distinguish between immigrants who have moved to Norway and persons living abroad. Another problem could be persons who change their national identity number as a consequence of new information about their date of birth.

Statistics on the population's level of education
For sources of error in the education statistics, see About the statistics.