Background: Corporations are established and organized in order to create economic values for their owners and the main aim of every business enterprise is to be profitable and satisfy the financial expectations of their shareholders. However, corporate social responsibility focuses on the ethical aspects of corporate business in order to achieve the balance between the profitability and social responsibility. Nongovernmental organizations through their activities promote the respect for human rights and environmental care within the corporate world. Purpose and Scope: To make an in-depth study about the role of nongovernmental organizations regarding corporate social responsibility in order to increase the understanding of corporate social responsibility. Methodology: We used literature research for our thesis and we analysed the secondary data related to the corporate social responsibility.

This thesis tackles the subject concerning arguments as a conceptual basis forunderstanding the general strategy of the European Union Commission on issuesconcerning EU-harmonized environmental taxes, politically delicate and intergovernmentaldependent. The Commission's official proposals, communications and other relevant documents are subject to inquiry, where the theoretical bases are that harmonized environmental taxes in the EU is an issue conceived as supported by academic debate, and where the institutional arrangement in relation to an European-national dimension alongside the discursive context, allows meaningfulspace for arguments. The study makes a distinction between substantial (environmental cancerns in itself) and instrumental (other benefits, mostly economic ones) rationality as a foundation in various types of arguments.The study's main findings are that the Commission's official documents over the past 20 years, have been trying to keep a strong image of reason and knowledge based arguments for an EU-wide environmental tax reform. In particular, the types of arguments tend to appeal to the Member States by stressing the instrumental rationality in a European environmental tax reform, indicating the value of good arguments as a part of the Commission's main strategies. In sum, this may have further theoretical suggestions concerning questions of environmental and elimate change policies in a European context or other more general studies relying on theoretical assumptions of logics of argument, legitimacy or studies of motives behind action strategies in politically sensitive issues such as taxation at supranationallevel..

The Swedish forest policies have earlier mainly been focused on two goals: production and environment. The production goal aims to benefit the economical gains from forestry while the environmental goal primarily aims to shield the ecological values of the forest. With the introduction of the Swedish environmental code and the environmental objectives it was made clear that the overall objective for Swedish community development, including the forestry sector, is sustainable development. Sustainable development includes supporting economic, ecologic as well as social values of which the latter seems to have been forgotten in the forestry sector. This was recently brought to attention to the sector and the debate how to handle the social values is now ongoing.The legislator has not been unaware of the social values since they have since long been at least somewhat included in the preliminary works.

The world's natural resources are constantly being reduced, which increases the pressure on companies to actively engage themselves in environmental activities. Meanwhile, stakeholders focus is being broadened and it is now important not only to supply a particular product or service but also show that they are actively pursuing an environmental agenda. Companies can use various tools to aid in environmental efforts, but also to demonstrate to the world that the company is actively engaged in environmental activities. One such tool is the environmental standard ISO14001 which provides the company with guidance and support on how the business must manage its environmental efforts. To show a business' progress in environmental performance, it is advantageous to use environmental performance indicators as they enable stakeholders to easily understand how the business works with environmental issues.Authors in the field explain that the environmental management system propagation is limited in service organizations.

Currently, the whole globe is faced with serious problems which negatively affect people around the world: increased pollution, excessive waste, and weather pattern changes. ?Left? and ?right? wing political parties alike have embraced ?green? politics and for many of these parties, environmental issues have become a top priority that is very much reflected in their manifestos. This study examines the environmental goals of two of Sweden?s largest political parties and how these ambitions are reflected at a local level.

The essay aims to compare Swedish and Finnish decisions regarding refugee policies by tracing them back to the critical junctures when the policies were established, in order to explain why there are big differences prevalent today. The questions asked involve the motivations of the refugee policies and how they have changed over time.The theoretical framework employed is based on historical institutionalism and path dependency. By using a most similar system design and process tracing, material in the form of government declarations and government bills are studied and summed up in two analytical models. The results show that there might be a weak path dependency in the case of Finland. However it is more apparent in the case of Sweden, with frequent statements of a generous refugee policy that is characterised by humanity.

The aim of this essay is to give the reader an idea of how the European agricultural policies have developed, in regard of sustainable development, since Sweden became a member in the union 1995. The main aspect that?s been investigated is the issues regarding sustainable development and how the issues regarding the ecological farming methods have been dealt with. My research questions are:- How has the European environment- and agricultural politics changed since Swedenjoined the union in 1995?- What consequences have the changes had for ecological farming?The answers to the stated questions are that there have been several treaties in the field of environmental development of the agricultural policy, starting with the Maastricht treaty and ends up with the European Action Plan for Organic Food and Farming.

Arms trade is a multi-faced issue, it can increase the state's economic revenue; however also endanger the human security. The European Union's member state United Kingdom is one of the five largest arms traders in the world. The EU promotes human security in its work, especially in the union's development policies. These circumstances address the main question of the study: is there a contradiction between the UK's arms trade and the EU development policies. The objective of this study is to research the stately weapon use in three of the UK's trading partners, and how it could affect the EU development policies.

AbstractThe aim with this essay has been to investigate if Sweden?s attitude against the European Union has changed expressed in the statement of government policies, during the years 1988-1998. In the prolongation I want to see if the policies can be seen as examples of agenda-setting.My comprehensive objective is: In which way is the change of the Swedish attitude towards the European Union expressed in the statement of government policies during 1988-1998 shown?My other objectives are: In which ways describes the statements the integrations process in Europe generally?In which ways does the integrations process influences Sweden in generally?In which ways does the integrations process influences Sweden?s relations against the European Union?I have used qualitative text analysis as method in my essay to find the answers to the questions. I have classified a number of opinions, found in the policies, summarized under my three objectives.The result of my essay was shown that the changed not can be found in the policies and they are examples of agenda-setting.

Buffer zones play an important role for the water quality in our watercourses. When harvesting a forest close to a watercourse a buffer zone should be left. When it's not left, it will lead to radical changes in the environment for the water organisms. The overall purpose of this thesis was to illuminate the production- and environmental thinking when establishing new buffer zones in south of Värmland. The partials goals were to determine choice of tree species, ways of regenerate, occurrence of soil scarification and the occurrence of machine tracks in newly established buffer zones.

Today?s political debate on environmental issues and environmental thinking, alongside the Swedish presidency of the EU and Climate Conferences shows that the environment is an important topic. Environment is important, not only in politics, but also for companies and the demand of environmental strategies and environmental reports has increased. This leads to an increased pressure on firms to begin to report on environmental concerns and to create active systems for environmental thinking.The aim of the present study is to examine why firms in the transport sector, mainly lorry transports, reports environmental aspects and what drives these companies to create these reports.Based on stakeholder and institutional theory we aim to examine to which extent stakeholders affects the environmental accounting and reporting. We also aim to explain how the organization is influenced to incorporate external and societal environmental procedures.

One of the biggest challenges in the human history is to prevent environmental pollution. Everybody has an indirect or direct influence on the environment through his or her consumption. The stakeholders are not just interested in price and quality, they are also interested in the circumstances of production and how this affects the environment. By taking environmental concern in public procurement it is possible to speed up the environmental adjustment of services and products. Environmental awareness has become more and more self evident in the environmental work.

The environmental work in Sweden has developed a lot over the past fifty years. Today, most companies have some kind of environmental work. Environmental activities are regulated by the Environmental Code, which applies in parallel with other laws. This report is an environmental review for Bräcke Diakoni. The report aims to find out how much environmental impact Bräcke Diakoni has.

Is accountability possible in global environmental governance? The purpose ofthis thesis is to examine if accountability is possible in global environmental governance. From an accountability perspective the thesis tries to illuminate global environmental governance. An investigation about the conceptaccountability is made and the thesis also illuminates the possible problems that exist in global environmental governance which exist of such a large amounts of different and often private actors. By investigating and examine the concept of accountability from different aspects and by using Global Compact as a example of global environmental governance the thesis try to answer if accountability actually exist in global environmental governance and in what way it is possible to demand accountability.

An environmental review has been carried out at FORIA AB, a transportation- and machine service company, to analyze the company?s environmental aspects from the transportation segment. This report describes the essential background and the methods of identifying and evaluate the environmental aspects. It also describes how the work with the environmental aspects often vary between different actors. The design of the ISO 14001 is intentionally broad in order to apply on all sorts of activities and organizations.