This study aims to investigate development and reasons behind sustainability reporting in large Swedish companies. By examining 15 companies? environmental and sustainability reports between the years 2000 and 2008, data was collected on matters such as frequency, scope and design. Identified trends were to a large extent in line with previous studies on international development; sustainability reporting is growing in several aspects. The authors have found one major reason for this development to be increasing requirements and expectations from stakeholders and a need for companies to legitimize their actions.

The environmental situation is becoming increasingly critical. The energy sector and other industries have a big impact on our climate and the public is raising their voice for companies to admit their responsibility towards the environment and society. Companies engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and happily disclose their responsible performance in annual reports. But what messages are they conveying in their CSR-reporting, and what attitudes towards CSR can be found underneath the explicit content? The aim of this study is to discover which discourses exist in CSR-reports from Swedish energy companies, and how these discourses operate.

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.

In modern health care, the quality registry is anexcellent tool to monitor everyday work. Collected data forms a foundation, presented as online reports, from which local work efforts to refine care quality can be performed. All reports are coded manually by specially trained developers. This is a tedious process and hence becomes a bottleneck in the strive for improvement.This thesis evaluates whether an extended way of dealing with reports can fit into the existing work situation, with main focus on the idea of creating custom reports directly within a quality registry. It provides a set of conclusions regarding today's usage of reports as well as the users' general and specific needs within the area.

This study is based on an ongoing debate regarding the Stockholm Stock Exchange, which centers around the possible abolition of quarterly reports. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to this debate by examining how the relationship between financial reports and stock price correlates. The study's methodological approach is based on the Capital Market Research frame-work in which an ERC model and an extended model are used to measure the relationship. Three hypotheses were formed to categorize the direction of the study, these categorizations treats the differences in impact between quarterly and annual reports on stock price, as well as differences in impact as a casual effect of company size and seasonal sensitivity. The results of the study show that quarterly reports have a stronger impact on the share price than annual reports.

During the past decade environmental challenges have been intensified and given increased attention. This implies that businesses in all sectors strategically need to manage these challenges. The service sector is often considered as a sector with a low environmental impact if the direct environmental aspects are assessed. Still, it has been argued that the environmental impact that the sector gives rise to can create severe indirect environmental impacts. The products and services that are produced by this sector have a relatively limited use of physical resources which may make the environmental impact challenging to visualize. Banks belong to the service sector and it is partly banks that make the development of societies possible.

The aim of this dissertation is to examine why smaller municipalities[1] in Sweden experience difficulties when implementing the 16 environmental objectives that are designed to solve Sweden's environmental problems.The theoretical framework used for this dissertation is implementation theory which provides three conditions that need to be met in order to have a successful implementation.  These three conditions have shaped the research questions that examine if Torsby municipality has the "understanding," "ability" and "will" needed to implement the decision correctly.  The dissertation employs a case study method to examine why Torsby municipality has experienced difficulties implementating the target: programmes and strategies for planning, which is an interim target to environmental objective number 15: A good built environment.  Qualitative text analysis and interviews with politicians and civil servants from Torsby municipality and the county administration board of Värmland have been conducted in order to answer the research questions.   The material used for this dissertation is mostly from the government bills that are the foundation of the Swedish environmental policy and the documents and reports about the environmental objectives that the National Board of Housing, Building and Planning (Boverket), the Swedish Environmental protection agency (Naturvårdsverket), and the Environmental objectives council (Miljörådet) have released.The result of this dissertation supports previous research which has shown that smaller municipalities have problems implementating the environmental objectives due to a lack of financial resources. This dissertation also shows that the problems can be due to a lack of understanding the purpose of the objectives.  This leads to a lack of political will to implement the objectives.  Since the municipalities do not have the political will to implement the objectives the appropriate resources needed for a successful implementation are not appointed and therefore the municipalities are not able to fully implement the environmental objectives. [1] Municipalities with less than 20 000 inhabitants..

The possibility for plants to utilize phosphorus in soil is a prerequisite for conducting agricultural production, both small scale and professional. Spreading of phosphorus fertilizers and manure is therefore seen as a necessity in today's agriculture in order to achieve high yield. Manure management, livestock farming and manure storage could contribute to the eutrophication of lakes and rivers. For instance, when the ground becomes saturated, phosphorus leakage could be seen in surface runoff or in point sources resulting from inadequate manure storage management.In the municipality of Växjö there is still many bodies of water that do not reach the Swedish environmental water quality standard of "good ecological status". This thesis has therefore analyzed the manure management and storage on agricultural farms which may have contributed to eutrophication in the municipality.The method for this thesis was a literature study, a questionnaire survey with 820 receivers and a summary of issued inspection reports from 2013.The results highlight the ways in which agriculture may have contributed to the eutrophication of lakes and streams in the municipality of Växjö.

The purpose of this essay was to identify the primary stakeholder in aid organisations, by which we mean whom they make their annual report for, and to analyse if there were any differences considering the design of their annual reports depending on which their primary stakeholder is. The method we used to explain the choice of primary stakeholder and the differences in the annual reports was a multiple case study. The collected data came from telephone interviews with 23 representatives from aid organisations and a review of annual reports. The results were analysed through pattern matching. We found that aid organisations do not have a primary stakeholder as in incorporated organisations.

The purpose of this paper is to study how Swedish CFOs perceive that the requirement for companies to issue quarterly reports affect business operations in the company. The fact that it is regulations on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, and not the law, that requires companies to issue quarterly reports makes Sweden unique in Europe. The paper is based on interviews with CFOs from 32 companies quoted on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. The major finding in the study is that a majority of the CFOs perceive that the pressure for short term results, created by quarterly reports, affect their work and the investment decisions made in the company. Also CFOs feel that the market over interprets the information given in quarterly reports.

The voluntary none-financial sustainability report has become a trend within accounting. The environmental issues used to be driven by activists only, but lately it has moved in to the general agenda in many companies. Investors are starting to put more attention to the sustainability reporting as it is considered to add value to the company. There are several standard guidelines to be used when producing a sustainability report, one example is the GRI´s Guidelines that takes the following three dimensions in consideration: economy, environment and social. This Guideline is from an international perspective considered to be of good accounting practice (Ljungdahl 2008).

Sustainability is today a current topic and companies are more or less forced to work with it even though it contradicts the historical role of companies, which is to generate a profit for shareholders. In recent years there has been a rising interest from banks to work with sustainability but research has shown a growing dissatisfaction among customers even though banks are spending a lot of money and time working with sustainability. This shows that there is an asymmetry between how the banks act and what their customers demand. The purpose of this paper is to create an understanding of how business customers perceive banks´ CSR-reports by investigating customers? interest in these reports.

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.

The increasing public concern regarding the government?s priorities in spending public resources puts pressure on public organisations to address quality issues in their practice. In United Kingdom both BRTF (Better Regulation Task Force) (BIS, 2005b) and the Hampton report (BIS, 2005a) highlighted management and quality problems in public organisations in UK. These reports revealed obstacles within institutions? intent to offer recommendations and appropriate solutions for agencies working with legal enforcement and control.