The representative democracy has become weakened during the last decades. At the same time the United Nations declared at the Rio de Janeiro meeting in 1992 that environmental problems can best be solved by involvement of all concerned citizens in decision-making. The main purpose of this study has been to examine if citizens panels is a possible way to involve citizens in environmental decision-making and what the outcomes can be. Furthermore the study has investigated what the participation has contributed to environmental politics and how representative the results have been. This has been carried out by investigating the Piteåpanel in the municipality of Piteå by conducting interviews.The result of the study shows that the involvement of the citizens in the decision-making influenced the environmental politics of the municipality.

This thesis examines the environmental benefits resulting from the choice of environmental certification scheme, with focus on energy. This was carried out by studying the measures that were implemented as a result of the certification of Sweco's three largest office buildings in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö. The office property in Stockholm has been certified with the Swedish Environmental Building, Gothenburg with the British BREEAM and Malmö with the U.S system LEED.The results from the study indicate that an environmental certification can reduce the energy consumption by up to 59 percent and the water consumption by 20 to 66 percent. However; the interviews, literature study and simulations in MATLAB indicate that the size and scope of these environmental benefits depend on several identified factors: the type of building and its conditions, system selection, grade level, the choice of indicators, the ambition of those involved and when in time the certification process begins. The comparison between Environmental Building, LEED and BREEAM showed that Environmental Building for the office property in Stockholm gave the largest environmental benefit in terms of reduced energy consumption thanks to several large measures.

The history of environmental reporting began in the early 1990?s when some companies included the environmental issue in their annual report. The increased interest of ethical and sustainable investments and demands from different stakeholders conjure a change of the report design. To develop the environmental reports and create design guidance for sustainability reports an organisation called Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) was born. The GRI is environmental reporting taken to another level, a level that is according to sustainable development.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the institutional effectiveness of the environmental institutions Helcom and the Mediterranean regime, by using Haas, Levy and Keohane's "the three Cs"; governmental concern, contractual environment, political and administrative capacity. The method used is a comparative analysis.This study takes into consideration the specific structural and economic factors that are prevailing in each region where the environmental regime operates. This study also takes into account the influence of the European Union as a factor that affects the environmental progress.By focusing the study on the line of conduct concerning hazardous substances by respectively regime this study shows that the institutional effectiveness is fulfilled in neither Helcom nor the Mediterranean Regime, although Helcom has been more successful. The lack of state capacity is the most restraining factor for both developing countries and countries in the transition towards being developed, to achieve a good environmental status of the sea. This study also shows that the European Union sometimes has a greater impact on the environmental progress in states, rather than the environmental regime in countries that were/are aspiring members, thus showing the ineffectiveness of the regime..

The purpose of this study was to investigate how Swedish retail companies work with CSR internationally.The study also sought to explore the opportunities and challenges that exist, and the stakeholders that motivate companies CSR commitment.The theoretical framework is composed of international CSR guidelines of the OECD and the UN, Carroll's CSR pyramid and three-stage model and Freeman's stakeholder theory. Furthermore a qualitative research approach was applied where four in-depth interviews were conducted with representatives from Axfood, Löfbergs Lila, Oriflame and CSR Sweden.Finally, the study demonstrated the conclusion that the companies CSR strategies are structured in a similar way regardless of the market. CSR attract and retain workers, create a good reputation for brands and results in working conditions, living standards and environmental improvements. Difficulties, however, are the complexity of being able to control each partner and manage differences in language, laws and culture between countries. Finally there are a number of stakeholders that motivate companies to work with CSR, of which shareholders are considered the most important..

The main purpose is to illuminate how a company links certain values to its brand in an effort to achieve a competitive position. We have done this by studying the government owned company Svenska Spel and its entrance on the netpokermarket. With Corporate Social Responsibility as a guidance for the company they wanted to offer Swedish gamblers an alternative to the, often morally dubious, international actors. Our thesis has taken an internal (corporate) as well as an external (consumer) perspective on the result of this strive. Our conclusions are that although Svenska Spel is successfully integrating social responsibility into their netpokerbusiness, they are facing a difficulty in making the consumer fully appreciate it.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how small organisations within the subject field health and training work with their environmental scanning. The main questions in this thesis are: How do the organisations work with business intelligence/environmental scanning? What is their environment like and of which parts does it consist? How extensive is their work with business intelligence/ environmental scanning? Which are their main fields of application and how is the work compiled practically? In order to answer these questions we have chosen to use a qualitative method, which in our case consists of two interviews with people in managerial positions within the health and training subject field. The result of the two interviews is presented in a compilation, and it is thereafter discussed and analyzed. We used an existing theoretical model and altered it in order to correspond to the aim of this research..

The environmental debate is more intensive than ever before and the demands on companies increase. There are a number of methods to make it easier for the companies to fulfil the demands. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) end ecodesign are some of the methods that can be used. Syntronic AB has the possibility to reduce the products´ environmental impact in the design phase. Therefore it is important for the company to make it possible to visualize the negative environmental impacts a product can cause in an easy way. It is also important to visualize for there clients if any improvement is possible. The purpose of this thesis is to develop a simplified model.

AbstractVäxjö University, School of Social SciencesBachelor thesisTitle: Ansvaret för skolan ? en studie om ansvarsfördelningen ur ett nyinstitutionalistiskt perspektivAuthor: Hanna JanssonSupervisor: Conny JohannessonThe aim of the study is to investigate which ideas that dominated the official political debate concerning the responsibility distribution for the Swedish school from 1974 to 1991.The study asks two questions: What ideas have dominated the official political debate concerning the responsibility distribution for the Swedish school from 1974 to 1991? and Why did the responsibility of the Swedish school change in 1991? In order to answer these questions an idea analysis were used. Three ideal types concerning democracy, effectivity and professionalism were used in analysing official governmental documents. The conclusion is that all three ideal types dominated the debate concerning the responsibility distribution, but in different degrees, and they can also explain why a new responsibility distribution came up in 1991..

Företag som upprättar så kallade hållbarhetsredovisningar har blivit allt vanligare. Dock råder det inom forskningen på området en oenighet om vad hållbarhetsredovisning egentligen är. En mängd olika begrepp används om vartannat och några klara definitioner finns inte fastlagda. Syftet med denna studie är därför att göra en kartläggning av de olika begrepp som används inom den globala, akademiska hållbarhetsredovisningslitteraturen för att utreda innebörden av dessa begrepp samt för att utreda hur dessa begrepp förhåller sig till varandra. Studien genomförs med hjälp av en litteraturstudie där 12 artiklar väljs ut genom ett intensitetsurval och sedan analyseras och jämförs med varandra.

The present essay concerns the Levinasian understanding of responsibility in relation to the two spheres that Levinas introduces in his second major work Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, namely the Saying and the Said. The essay investigates some of the different meanings that the concept responsibility takes on in regard to these two spheres, and thus also in regard to the separation between the ethical and the political that is apparent in the book. Is it possible to find a politically uttered responsibility in Levinas Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence?The essay wants to emphasize the continuous transition between the ethical or the Saying and the political or the Said, and vice versa, with the purpose of showing how the two spheres may be conceived simultaneously. By posing the relationship between the two as a reciprocal rather than a oppositional one, the essay aims to suggest that an understanding of responsibility at once must be ethical and political.

Background: Corporate Responsibility is not a new concept however in recent times more companies are starting to use different kinds of responsibility disclosures. These disclosures are voluntary and corporations may use them in the way they find suits them best. There is a lot of research in this field and there is no single explanation for what Corporate Responsibility is and how corporations should relate to it.Purpose: The purpose of the study is to examine the relationship between the controlling owners of corporations and CSR disclosure.Method: We use a content analysis and a survey study to examine the relationship between corporate controlling owners and the CSR disclosure.Conclusions: Our results show that controlling owners have little effect on the different dimensions of CSR disclosure. We have however found some differences between the different owner categories where some categories are found to use CSR disclosure to a greater extent..

Mankind has always been communicating, it is almost impossible to not communicate. The communication tree has grown a new branch, the environmental communication branch, and an ISO standard, the ISO 14 063 Environmental communication- guidelines and examples was issued October 2006. The purpose of this thesis is commissioned by the managing director of NQA Nordic AB in order to examine and analyse how organisations communicate environmental issues today, and how big the need for ISO 14 063 actually is, and further more if there are needs and wishes to make ISO 14 063 a certifiable standard. The main conclusion is that the there is a need for the standard, but it is difficult to say in which form since the knowledge about the standard is far to low among the organisations examined in this thesis. Clarity and transparency as ISO 14 063 promotes are important ingredients in organisations? environmental work, so sure a standard for environmental communication can help improve environmental performance, for example through opening up for two-way communication and from that on take part of the stakeholders? opinions.This study is based on a literature study and a questionnaire survey where 70 organisations (in this case authorities, corporations and non-governmental organisations) randomly chosen from the seven criteria, which ISO 14 001 defines as the environment: land, water, air, flora, fauna, natural resources and man and his collaboration with those.

The relationship between free trade and the environment is often considered conflicting and the debates surrounding it are infected. My thesis deal with this conflict and how environmental concerns are integrated in three regional free trade agreements, North American Free Trade Agreement, The common market of the southern cone (MERCOSUR) and Southern African Development Community (SADC). I point out how the organizations differ from each other in this respect and I present a possible explanation to why they differ. The explanation is founded on the theory of the environmental Kuznets curve and that environmental concerns will depend on which level of development the member states in the organizations have. To judge and rank the organizations I have composed a model based on a pre-existing description of the trade and environment conflict.

A uniform environmental rating system for green buildings is demanded in today's society, where the requirements of the energy consumption for real estate are increasing. There are several different systems around the world used to rate buildings, all with different assessment criteria and starting points, which make it difficult to compare environmental rated buildings with each other.The purpose of this paper is to acquire knowledge about the differences between the Swedish environmental rating system Miljöklassad Byggnad and the American LEED, to discover which system is most advantageous. We also examine whether environmental rating affect the value of a property.Miljöklassad Byggnad is relatively simple structured, which makes it possible for private individuals to rate their property. LEED is better structured on the other hand in the case of environmental classification of commercial properties, because there are manuals for among others hospitals, schools and retail. The rating system for Miljöklassad Byggnad is good since the system seeks to fix the number of errors and deficiencies as soon as possible.