Presently environmental and ethical matters are in the centre of attention and companies producing sustainability reports have become more common. It has also started to become more and more ordinary to assure these sustainability reports by an external part. However, the amount of assured sustainability reports differs a lot between different countries.There can be several reasons for why the companies chose to get the sustainability report assured. Previous studies state that the choice to produce sustainability reports can be re-lated to theories like the legitimacy theory, stakeholder theory and the agent theory. Other aspects that can affect the decision to construct a sustainability report can according to prior studies be different company characteristics and the national culture in the country in which the company is operating.

The aim of this study is to find out if there is any difference between how a state-owned company and a publicly listed private company communicate its sustainability performance in its sustainability report. It also aims to find out if the communication regarding sustainability has changed over time. The poll was conducted in two Swedish companies, Sveaskog AB and AB SCA, operating in the forestry industry and through a quantitative content analysis, the companies' sustainability reports from 2005 and 2010 were examined. To get a result, the reports has been examined by the GRI framework (Global Reporting Initiative) and an assessment of the communication was made based on a scale of 0-3. The results has been evaluated based on stakeholder theory, legitimacy theory and the growing interest in CSR. The analyses found evidence that there is a link between the form of ownership of the company and how it communicates regarding sustainability.

In organizations today Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is becoming a common means to try to gain legitimacy and credibility for their business. A successful CSR strategy has the potential to generate positive outcomes for a company and reaching out to stakeholders about the corporation?s contribution in the field is an important part of the work. In this study I examine how the employees at Max Hamburgare receive the corporation?s efforts within sustainability, how it is perceived and what this means to the employees.

The aim of this study was to examine and describe the reasons why companies choose to conduct a sustainability report and what is required to compile it. Moreover, we wanted to examine why companies choose not to revise their sustainability report while others do..

The main purpose of the essay was to evaluate whether investments in index-linked bonds were suitable investments for smaller investors on the international finance market. To determine whether the index-linked bonds are good investments, the variables yield, cost and risk were used to measure the index-linked bonds against investments in stocks and funds. The reason for the interest in this subject is that investments in index-linked bonds have grown furiously the last few years. With the growth of the investments the criticism of index-linked bonds has also grown stronger. The critics? main point is the cost of the product, and they imply that investors can create their own index-linked bond and thereby avoid the bank fees.This study used a quantitative approach, because all the data of yield, cost and risk consist of numbers.

This study deals with sustainability reporting in three governmental and three non-governmental Swedish companies in different industries. With increasing demands from the society regarding company?s CSR - Corporate social responsibility, the perspective of accounting gets broader and covers even non-financial information to meet not only the owners? demands but also others stakeholders' requirements. Sustainability has become an important tool for creating company?s business value and a positive sustainable external image.

In organizations today Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is becoming a common means to try to gain legitimacy and credibility for their business. A successful CSR strategy has the potential to generate positive outcomes for a company and reaching out to stakeholders about the corporation?s contribution in the field is an important part of the work. In this study I examine how the employees at Max Hamburgare receive the corporation?s efforts within sustainability, how it is perceived and what this means to the employees.

I denna undersökning konstrueras fundamentala aktieindex med aktier innefattade av indexetStockholm OMX30 under perioden 1999-04-01 till och med 2009-03-31. Dels konstruerasenskilda index där indexeringen sker efter faktorerna bokvärde, utdelning, försäljning, resultat,kassaflöde och antal anställda, dels ett index där faktorerna sammanvägs. Detta för att undersökahuruvida fundamentala index bättre speglar företags fundamentala värde och därmed genererarhögre riskjusterad avkastning i förhållande till ett marknadsvägt referensindex. De enskildaindexen bokvärde, utdelning, försäljning, antal anställda samt det sammanvägda indexet visarhögre riskjusterad avkastning än referensindexet. Kassaflödes- och resultatindexet presterardäremot markant sämre än referensindexet.

To establish sustainability reports is an increasing trend for more and more companies. This has led to a spread of the international framework Global reporting initiative, GRI, guidelines to make a sustainability reports. This trend has got a lot of critics from various stakeholders who believe that companies in these reports communicate the information in a way of window dressing. Both negative and positive information has to be represented according to GRI: s principle of balance.  Window dressing is created by adding a greater emphasis on the positive information. The researchers review the context of the negative information to study the extent to which it is reported and whether there are patterns and variations in the reported information.

In recent years there have been many corporate scandals from environmental and social aspects. Corporate irresponsible behavior has led to major public discussions on responsibility and these pressures made that many companies wanting to show that they are working for a sustainable development by voluntarily reporting economic, environmental and social and social issues in the financial statement. They hope this will create credibility for the companies. In the current situation, there are a number of guidelines that companies can use to report sustainability. One of these is the GRI guidelines which is an international framework that covers many accounting areas and allows companies to compare their sustainability reports with other companies.The purpose of this study is to determine if all state-owned companies follows the government?s requirement that these companies must form a sustainability report under the GRI guidelines, and the sustainability report must be audited and certified by an outside party.

In recent decades, demands has emerged that the companies shall take a greater social responsibility for the impact that they have on their environment and that this impact shall be reported, which is known as Sustainability Reporting. The Sustainability Report is based on a number of general principles that ensure the content and the quality of the Sustainability Report. One of these principles is the principle of completeness. In the research, this principle seems to have been interpreted in terms of number of reported aspects and indicators, which can be a limited view where only the existence of the aspects and indicators is observed. By including the degree of the reporting in terms of full, partial and no reporting as well as a comparison between the real and the alleged reporting, our intention is to extend the principle of completeness and to develop a tool that we also apply through an empirical survey in a particular area.

Sustainability reports have during the last decade had a strong development. Both in terms of establishing a sustainability assurance, in its form, and get it assured together with standards, principles and regulations which organisations and accountants have utilized. The growth of sustainability reports and the choice of getting them assured have in particular favoured the accounting business. Due to this result, some critics have voiced that assuring a sustainability report gain accounting firms more than it gains the actual organisation. Other say that it is necessary in order to increase the credibility and the eligibility of the report, while it also has become a requirement from stakeholders.

Companies today are expected to communicate their responsibility to the world around them. Society?s expectations differ and stakeholders are demanding that companies act responsibly on matters related to climate, work environment and human rights. The purpose of sustainability reports is that companies should measure, present and take responsibility in relation to their internal and external stakeholders. It is intended that a reasonable picture of the company's sustainability performance should be communicated, containing both positive and negative effects.Companies efforts with sustainability issues is industry-dependent and industries with significant environmental problems perform the most advanced environmental statement.

As consumers we want to know from whom we buy, what we buy and the impact the company has on our planet. In recent years there been an increasing number of scandals concerning child labour, dangerous chemicals and falsely labelled meat. A good way for companies to communicate their environmental efforts is to establish a sustainability report, where they describe their work and their impact on our environment. By concentrating on H&M?s sustainability report, as well as conducting a rhetorical analysis, we have been able to focus on the following research questions:  ? Why do companies establish CSR reports? ? How do companies gain legitimacy through their rhetorical choices? ? How do companies try to influence recipients? attitudes to the company? We begin by studying the context, which is of importance when using a rhetorical method and thereby attempt to understand in what situation the text is created.

In this thesis, a computer program that in a simple way can calculate the performance of control loops at the refinery Preemraff Lysekil has been created. The computer program has been adapted to the environment at Preemraff Lysekil. Theories for evaluation has been studied in aspect of reliability and of automatic implementation. The evaluation has been carried out from data collected directly from control loops at the refinery and from simulated control loops with implemented errors. Among the studied methods are Harris index and Stattin´s oscillation index.