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).

Social sustainability is often regarded as a solution to social problems in general. In this study, on the contrary, social sustainability is conceived as a socially constructed concept and the result of a certain way of looking at the world, the human being and the ideal society. The study centers around Kinda municipality in the southern region of Östergötland and a few of its elder inhabitants. What meaning and substance social sustainability is contained with as well as the effects that are produced by these conceptualizations is explored and analyzed. Also, the study examines the encounter between political policy?s and judgments on the one hand and the experiences and preferences held by the municipality?s elder inhabitants on the other..

In today's society it has become increasingly important for organizations to take into account non-financial values. Sustainability reporting involves reporting the economic, social and environmental aspects of an organization's operations. The trend has been towards an all the more scrutinizing society with an increasing demand for transparency and translucency. A greater focus on environmental issues has also contributed to sustainability?s increasing importance as a topic.

Humanity faces a major challenge with the climate and environmental crisis, largely driven by reckless recourse use and greenhouse gas emissions by corporations. The EU?s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) aims to standardise corporate sustainability reporting, making practices more transparent and comparable. This directive seeks to enhance sustainability practices and guide market forces towards sustainability, supporting the EU?s goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.

AbstractTitle:Sustainability reporting- For whom and what? What is the opinion of analysts, consultants and fund managers on sustainability reporting?Level:Bachelor thesis in business administration, 15 university creditsAuthors:Nils Johansson and Hannes ThomasfolkSupervisor:Sarah PhilipsonDate:20140108Keywords:Sustainability reporting, value relevance, stakeholder theory, signaling theory.Purpose:The purpose of this paper is to study how different professional groups in the Swedish financial market in 2013 use sustainability reporting and explore how professional groups look at the future development of sustainability reporting.Limitations:The study focuses only on organizations that are members of SWESIF.Method:In this study we chose a multiple case study design, inspired by well grounded theory. The study's empirical data was obtained through ten semi-structured interviews with analysts, consultants and fund managers.Results and conclusions:It was revealed by the study that companies producing a sustainability report demonstrates transparency and are perceived as a company that is aware of risk, both economic risks as well as external risks. The study also shows that among the study's respondents, there is a strong belief that sustainable business in the long term is a good investment. The study also indicates that this is no concrete evidence of an association between the use of sustainability reporting and either increased or decreased profitability.

The purpose of the study is to explore the internal implementation and communication of ecological sustainability within an organization and to identify obstacles and challenges that may arise. To address the study's purpose and research questions, a qualitative methodology and semi-structured interviews were used. Respondents were selected from two different units within a large global organization operating in the automotive industry. The study's findings indicate that the organization's sustainability efforts are extensive and integrated across several departments. It is also evident that sustainability initiatives are primarily driven by upper management within the organization, although there is room for lower hierarchical levels to provide some feedback.

Sustainable development is a concept that has been interpreted in a multitude of ways in different contexts. This essay argues that the discourse of "ecological modernization" has strongly influenced the way in which the concept of ?sustainability? has been constructed in Swedish environmental policy. This interpretation of the concept of sustainability offers the possibility of combining economic growth with ecological sustainability which stands in contrast to the assumptions of Deep Ecology and Green Theory. The aim of this essay is to explore how the concept of sustainability is being formulated in environmental policy both on a national level and in the city of Malmö.Considering these issues in a specific context, this essay focuses on city planning that is as an important instrument to promote urban sustainability both on national and local levels.

The connection between management control systems for controlling sustainability and a firm's motivation for engaging in sustainability is not completely understood (Arjaliès & Mundy, 2013). The aim of this thesis is to develop a more profound understanding for management control in achieving sustainable companies. To do this, we raise the question: How and to what extent do companies use management control systems to achieve sustainability compliance Simons's Levers of Control (1995) are applied to this question in order to get a consistent and thorough insight of management control systems. Hence, a case study of ABB:s work to achieve material compliance in accordance with EU-regulation was conducted. The findings of the case study reveal that ABB uses the regulations as explicit goals and implement them in sustainability procedures.

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..

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.

This thesis studies whether private equity owned firms within the Swedish welfare sector distinguish themselves in terms of tax planning and short-termism from a control group consisting of other privately owned welfare firms. For the first time, the comparison is made on the entire welfare sector, between 14 matched pairs within education, health care and elderly care. We use financial metrics associated with tax planning and short-termism in sign tests to examine whether the private equity owned firms differ from our control group. The financial metrics tested are actual and paid tax rates, level of interest, book-tax gap, investments, personnel expenses per employee, and cash earnings. We find that the private equity owned firms in terms of tax planning only differ in the level of interest, while no notable differences are found in terms of short-termism..