Companies today face more and more demands from society and stakeholders. It is no longer about just satisfying shareholders, sales and making a profit. Consumers are becoming more aware of products effects and the consequences it has on humans, our environment and the generation ahead of us. NGO:s and society request that companies take responsibility and actions toward a more sustainable business. Many investors analyze companies? sustainability regarding social and environmental issues when it comes to choosing a company to invest in.

The purpose of this thesis is to gain a deeper understanding about why Swedish banks choose to work and report CSR and also analyze differences and similarities between two banks.Research question: Why do Swedish companies within the financial sector choose to report and work with Corporate Social Responsibility?The major incentives to work and report CSR are because it benefits bank´s businesses, which is driven by stakeholders. Stakeholder pressure is also an important incentive, especially pressure from customers and employees. The incentives that differed between the two banks were morality of the business leader, society and the priority of stakeholders. The incentives that we could not support were guidelines and competitors-.

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.

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).

Background: The latest development within the business world has been characterized by deregulation and globalization which has made the company bigger and even more influential. The increased power has resulted in a shift of responsibility for the community from the public to the private sector. (Steinholtz och Löhman, 2003) There have been many trends regarding what accountability includes and how financial accounting can be complimented in a useful and reliable way. Some trends have come to stay whilst others have shown to be less successful or the world has not been ready for them. (Larsson, a, 2002) Purpose: The purpose with this paper is to look at the historical development towards accounting for sustainability and to investigate what factors that might have hade an impact on this development.

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.

Companies today are facing more and different kinds of demands from the society and their stakeholders. It is no longer enough to just deliver the products, and not just the quality of the products that matter. The consumers are getting more conscious about the many ways in which companies affect the society and the environment in which we live. The financial sector, that among others includes stakeholders such as insurance companies, banks and fund companies are starting to realise the importance of the non- financial issues that companies are encountering. Analysing the companies sustainability when it comes to social and environmental issues, has become an increasingly important factor when for example choosing companies to invest in.

This report tries to discuss the concept of social sustainability; what it means and how residential development can be made more socially sustainable. This is done by interviewing several and various representatives in JM AB, the municipality of Uppsala and residents of Åriket to explore how JM AB as a housing developer and the municipality are working with issues regarding social sustainability and what the residents in one of the new housing projects themselves think of these issues. The result of these interviews will be compared and analyzed with the prospect of finding common variables and hopefully ways of improvement.This will result in our own recommendations of areas of improvement either by broad initiatives or specific actions to increase the social sustainability. Areas such as meeting places, sustainable functions and joint efforts between different parties. During the work on the report we come in contact with several other areas of interest that we are not able to process ourselves and therefore recommend them for future studies..

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.

Background and Introduction: Environmental report drew attention in the 1980s when the Va?rldskommissionen fo?r miljo? och utveckling received a mandate from the FN to investigate the relationship between economic development and environmental degradation. In connection with this, although sustainability a new item for many businesses. But to say exactly what sustainability is all about is very difficult. In 1996 the then Government Redovisningskommissionen a study on the introduction of an amendment to the Annual Accounts Act, which would force companies to report on environmental issues in their annual or consolidated accounts.

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.

Background: Following an increased awareness concerning social and environmental aspectsin society, more enterprises establish Sustainability reports in order to inform theirstakeholders about the company?s sustainability duties. A previous study indicates that themetal sector is enjoying relatively limited increases in business opportunities and/or financialvalue of corporate responsibility. Another study suggests that there is a gap in expectationsbetween producers and users of Sustainability reports due to an uncertainty regarding whatinformation such reports should contain and what audience such reports should target. Thequestion is whether or not a gap in expectations concerning Sustainability reporting is acontributing factor to the limited increases in financial value in the metal sector?Purpose: The purpose of the study was to examine how a Sustainability report should becarried out by a company in the steel industry given what information the company and thestakeholders consider as essential in a Sustainability report.Methodology: To accomplish the purpose of the study, a deductive approach was used due tothe availability of suitable theories.

The purpose of this study are to investigate and describe if companies? Sustainability reports differ in substance and quantity between public and Large Cap companies? and if there are any differences between industries. This study will also analyze if companies? size, stakeholder group or profitability have some impact on the companies? Sustainability report. The study includes all Swedish public companies and the Large Cap companies.To investigate in line of the purpose this study will measure both the substance and quantity.

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.

The environment has become an important part in people´s lives, and in today´s society stakeholders demands have increased upon companies when it comes to Sustainability reports. How these Sustainability reports are designed depends on whom it?s for, laws and regulations, and the companies own norms and values. The purpose of Sustainability reports is to measure, monitor and compare a company´s enviromental impact. It?s not only about integrating economics, but also enviromental and social standards together to get both financial and competitive advantages.Sustainable Value method is a new model and is the first real method that can be used to evaluate a company´s resources, both financial, social and enviromental to a sustainable value.This model is used to compare the resource efficiency between companies.In this thesis, a documentary study with an experimental approach has been made.Sustainability reports from six selected companies (in the engineering and forestry sector) have been investigated with respect to their accounting for carbon dioxide, and an experiment using the method ?Sustainable Value Approach? was subsequently performed.