Background: Climate changes are a growing concern all over the world today. In June year 2006 the European Union accepted a new strategy for the Unions work against a sustainable development. The concept of taking consideration to all the aspects of an organisations/a company's activity is something that have been in focus during later years. Social and ethical aspects are in focus and questions regarding these aspects are more commonly included in the companies yearly reporting. A sustainability report is characterised by that it takes into account not only environmental aspects, like ordinary environmental reports, but also social and ethical aspects of a company's activity with it's surroundings. The expansions of the way the consumer views companies have forced the companies to expand their yearly reporting as well. This expansion has led to questions regarding how the companies should present these new figures in the yearly reporting. Should it be included or excluded in the traditional yearly reporting, who are the readers of these new reporting phenomena and so on?
Aim: The aim of the master thesis is to analyse the sustainable reporting concept. The primary focus on the thesis is to identify and illuminate the stakeholders of sustainable reporting, from a company's point of view. But the stakeholders point of view will also be taken into consideration. The essential question of issue in this thesis is who are the stakeholders of a sustainability report, for whom is it meant?
The study: Is analytical and will be built on primary data collected through interviews and questionnaire. The companies that take part in this study are the six Swedish companies Atlas Copco AB, Electrolux AB, Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson AB, Holmen AB, SKF AB, and Vin & Sprit AB. They are all big and operate on the global market and have been identified through the organisation Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI) webpage. They all have in common that they follow GRI:s directive and recommendation on sustainability reporting. On the basis of the data that has been collected during the thesis and a stakeholder-model will be applied for these companies and their yearly sustainable reporting. Well known theory will be discussed such as Archie B Carroll's definition of the concept Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and the classical Stakeholder Theory, the Legitimacy Theory in this master thesis and off course the Swedish law regarding mandatory yearly reporting and environmental issues.
Conclusion: There were no significant differences in the stakeholder-model presented in the classical yearly reporting compared to the one presented for more voluntary reporting such as sustainability reporting. Not if you se to the extent in which the company believes it can influence or affect its stakeholders. If a deeper analysis of the stakeholder-model is applied some differences emerge. Five more stakeholders could be identified in the model. These stakeholders were rating institute, the general public, student/universities, media, and consults/experts.
Among the six Swedish companies investigated for this master thesis only one of them had an external audit of their sustainability report. From an international point of vie...
