During the last 15 years, due to several social conflicts generated by mining operations in Peru, mining has reshaped its performance from a questionable activity to an accountable one. Corporate Social Responsibility (hereafter CSR) has represented the approach to do this reshaping. In that sense, idea of mining CSR represents how corporations ought to interact responsibly with society. Then, society expects that mining corporations ought to act correctly, guided by the CSR frame that represents the assumption of the correct way to behave. However, mining CSR framework must be accepted for the corporation as well as for society, which might be affected by the corporate actions guided by the framework, mainly the local community. The way mining CSR will be accepted is through dialogue between corporations and stakeholders. Thereby, CSR would imply that corporations should consider what society expects as a responsible performance to be part of the way they ought to act through dialogue and mutual understanding.

There is a shift of values in the Western society of today from material to immaterial values Löhman and Steinholtz (2003). This changes together with the interest among people in Sweden and in the rest of the Western world to travel and experience new cultures the developing world has come closer. This has raised the awareness of the role of companies re-garding social responsibility since most companies have suppliers, producers or some other kind of involvement in developing countries. Today several companies are engaged in corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues. However, the topic of CSR has to a large extent divided a large part of the Swedish business world due to the strong opinions regarding this topic. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how the concept of CSR is perceived by Swedish corporations and what implications it yields. This will be done by comparing the views of three different groups: managers in Swedish small and medium sized enterprises (SME’s) and managers of Swedish large sized enterprises (LSE’s), responsible for CSR implementation, supplemented with the view of independent thinkers. To perform the study a qualitative method has been used. Eleven interviews have been conducted with company representatives as well as independent thinkers that are involved in or have a great knowledge in the field of CSR. The respondents have been divided into three groups: ethically driven SME’s, LSE’s working with CSR and independent thinkers. The concept of corporate social responsibility is perceived very differently in between the three groups. The views are split regarding their fundamental understanding of CSR, which is reflected in their relation to stakeholders as well as their thoughts about the future development of CSR. The motives, ideological and commercial, for working with CSR also dif-fers and some external thinkers believe that there are no motives for engage in CSR at all. The ethically driven SME’s have built their core business on social responsibility and is therefore the backbone of the companies. The LSE’s core business is not built on social responsibility, but rather on demands from the customers, who they regard as a critical stakeholder group. Some of the independent thinkers instead adhere to the shareholder approach and reject the concept of CSR. Nevertheless, all of the respondents agree on why CSR has developed, which is due to globalisation.

The aim of this study is to research environmental factors and their impact among manufacturing companies in Umeå. In order to capture the essence of environmental impacts , two research questions were asked; which environmental factors are considered, and in what context are they evaluated among manufacturing companies in Umeå, and how are stakeholders an implication on corporate environmental efforts for manufacturing companies in Umeå? First and foremost relevant theories were discovered, using several databases. Second, they were incorporated into a conceptual framework, where their relationship and characteristics were displayed. The theories were then transformed into themes, which became the foundation of the interview guide. The study was conducted by interviewing six manufacturing companies with more than 10 employees in Umeå. The interviews were semi-structured, and a mixture of telephone interviews and in-person interviews. An analysis of the empirical material was undertaken, by analyzing the data using the theories found during the information search. Almost all participating companies consider environmental factors in one way or another, according to the findings of this study. Further, the customers were concluded to be the most important stakeholder in leading to environmental reform among the companies. However, other stakeholders were also recognized by the respondents, and had an impact in for the stakeholders’ specific circumstances.

Serious academic enquiry for the tourism sector may appear inconsequential, but the business of tourism is complex and fragmented. Tourism is a multi-disciplinary phenomenon facilitating research from a number of different angles and providing many services requiring partnership between public and private collaboration towards delivering an effective tourism sector. Waterloo Regional Council declared its aspiration for Waterloo Region to be a destination of choice. However, there has been no research conducted to understand the viability of this aspiration. Thus, this research understands from a stakeholder perspective how tourism development is being undertaken in the Region. This will provide a preliminary understanding on tourism development in the context of economic, social and environmental dimensions of development. The joint use of two theoretical frameworks helped to identify and manage divergent perspectives of sixteen stakeholders who provided the primary data for this research. The data revealed three major themes through a changing lens that first considers the role of tourism as an effective vehicle of development. This meets with change due to limitations and uncertainties due to constraints that lead to conflicts between stakeholders responsible for its development. Findings reveal that stakeholders confront numerous fundamental challenges, which provide constraints and bottlenecks for tourism development in the Region. This research understands the need for leadership, strategy and effective collaboration between all stakeholders as vital for tourism development.

In this thesis, we have identified the difference between Agile and Lean methodsbased on stakeholder’s perspectives. To achieve the goal we have dealwith only Agile and Lean principles. In addition, in order to identify thestakeholders from Agile and Lean principles we have used the relevant practicesfrom both sides. As the principles of Agile manifesto are directly followedby most of the organizations, we have also used Agile principles directlyin this research. On the other hand lean methods have no pure principles,as a result we have used the most common and popular lean principlesderived from different authors. We have only considered the mostrelevant principles that might be useful in software development. To achievea stronger result of this thesis we have also considered stakeholder theory.Moreover we have identified the stakeholder’s involvement with Agile/Leanprinciples and stakeholder theory.

In this paper, Swedish wolf population management was analyzed by two models. One is information index system to measure the positive and normative information held by the stakeholders. By using this system, the quantitative information indices can be measured to give people a clear understanding of the current situation of themselves and other stakeholders in order to enhance communication and engagement. By testing the current information shortage from the national survey, it was confirmed that the information shortage do exist in the society and the need for improving the information acquirement is significant. Besides, satisfaction functions of positive and negative stakeholders towards wolf population were used to test an agreeable wolf population. Stakeholder satisfaction was expressed as a function of wolf pupulation, either positively or negatively correlated, using economic and social features such as taxes, compensation, preventative payments, lupophobia, biphilia, etc. Weights were given to derive overall goal functions for pro- and anti-wolf stakeholders in order to find if there exist wolf population levels which might indicate include common preference. Whereas, current wolf pupulation is around 210 in Sweden, the results showed that all stakeholder groups could be satisfied with a population of around 500 wolves. Some major policy measures were studied for their influence on stakeholders' interests, in particular in how to increase wolf population in order to achieve this solution.

Place branding has in previous research been studied mostly from the perspective of an individual stakeholder, for example the tourism sector or the state authority. Furthermore, there is a limited amount of prior studies concerning the potential effect infrastructure improvements have on place branding. This thesis aims to address these research gaps and make a theoretical contribution to research on place branding. The purpose of this thesis is to develop a deeper understanding about how different stakeholders perceive the place brand identity of Nyköping as well as how they collaborate within the place branding process. This understanding will be viewed in the context of future improvements of infrastructure, more specifically the construction of Ostlänken. The findings of this thesis are based upon a theoretical framework consisting of four foundations, place branding and its conceptualisations, place brand identity, multiple stakeholders, and place brand management and infrastructure. The theoretical framework includes general theories as well as more elaborate models specific to research on place branding. In order to fulfil the purpose of this thesis, organisations belonging to different stakeholder groups with interests within a specific place have been interviewed. By adopting an inductive approach of the study, the interviews have been held using a semi-structured interview technique with the intention to gain elaborated data. A thematic network analysis has been applied for analysing the collected data.  The data have been coded resulting in four global themes: place brand identity, multiple stakeholders, infrastructure and place brand management. By applying these themes to the empirical data and previous research, the findings of the study have been developed.

Traditionally, it has been argued that companies are only responsible towards their shareholders, to maximize the profits. But lately it has changed into another way of responsibilty. It has become of great importance to demonstrate sustainable long-term values for stakeholders to identify with. This thesis aims to clarify the banks’ definition of responsible investment and what criteria they assume when talking about such kind of investments. Furthermore, the thesis intends to examine how the banks in their role as an agent can contribute so their customers can achieve responsible investments. The issues dealt with are: What criterias must a responsible investment meet according to the Swedish banks? and How can the Swedish banks contribute so their clients' investments falls under what is defined as responsible investment?The conclusions of this study show that to conduct a dialogue with companies that violate norms and principles is considered more responsible, than to exclude companies and divest holding. A responsible investment is thus an investment on which banks are active owners and influence companies through dialogues. / Traditionellt sett har det hävdats att företag endast har ett ansvar gentemot aktieägarna. I takt med globaliseringen och en ökad medvetenhet om hur företag påverkar omvärlden, blir trycket allt större på att organisationer och företag ska ta ett ansvar bortom årets resultat. Påtryckningarna kommer främst från företagens intressenter och utgörs av deras krav på företagets verksamhet. För att ett företag ska kunna överleva i en föränderlig omvärld är det av stor vikt att företaget kan uppvisa hållbara värderingar som intressenterna långsiktigt kan identifiera sig med. Företagsledningen måste därför acceptera att det finns andra mål än vinstmaximering och vara redo att arbeta med flera parallella målsättningar av olika slag. Det är genom detta arbete som företaget måste hitta vägar att möta dessa krav och på så vis axla sitt ansvar gentemot omvärlden. SRI, Socially Responsible Investment, går i linje med att företagen ska förmå att ta sitt ansvar. SRI medför att aktieägarna genom sina investeringar ges en möjlighet att utöva påtryckningar på företagen, att integrera CSR-arbetet i sin verksamhet, samtidigt som de får ekonomisk avkastning. På en internationell nivå är FN:s principer för ansvarsfulla investeringar, UN’s Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), kanske det mest betydelsefulla initiativet för att kombinera ett ansvarsfullt agerande med ekonomisk avkastning. Principerna förser investerare med ett ramverk för att ställa krav på företagen att implementera ett arbete avseende miljö- och socialt ansvar, samt frågor som rör bolagsstyrning i företagens verksamheter. Denna uppsats syftar till att bringa klarhet i vad som, enligt de ledande bankerna i Sverige, avses med ansvarsfulla investeringar och vilka kriterier bankerna utgår från när de talar om den här typen av investering. Vidare studeras hur bankerna i sin roll som agenter kan verka för att kundernas placeringar blir ansvarsfulla investeringar. Frågeställningarna som uppsatsen behandlar lyder: Vilka kriterier utgår Sveriges ledande banker från när de definierar en ansvarsfull investering? samt Hur kan Sveriges ledande banker verka för att deras kunders placeringar faller inom ramen för ansvarsfulla investeringar? Studien visar att de ledande bankerna i Sverige följer Principles for Responsible Investments när de talas om ansvarsfulla investeringar. Respondenterna och bankerna har genomgående definierat en ansvarsfull investering som en investering där ägaren är aktiv i sin roll och påverkar bolagen att leva upp till ESG-kriterierna. Bankerna är i sin roll som agenter av stor betydelse för dialogen med bolagen för att kundernas placeringar faller inom ramen för ansvarsfulla investeringar. Att föra en dialog med bolag som bryter mot normer och principer anses mer ansvarsfullt än att exkludera bolagen och avyttra innehavet.

ID projects are characterized by a complex network of stakeholders that often lead to the tangledrelationships among various parties. Different stakeholders therefore can exert the influence overan ID project in different ways resulting in both constructive and counter-productive impacts tothe projects. The implementation stage, in many ways, is considered the most significantlyimportant phase in the project life cycle where all the project activities are materialized. Thus,understanding the intricacy of the stakeholders’ impacts to the project implementation is criticalto facilitate the project results. A multiple-case study of the two ID projects executed in Vietnam is undertaken with the aim toinvestigate the impacts of the key stakeholders on ID projects beyond the early phases of IDproject life cycle, focusing in particular on the implementation phase. In order to have the wholepicture of the key stakeholders’ impacts to the project implementation, this research alsoexplores the contributing factors of the identified impacts as well as examines how powerful thekey stakeholders are in controlling the decisions making and/or facilitating the projecti mplementation represented through their different degrees of influence. Results of the findings suggest both similarities and differences in which the reported impacts ofthe key stakeholders tend to be more counter-productive than constructive to the projectimplementation. The similarities of the findings indicate that the two distinctive projects facecommon issues in the implementation phase whilst the differences can be explained by thespecific circumstances that surround the projects. The representation of the counter-productiveaspects in the findings signify the risks associated with the key stakeholders which is worth while considering in terms of the risk mitigation in the implementation phase of an ID project.

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