The need for adaption within the business world is critical to keep up with the rapidly changing pace due to the internet. The internet, among other things, provides customers with the advantage of transparency. It is constantly becoming easier for customers to gather information about companies and their products and services and compare this in the comfort of their own home. One tool they can use are comparison sites such as prisjakt.nu. These sites are also available to compare energy providers and it is free of charge. Customers can both compare and change energy providers without any cost. Furthermore, energy is a homogeneous product which mean that, until the energy bill arrives, the customer cannot tell where the energy comes from. Therefore, to make sure that customers will not change energy providers as soon as there is a change in price, something more has to be offered to make them loyal. Loyalty is one of the most significant contemporary strategies to ensure long-term customers. To identify customer needs before the customer even realizes it themselves, companies has to be proactive. They have to actively research upcoming trends and find out if these apply to their customers before their competitors does. Several trends appear every day, however, one of them which has been slowly growing during the twenty-first century is social sustainability. Consumers are becoming more informed and engaged in what products and services they buy and what social footprint it leaves. Therefore, this thesis will study corporate social sustainability (CSR) as a possible moderating factor to customer loyalty within the energy industry. Furthermore, willingness to pay (WTP) for CSR related activities will also be researched as a moderating factor to customer loyalty. This is of interest for the energy providers since customers can feel that CSR related activities are important at the same time as they do not wish to pay for it. WTP also contributes to a more realistic result since people have a tendency to answer highly on importance of sustainability questions since it is the ”right thing to do”. The method chosen to gather data for this study, besides doing a literature review, was to send out an electronic questionnaire to several energy providers customers. The survey included demographic questions as well as several questions on how highly customers value CSR, WTP for CSR and customer loyalty which were then analyzed in SPSS. The responses were both analyzed separately for each energy provider and as a full sample. Answering the research questions and hypotheses, the result provided four main points. First, it showed that men above 64 years old with an income of 10-15.000 SEK/month had a higher WTP for CSR related activities which did not add up with the theory. It was also the opposite to the customer groups who had the highest mean score for CSR value. Second, WTP for CSR related activities and value for CSR related activities did not rate the same activity as the highest one. There was, however, overall a positive, medium or high correlation between value and WTP for the different CSR activities. Third, there was a predicting relationship between value for CSR and customer loyalty as well as between WTP for CSR and customer loyalty. However, when meerging there toghether to one moderator, there was a weak and negative affect on customer loyalty. Finally, when conducting a status analysis it is clear that there are customer needs within CSR that most energy providers do not fulfill.

Flertalet tidigare studier inriktar sig på vilka bakomliggande faktorer och motiv som påverkar upprättandet av ett ESG-betyg. Det är sedan tidigare konstaterat att faktorer som land, bransch och lönsamhet kan påverka graden av hållbarhetsrapportering. För att bidra ytterligare till detta resonemang väljer studien att kategorisera fyra variabler som tänkbara hållbarhetsstrategier. Tidigare forskning styrker resonemanget att företag väljer att CSR-redovisa baserat på fler faktorer än miljömedvetenhet. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hållbarhetsstrategiers potentiella implementering efter miljökontroverser samt dess effekter på ESG-betygets miljödimension. / Most previous studies focus on the underlying factors and motives that influence the establishment of an ESG score. It has previously been established that factors such as country, industry and profitability can affect the degree of sustainability reporting. To further contribute to this reasoning, the study chooses to categorize four variables as possible sustainability strategies. Previous research supports the reasoning that companies choose to report CSR based on more factors than environmental awareness. The purpose of this study is to investigate the potential implementation of sustainability strategies after environmental controversies and their effects on the environmental dimension of the ESG rating.

Att spela om pengar online kan till grunden ses som en form av underhållning, dock kan det också urskiljas en stor problematik relaterat till denna underhållning. Antalet personer som har ett spelberoende ökar i oroande takt och i all denna uppståndelse kan man fundera kring vad spelbolagen själva har för ansvar i frågan. Med bakgrund av detta har vår studie som syfte att skapa en ökad förståelse för hur spelbolagen Svenska Spel och LeoVegas arbetar med CSR. Vidare syftar uppsatsen till att jämföra spelbolagens CSR-arbeten för att kunna urskilja eventuella likheter och skillnader. Studien behandlar tre följande huvudfrågor: Hur arbetar Svenska Spel samt LeoVegas med CSR-arbete? Vilka eventuella likheter och skillnader finns i CSR-arbetet hos de båda spelbolagen? Hur uppfattar konsumenter och potentiella konsumenter CSR-arbetet hos de båda spelbolagen? Mixed methods användes som metod, där vi har samlat in data både genom en webbaserad enkät och inhämtning av info från sekundärkällor såsom spelbolagens årsredovisningar. Utifrån studiens resultat så kan det konstateras att Svenska Spel innehar ett större samhällsansvar. Det finns även större förväntningar och kravbild på att ett gediget CSR-arbete utförs av Svenska Spel. Det finns däremot intressanta likheter och skillnader mellan spelbolagens CSR-arbeten. / Gambling with money online can basically be seen as a form of entertainment, however, it can also discern a major issue related to this. The number of problem gamblers is increasing at a worrying rate and in all this commotion one might wonder what responsibility the gambling companies as a supplier of the forms of gambling have in the matter. Based on this, our study aims to gain an increased understanding of how the gambling companies Svenska Spel and LeoVegas work with CSR. Furthermore, the thesis aims to compare gambling companies CSR-work in order to distinguish any similarities and differences. The study deals with the following three main questions: How do Svenska Spel and LeoVegas work with CSR? What are the possible similarities and differences in the CSR-work of the two gambling companies? How do Consumers and potential consumers perceive the CSR-work of the two gambling companies? Mixed methods were used as a method, where we have collected data both through web-based surveys and collection of info from secondary sources such as gambling companies annual reports. Based on the results of the study, it can be stated that Svenska Spel has a greater social responsibility. There are also greater expectations that a solid CSR-work is carried out by Svenska Spel. However, there are interesting similarities and differences between the gamling companies’ CSR-work.

Syftet med studien är att undersöka små och medelstora företags skäl till att arbeta med hållbarhet ochstudien utgår ifrån ett ekonomisk, legalt, etiskt och filantropiskt perspektiv. Som utgångspunkt har lagarangående hållbarhetsrapportering, frivilliga standarder och den teoretiska referensramen använts.Teorierna som används är intressentteorin, legitimitetsteorin, Carrolls (1991) CSR-pyramid samt Grimstad et al. (2020) Strukturmodell. För att undersöka studiens syfte används semistruktureradeintervjuer där fyra företag som arbetar med hållbarhet eller hållbarhetsrapporterar intervjuas. Sedanpresenteras den insamlade empirin för att därefter analyseras och diskuteras. I analysen jämfördesföretagens svar utifrån perspektiven med hjälp av teorierna. En slutsats som studien antyder är attföretagen visade på starkast ekonomiska skäl för att arbeta med hållbarhet. Vidare visar studien att etiskaskäl är det som har näst mest påverkan på små och medelstora företag. Slutligen tyder studien på attlegala och filantropiska skäl förekommer lika ofta men att företagen gör fler filantropiska handlingar vilketgör att det filantropiska perspektivet har större koppling till CSR enligt studiens resultat. Studiens förstabidrag är ett teoretiskt bidrag som bidrar till vidare teori och det kan hjälpa vägleda vid fortsatta studier.Vidare bidrar studien med ett empiriskt bidrag som ger nya djupare insikter till skäl som små ochmedelstora företag kan ha angående varför företagen väljer att arbeta med hållbarhet. Slutligen görstudien ett mindre praktiskt bidrag som antyder att små och medelstora företag inte känner press att blipåverkade av framtida lagkrav. / The purpose of the study is to explore small and medium sized enterprises' reasons for working withsustainability and the study is based on an economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic perspective. Thestudy uses laws concerning sustainability reporting, voluntary standards and the theoretical framework asbasis for conducting the study. The theories used were, stakeholder theory, legitimacy theory, Carroll’s(1991) the pyramid of CSR and Grimstad el at. (2020) structural model. To research the study’s purposea semi-structured interview method is used and four companies that either work with sustainability or CSRreport where interviewed. Thereafter the study's empirical data was presented and then analyzed. In theanalysis the companies answers were compared through the perspectives and with help of the theories.One conclusion is that the company's show most economic reasons for working with sustainability.Furthermore, the findings show that ethical reasons are the second largest impacting aspect for SME.Lastly the study suggests that legal and philanthropic reasons occur a similar amount of times butcompanies perform more philanthropic activities which means that the philanthropic perspective has agreater impact in relation to CSR. The study’s first contribution is a theoretical contribution that expandsand helps guide future studies. Furthermore, the study’s empirical contribution gives new deeper insightsinto the reasons SME can have for working with sustainability. Lastly the study makes a smaller practicalcontribution that suggests that SMEs do not feel impacted from future legal requirements.

Bakgrund: Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR, är ett begrepp som förklarar hur företag engagerar sig i tre olika områden: ekonomiskt, miljömässigt, och socialt för att anpassa sig till den samhällsekonomiska utvecklingen. CSR är en aspekt som blir alltmer vanlig för företag att tillämpa genom att långsiktigt nå sina mål. Om företag inte prioriterar CSR i hög grad kan det riskera att de förlorar kunder och får ett dåligt rykte. De som jobbar för att se till att företag har ett bra CSR-arbete är revisionsföretag. Revisionsföretag ska vara bra representanter för CSR-arbete för att styrka deras roll som granskare av andra företag. Syfte: Syftet med denna uppsats har varit att undersöka hur svenska revisionsföretag använder CSR. Sålunda syftar denna uppsats till att öka förståelse om varför vissa CSR-aktiviteter väljs i svenska revisionsföretag inom “Big Four” samt hur de kommuniceras. Metod: Denna uppsats har utgått från en kvalitativ metod där tre intervjuer har genomförts. Intervjuerna är få i antal men duger till arbetet för att intervjupersonerna besitter den bästa kunskapen om ämnesområdet inom just det företaget de är verksamma i. Respondenterna är ansvariga för Deloittes CSR-arbete i Sverige och arbetade på huvudkontoret i Stockholm, det har således gjorts ett icke-sannolikhetsurval. Resultat och slutsats: Uppsatsen har visat att svenska revisionsföretag prioriterar att välja CSR-aktiviteter som har en filantropisk karaktär. Svenska revisionsföretag prioriterar filantropiska aktiviteter över de som är av etisk, rättslig eller ekonomisk karaktär för de filantropiska aktiviteterna visar den bästa bilden av revisionsföretaget. / Background: Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR, is a concept that explains how companies engage in three different areas: economic, environmental, and social in order to adapt to socio-economic development. CSR is an aspect that is becoming more and more common for companies to apply by achieving their goals in the long term. If companies do not prioritize CSR to a large extent, there is a risk that they will lose customers and get a bad reputation. Those who work to ensure that companies have good CSR work are auditing companies. Auditing firms should be good representatives for CSR work to strengthen their role as auditors of other firms. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis has been to investigate how Swedish auditing companies use CSR. Thus, this essay aims to increase understanding of why certain CSR activities are selected for Swedish auditing companies within the “Big Four” and the way they are communicated. Methods: This essay has been based on a qualitative method where three interviews have been conducted. The interviews are few but suitable for the work because the interviewees possess the best knowledge of the subject area within the company, they are active in. The respondents are responsible for Deloitte's CSR work in Sweden and worked at the head office in Stockholm, so a non-probability selection. Results and conclusion: The thesis has shown that Swedish auditing companies prioritize choosing CSR activities that have a philanthropic character. Swedish auditing companies prioritize philanthropic activities over those that are of an ethical, legal or economic nature for the philanthropic activities show the best picture of the auditing company.

Den pågående globaliseringen och den förestående klimatkrisen har medfört ett ökat fokus på hållbarhet och frågan om företagens ansvar står högt upp på agendan. Till följd av den ökade hållbarhetsdebatten har konceptet CSR vuxit fram, som innebär att företag frivilligt ska ta ansvar för konsekvenserna av sin verksamhet. CSR-åtgärder kan svårligen karaktäriseras som rent vinstskapande och frågan blir därför om kon­ceptet är förenligt med det aktiebolagsrättsliga vinstsyftet i 3 kap. 3 § ABL och därmed vilka möjligheter styrelsen i ett aktiebolag har att verka hållbarhetsfrämjande. En del menar att miljöhänsyn omöjligen kan förenas med ekonomisk vinning medan andra menar att vinst och CSR i dagsläget är två koncept helt förenliga med varandra.I uppsatsen konstateras att styrelsen i ett aktiebolag har relativt stora möjligheter att vidta CSR-åtgärder inom ramen för 3 kap. 3 § ABL, här främst med hänsyn till möjligheten att tolka vinstmaximering som ett långsiktigt kriterium samt att det enbart är uppenbart syftesstridiga åtgärder som kan leda till ansvar för styrelsen. Med ett aktuellt exempel från pandemin, nämligen vaccintillverkningen, visas också att strävan efter vinst kan motivera företag till att hjälpa samhället genom kriser, vilket talar för att vinstsyftet även i framtiden bör få utgöra det avgörande beslutskriteriet. Det aktiebolagsrättsliga vinstsyftet innebär dock att hållbarhet inte får prioriteras framför vinst, vilket innebär att det alternativ som är mest fördelaktigt ur ett hållbarhetsper­spektiv ofta kommer behöva ge vika till förmån för det beslutsalternativ som har störst vinstpotential. Problemet ligger i det kortsiktiga förhållningssättet till vinst.För att komma till bukt med den kortsiktighet som sägs prägla europeiska aktie­marknadsbolag planerar EU-kommissionen att presentera ett nytt lagförslag om hållbar bolagsstyrning under 2021. Initiativet kan kritiseras mot bakgrund av att det tycks förespråka en övergång till en stakeholder-modell. Samtidigt kan aktieägarvärde inte längre tillåtas på bekostnad av miljön och det är därför av vikt att rättsliga åtgärder vidtas. I uppsatsen föreslås en alternativ lösning där det i medlemsstaternas aktiebo­lagslagar preciseras att vinstsyftet avser en strävan efter långsiktig vinst och inget annat. På så sätt skulle den aktiebolagsrättsliga lagstiftningen öppnas upp och kunna sägas uppmuntra till hållbarhet i större utsträckning än i dagsläget. / The ongoing globalization and the climate crisis have resulted in an intensified debate about sustainability and business activities. The intensified debate has in turn resulted in the concept of CSR – the notion that business has a responsibility to contribute to social and environmental goals on a voluntary basis. CSR-measures can hardly be characterized as purely profit-making and this essay therefore examines if there is a conflict between chapter 3, paragraph 3, in the Swedish Companies Act (ABL) and CSR as a concept. Some claim that environmental considerations cannot possibly be reconciled with profit making while others argue that environmental considerations and profit making are two consistent concepts. It is stated in the essay that the board of directors have relatively great opportunities to incorporate CSR-measures within the limits of chapter 3, paragraph 3 ABL, mainly because of the possibility to interpret the profit-making purpose from a long-term perspective together with the difficulty of holding the board accountable for CSR-measures. During the pandemic, and especially through the vaccine production, it has also been clearly shown that the profit-making purpose can motivate business to help society through crises. However, the corporate profit-making purpose does mean that the board of directors cannot prioritize CSR over profit, which means that the alternative that is most advantageous from a sustainability perspective cannot always be selected. The main problem is the short-termism, the excessive focus on short term result at the expense of long-term interests. The European Commission have announced an initiative on sustainable corporate governance for 2021. The initiative can mainly be criticized because it seems to favor a stakeholder-model rather than a shareholder-model for corporate governance. At the same time – shareholder-value can no longer be prioritized at the expense of the environment and legal actions are vital for a sustainable future. Therefore, I suggest that the long-term perspective should be explicitly codified in the Member States’ Companies Acts which, in my opinion, would promote sustainability and corporate responsibility to a greater extent compared to current law.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability have been rising topics in the contemporary business environment over the recent years and disclosing on sustainability have become increasingly important. While some countries have legislation mandating companies to report CSR, other countries leave the decision of reporting to the companies themselves. There are numerous ways of reporting and communicating on sustainability activity and the quality of the reports can deviate heavily between companies. Theories such as stakeholder theory and legitimacy theory suggest that entities reporting comprehensive responsibility information can achieve better financial results than their non-reporting peers. There has been a myriad of studies conducted on the relationship between corporate social responsibility and corporate financial performance. Despite the great number of research, there have been only a few studies that have investigated the true effect of CSR disclosure. The best way for a company to communicate their sustainable agenda is to disclose it for their stakeholders. Therefore, we took it upon ourselves to fill this research gap by investigating if level of CSR disclosure has a substantial impact on corporate financial performance. We approach CSR reporting from a stakeholder perspective, which to our knowledge have not been done before.  This study examines 189 Finnish companies that are selected from a list of the 500 largest companies in Finland. These companies are divided into the subgroups GRI, CSR, and non-CSR, depending on their level of CSR disclosure. The financial information used in this study are comprised from the time period 2015-2019 and gathered from the database Orbis by Bureu van Dijk. This study investigates if there exists a relationship between level of sustainability reporting and the financial performance ratios ROA, ROE, Sales growth, and Profit margin. We find that there exists a strong positive relationship between the subgroup GRI and ROA and ROE, which implies that companies see a clear financial benefit from providing comprehensive CSR reports. Contrary, we find an increasingly negative relationship with sales growth as level of reporting increases, which suggest that CSR implementations stagnates growth. Profit margin showed a neutral behavior across all three groups. Overall, we conclude that there exists a relationship between the level of CSR reporting and financial performance, but that the results are mixed.

The number of firms adapting the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility is constantly growing. It is no longer enough only to supply your customers with demanded products and services since todays’ customers have an increased awareness and are demanding more transparence when it comes to the manufacturing and responsibility for society. Along with a growing interest in social, ethical and environmental matters, many firms have received critique, consequently forcing them to start taking more responsibility for their activities. The clothing industry was among the first to get critized and therefore early in starting their work with CSR. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how firms in the clothing industry work with CSR today, and also how they choose to communicate this work, both internally and externally. The methodology of the paper is qualitative and aims to deeply investigate four different firms, along with an additional interview with a CSR-consult from one of the leading communication-firms in Sweden. The theoretical foundation includes a frame of reference around CSR and the communication thereof, and also a few relevant theories around CSR and business ethics. After analyzing the empirical material the paper have reached a few conclusions. Firms in the clothing industry tend to focus their CSR-work on the social matters, such as improving the controls of their supplier-chain. Human rights tend to be the most important matter when is comes to corporate responsibility. Another important finding is that personal commitment among the management or the persons responsible for CSR-activities is connected with successful and well-developed CSR- involvement in a firm. The difficult part of working with CSR tends to be how to communicate the work, both at an internal and external level. The internal communication seems to be deficient mainly because the firms’ lack of systems and routines to implement CSR through the whole organization. The external communication is often modest because firms fear critique and is not always certain about how much they really can guarantee.

Given the current environmental developments and the poor state of human rights in some countries, sustainability is a necessity, and one of the biggest actors regarding sustainability are companies. Nowadays the companies are obligated by law to present a yearly sustainability report, but this has not always been the case. Given the relative recency of the term sustainability, the purpose of this paper is to analyse and identify changes in sustainability reporting and what the reason(s) of these changes may be. In order to research this we have used a qualitative research strategy, namely a case study. Annual reports and sustainability reports over the span of 16 years, have been read through, in order to establish the empirical data. Due to the current situation regarding COVID-19, the study has unfortunately been limited to an analysis of two companies’ sustainability reporting, and to conduct a document analysis. However this study has shown a change in time where the studied companies included societal and environmental issues in the areas that they and their suppliers affect. In conclusion the companies see agenda 2030 as a method to further legitimize the company and therefore the changes have been made in order to satisfy the goals of agenda 2030.

Diploma thesis deals with issues of perception of corporate social responsibility by clients of the largest banks in the Czech Republic. Socially responsible activities in these institutions are evaluated by the Korp methodology and with quantitative research are the basis for the proposed recommendations. The data are obtained through semi-structured interviews with bank workers and a questionnaire survey among bank clients. Secondary data is obtained from annual reports and other bank documents.