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Background: The financial crisis in 2008 has led to a number of consequences for the financial sector. For banks, new stricter regulations with the Basel III accord will be implemented from 2013. The adaption to the new conditions has resulted in stricter lending policies, which means that is tougher for companies to get traditional bank loans. Companies have started to look for other funding alternatives and the corporate bond market has gained more attention and a clear trend of growth for this market has been seen during the last couple of years Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to examine the development of the corporate bond market in Sweden and analyze how this will impact the market participants and how they can adapt and utilize from it. Method: The research method used, in order to meet the purpose of this thesis, is mainly qualitative. The study it is based on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with different market participants that have great knowledge regarding their specific field of expertise. To back this up and, in more detail, understand more exactly the pace of the growth, the interview have been complemented with statistics of the current market situation. Conclusion: The Swedish corporate bond market has experienced a significant growth during the last couple of years and this has affected a lot of actors on the financial markets that have adapted their business to the new prevailing conditions. All market participants agree that this development will continue and they highlight the importance for the development to be qualitative in order to get a sustainable market.

This thesis seeks to examine how the meaning of corporate identity was constructed through the corporate advertisements that were published in Nigeria's national press media between 1970 and 2005 by the major operators in the Nigerian banking industry. In order to accomplish this task, this research has been divided into ten chapters. The first chapter introduces the research. It conceptualises a research question and provides an overall trajectory for this thesis. Chapter two established four ontologically grounded reasons for pursuing this research from the social constructionist perspective and chapter three sought to examine how the meaning of corporate identity was constructed (in theoretical literature) between 1970 and 2008. Chapter four presents an analysis of the construction of the meaning of the concept of corporate identity in the Nigerian banking industry between 1970 and 2005. Chapter six concerns research methodology and the specific research method drawn to address the question being investigated in this research. Chapters seven and eight presents the empirical findings and chapter nine makes an attempt to establish what has been accomplished in the process of this research by discussing its outcomes. Chapter ten concludes the thesis. It considers the contributions emerging from this research and its implications in terms of relevance for corporate identity theory and practice. In addition, it examines the limitations of the research as well as possible future research directions of this study. Finally, the thesis ends with a summary and conclusion. Findings from this research indicate the emergence of four new scholarships, namely generic, distinctive, innovative and transformative corporate personalities. Importantly, the outcome of this study provides ample evidence to argue that the industry construction of the meaning of corporate identity witnessed an ongoing flow of changes and stabilities, which run through these new scholarships.

In this thesis first, I investigate the link between firms’ environmental and social disclosures (ESD) and their profitability, as well as establish the direction of causality between the two. Second, I examine the association between ESD with firms’ market value, employee productivity and carbon eco-efficiency respectively. Finally, I examine the relations among firms’  CSR  related  board attributes, CSR strategy and their environmental and social performance (ESP). The first empirical chapter shows that firms with higher profitability tend to provide more ESD, which is consistent with the accounting- and economics- based arguments that ESD involve a real as well as an opportunity cost that more profitable firms with higher slack resources are better able to afford. The results regarding market value analysis show that overall ESD, in particular social disclosures matter to investors. Investors appear to be placing higher values on firms seen to be behaving in a socially responsible manner. Presumably, more responsible behaviour in the social arena reflected in higher disclosure helps to mitigate the information asymmetry, and hence the perceived social risk of the firm. Investors thus place higher values on such firms. The evidence on the link between  firms’  ESD  and  their  ESP measures supports this explanation. Specifically, I find that more social (environmental) disclosure in prior year reflects better social (environmental) performance as captured by higher employee productivity (more carbon eco-efficiency) in the current year. The results of the final empirical chapter show that boards having certain CSR- conducive attributes, particularly independent directors, women directors, and directors with financial expertise on the audit committee, are more likely to develop a multi-pronged CSR strategy which in turn translates into superior environmental and social performance. Furthermore, I find that firms with better ESP tend to further strengthen their board CSR orientation. In other words, the analysis suggests the presence of a positive and cyclical link between CSR orientation, firm CSR strategy, and firm environmental and social performance.