The number of sustainability-related reporting frameworks has been increasing throughout the years, as a response to increasing awareness towards the sustainability-related issues from various stakeholders of companies. At the same time, major sustainability-related reporting frameworks publish more guides to support the business on its Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) commitment. For the business, it is challenging to use these guides in harmony to obtain the highest benefit for achieving corporate sustainability targets. The thesis aims to provide a structural approach and a robust alignment methodology, which can be repeatedly utilized over time, on how to establish tailor-made alignment guidances for various corporations, by considering their current specific SDGs reporting challenges and stakeholder expectations by harmonizing Global Reporting Initiative’s and Integrated Reporting’s SDGs guides. The thesis conducts a set of research methods such as case study analysis of telecommunication sector companies, semi-structured interviews with sustainability professionals, content analysis of company reports, and secondary data analysis of various stakeholder engagement forums for the SDGs. The thesis concludes that it is possible to construct a structural alignment approach in six steps, which constitutes identifying the underlying reasons of alignment (Step 1), mapping the external and internal stakeholder views (Step 2), defining the specific SDGs challenges of the companies analyzed (Step 3), examining the segments of corporate sustainability according to the current SDGs challenges of the companies analyzed (Step 4), preparing alignment guidance by defining the contributions of the SDGs guides analyzed, over the challenges examined by the segments of corporate sustainability (Step 5), improving the SDGs commitment performance of the companies analyzed, by applying the tailor-made alignment guidance established for the specific needs (Step 6). Furthermore, the thesis finds out that the case study companies can use all the SDGs guides analyzed to varying degrees, yet, especially SDGs Disclosures and the Analysis of Goals and Targets SDGs guides can support the contemporary needs of case study companies, to address their sustainability strategy, inside-out assessment, and sustainability management accounting & control requirements. As underlying research limitations, the thesis focuses on a specified range of case study samples and reporting frameworks. The thesis adds value to the corporate sustainability literature by analyzing the relationship between the same sector companies and SDG guides of sustainability-related reporting frameworks over an alignment approach and methodology established by the thesis.

Both the ecological and social system are systematically degrading, resulting in decreasing capacities to support human civilization. Product development and manufacturing companies play a key role in driving society’s transition towards a sustainable path. Besides moral arguments, the motivation for companies can be expressed as a matter of smart risk management, i.e. avoiding threats and exploiting opportunities. Such sustainability risks can be related to, for example, brand and reputation, legislative change, or attracting top-talented employees. But, more importantly, it is about understanding changes that are inevitable on markets to come. Based on Maxwell’s interactive qualitative research approach and following the structure of the Design Research Methodology, this thesis aims to contribute (i) to knowledge by increasing the conceptual understanding of what sustainability risks are; and (ii) to practice by researching decision-support for how sustainability risks can be managed in a product development company context. The first study reviewed existing literature and identified characteristics of sustainability risks, which make them particularly difficult to manage. A following exploratory and descriptive study investigated companies’ current risk management practices and preconditions for sustainability integration. It showed that the effects of uncertainty from the sustainability transition need to be identified, assessed, and managed in relation to how they can affect objectives anchored in both internal and external stakeholder value creation. In parallel, the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development was applied as a lens to understand the implications of the sustainability transition for company risk management. This resulted in a new definition, stating that sustainability risks are threats and opportunities that are due to an organization’s contribution or counteraction to society’s transition towards strategic sustainable development. A questionnaire study then investigated some case companies’ challenges and preconditions to build sustainability capabilities. Finally, a workshop method is proposed that aims to support design teams in early sustainable product development. Future research will leverage on the findings to develop and test decision support for how product development companies can manage sustainability risks on different organizational levels in practice to increase competitiveness, while taking leadership in the transition towards a sustainable society.

Background: As mentioned by the hoteliers in our study, the Saudi Arabian markets are not in a full usage or application of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). There have been several reviews formed by the United Nation Development Program show the efforts done by the different sectors of the country to reach the 2030 Agenda which aim for a sustainable development. Sustainability became a requirement for any business to start in the region. CS has changed the way Saudi hotels market are conducting their business a few years ago. Besides that, doing business online has also been an important factor of this change. In many cases, being sustainable might be very costly to apply to many kinds of businesses, and for that reason companies must plan well. So, the companies should take into consideration several factors that might affect their relation with their B2B customers.  Problem Discussion: There has been a huge pressure from customers and the public on companies to perform their business in an environmentally sustainable way. The increased number of hotels which led to higher competition in the region causing the companies in the hotels industry to carefully manage their B2B relationship. Second is the obligatory laws for companies to apply CS actions. Sustainable behaviors have today grown to become a compulsion to practice; however, these actions are not limited to the B2C sector of a business, CS has become a vital part of marketing strategies for business within B2B markets. In spite CS has proven to be advantageous to be practiced with B2B customers, the research on the subject has been very limited. The research and studies towards CS and CSR have been limited to B2C markets Due to the lack of enough research on the subject of being sustainability and its relationship to B2B customers, this paper will dig deep to fill this gap. Purpose:  The aim of this research paper is to uncover the hotels CS and CSR strategies that hoteliers’ practice with their B2B customers. While also considering the aspect of CS in markets where these hotels are gradually indulging into it, such as the Saudi Arabian Market. This research paper’s goal is to analyze and study different approaches for hoteliers that could be beneficial for them focused towards their business customer and guide them to gain competitive advantage and turn it into a profitable business decision through building and strengthening their relationships with their B2B customers.       Research Question:    <ol type="1"> What are the current CS strategies practiced by international five-star hotel chains situated in Saudi Arabia?   2.     How can these hotel’s CS strategies be developed and adopted to positively influence and strengthen its relationship with their B2B customers internationally?     Methodology: The authors of this study have been using qualitative method as their research approach which gave them the way in order to deeply understand the application of CS actions and its relation with the pricing strategies chosen by the companies in the hotel industry. The theory was collected from different database, and the empirical data was collected from 9 interviews within 3 hotels. The data collected was from high ranked journals. As for the type of interviews, it was semi-structured interviews. The authors used open questions to give a space to the interviewees to discuss in depth the topic of the question.  Conclusion: This study shows that within the hotel industry social sustainability dimension of CS and instrumental theories of CSR, these hotels could develop and strengthen their relationships with their B2B customers as well as suppliers. Within the academic literature CS has been categorized into three sections; environment, that actions to sustain the planet, social, that is working for the welfare of the people and lastly economical that is the financial benefits gained from CS activities. In this study, the authors concluded that the international five-star hotel chains residing within Saudi Arabia have not been actively working toward their CS and CSR behaviors.

Background: The automotive industry is more often subject to pressure and scrutiny from consumers, environmental organizations, as well as state regulators. Therefore, this industry is making major investments in implementing a robust CSR strategy in order to tackle these ramifications. The discussion among academia asserts that CSR does not always contribute to creating value, and this leads to the assumption that the implementation of CSR may be detrimental for some companies. Thus, it is questionable whether companies can create shared value through the mediating role of CSR. Considering the automotive industry as among the largest and most criticized industries from a CSR point of view, it was worth to investigate the topic of creating shared value through the mediating role of CSR under this context. Purpose: The overall purpose of this thesis is to broaden and deepen the knowledge about how companies can create shared value through the mediating role of CSR in the automotive industry. Method: In order to attain the research purpose, we conducted a qualitative content analysis, used an inductive approach, and collected the primary data through semi-structured interviews. A total of eight interviews were held with participants, and the respondents were representing car dealerships and automobile manufacturers. Conclusion: Throughout the analysis, we have identified eight dimensions that impact shared value creation for the companies. These dimensions are CSR initiatives, employee relations, consumer relations, supply chain collaboration, local businesses partnership, the potential of local cluster, government regulatory compliance, and barriers to CSR. We have therefore developed a framework to orientate managers on how to tailor a CSR strategy that takes into consideration the aforementioned dimensions, and eventually create shared value.

Problem: A decisive majority of Swedish firms are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and studies indicate that most of these lack, among other things, financial resources, which often limit smaller firms from implementing sustainable practices. Since SMEs compete with larger enterprises, with more established departments and therefore, they cannot strategize their sustainability work to the same extent. The problem emerges when requirements from stakeholders, based on the 2030 agenda, cannot be met due to lacking organizational abilities. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to gain an understanding of how sustainability consultants support SMEs in their sustainable development work. The research, therefore, investigated the practical processes of consultants when they work with SMEs. The varying processes between sustainability consultants will also be investigated, so similarities and differences can be discovered in their processes. Method: The research conducted follows a grounded theory, an exploratory approach, an abductive research design, all under an interpretive philosophy. The primary data collected consists of semi-structured interviews with sustainability consultants in the Jönköping area. Following the grounded theory, this included three stages of analysis namely open coding, axial coding, and selective coding. During selective coding, it is critical to use an abductive design to ground the empirical findings in existing literature and theory. The analyzed findings were thereafter transformed into a proposed model which is supported by both the empirical findings and theory. Conclusion: Sustainability consultants can support SMEs with their knowledge and expertise when developing sustainable business practices in smaller firms. This research also contributes to a proposed model that shows the process for SMEs and further explains how SMEs and consultants can work together to develop strategic goals for regenerative firms. However, it is noted that contextual factors and specific gains in knowledge cannot be conveyed in a model. Although, describing the processes of knowledge transfer using an adaption of agile methodology was found suitable for this study. Conclusively, the model’s success is highly based on contextual factors such as firm maturity and the knowledge of the consultant in the specific field under development.

This study aims to establish an understanding of corporate sustainability and how companies communicate their sustainability. It also evaluates how sustainability reporting is addressed by various corporate companies by using GRI reporting guidelines and ISO standards, and also how these standards and guidelines are helping the companies to achieve Sustainable Development Goals. A literature review was conducted to understand the various approaches to developing a sustainability report. A theoretical relationship matrix was carried out to establish the relationship of ISO standard (clauses are the section in ISO standard which defines the action or requirements to be carried out, ISO in this research is used to represent the various important areas in a company) with the GRI guidelines (disclosure, are the section used to report contextual information about an organization and its sustainability reporting practices), and a list of the number of SDGs which each GRI disclosure and ISO standard achieves was developed. Four industrial sectors were selected and one company in each sector was used as a case study. The SDG impact assessment web-based tool was used to represent the information provided by the companies in their sustainability report/annual report. From the case studies, it was understood that, out of 4 companies, two companies employed GRI reporting guidelines i.e 2 companies used twin approaches for reporting their sustainability and 2 companies used inside-out reporting approaches. Whereas all the companies had ISO 14001:2015 certification, 3 out of 4 companies had ISO 9001:2015 certification and 2 out of 4 had companies ISO 45001:2018 certified. With this, we can understand a broad picture of corporate sustainability, and in-depth sustainability analysis of one industrial sector from the companies point of view has to be carried out in future.

This research leads to investigate the response of French companies through their corporate sustainability policies as a result of the different types of pressure that stakeholders can bring. The influence of stakeholders is increasingly significant towards ethical and environmental issues. Stakeholders do not hesitate to set up actions to make themselves heard. Social and environmental concerns facing this polluting industry make food companies exposed to more and more pressures that they must manage.  The academic literature necessary for the understanding of this study was carefully selected from online academic libraries. The literature review defined the objective of balancing Profit, People and Planet in corporate sustainability policies and its implementation through the Triple Bottom Line model. Also, the pressure groups are defined according to the academic literature and associated with Freeman's theory on stakeholders. This literature was coupled with collected primary data. Interviews were conducted with three French companies of different sizes to guarantee a realistic representation of the market. The interest of the inductive method used is to be able to apply the observations made on a larger scale.   The results obtained are grouped under five themes to facilitate their identification: Quality, Ethics, Environment, Consumer's power, and Well-Being. Under each of these themes, one or more stakeholders exert pressures to achieve the same objective. The strategies adopted by companies vary according to the type of pressure they face. Each company adapts its corporate sustainability policies to the pressures according to its size. Large companies will be better resourced than small ones. All corporate actions have two objectives: the satisfaction of their stakeholders and the improvement of the company in terms of sustainability.   This thesis contributes to the Stakeholder's theory and Triple Bottom Line model. The combination of these two theories is essential to explain the two converging phenomena of this thesis: pressures and sustainable responses.

Companies all over the world are seeking ways to address sustainability related issues, both to meet external expectations and as a way to find opportunities for growth and innovation. Many attempts have been made in providing descriptions and guidance in how sustainability can be adopted within corporations. However, much of earlier research has focused on the manufacturing industry where materials and production processes are central in the concept. How sustainability can be incorporated in service industries, more specifically by IT service providers (ITSPs), is a somewhat unexplored area even though the potential for sustainability related risks as well as opportunities are high. Previous research in this area that has set out to construct models of this phenomenon has not managed to consider the characteristics of  ITservice providers to the fullest. This study has investigated how ITSPs can incorporate sustainability into business practices through a multiple-case study with four ITSP and one technical consulting company. The data has been collected through interviews and document analysis, and analyzed both separately nd by comparison. Additional interviews were held with experts and professionals with relevant knowledge to strengthen the findings. This study resulted in model that can serve as an analytical tool and presentation format  hen incorporating sustainability in business practices within the IT Professional service industry. The results showed that incorporation of sustainability in practices needs to be divided in two main categories; incorporating sustainability in internal operations and incorporating sustainability in customer offerings. Within these categories the study identified a number of activities that ITSPs can undertake to incorporate sustainability and what outcomes they may have. It was concluded that the activities in within internal operations were primarily focused n building trust towards customers. The study also showed that incorporating  ustainability in customer offerings can be done to different extent with different outcomes. The critical activities to successfully incorporate sustainability in customer offerings has been described in the study and visualized in a 3-level map to further provide guidance. A main finding within this category was that interaction with the customer is crucial to successfully deploy service offerings that incorporate sustainability. The results can be generalized to other ITSPs in similar settings and parts can also be argued to be adoptable to other companies in the professional service industry that rely on intense technology.

Modern businesses are trying to employ sustainability as part of their business structure. The alongside terms internal control and corporate social responsibility has also become a key concern for businesses in the ever changing business environment. Changes in business environment are unavoidable. In this paper, we have tried to link these three terms together. We have tried to find out the role of internal control and corporate social responsibility in sustainability of a business. We have selected Boeing as our case as it is a reputed giant corporation, who has practice COSO internal control framework and corporate social responsibility (CSR). We have discussed the models related to the terms and tried to find out how the company used those model into their organization. This paper also tried to find out if there is any direct link between internal control and CSR with a company being sustainable and profitable. Our study showed Boeing’s proper adaptation of COSO framework and CS model. Nevertheless, the study could not suggest any clear connection of internal control and CSR as a key mean for sustainability or profitability. However, a clear rise in goodwill has pointed out in the paper that could be a key outcome from effective internal control and CSR.

Background: The importance of sustainability is growing; however, the mindset of many businesses remains in the profit-driven take-make-waste economy, aiming for limitless growth. Humanity cannot continue with business-as-usual, and a paradigm shift must occur to ensure a future for the planet. SMEs represent 99% of the businesses in the EU, and to ensure a safer tomorrow for all, they need to evolve to reach sustainable development and capture the opportunities of regenerative strategies. Nevertheless, regenerative business practices are not widely appropriated in practice. Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to explore the phenomenon of regenerative businesses on SME level through the perspective of Swedish sustainability consultants. The authors aim to gain an understanding of the transformation processes in order to investigate if SMEs can reach a regenerative stage and, if so, how? Method: The study was conducted with an inductive qualitative approach under the interpretivism paradigm, and a multiple case study approach was chosen to best capture the phenomenon. The primary data was collected through semi-structured interviews with sustainability consultants from various SMEs in Sweden, and a thematic data analysis was conducted to interpret the empirical findings to relate them to the theories presented. Conclusion: The findings pointed to eight factors that enable and restrict SMEs in transitioning to a regenerative phase. Internally, SMEs are impacted in their transition by the mindset, values, sustainability awareness, strategy and communication, and the organizational structure of the business. In addition, the main external factors influencing the transition are the ambiguity regarding the sustainability concept and pressure from various stakeholders. The findings also highlighted the interconnectedness of the factors and the importance of a paradigm shift to whole systems thinking.