Barnsexturism kännetecknas av ojämlikhet mellan den utvecklade och underutvecklade delen av världen. Barnsexturisterna är oftast västerländska män som reser till utvecklingsländer länder för att utnyttja barn. Det har dock sedan länge funnits såväl folkrättsligt bindande överenskommelser som juridiskt bindande lagar mot barnarbete och sexuellt utnyttjande av barn. Det till trots utnyttjas tre miljoner barn årligen inom barnsexturismindustrin. Många av utvecklingsländerna präglas nämligen av dysfunktionalitet såsom korruption och bristfällig tillämpning av de befintliga lagarna. Med anledning av det samt att många länders regeringar negligerar problemet har det globala nätverket ECPAT växt fram. En del av deras arbete är att påverka såväl regeringar världen över som olika företag att ta ansvar för problemet. ECPAT Sverige har exempelvis utvecklat Uppförandekoden för researrangörer mot barnsexhandel (Uppförandekoden) och kampanjen ”Jag fegar inte ur”, vilken involverar svenska resebyråer i arbetet. Syftet med såväl Uppförandekoden som ”Jag fegar inte ur” är att informera allmänheten om problemet. Eftersom det vanligen är allmänheten som bevittnar barnsexturism är det även de som har möjlighet att anmäla förövarna och därmed motverka efterfrågan. Både Uppförandekoden och ”Jag fegar inte ur” präglas dock av bristande engagemang från många av de deltagande företagen, vilket är till barnsexturisternas fördel. För att motverka barnsexturisternas maktposition över sina offer och därmed bidra till något mer jämlik värld krävs det att företagen blir mer benägna att informera sina kunder samt att allmänheten blir mer villiga att anmäla förövarna.

In the early 21st Century Sweden’s daily press was full of articles of Asian migrant workers that was picking berries in the north of the country. It was reported that the pickers was exploited by the industry and that it was complete chaos in the berry forests and that no one wanted to take responsible for the situation. As one measurement the Swedish Board of Migration adopted guidelines of how to import work force. The guidelines had a positive effect. The guidelines, however, also created a new problem a now shifted focus to another group of pickers: migrant workers from poor member-states of the European Union. This research partly aims to find out who is the responsible for the situation and who can do something that can improve the situation. Further, the research aim to find out why so many Easter European chose Sweden as country to work in, and then if the Swedish Board of Migrations guidelines actual effect of the migration flow. As a part of a solution for the berry pickers a few organization stands out, namely the ones that a company can use to clean their name with if they connect themselves to. This research then also aim to understand to find out if those organizations can make a positive impact of the situation. Mainly daily press has been used as the main source to create a framework over the situation. The analysis is made from the statements found in the large share of different sources available, but also through Swedish rules, politicians and the workers and theories of migration. In order to put the situation in Sweden in a larger context, a comparison with Austria is made. The final conclusion of the research is somehow devastating. There is still a hassle to understand who can be put in charge of the wheel, but the aftermath is that in the end the actor with most power in the industry might be the consumer of the berries.

Syfte: Syftet med studien är att identifiera skillnader och likheter i Ramlösa och Lokas CSR-initiativ, samt att placera deras hållbarhetstexter i relation till vårt teoretiska ramverk. Metod: Kritisk diskursanalys av Ramlösa och Lokas texter kring deras CSR-arbete. Slutsatser: Alla delar av Carrolls CSR-pyramid inkluderas i båda verksamheternas texter, men den etiska byggstenen är mest framträdande hos båda. Det framkom att den främsta explicita skillnaden låg inom den filantropiska byggstenen. Loka har valt ett mer lågmält förhållningssätt gällande framställningen av sitt filantropiska arbete till skillnad från Ramlösa som påvisar sitt filantropiska arbete på både hemsida, reklamfilmer samt på dess flaskor. Båda företagens texter vidmakthåller och bidrar till den rådande diskursordningen inom CSR.

This thesis examines the disconnect between the stated intentions of mining companies and narratives of hegemonic dispossession from mining-affected communities in the Andean region of Peru. The study focuses on Barrick Gold Corporations’ operations in rural Peruvian communities to illustrate how policy decisions and corporate privilege in Canada, and globally, construct hegemonic processes of development broadly. The research question asks how the mining industry frames its intentions so that civil society in Canada subscribes to the interest of this elite group. Findings from two case studies in rural Peru show that the mining industry uses instrumental tools such as Sustainable Development (SD), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and partnerships with NGOs to create an illusion of shared values with civil society. The presence of a transnational capitalist class (TCC) is evidenced by examples of collaboration between government and corporate efforts. I argue that a TCC enables global mining to maintain an influential role in shaping economic and political agendas that hinder development behind a guise of responsible and sustainable behaviour. A local-level analysis of Barrick Gold Corporation’s actions in Peru is connected to global economic and political trends to show how hegemony serves the maintenance of neoliberal economic growth instead of social development.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) är det arbete som företag åtar sig utöver den lagliga skyldigheten och innefattar bland annat arbete med miljö och samhälle. Fenomenet har framförallt undersökts i större företag i och med deras stora inverkan på omgivningen. I små och medelstora företag (vidare kallat SMEs) är CSR-arbetet inte lika väl utforskat. Syftet med detta arbete är att utforska hur och varför SMEs i Sverige, med fokus på enmans- och mikroföretag i Uppsala, arbetar internt med CSR-relaterade aktiviteter. Genom intervjuer undersöker studien huruvida femton enmans- och mikroföretag i detaljhandeln arbetar med CSR inom kategorierna välgörenhet, samhället, miljön samt leverantörer. Undersökningen visar att dessa företag inte arbetar med CSR som en del i en strategi utan att de arbetar lokalt med fokus främst på det miljörelaterade arbetet. Ägarnas personliga engagemang inom olika områden reflekterades ofta i företaget och generellt fanns åsikten att ”det lilla man kan, gör man”, som en respondent uttryckte det.

The widespread use of Corporate Philanthropy (CP) in the US and the UK has resulted in a significant body of literature on the phenomena and its use. However, the literature generated around CP is criticised for being of an economic nature and for being biased toward the context of developed Western countries. This thesis suggests that the context of developing countries is important in relation to the non-economic nature of CP, due to the existence of intense religious beliefs and values. However, there has been little attempt to explicitly examine how the institutional pressures within this context shape the CP of a non-economic and more precisely of an altruistic nature, and how firms act in response to these influences. This thesis leverages institutional theory by proposing that stakeholders – including communities, competitors, NGOs and politicians – may impose coercive and mimetic pressures encouraging isomorphic field-level CP of a non-economic nature in a context of intense Islamic beliefs, values and norms. However, the way in which firms perceive and act upon these pressures may differ depending on specific factors related to the firm itself, including the identity of the firm, the competitive position of the firm, and shareholder pressures. These differences between firms result in the adoption of different CP strategies as decided by each firm, expressing its appropriate responses to field pressures. This study uses a qualitative methodology using data collected from 27 of the key personnel responsible for CP decisions (shareholders and managers) in the Kuwaiti banking sector. Questions were developed to assess the relationships between institutional pressures at the field and organisational levels of analysis. Data was collected through multiple sources such as in-depth interviews, documentation, and archival records. The contributions of the thesis are in relation to: a) the institutional theory; b) gaining more understanding of CP in developing countries; C) offering a robust understanding of altruistic CP influenced by an Islamic context; and d) practical implementations of CP in Islamic banks.

<p>This dissertation examines the conjuncture of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and migrant social life in the urban space of Beijing as a problematic of what Foucault called biopower, where distinct logics of market and state power deploy techniques of civil society and culture in the form of public-private partnerships. The unique effect of this conjuncture is an expanding logic of power that obfuscates lines of antagonism between capital and labor, requiring new theoretical and methodological insight into how power, resistance, and antagonism might be conceived in the biopolitical era. </p><p>Drawing on recent work on biopower and new theories of antagonism and subjectivity, I argue (following Badiou's work) that both power and resistance must be articulated in their divided tendencies, which allows us to work through how certain tendencies may be contradictory and complementary, and to redraw the lines of antagonism at the level of subjectivity in terms of these divided tendencies. These lines of antagonism don't fall between public/private, market/state, or civil society/state, but along a process by which subjectivities are produced and sustained at a "distance" from the logic of their placement in society, or integrated into power by various strategies of civil society and culture. The practices and theoretical productions of one migrant cultural organization in Beijing, whose project centers on the production of new migrant subjectivity and culture in the transformation of self and society, provides insight into how we might conceive of politics as new forms of "distance" from the logic of biopower.</p><p>Through over twelve months of intensive fieldwork from 2010-2011 and follow up trips the following year on the intersection between Corporate Social Responsibility and migrant social life in Beijing, I trace the techniques by which antagonistic subjectivity is intervened upon. First, I examine the surrounding discourses, logics, and conditions of knowledge production on culture that inform the projects of migrant subjectivity from a historical perspective, and reveal a theoretical impasse in the displacement and disavowal of revolutionary culture to grapple with how to re-think antagonistic contradictions in the pervading market logic of difference. The continuation of this impasse into the biopolitical era is brought into focus through the state and market turn to "culture industries" that include, mirror, and delimit migrant social life in Beijing. Problematizing the rise of self-articulated migrant subjectivity and migrant culture amidst these public-private projects, I then turn to the practices of one migrant organization whose project draws upon a legacy of struggle for self-organized and self-run migrant collective practices to successfully confront and block a situation of forced demolition and displacement. Analyzing how elements from state, market, and "civil society" interacted through public-private partnerships in the situation of daily migrant struggles, I identify the importance of the rise of Corporate Social Responsibility in the urban space of Beijing and the growth of biopolitical practices of intervention upon the migrant issue. I argue that the effect of the diffusion of Corporate Social Responsibility as a social practice is to enroll migrants as active participants in a social life that makes their subjectivities and productive activities visible to the public sphere. Lines of antagonism can thus be drawn by taking up distinctions between subjectivities oriented toward "the public," "self-governance," and the CSR "community," versus collective self-organizing. I conclude by arguing that if biopower seeks to mirror practices of resistance and power by drawing upon the self-activities of cooperative subjects, then thinking about the self-organized and self-run migrant organization as a new form of "distance" may shed light on how antagonism and political struggle might be redefined today.</p> / Dissertation

The thesis investigates the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and financial performance. The thesis is organised into three parts. The first part, the literature review, is in three sections, the first section provides an introduction to the field of corporate social responsibility, its grounding in economic theory and its historical background. The second part of the literature review covers the social and environmental issues relevant specifically to the food and agriculture sector. The third section is a systematic review of the studies that examine the relationship between corporate social performance and financial performance. This review was carried out using a modified Cochrane systematic review method, more commonly found in the medical literature than in the economics literature. The results showed that 70% of the studies reviewed showed a positive and statistically significant relationship between CSR and financial performance. The second part of the thesis includes three empirical studies. The first study, an event study, assessed the impact of the FTSE4Good Index on firm price. The study examined the return to companies of being included in a modified share index that signals good performance in terms of CSR. The results of this event study showed that companies are not rewarded for being included in the index and are not penalised for being deleted from it. The second empirical study, a probit analysis, aimed to identify the probability of a company passing a social and environmental screen given information about the company’s size, financial performance and sector. Results showed that companies with small market capitalisation, low income gearing and high net profit margins were more likely to pass the screen than other companies. Companies in the energy sector were less likely to pass than other companies, and financial sector companies more likely to pass. The third empirical chapter assessed the effect on the financial performance of companies of passing a socially responsible investment screen. The results showed that there was a relationship between passing the screen and higher earnings per share, but the relationship between passing the screen and other financial indicators was not proven. These studies demonstrated the difficulties that exist to provide statistically strong evidence for the relationship between corporate social responsibility and financial performance. Thus the third part of the thesis moved into a different area, from the supply to the demand side. This is the valuation of non-financial indicators and their relationship with CSR, this included a discursive chapter on intangibles and their relationship with CSR and a final empirical study: a choice experiment. This study demonstrated that MBA students take nonfinancial and ethical issues into account when making investment decisions. In conclusion, providing strong evidence for the relationship between corporate social responsibility and financial performance is difficult. There are many ways of measuring CSR and many ways of measuring financial performance. Depending on the measures used, different results are obtained. Looking beyond conventional financial performance measurements, to intangibles, provides a more holistic picture of what is going on in the relationship and shows that there is more to company valuation and investment decision making than financial performance indicators. CSR is an important component of company reputation and has an intrinsic value that is difficult to measure but is no doubt very high.

This dissertation examines the Corporate Social Responsibility in a developing country, Malaysia. The research is divided into two phases. First phase of the research contributes to the literature on CSR by providing a national perspective on CSR in Malaysia. The second phase of the research takes an organisation-centric viewpoint. The aim of is to examine (1) CSR core issues; (2) translation of identified core issues into CSR principles; and (3) implementation of these principles with CSR activities engaged. The key findings from the within-case and cross-case analysis suggest: (i) the role of regulatory bodies promoting CSR; (ii) organisations focus on CSR core issues and written policies; (iii) certain core issues being ignored; (iv) written policies developed not known throughout the organisations; (v) CSR carried out as project or add-on depending on industry norm; (vi) most common CSR activities; (vii) communications aspect rather weak; and (viii) organisation in early stage of CSR reporting; in the CSR management process in Malaysia.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how social procurement can be a further development of public-private partnership. This is done with interviews and a case study of the social procurement Mitt Gröna Kvarter and its labor effort Boendebyggarna. The theoretical framework used in the thesis consists of public-private partnership and corporate social responsibility. It tries to answer the following questions: What does this social procurement mean by the concept of public-private partnership? What does this social procurement mean for the participants involved? How can social procurement be seen as a further development of public-private partnership? The thesis uses the theory development around the concepts of public-private partnership and corporate social responsibility and shows that social procurement does indeed have similarities to public-private partnership and could very well be a further development of it.