Problem: There is little amount of research focused on small and medium-sized enterprise’s (SMEs) and their work with sustainability. Most research on sustainability drivers has been developed on large organizations which makes this thesis provide a perspective on the most important sustainability drivers in SME’s and how they are embedded in SME’s. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to deepen and enrich knowledge of sustainability drivers in SME’s with the aspects internal and external drivers. Method: This thesis has a qualitative and quantitative research approach where the interview included qualitative questions and quantitative rankings of the internal and external drivers by the interviewed SMEs. Findings: The findings of the qualitative and quantitative research indicate that SMEs have embedded sustainability in their work by ranking the most important drivers. The highest ranked internal drivers are proactive leadership, company culture and moral and ethical obligations. The highest ranked external drivers are regulation and legislation, customer demands and expectations, society’s raising awareness and market demands. Conclusion: The main contribution of the thesis is presented by highlighting the most important drivers in SMEs, external stakeholders might have an idea of which driver influences SMEs to make them sustainable; if sustainability is not embedded in the SME. This thesis did not aim to generalize the findings about SMEs sustainability drivers, but to obtain a deeper insight by the interviewees experiences.

Today's organizations face a global talent shortage, where they struggle to find and develop the talents needed to gain a competitive advantage in the global labor market. The war for talent has shifted from a national to a global scale, affecting organizations Human Resource Management strategies. As a result, scholars argue that the implementation of Global Talent Management (GTM) in the organization's business strategy can facilitate the work by gaining a competitive advantage. Due to globalization, organizations face rapidly changing global environments, affecting the strategies of GTM. The specific contribution from this study is to examine the relevance of the internal drivers affecting GTM, identified by Tarique and Schuler in 2010 as regiocentrism, international strategic alliances, and required competencies, for future research and practical implementations. The findings declare that although the framework from 2010 still is relevant in some aspects, globalization has led to new internal drivers being presented in current literature. New aspects as defining a talent philosophy, adopting an alternative employment arrangement and developing an attractive employer branding have been identified as important internal drivers within GTM. These drivers are described and presented in a conceptual model, developed from the framework by Tarique and Schuler (2010).

Purpose: The increasing importance given to sustainability issues by governments, companies, consumers, suppliers, researchers, students and the authors of this paper in addition to the scarce empirical studies on the topic of sustainable last mile logistics operations in the food retail industry in Sweden provides relevance to the choice of topic. This paper presents an exploratory single-case study on a Swedish food retailer with a strong sustainability-oriented decision-making body, and will seek to understand how they manage to adopt best sustainable practices and which drivers and most responsible for it. Objective: The aim of this study is to present through an empirical study, how food retailers operate their last mile logistics operations according to the triple bottom line approach, contributing to this young field where a profusion of data to confirm the existing theory remains deficient. Furthermore, the focus is placed on the different drivers for food retailers to adopt sustainable practices in their transportation operations from the distribution warehouse to their stores located in urban areas. Approach: A Swedish food retailer that strives for best practices will be studied in order to obtain key empirical data, which will allow the authors to compare theory and empirical data.  The study will focus on the sustainability-oriented operations approach in the Last Mile Logistics of the chosen retailer and observe the different drivers regarding their operations following all aspects of the triple bottom line. A single-case study analysis of a leading company in terms of sustainability-driven operations will provide more insight on how this “category” of food retailers manages to operationalize their environmental-friendly culture and strategy for inbound Last Mile Logistics successfully, without losing their competitive edge and remaining economically sustainable. Findings: After juxtaposing the secondary data issued from the existing theories on sustainable LML in the food retail industry to the primary data obtained from Axfood, a Swedish food retailer, the results have demonstrated that a business cannot neglect economic drivers to be financially sustainable, (cost optimization, enhanced efficiency, etc.) it remains important and cannot be overridden to enable a shift towards optimal sustainability practices in LML operations. However, the drivers that have proven to make the cut in order to succeed in achieving best sustainable practices are; a highly proactive management, stakeholder pressure (particularly consumers and NGOs amongst others) and innovative technology (including those that imply a short-term economic trade-off for long-term greater good to the TBL dimensions). Keywords: Sustainability; Sustainable practices; Last Mile Logistics; Sustainable Last Mile Logistics; Triple Bottom Line; Food Retailers; Food Retail Industry; Drivers.