Sustainability has become one of the key issues facing today’s organisations. Poor risk management, excessive compensation and greed have opened the behaviour of organisations to the eyes of the world and have called in corporate disclosures to date. While an increase of disclosure in non-financial reports has been noted, there is little evidence to suggest that the investment community is using this information to make informed investment decisions. The goal of this research was to draw attention to the importance of alignment of non-financial information between organisations and the investment community, in order to ultimately encourage responsible investment. This was done by way of a three-phase endeavor that delivered: • A best-practice framework for the communication of non-financial performance by organisations • An assessment of six South African organisations and their communication of non-financial information, specifically with their investment community • An assessment of six investment firms’ perceptions and expectations of non-financial performance communication in South Africa The study highlighted the importance of engaging the investor community in order to understand their expectation of non-financial performance information, thus rendering non-financial reports useful to the investment community and progressing the responsible investment movement in South Africa. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

The equity crowdfunding market has since the financial crisis in 2008 become an important source of alternative financing in Sweden. The equity crowdfunding platforms constitute the market and are responsible for governing the investment relationships. However, the market is not regulated, and in the spring of 2018 the Swedish government proposed regulatory changes for the platforms to impact the problem of information asymmetry. There are different approaches on how to impact the problem, and therefore the thesis sets out to understand how the equity crowdfunding platforms within the Swedish market work to impact information asymmetry.  Empirical data has been collected from five different Swedish equity crowdfunding platforms. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with individuals whose work is connected to governing and impacting information asymmetry. The analysis of the empirical findings identifies five main reasons for the arise of information asymmetry and the platforms work to control and reduce information asymmetry by mitigation strategies, investor communication and effective signaling. The findings indicate that there is a trade-off between controlling information asymmetry and making the financing method accessible within the market. This study contributes to the understanding of how equity crowdfunding platforms work to impact information asymmetry within the Swedish market.