The aim of this research is to discover ways that multi-stakeholder platforms for collaboration can be instrumental in the efforts of the media industry to achieve compliance with sustainability. Industries have gained awareness of their responsibilities towards environmental, social and economic welfare, and the media has a powerful role within society. The media industry's behavior is reflected both through its impacts of business operations as well as media products. The premise of this research suggests that an effective platform model fosters interpersonal, stimulating and energizing conversations amongst stakeholders in a neutral and friendly environment. In collaboration with various media stakeholders and showcasing an existing UK-based platform, the Media CSR Forum, and in investigating its structure and membership dynamics, it was possible to gain insight of common challenges for media companies. We identified the potential for platform models to help media companies plan strategically with the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development. Strategic planning for sustainable development can help the media industry to face the challenge that their current contribution to un-sustainability represents and become a key player for sustainable societies.

A strategic management of water is integral for any society aiming at moving towards sustainability. This thesis aims to provide a common understanding of how water management should be considered within sustainability constraints, using ‘backcasting’ from basic sustainability principles as a compass. With a common language, a constructive dialogue is then possible to unify all stakeholders to move together towards sustainability. To answer the research question “How can an interaction with water stakeholders be strategically developed to progress toward the service of water in a sustainable society”, a methodology based on Sustainability Life Cycle Assessment, the Template for Sustainable Product Development and Multi-Stakeholder Platforms has been utilised within one domestic and one industrial water user case study in Blekinge, Southern Sweden. In this locality, water is regarded as abundant in volume. Yet it was revealed that what is consumed by society is not water as such; but the purity of water. Within this context, opportunities to move towards sustainability have arisen and the case study organizations were able to utilise improvements in reporting and operations. Economic activity such as new infrastructure, pollutant trading schemes and product accreditation are amongst the many concepts identified as potential steps towards the service of water in a sustainable society.

O sistema de certificação florestal FSC, cujo objetivo institucional é reduzir os impactos negativos da exploração predatória de florestas, é um mecanismo criado e governado por atores da sociedade civil. Sem dispor de poder governamental para regulamentar a forma de atuação do setor privado, o FSC define regras socioambientais de produção que são seguidas por milhares de empresas em centenas de países, representando cerca de 20% das áreas florestais produtivas. Atualmente o FSC reúne entre seus afiliados as principais organizações ambientalistas, movimentos sociais e empresas florestais do mundo. Estudar os mecanismos internos de funcionamento do FSC, utilizados para manter o apoio desta densa rede de organizações, cada qual com seus interesses específicos e muitas vezes antagônicos, de modo que consiga ser, ao mesmo tempo, uma oportunidade de ganhos para empresas privadas e uma estratégia de redução de impactos socioambientais para organizações ambientais e sociais, é o objetivo central desta dissertação de mestrado. Para isso foi analisado o desenho institucional do FSC e os mecanismos utilizados no processo de tomada de decisões, por meio de um estudo das últimas duas Assembléias Gerais do FSC (2005 e 2008), instância máxima de decisão do sistema. Este estudo foi realizado a partir de análises dos resultados das decisões tomadas nestas ocasiões, e de interpretações factuais do processo de negociação que existe entre os diferentes setores envolvidos. Estas assembléias constituem reais arenas de negociação entre os diversos atores interessados no setor florestal, sejam empresas privadas, organizações ambientalistas ou movimentos sociais, ambos com poder igualitário de voto em todas as decisões que definem o funcionamento do sistema. As análises realizadas nesta dissertação demonstraram que este desenho institucional de tomada de decisões é fundamental para a legitimação do sistema, e é em grande parte responsável por manter o apoio dos diversos setores. Ao compartilharem as decisões, prevalece um ambiente de confiança e cooperação entre os atores, que resulta em uma percepção de co-responsabilidade sobre a configuração do sistema. Esta situação não apresenta nenhum sinal de estabilidade, pelo contrário, é através das freqüentes contestações por parte dos atores que a legitimidade do sistema se reafirma periodicamente nos resultados obtidos nas Assembléias Gerais. Os resultados desta dissertação contribuem para o entendimento dos novos mecanismos de governança, onde a sociedade civil passa a ter um papel fundamental no enfrentamento dos grandes desafios globais. / The FSC forest certification system, which institutional goal is to reduce the negative impacts of predatory use of forests, is a mechanism created and managed by civil society actors. Without the governmental power to regulate the behavior of the private sector, the FSC has defined social and environmental standards that are followed by thousands of companies in hundreds of countries, representing around 20% of the world productive forest area. Currently FSC has the support of the major environmentalist organizations, social movements and private companies in the world. The central objective of this dissertation is to study the internal FSC mechanisms, applied to maintain the support of this dense network of organizations, each of those with its specific and most of the time opposed interests, able to be, at the same time, an opportunity of benefits for private companies, and a strategy to reduce the social and environmental impacts of harvesting activities for the civil society organizations. In order to achieve this, the FSC institutional design and decision making process were assessed, through an analysis of two FSC General Assemblies (2005 and 2008). The study has evaluated the results of the decisions that were taken by the FSC members in these two occasions, and the negotiation processes between the different stakeholders that were in place for the approval of such decisions. The FSC General Assembly configures a real negotiation arena, where private companies, environmentalists and social organizations have equal voting power in all decisions that affect the functioning of the system. The analyses demonstrates that the institutional design that defines the decision making process in FSC is crucial for the legitimacy of the system, and is in great part responsible to maintain the support of such diverse stakeholders group. Once the decisions are taken collectively, there´s a prevailing environment of trust and cooperation among stakeholders, resulting in a perception of co-responsibility over the general configuration of the system. This is far away from a stable situation, but rather it´s due to the frequent conflicts among stakeholders that the system´s legitimacy is periodically reaffirmed in the FSC General Assemblies. The result of this dissertation is a contribution for the general understanding of the new governance mechanisms, where civil society plays a fundamental role in addressing the major global challenges.

The alternative food movement claims varied goals such as building environmental sustainability, strengthening local economies, and promoting health equity, yet critics argue that the movement’s transformative potential is threatened by a lack of shared vision. Literature suggests that community-based multi-stakeholder coalitions are a useful tool for building consensus around food systems futures. But what kinds of futures? Home Grown Springfield is a school food initiative aimed at reducing hunger in Springfield, MA by serving healthy, homemade, and locally-sourced meals via the Culinary and Nutrition Center, a brand-new full-service commercial kitchen and storage facility. This qualitative case study examines the engagement process of the Culinary and Nutrition Center’s Advisory Council, a multi-stakeholder coalition convened in 2018 to guide the project. The engagement process was envisioned by the Springfield Food Policy Council, Springfield Public Schools, and Sodexo, and funded by the Henry P. Kendall Foundation. Research findings suggests that engagement of diverse actors promotes expanded project visions, which results in more holistic, progressive, and potentially transformative food systems change. In addition, it reveals challenges around the process of authentic community engagement and the dynamics of power-sharing between project leaders and community members. This research has multiple objectives: 1) to document the first year of the Advisory Council’s process for its own reflection; 2) to demonstrate the need for planners to help facilitate diverse cross-sector engagement for more holistic and progressive regional planning; and 3) to highlight the critical need for community leadership and decision-making in planning for sustainable and equitable community development.

Micro-property developers are social entrepreneurs operating in townships and offer high quality rental units that upholds the dignity of community members. Although they are making a valuable contribution they are also faced with many challenges and the biggest being access to funds. This study looks at how impact investing, an emerging funding model can be used to address this challenge. Impact investing can be described as a cross-sectional initiative that involves the professional participation of various stakeholders; to drive social entrepreneurship to a level which can drive the socio-economic impact within communities, to create a social good that optimises financial, social and environmental returns ( Annual Impact Investor Survey, 2019). This research study seeks to explore and understand collaboration strategies that can be employed by micro-property developers in the context of South African townships. This study investigates how micro-property developers, through institutional systems and a multi-stakeholder approach can collaborate with impact investors by applying the concept of collective impact effort in township areas. Further on, this study highlights the importance of impact investing and unpacks the successes and challenges in township areas by illuminating how risk-taking, organisational values and funding contribute to corporate considerations in generating measurable, social and environment impact combined with financial return. Through relevant literature consulted and the use of in-depth interviews this study adopted a qualitative research methodology. Research participants included micro-property developers, impact investors and intermediaries. The research findings indicate that in the corporate ambit of social entrepreneurship and impact investing; variables such as income, risks, impact measurement, the situated area of human settlement and investor readiness are key considerations in the successful acquisition of funding opportunities. In addition, although impact investment in township areas is still an untapped market in South Africa, community leadership and partners should equally advocate the need of inclusion and innovation to steer sustainable impact investment opportunities in such communities. This study suggests that impact investors and funders should work toward cross-sectional initiatives that are scalable and inclusive, and that can create a positive impact in township communities. This study also recommends that a level of deeper knowledge is required through informed research, to understand the value and the impact of impact investments in township areas. This way, scientific data can override all stereotypical notions linked to township investments, as stigmas of crime and risks still hinder investment opportunities in townships compared to their urban counterparts.

<div>This thesis combines human and machine intelligence for consensus decision-making, and it contains four interrelated research areas. Before presenting the four research areas, this thesis presents a literature review on decision-making using two criteria: trust and risk. The analysis involves studying the individual and the multi-stakeholder decision-making. Also, it explores the relationship between trust and risk to provide insight on how to apply them when making any decision. This thesis presents a grouping procedure of the existing trust-based multi-stakeholder decision-making schemes by considering the group decision-making process and models. In the first research area, this thesis presents the foundation of building multi-stakeholder consensus decision-making (MSCDM). This thesis describes trust-based multi-stakeholder decision-making for water allocation to help the participants select a solution that comes from the best model. Several criteria are involved when deciding on a solution such as trust, damage, and benefit. This thesis considers Jain's fairness index as an indicator of reaching balance or equality for the stakeholder's needs. The preferred scenario is when having a high trust, low damages and high benefits. The worst scenario involves having low trust, high damage, and low benefit. The model is dynamic by adapting to the changes over time. The decision to select is the solution that is fair for almost everyone. In the second research area, this thesis presents a MSCDM, which is a generic framework that coordinates the decision-making rounds among stakeholders based on their influence toward each other, as represented by the trust relationship among them. This thesis describes the MSCDM framework that helps to find a decision the stakeholders can agree upon. Reaching a consensus decision might require several rounds where stakeholders negotiate by rating each other. This thesis presents the results of implementing MSCDM and evaluates the effect of trust on the consensus achievement and the reduction in the number of rounds needed to reach the final decision. This thesis presents Rating Convergence in the implemented MSCDM framework, and such convergence is a result of changes in the stakeholders' rating behavior in each round. This thesis evaluates the effect of trust on the rating changes by measuring the distance of the choices made by the stakeholders. Trust is useful in decreasing the distances. In the third research area, this thesis presents Rating Convergence in the implemented MSCDM framework, and such convergence is a result of changes in stakeholders' rating behavior in each round. This thesis evaluates the effect of trust on the rating changes by measuring the perturbation in the rating matrix. Trust is useful in increasing the rating matrix perturbation. Such perturbation helps to decrease the number of rounds. Therefore, trust helps to increase the speed of agreeing upon the same decision through the influence. In the fourth research area, this thesis presents Rating Aggregation operators in the implemented MSCDM framework. This thesis addresses the need for aggregating the stakeholders' ratings while they negotiate on the round of decisions to compute the consensus achievement. This thesis presents four aggregation operators: weighted sum (WS), weighted product (WP), weighted product similarity measure (WPSM), and weighted exponent similarity measure (WESM). This thesis studies the performance of those aggregation operators in terms of consensus achievement and the number of rounds needed. The consensus threshold controls the performance of these operators. The contribution of this thesis lays the foundation for developing a framework for MSCDM that facilitates reaching the consensus decision by accounting for the stakeholders' influences toward one another. Trust represents the influence.</div>

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the understanding of human rights in Agenda 2030 and the role of companies by adopting a human rights-based approach to sustainable development. It applies a qualitative idea analysis of the primarily material where central concepts are operationalized by constructing a model of analysis based on dimensions. The dimensions of human rights as moral, politics and law, derives from previous research by the ethical theorist Elena Namli. A potential fourth dimension, the economic dimension of human rights, is further developed, applying research of the economists Dan Seymour and Jonathan Pincus. Furthermore, this research considers what Agenda 2030 indicates in terms of human rights obligations for companies and the impacts the perceived role of companies may have for human rights. Therefore, the theoretical framework is complemented by research of the political theorist Thomas Pogge's, and international lawyer Andrew Clapham’s ideas of human rights obligations for companies. The results show that Agenda 2030 encourages a multi-stakeholder approach and addresses companies as partners in order to achieve a sustainable development based on human rights. This can be regarded as an opportunity to enhance the respect, protection and fulfillment of human rights, inviting more actors to contribute in a complementary way to states. At the same time challenges remains in creating policies, accountability and monitoring mechanisms towards companies bothin terms of human rights and companies’ performance on the SDGs. Until there is more legal clarity, the moral question of what is good and fair business practice becomes central.

在這個充滿繁多新媒體時代，使用者面臨到眾多資料和快速變動的環境，使用者在媒體的使用行為和選擇上更加依賴各種推薦平台的建議。除此之外，隨著社群媒體的興起，許多的推薦平台整合了社群的人們關係來提供更準確的建議和選擇。雖然推薦系統在影響使用者的使用行為有顯著的效果，然而企業和品牌卻鮮少去關注或了解如何增加顧客參與行為在整合社群媒體的推薦平台上。顧客參與行為並不只有傳統的交易行為，而是包含了所有直接和間接影響企業品牌的行為，像是使用者回饋、口碑傳播等。而且，現今尚未有清楚明確的定義哪些關鍵因素，會影響顧客參與行為在社群化推薦推薦系統，來藉此獲得顧客關注，形成正向生態系統。 本研究中，我們根據達人在社群化推薦平台中具有重要的影響力的觀點，以促進重塑達人知識來改變原有達人的行為和態度，藉此影響所有一般使用者在社群化推薦平台的顧客參與行為。我們提出新的架構和系統來幫助中小型商家在推薦平台上影響更多的推薦達人，獲得更多的顧客參與。我們建立商家參與後台來幫助中小型商家可以洞悉達人的行為，我們也建立了重新塑造資訊的系統，提供達人所需要的訊息文章，藉此來改變達人的知識和行為。此研究發現，達人的行為會受到娛樂型、知識型和激勵型的文章訊息影響行為，一般使用者也會受到達人行為影響。此外我們藉由品牌合作角度來幫助得到更多的顧客參與行為，我們發現中小型商家可以在社群化推薦平台獲得顧客參與且建立一個正向機制循環。 / With the highly dynamic trend of service economy, the firms are increasingly to co-create value with brand alliance to advance their competition advantage. On the other hand, with the massive information on the new media, the referrals provided by recommender systems in combination with social media have significantly impact on customer behavior. In light of these trends, the markers and firms should aim to increase the customer engagement behavior (CEB) which goes beyond the traditional transactions including purchase and non-purchase behavior on social recommenders. In this research, we focus on the role of mavens who are powerful influencers on the social recommender. We propose a new conceptual framework for facilitating to impact the maven’s knowledge and behavior and increase the CEB on the social recommender for Small/Middle Enterprise (SME). We establish the SME support engagement site for increasing the CEB on social recommender and framing knowledge context to influence maven for achieving the insight of the maven’s behavior. As the result of research, we discover that maven engagement behavior would be influenced by the entertainment, information and incentive types in context from the brand alliance perspective and the non-maven are willing to be affected by maven behavior. Moreover, with this discovery, the SME can increase the customer engagement behavior on the social recommender

Persuasive technology is becoming increasingly prevalent in the retail industry, often to influence customer behaviours and increase sales. This study explores multi-stakeholder perspectives on the values, ethical considerations, and possible risks associated with the implementation of such persuasive technologies. It was conducted with a retail agency that develops persuasive technology in the form of an engagement retail platform. Value Sensitive Design (VSD) Framework and ACTVOD Futures Workshop were used to develop value scenario workshops with program managers, designers, and field team members. Value-oriented themes were then derived from a thematic analysis. Values such as ownership and property, identity, and informed consent were often discussed, while human welfare and environmental sustainability were neglected. Also uncovered were several misconceptions concerning artificial intelligence (AI) and a lack of urgency to address ethical concerns among company stakeholders. This study emphasizes the importance of recognizing and addressing the ethical considerations of persuasive technology and develop proactive solutions to make it safe, sustainable, and beneficial for users and consumers. / Övertygande teknologi, så kallad persuasive technology, blir allt vanligare inom detaljhandelsbranschen, ofta för att påverka kundbeteenden och öka försäljningen. Denna studie undersöker flera parters perspektiv på värden, etiska överväganden och möjliga risker i samband med implementeringen av övertygande teknologier. Studien genomfördes på en detaljhandelsbyrå som utvecklar övertygande teknologi i form av en engagerande detaljhandelsplattform. Ett ramverk för värdekänslig design (Value Sensitive Design - VSD) och ACTVOD Futures Workshop användes för att utveckla värdescenario-workshops med programchefer, designers och fältteammedlemmar. Värdeteman genererades sedan från en tematisk analys. Värden som ägande och egendom, identitet och informerat samtycke diskuterades ofta, medan mänskligt välbefinnande och miljömässig hållbarhet försummades. Dessutom påvisades flera missuppfattningar om artificiell intelligens (AI) och en bristande brådska att ta itu med etiska frågor bland företagets nyckelpersoner. Denna studie betonar vikten av att erkänna och hantera de etiska övervägandena för övertygande teknologi och att utveckla proaktiva lösningar för att göra sådana övertygande teknologier säkra, hållbara och gynnsamma för användare och konsumenter.

Cross-sector collaborations (CSCs) are crucial for addressing complex environmental, social, and economic challenges. Sustainability issues are multifaceted and require holistic solutions that leverage multiple stakeholders’ expertise, perspectives, resources, and networks. This research explores the effectiveness of CSCs for strategic sustainable development (SSD). It identifies conditions for effective sustainability-oriented CSCs, assesses the applicability of these findings to various contexts, and provides key considerations for newly forming CSCs and SSD practitioners. The research study was undertaken in two phases. Phase 1 examined cross-sector initiatives within the sustainable development field in Sweden and other parts of Europe. It explored how these CSCs operate effectively by examining their formation conditions, processes and structures, endemic tensions and conflicts, and accountabilities and outcomes using a conceptual framework. Data collection involved nine semi-structured interviews, which were analysed deductively to identify patterns based on these conditions. In phase 2, the findings from phase 1 were summarised and presented to SSD practitioners working with CSCs. This phase refined the nuances CSCs need to effectively apply a strategic sustainable development approach. Data collection involved semi-structured interviews, and the findings were analysed inductively to pinpoint common themes. The research identified eight key considerations for SSD practitioners when working with CSCs toward sustainable development.