Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In the last 15 years, growing public awareness of the negative impact of corporate activities has prompted big corporations in the mining, manufacturing and retail sectors to publish reports that communicate their awareness of environmental and social issues. These reports typically take the form of standalone corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports or integrated annual (IA) reports. The publication of these reports is not an isolated event or practice on behalf of each company; the structure and content of the reports are informed by stock exchange policies such as the King Code in South Africa, and reporting frameworks such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) on an international level. The nature of corporate social responsibility and CSR reporting has captured the interest of researchers in diverse disciplines. Scholars such as Jones (1995) and Pedersen (2006), working within business and marketing-related fields, have praised CSR reports as a “win-win” concept which encourages corporations to focus on both their financial and social performance. Conversely, scholars such as Banerjee (2003, 2007) and Redclift (2002, 2005) have criticised CSR for being a new form of “greenwashing” and a mechanism that promotes the continued dominance of financially strong institutions. Critical scholars typically adopt a neo-Marxist perspective of neoliberalism and assert that legitimate environmental protection or social transformation and equality cannot take place within the reigning economic paradigm (see Pepper 1984, 1996). This study is a contribution to applied linguistic research into CSR and IA reports, particularly those originating from the Global South. It draws on methods developed within critical discourse analysis (CDA), systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and corpus linguistics to investigate the 2011, 2012 and 2013 CSR and IA reports of six South African companies located in the mining, retail and food manufacturing industries. Drawing on Halliday’s (1978) three metafunctions of texts, Fairclough’s (1989, 2002) three dimensional framework, as well as the Appraisal Framework (White 2001; Martin and White 2005) this study investigates the textual, representational and interpersonal meanings of the selected reports as ones that represent a new, gradually conventionalised genre within modern corporate discourse. In summary, the study contributes to an understanding of CSR and IA reports in three ways: First, it highlights the significant role of the GRI in prescribing, and thus restricting, the structural and discursive features of CSR and IA reports. Second, the study shows how the six companies draw on a limited set of discourses in the reports which all, in some way or another, embed neoliberal ideologies. This suggests that the South African CSR and IA reports function to maintain an established, dominant ideological and discursive order. Third, the degree of reliability of the information in the reports is dependent on how the companies construct themselves in this report. In this regard, the analysis reveals that the companies use a limited set of linguistic resources to construct themselves as strategic, moral and responsible social actors. In a country marked by widespread social inequality and diminishing resources, the findings ultimately suggest that social transformation and environmental protection are unlikely to be achieved if the sustainability discourses of corporate institutions are not publically challenged.

The purpose of this report was to find out if grocery stores in Örnsköldsvik and Kramfors municipality recycle their producer responsibility package waste, hazardous waste and their food waste and in what way they get rid of their waste. Are there any differences in how these two municipalities does it? Are there any variance between different stores depending on size, location and finally come up with suggestions for improvements. To find out the answer to this questions phone interviews with 25 grocery stores in these two municipalities were conducted. The results from the survey shows that grocery stores in both municipalities sort out their producer responsibility package waste and hazardous waste to a great extent. Only four stores indicated that they sorted out food waste. Responses were varied regarding in what way the grocery stores get rid of their waste. Some stores get their waste picked-up by the municipality and others by different entrepreneurs. One of the big food chains have a contract with an entrepreneur to pick up their waste at all the stores in this part of the country. Some of the suggested improvements are to minimize the amount of food waste that gets thrown away and clarify the laws on what waste that the municipality have monopoly on. The conclusion of this report is that grocery stores in these two municipalities are good at sorting out their waste except food waste.

A recent series of scandals hitting the UK financial industry has had a negative impact on consumer confidence in UK insurance companies. After assuming its powers and responsibility under the Financial Services and Market Act 2000, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) becomes the single statutory regulator directly responsible for the regulation of deposit taking, insurance and investment business. Strong legislation was introduced to maintain IFAs' independence, prohibiting insurance companies from exerting or persuading more IFAs to promote their products. Fighting to survive in an increasingly competitive market, several insurance companies have adopted the extranet to improve their communication and relationships with IFAs. Whilst channel relationship literature insists on the important role of communication in the supplier-distributor relationship, the emerging role of the extranet and how it reshapes IFA-insurer communication and relationships has hardly been explored. Accordingly, the research problem investigated in this thesis is: How has the extranet impacted on communication and relationships between the insurer and independent financial advisors (IE4s) in the UK? The research problem was investigated in two stages. In Stage 1, face-to-face interviews were carried out to help identify 5 research issues. RI 1: How does the extranet facilitate insurer-IFA communication? RI 2: How does the extranet impact on the use of other communication media? RI 3: How does the extranet facilitate the insurer-IFA relationship? RI 4: Impact of the extranet on communication, trust, commitment, cooperation, and conflict - How does this facilitate the quality of relationship between insurers and IFAs? RI 5: Does the perceived impact of the extranet on commitment have the strongest impact on the quality of the insurer-IFA relationship? in Stage2 , a mail survey of UK independent financial advisors was conducted to explore the research issues. In answering the research issues,this thesis' findings make the following contributions. Firstly, this research found that the extranet has a positive impact on insurer- IFA communication in general. However, it is still not conclusive that the extranet increases two-way communication between them. Secondly, this research found that it is highly likely that the extranet will decrease the use of certain modes of communication especially, the facsimile and the telephone. Thirdly, this research found that the extranet improves certain aspects of trust. In terms of commitment, although the extranet increases the IFAs' willingness to maintain their relationship with the insurer, it does not have a strong impact on the IFAs' commitment to the insurer. Concerning the co-operation construct, it is still inconclusive whether the communication enhanced by the extranet leads to better co-operation between the insurer and IFAs. Likewise, it is still not conclusive if the extranet-enhanced communication results in less conflict between the insurer and IFAs. Nevertheless, it is clear that the extranet does not intensify existing disagreements between them. Overall, the IFAs felt that the extranet-enhanced communication increased the quality of their relationship with the insurer. Next, this research found that the perceived impact of the extranet on relationship quality is positively related to the perceived impact of the extranet on trust, commitment, and co-operation and negatively related to the perceived impact of the extranet on conflict and, disagreement. Indeed, insurers need to be aware that to enhance the quality of their relationship with the IFA, they need to maintain and increase the IFAs' trust in, and commitment to them. At the same time, they should also try to facilitate co-operation and effectively solve conflicts between them and the IFAs. This research found that the extranet has the potential to help the insurer achieve these goals if it is implemented appropriately and effectively. Finally, the findings also suggest that commitment has the strongest effect on the perceived quality of relationship.

Corporate social responsibility, CSR väcker intresse bland företag och även många forskare har uppmärksammat begreppet på senare tid. Det finns banker som har börjat ta hänsyn till CSR i låneprocessen. Däremot är den forskning som finns om hur ett företags arbete med CSR beaktas i låneprocessen begränsad, vilket gör det svårt att skapa en förståelse för området. För att kunna skapa en bättre förståelse har det resulterat i frågeställningen: Hur och varför beaktar banker företagens arbete med CSR vid kreditgivning? För att besvara frågeställningen har CSR definierats med sju dimensioner vilka har varit utgångspunkterna för den teoretiska referensramen, samt för den kvalitativa studien. Dimensionerna är miljön, samhället, företagets relation till de anställda, styrelse, mänskliga rättigheter, produkt och mångfald. Den kvalitativa studien som genomfördes gjordes genom tio intervjuer med kreditgivare på olika banker. De slutsatser som framkommer utifrån den genomförda studien är att en del av dimensionerna av CSR ingår i låneprocessen. I det andra steget av låneprocessen, vilket benämns kreditbedömningen ingår dimensionen miljö som en egen stående bedömningspunkt. Produkt, styrelse och företagets relation till de anställda går att beakta tillsammans med andra stående bedömningspunkter. Mänskliga rättigheter beaktas om kreditgivaren upptäcker varningssignalen och då anser att dimensionen bör kontrolleras för att säkerställa krediten. Studien visar att samhället och mångfald inte ingår i låne-processen, utan endast kan ge positiva indikationer om företaget. Kreditgivare väljer att beakta de olika dimensionerna inom CSR för att bedöma de risker som kan uppstå i en kredit. Riskerna bedöms för att kunna fastställa företagets återbetalningsförmåga, vilket gör att kreditgivare kan undvika en kreditförlust.

Research suggests that intuitions about thought experiments are vulnerable to a wide array of seemingly irrelevant factors. I argue that when arguments hinge on the use of intuitions about thought experiments, research on the subtle factors that affect intuitions must be taken seriously. To demonstrate how failing to consider such psychological influences can undermine an argument, I discuss Pereboom’s four-case manipulation argument. I argue that by failing to consider the impact of subtle psychological influences such as order effects, Pereboom likely mis-identifies what really leads us to have the intuitions that we have about his cases, and this in turn undermines his argument for incompatibilism. Last, I consider objections and discuss how to empirically test my hypothesis.

Hong Kong is searching for an environmental ethic that asks us to live not as mere exploiters and consumers of natural resources, but responsibly and as if we saw the nature, supporting all of our activities and needs, as our home. In the years throughout its history, Hong Kong has struggled to understand the city and the people's relationship with the local environment, hindering efforts to move the city towards a more environmentally viable future. Without a systematic and holistic investigation into the traits, roots, and potentials of this relationship, efforts to salvage the city's worsening environmental conditions will remain scattered and in vain. In Hong Kong, the concept of environmental responsibility is largely absent among the people. The culture, economically driven and characterized primarily by materialistic values, together with a top-down and centralized management of local environmental issues, paves way for individuals to self-sanction their avoidance or disengagement from their responsibilities as moral agents. An exploration of the worldviews -- that is, the beliefs about interactions between the self, the society and the universe -- that predominated in Hong Kong's culture throughout different stages of its environmental history, reveals the root of our predicament as resting on the continuation of societal norms that ignore the necessity of individuals taking responsibility for their environmental attitudes and behaviours. Greater effort should hence be invested in restoring the feeling of personal responsibility for environmental wellbeing as the societal norm. I advocate two courses of action for invigorating a sense of environmental responsibility in Hongkongers. In the short run, drawing on existing research concerning normative social influence and the construction of personal and societal norms, techniques in marketing and advertising, and to some extent propaganda, can encourage behaviour that is more environmentally conscious. In the long run, I suggest we change the way our youth are being educated, about the environment and about ways to value. The local education system and content must be reoriented so that the teaching of environmental knowledge, and the creating of values that support environmental responsibility, are brought to the center stage. The progress toward an environmentally responsible ethic in Hong Kong has remained stagnant for far too long. If there is a time to take action and make a change, that time is now. / published_or_final_version / Philosophy / Master / Master of Philosophy

<p>Bakgrund: Ökade krav på att företag skall ta ett större etiskt och miljömässigt ansvar för sin verksamhet har väckts under senare år. Corporate social responsibility är ett samlingsnamn för detta ansvarstagande.</p><p>Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är att fastställa huruvida företags arbete med corporate social responsibility har någon synbar effekt på företags marknadsvärden, eller om företag bara förspiller sina resurser på ett ansvarstagande och informationsskapande som deras aktieägare nonchalerar.</p><p>Teoretiskt perspektiv: Författarna redogör för forskningen inom ämnet CSR och presenterar de två teorier som används; den effektiva marknadshypotesen och agent-principalförhållandet. Därtill belyser författarna begreppen etik, moral och förtroende för att läsaren skall erhålla en djupare förståelse för de begrepp som genomsyrar CSR.</p><p>Metod: För att kunna besvara uppsatsen syfte väljer författarna att genomföra en metodtriangulering bestående av en enkätundersökning bland fondbolag, en eventstudie på negativ publicitet om företags agerande i etik- och miljöfrågor och slutligen fem intervjuer med miljö- och etikanalytiker.</p><p>Resultat: Resultaten från eventstudien pekar på att företags aktiekurser generellt sett inte reagerar på information kopplade till CSR. Vid enstaka händelser som är nära kopplade till företags kärnverksamhet kunde författarna dock urskilja begränsade effekter på företags marknadsvärden.</p><p>Empiri: Majoriteten av intervjurespondenterna såg en ökad trend av aktivt ägarskap i Sverige men framförallt i USA. Det aktiva ägarskapet har lett till att fondbolag och förvaltare gått från uteslutning av företag till att försöka påverka dem till förbättringar inom CSR-frågor och corporate governance. Vidare såg övervägande delen av intervjurespondenterna ett ökat tryck från allmänheten på företagen att ta ett större socialt och miljömässigt ansvar, dock har CSR-frågorna fortfarande mycket lite betydelse för merparten av investerarna. Trots att eventstudien inte visar på en synbar effekt på kapitalmarknaden tror samtliga intervjurespondenter att företagen tjänar på att agera etiskt och miljömässigt korrekt.</p><p>Slutsats: Författarna drar bland annat slutsatser om att händelser kopplade till CSR generellt sett inte har någon synbar effekt på företags marknadsvärden. En mindre effekt på företags marknadsvärde kan emellertid urskilja då händelsen är nära kopplad till företags kärnverksamhet. Vidare finns det endast ett marginellt intresse för CSR bland ägarna. Slutligen innebär utbredningen av aktivt ägande att de eventuella effekterna på börskurserna i ett tidigt stadium försvinner.</p> / <p>Title: Corporate Social Responsibility – how does it affect the capital market?</p><p>Background: Demands have been raised in recent years for companies to take on larger ethical and environmental responsibilities for their business activities. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is the collective term for this accountability.</p><p>Purpose: The purpose of this essay is to establish whether companies’ efforts with corporate social responsibility have a visible effect on their market values, or whether it simply is a misuse of company resources and a creation of information that their shareholders ignore.</p><p>Theoretical Perspective: The authors give an account of the research within the subject of CSR and introduce the two theories that are used; the effective market hypothesis and the agent-principal relationship. In addition the authors shed some light on the concepts of ethic, moral and trust so that the reader can gain a deeper understanding of the concepts that permeates CSR.</p><p>Method: To be able to answer the essay’s purpose the authors choose to carry out a triangulation of methods consisting of a questionnaire sent out to fund managers, an event study on negative publicity regarding companies’ dealings in ethical and environmental issues, and finally five interviews with environmental- and ethical analysts.</p><p>Results: The results from the event study indicate that stock prices in general term do not react to information connected to CSR. In specific events, that weere closely connected to the companies’ core business activities, the authors could distinguish limited effects on the companies’ market values.</p><p>Empirical: The majority of the interview respondents saw an increased trend in active ownership in Sweden but the trend is far more apparent in the US. The active ownership has lead to fund managers and trustees moving from excluding companies towards influencing them towards improvements within CSR-issues and corporate governance. Furthermore the greater part of the interview respondents saw increased pressure from the general public upon the companies to take a greater social and environmental responsibility, however CSR-issues still have very little significance for the mainstream investor.</p><p>Conclusions: The authors conclude that in general events which are connected to CSR do not have a visible effect on companies’ market values. However, there are limited effects on companies’ market values in specific events, that are closely connected to the companies’ core business activities. Furthermore, there is only a minor interest for CSR amongst the owners. Finally, the spread of active ownership means that possible effects on stock prices disappear at an early stage.</p>

<p>Today it has become critical that people adapt their behavior and lifestyles to environmental constraints. Teachers are supposed to teach pupils to accept personal responsibility in regard to these problems. The pedagogies of Waldorf and public schools have different outlooks on nature, hence it was hypothesized that Waldorf and public teachers would differ in regard to pro-environmental behavior and factors explaining such actions. An e-questionnaire measuring pro-environmental behavior, biospheric and altruistic values, feelings of personal responsibility, and pro-environmental attitudes was filled out by 68 Waldorf teachers and 73 public teachers from different municipalities in Sweden. The results suggest that Waldorf teachers report higher biospheric values (partial <em>eta²</em>= .46, <em>p</em> < .001), more pro-environmental behavior (partial <em>eta²</em>= .39, <em>p</em> < .001), more feelings of personal responsibility, (partial <em>eta²</em>= .32, <em>p</em> < .001), and higher altruistic values (partial <em>eta²</em>= .12, <em>p</em> < .001), than public school teachers do. There were a few limitations in reliability and possibly with social desirability. However, the present study paves the way for an understanding of how pedagogy can be of help in preventing further environmental problems.</p>

<p><strong>Background:</strong> In the beginning of the 1960´s, pollution and immoral behaviour was common in the business world and as a reaction to this, an increased interest for socially beneficial activities occurred. Since then, large amount of literature and research has been conducted within the matter and the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has developed. Today, stakeholder theory is a common aspect when discussing CSR and some researchers argue that the stakeholders influence to what extent an organization engages within socially responsible activities. Yet, there is still an inquiry to identify what social responsibility really is and to define it.</p><p><strong>Problem:</strong> Due to the augmented interest for CSR many large organizations engage in CSR activities. However, one industry where little research and literature has been conducted in the field of CSR is in the context of service organizations.</p><p><strong>Purpose:</strong> The purpose of this thesis is to analyze how Corporate Social Responsibility is defined and how it is exercised in the context of service organizations and also the importance of different stakeholders in this process.</p><p><strong>Method:</strong> In order to execute this, qualitative case study on a service organization was performed. This was executed because the nature of the purpose was explanatory and the intention was to gain a deeper knowledge about the concept of CSR within a service organization context. Nine interviewees with different stakeholders from one single organization were executed in order to fulfill the intended purpose.</p><p><strong>Conclusion:</strong> The definition of CSR is rather complicated in a service organization context. A strong correlation between position and knowledge about the concept was identified. Service organizations tend to engage in strategic CSR activities to a greater extent than pure altruistic. Moreover, several stakeholders seem to influence the process of CSR in a service organization. The demand from the shareholders is considered as vital in the aspect of social responsibility, as well as the demand from customers and employees.</p><p> </p>

The doping culture represents an issue for sport and for society. Normative debates on doping have been mainly concerned with questions of the justifiability of doping. The practice of assigning responsibility for doping behaviour has chiefly been individual-based, focusing mainly on the individual athlete’s doping behaviour. The overarching aim of this thesis is to investigate the relevance and the importance of the ideas of responsibility in relation to ethical debates on doping. The more specific aim is to examine the possibility of broadening the scope of responsibility beyond the individual athlete, and to sketch a theoretical framework within which this expansion could be accommodated. In the first study, it is argued that bioethicists have a moral/professional responsibility to start out from a realistic and up-to-date view of genetics in ethical debates on gene doping, and that good bioethics requires good empirics. In study 2, the role played by affective processes in influencing athletes’ attitudes towards doping behaviour is investigated, both on an individual and on a collective level. It is concluded that an exclusive focus on individual-level rule violation and sanctions may entail overlooking the greater social picture and would prove to be ineffective in the long term. In study 3, the common doping-is-cheating arguments are examined and it is argued that they fail to capture vital features of people’s moral responses to doping behaviour. An alternative account of cheating in sport is presented in terms of failure to manifest good will and respect. It is concluded that putting cheating in the broader context of human interpersonal relationships makes evident the need to broaden the scope of moral responsibility and agency beyond the individual athlete. In study 4, the particular case of assigning responsibility for doping to sports physicians is used to examine the current individual-based approach to responsibility. This approach underestimates the scope of the responsibility by leaving out a range of other actors from the discourse of responsibility. The central conclusion of the thesis is that transforming the current doping culture requires broadening the scope of responsibility to include individuals and groups of individuals other than the athletes themselves.