Supportrar är en viktig intressent för fotbollsföreningar. Fotbollssupportrar är konsument av samma produkt som de är medproducent av då de betalar för att gå på fotbollsmatcher samtidigt som de är med och skapar stämningen kring matchen. Svensk fotboll är reglerad av 51%-regeln vilket innebär att föreningens medlemmar också är ägare av föreningen. Denna tredelade roll som supportrarna besitter är en del av komplexiteten i relationen mellan en fotbollsförening och dess supportrar. Med bakgrund av tidigare forskning gjord kring Stakeholder Theory har fokus till störst del har varit att identifiera fotbollsföreningars olika intressenter och hur viktiga de är för organisationen. Denna studie kommer endast att fokusera på en intressent i en förening i Sverige med ambitionen att utifrån Stakeholder Theory beskriva relationen mellan en fotbollsförening och dess supportrar, ur båda parters perspektiv, vilket även efterfrågats av tidigare studier inom ämnet. En kvalitativ studie har genomförts där empiriskt material samlats in genom semi- strukturerade intervjuer med valda representanter från Djurgården Fotboll samt föreningens supportrar. Det empiriska materialet analyserades utifrån Stakeholder Theory för att sedermera besvara studiens syfte och frågeställning. Resultatet visar att supportrar är den viktigaste intressenten för Djurgården Fotboll och att Stakeholder Theory grundläggande kan ge en förklaring till supportrarnas betydelse som intressentgrupp.

The research’s intent is improvement in governance and strategic management initially by comparing Shareholder Theory and Stakeholder Theory and making results useful for both Practitioner and Academic audiences. A conceptual model for how a society establishes and evolves the roles it legitimizes for a business to support reasoning about those roles and the process originating the expectations, responsibilities, obligations, contributions and freedom to act in the roles is proposed. Understanding this process would enable better governance and strategic management of a firm while avoiding unintended consequences when fulfilling the role and consequences for failing the role. The model becomes a basis for comparing Shareholder and Stakeholder Theories. Context for the model comes from practitioner narratives around changes occurring in business and their themes around the relationship of a business with its ecosystem. To incorporate both the societal and business relationship components, the model building process was based upon concepts and ideas from General Systems, Economics, Sociology, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Evolution, Complexity and Complex Adaptive Systems, Semiotics, as well as Business. This was an iterative abductive, inductive, deductive process with each iteration compared to relevant theory, integrated across the subject domains, then tested against other academic research on the issue, evidence of the model in practice, and a culturomics study across social and industry literature. These results are exploratory, descriptive, directional, and suggestive for future research opportunities. Problems with Stakeholder Theory are identified but potentially addressed with the conceptual model, in turn suggesting a systemic approach to governance and strategic management. It was determined that Shareholder Theory results in many unintended consequences detrimental to society and the firm. The conceptual model provides points of intervention in the process and suggests potential tooling for governance and strategic management. A side effect of the research was a perspective on the practitioner / academic divide as the research grappled with the “wicked problem” nature and transdisciplinary nature of process being described. By introducing systems and complexity paradigms in the model, potential ways to address the divide are suggested, such as 3 level analysis (micro, meso, macro).

This study explores the necessity of stakeholder inclusivity, particularly the inclusivity of teachers, in the development of the national policy pertaining to the programme and promotion requirements of the National Curriculum Statement Grades R – 12 in the Department of Basic Education. Through the qualitative exploration of data drawn from in-depth interviews, the study found that bureaucracy and a top-down approach drives policy development in the basic education system of South Africa. While most of the stakeholders indicated that they are only consulted at a public comment phase of the policy development, they viewed this as asking for their endorsement as opposed to genuine and constructive inputs. As such, educational policy developer’s end up missing an opportunity to engage and learn from stakeholders and ultimately the policy reaches the implementation phase with loopholes. Therefore, adopting a consultative approach throughout the life cycle of the policy development with not only the body of stakeholders who have a say by virtue of their power, but also with those whose say was initially restricted as a result of having less influential power in the formulation of educational objectives, might be the breakthrough being strived for in developing policies that will lead to the achievement of quality learner outcomes. / Mini Dissertation (MPhil)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Communication Management / MPhil / Unrestricted

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Thesis (MTech (Public Relations Management))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2017 / In popular opinion political public relations practitioners have long been regarded as spin doctors. Their lane of actions is mostly viewed as propaganda and they are perceived as spin doctors who manipulate power-relations. The pervasive role of public relations in political campaigns cannot be denied as political actors rely on communication to reach their key stakeholders. While it can be used as an important tool that can mediate in these power relations, the facts remain in the case of this study that the political party campaign communication was rather reactive than strategic. The answer lays in the accurate application of the strategic nature and role of public relations. I believe that there is a strategic public relations role that is evident and has to be played in political party campaign communication. As a matter of fact, public relations strives to ensure an effective and efficient communication on behalf of its organisation. The purpose of this study was to explore the application of public relations principles in political parties’ campaign communication of the Democratic Alliance, in the context of three other political parties in a regional newspaper during the build-up to the 2014 South African general elections. Four distinct political parties were at the centre of this research, namely African National Congress, Democratic Alliance, Economic Freedom Fighters and Agang. Particular attention was given to the elite parties, African National Congress, and Democratic Alliance; the main environment of the study. It is true that political parties ‘communication with stakeholders reflects in essence public relations. Managing communication to promote the organisational agenda is to talk about issues important to both the public and the political party. This suggests that an effective political organisation will act on a two-way operation to build a common political position that influences public attitudes. Hence, a comparative case study was used as the strategy of inquiry. I conducted a content analysis of the political party campaign communication of the Democratic Alliance, covered in the Cape Times newspaper; as well as their election manifesto, to identify the public relations principles and strategies that were used. The daily newspapers were surveyed from January 8 to May 7, 2014. An overall of one hundred and forty-four related newspapers articles were analysed and formed the data for analysis. A close reading and counting of frequencies of varieties of themes in the newspaper revealed that the Democratic Alliance, as well as the African National congress, took a tactical and responsive approach, rather than a strategic and proactive approach, to their political party campaign communication. News coverage indicated that there was extensive counterpunching to other political parties ‘statuses, but very little promotion or management of the issues included in their election manifesto. Nkandla was the most controversial issue covered in the pre-election media coverage; while the proposed merger with AGANG; and the subsequent fall out was damaging to both political parties ‘reputation and relationship with voters. Therefore, more research on this topic needs to be undertaken, as public relations is crucial in translating public opinions to the organisation. In the political scope, this can serve as an attempt to adjust the socio-political environment to suit the political principles, as well as to help the political principles adjust to the environment by creating the right balance to mutual benefit an organisation and its publics that further ensures a real participatory democracy. Further studies should be done to investigate whether, the advocacy of the two-way symmetrical, as a way to central route to persuasion, along with the dialogical approach can impact on more effective decisions making, and ultimately create a more dynamic public sphere that seeks the resolution of socio-political conflicts. This new knowledge will lead to guidelines for public relations practitioners and can provide useful insights for political communication specialists.

Background: Corporate Social Responsibility has been studied since the 1970s, but was originally controversial and met opposition from e.g. Milton Friedman who viewed a company’s responsibility as being strictly economic. Since then, CSR has grown in scope and importance, especially within the fast fashion industry, and is now a central part of academia and business operations. However, the debate whether companies’ responsibilities are only economic or also include responsibilities such as social, environmental, and transparency- related is still ongoing, and it is therefore interesting to study how companies view their own responsibilities. Purpose: Our research aims to fill the existing research gap regarding how companies view their responsibilities by providing an overview of how the CSR work has changed over time in fast fashion companies. Research Question: How has the focus of the CSR work changed over time in large, international, fast-fashion companies? Methods: A qualitative content analysis inspired by grounded theory was used to answer the research question. The data material consisted of H&M’s sustainability reports from 2002, 2005, 2008, 2011, 2014, 2017 and 2019. The material was categorized into social, environmental or transparency dimensions, along with several under-categories. A simpler analysis of news articles regarding sustainability during the period 2002-2019 was also performed. Results: The results suggest that the fast fashion industry has increased their sense of responsibility as the expectations of stakeholders in the area has grown, and that CSR work increasingly is seen as a possible competitive advantage. The results also show that the most difficult parts to fulfill is the ethical level of the CSR pyramid, due to the difficulty of comprehending and fulfilling the stakeholders’ different expectations and demands, and the social dimension, because of its profound complexity, especially within fast-fashion.

Intressenter är allt mer engagerade kring miljön vilket har bidragit till att det har blivit viktigare för intressenter att göra hållbara beslut. Att företag tar hänsyn till sina intressenter och redovisar sitt arbete gällande hållbara frågor i en hållbarhetsrapport kan bidra till att företaget uppnår legitimitet, vilket kan vara avgörande för deras överlevnad. För att intressenter skall kunna ta beslut eller investera i företag vill de kunna jämföra företag emellan, detta för att kunna fatta dem rätta besluten oavsett vad det gäller. Men då riktlinjerna för hur företag skall eller bör rapportera är många kan det betyda att resultatet kan variera stort och påverka jämförbarheten. Global Reporting Initiative är det mest använda ramverket inom hållbarhetsrapportering, men är endast ett hjälpmedel med riktlinjer för hur rapporteringen bör gå till. Syftet med denna studie var därför att undersöka om hållbarhetsrapporter, med ramverket GRI, påverkar intressenters tolkning och jämförelse mellan företag.    För att uppnå syftet med studien och kunna besvara frågan genomfördes sju semistrukturerade intervjuer. Genom att studera två anonyma företags hållbarhetsrapporter fick respondenterna besvara frågor angående jämförbarhet, tolkning och legitimitet. Genom att analysera respondenternas svar utifrån legitimitetsteorin, intressentteorin och jämförbarhet resulterade studien i att sex av sju respondenter ansåg att rapporterna avvek väldigt mycket från varandra, varav den ena var bristfällig gällande många aspekter. De hade svårt att tolka och förstå den ena rapporten vilket också bidrog till att det i princip var omöjligt att uppnå legitimitet och jämförbarhet för dessa företag. Respondenterna hade önskat att det fanns en standard och standardiserade nyckeltal för att lättare uppnå jämförbarhet. Detta tyder på att behovet av ett tydligt och mer följdriktigt ramverk kan vara betydande för att öka legitimiteten, trovärdigheten och jämförbarheten i rapporterna. / The topic of sustainability is a topic that most people are familiar with. But something that is relatively new and foreign to most is sustainability reporting.  companies report how they work on issues related to the environment, social conditions, staff, respect for human rights and countering corruption. Reporting this to its stakeholders can be significant as it displays and create legitimacy and be crucial to the company's existence. Stakeholders also want to be able to compare companies in order to make the right decisions, but this can be problematic as there are several ways to report the same matter. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to investigate how comparability and legitimacy are affected based on how companies prepare their sustainability report. What the study finds is that legitimacy and comparability are negatively affected by the few guidelines that currently prevail.

Purpose: The aim of this thesis is to examine the link between CSR and EM in the EU manufacturing sector. The former is measured by ESG scores whereas the latter is approximated by discretionary accruals. Moreover, the corporate governance theories of stakeholder and agency are used as starting points. Method: Accruals are calculated using the so-called Modified Jones model. A linear regression equation with five variables is used to calculate the effect of CSR scores on the levels EM. In order to capture the difference, if any, regarding the link between CSR and EM between companies with high CSR scores and those with lower scores, three models are developed – the top 30 percent (model 1), the bottom 70 percent (model 2) and all companies (model 3). Findings: The results indicate CSR scores negatively affect the levels of EM. The causation is statistically significant. Implication: The findings of this study imply CSR practices are not used to hide weaker earnings in the manufacturing sector of the EU. Value: The study contributes to the literature on the link between CSR and EM by focusing on a specific sector that is often scrutinized for its negative environmental footprint. The choice of using three models is also seen to be of additional value.

The intersection of the environment, the economy and society create a wicked problem in salmon aquaculture in Canada. To provide a unique insight into the challenges of the salmon aquaculture industry amongst key stakeholders, this thesis investigates the sentiment of several important stakeholder groups in the salmon aquaculture industry: academics, industry, ENGOs, Government, Indigenous peoples, and the media. By scraping data from Twitter from the years 2006 to 2021, it examines aquaculture sentiment from a global English-speaking view, as well as a subset of Canadian data. This thesis addresses the following questions: How does public sentiment towards salmon aquaculture differ over time? How does public sentiment towards salmon aquaculture differ among stakeholder groups? Data is analyzed through a stakeholder management theory framework using sentiment analysis. Data is collected from Twitter because users prefer it to other social media sites to share their unprompted thoughts, ideas, and opinions. The data is scrapable using the open-source Twitter scraper Twint. The data is processed using Google Colab notebooks: raw data is preprocessed into 273,319 tweets (rows) of clean data, which are analyzed using VADER’s natural language processing tool, yielding a sentiment score between -1 and +1 for each tweet. This thesis explores the dependent variable of sentiment and the independent variable of time. Findings are examined through the lens of overall sentiment, sentiment from year to year (2006-2021), sentiment per stakeholder category, and sentiment per stakeholder category per year. Sentiment from 2007 to 2021 is expected to be increasingly negative because of significant negative events in the salmon aquaculture industry from 2006 to 2021. There have been many policy changes, lawsuits, fish escapes and concerns from ENGOs, Indigenous groups, and researchers about salmon aquaculture during this time. However, the data contradicts this hypothesis by trending positively over time. The overall dataset is consistent and clusters around a mean of 0.3 (slightly positive), a median of 0.4 and a standard deviation of 0.4. The skewness of the general data is -0.994, meaning that the distribution has a moderate negative skew (most tweets have positive sentiment). The dataset has an R-squared value of 0.64, meaning that the data represents a moderate model, and an R-squared value of 0.79 (when removing outliers) shows an absolute strong model. All eight stakeholder group categories display a moderately negative skewness value and a positive mean sentiment. The Academic / Researcher Group and the Industry / Worker stakeholder groups show strong models, and the other stakeholder categories with lower R-squared values show weaker models. This thesis provides new insight into the growing and expanding salmon aquaculture industry. Further, understanding stakeholder sentiment can allow a government, individual, or group to be more proactive in its decision-making rather than reactive. The data allows for open dialogue with all stakeholders and promotes future research, analysis, and collaboration within the salmon aquaculture industry.

Background: Due to the commercialization of football, clubs have put more focus on management in general, and stakeholder management in particular. Despite this, research on stakeholder management in football is in its infancy. Therefore, little is known about how football clubs manage their stakeholders that also possess unique characteristics. Furthermore, these characteristics are more prevalent in Swedish football because of the ownership structure that allows the stakeholder to possess multiple roles at once. Thus, Swedish football was selected as the area to study, as the unique features of Swedish football provide interesting implications.  Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore the concept of stakeholder management in Swedish football. This study aims to understand the managerial implications that arise when managing stakeholders in Swedish football, how tensions are managed, and how to keep stakeholders satisfied.  Method: In order to fulfill the purpose of this thesis, a qualitative multiple case study approach was adopted since the nature of the study is exploratory. Through twelve semi-structured interviews, empirical data was gathered. This study adopted an inductive approach, and the data were analyzed using thematic analysis.  Conclusion: This study has found that tensions are managed through the use of good communication tools, as well as the building of relationships. These relationships later affect the level of influence stakeholders have on the club. Furthermore, clubs keep their stakeholders satisfied by listening, being clear and transparent, having good values for the stakeholders to be proud of, as well as giving stakeholders a good return on their investment. These findings emerged into a suggested framework that displays the relationship between the different aspects of stakeholder management in football.