Purpose: This master thesis aims to investigate the SMEs' perceptions about digitalization and sustainability of the firm and distinguish the factors that affect them. Furthermore, it illustrates how the SMEs’ digitalization process is linked to their sustainability.  Theoretical approach: This master thesis is based on the previous research and literature on SMEs’ digitalization and sustainability of the firm. Additionally, it proposed a conceptual model that links SMEs' digitalization process to their sustainability. Methodology: This research followed the qualitative method in which the data was obtained through semi-structured interviews with eight SMEs. These SMEs are located in Sweden, France, and Iran. However, the responses were analyzed based on the secondary analysis method. Findings: The study's findings demonstrate that digitalization affects an SME's sustainability through growth, competitiveness advantages, value creation, internal efficiency, and saving costs. Regardless of where SMEs are located, they mostly have the same perception of digitalization and insufficient knowledge about the firm's sustainability, and mainly the same factors affect their digitalization process and sustainability. Practical implications: The results of this study could provide a perspective on adopting the new technology by SMEs. It could inspire SMEs to increase their digitalization capability by adopting new technologies to ensure long-term sustainability in their organizations. It also sheds light on confusing the firm’s sustainability with SDGs, which SMEs must investigate. Originality/Value: This study adds to the digitalization and sustainability of the firm literature by investigating SMEs' perceptions about digitalization and firm’s sustainability, factors that influence the digitalization and sustainability process of the SMEs and examining how SMEs' digitalization processes are linked to their sustainability

Stakeholder engagement is considered, by both researchers and practitioners, an increasingly important aspect of corporate sustainability, and it is argued that companies should work together with their stakeholders to address the substantial social and environmental challenges ahead. Because of its importance, scholars within stakeholder theory and corporate sustainability have called for more research on how stakeholder engagement is conducted. This thesis, based on interviews with sustainability executives representing 18 Nordic companies, explores how companies work to engage stakeholders in their sustainability work. The study indicates that stakeholder engagement is an important part of the companies’ sustainability work, and that the companies are dependent on working together with stakeholders. It also highlights that even though stakeholder engagement occurs on a range of different levels, from one-way communication to strategic collaborations, education and information sharing efforts appear to be the most common. The companies in the study advocate for engaging with all stakeholders, but three stakeholder groups are considered particularly important due to their impact on the companies: customers, investors, and employees. Finally, transparency, openness, and listening are considered important success factors for stakeholder engagement, whereas lack of resources is seen as the overarching challenge.

Sustainability has been considered a novel research field emerging from the desire to protect the environment, and equally emerging in transition discourses. This research explores the construction of sustainability transition processes and pathways in a public sector organization implementing a sustainability oriented program. The study takes on an explorative, qualitative longitudinal approach. Through antenarrative inquiry, analysis is made on the stories and discussions as a reflexive way in expressing experiences and by giving meaning to these experiences. Assessed within sustainability transition theories, processes and pathways emerge from socio-technical transitions and its micro-foundations. Results indicate that pathways of transition exist in socio-technical systems, socio-political systems, socio-institutional systems and in socio-ecological systems as achored in public sector processes. The narrative character and sustainability formations potray inclusivity of actors, continuity and gradual transition processes. It is therefore opined that  sustainability oriented programs and projects implemented in developing nations by the public sector have the ability to enable niche level changes by creating necessary momentum at the micro-foundations required to distabilize dominant regimes. Methodoligally, antenarratives provide an avenue for prospective sensemaking necessary in prospected and wholistic sustainability transitions.

Urbanization and climate change are two of the most important issues of our days. Many attempts have been made to define the most sustainable way to organise cities in order to cope with the increased population, while simultaneously being climate friendly, socially acceptable and economically viable. This master thesis focuses on the comparison of the sustainability performance of two particular theoretically planned urban forms, located in the suburban area of Stockholm – a “compact city”-like neighborhood and a “garden-city”-like neighbourhood. It was decided that the focus would be on the carbon footprint of the representative residences of each urban form, with the help of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA); and that overall sustainability criteria for neighbourhoods would after wards be assessed, having a certification system forsustainable neighbourhoods (CityLab for districts, in particular) as a framework for a – mostly theoreticalassessment. After the exploring of the differences in the sustainability performance(environmental and social) of the two assessed urban forms, a discussion is made concerning the relationship between urban form and sustainability and conditions under which the most sustainable urban form could be achieved. The results of the analysis highlight that the concept “one size fits all” cannot conform to urban planning decisions, since cities should be able to adjust to the needs of each generation.

Background:Social sustainability has had a major impact in recent decade on. Previous studies have primarily focused on the ecological and economic aspects, while social sustainability has not received as much attention. Previous research highlights that social sustainability is not as far developed and lacks strategies for how social sustainability efforts should be implemented in SME.                   Purpose: The aim of the study is to obtain a greater understanding of how SMEs in Sweden work with social sustainability today and to contribute to the development of social sustainability by proposing specific factors to SMEs that are central to the work around social sustainability.  Method: The study is a multiple case study and assumes a descriptive quantitative study in combination with a qualitative study. The study has called for a abductive approach. Based on interviews and questionnaires, the study has gathered what constitutes the empirical data for this study.  The data has then been analyzed through the theory to answer the study's research question.                      Conclusions: Today, SME works with social sustainability, but more on a general level. The work primarily takes place through activities such as social responsibility, good working conditions and gender equality. Although the work takes place more on a general level, the study showed that SMEs understand the importance of working with social sustainability, but what prevents SMEs from working more effectively with social sustainability is mainly resources. These resources are used as a basis for developing the work around social sustainability at SME. Furthermore, it is indicated that SMEs need guidelines and the right skills for the CSR work to be developed and adapted to SME needs and resources. / Bakgrund: Social hållbarhet har haft stor inverkan det senaste decennierna på företag och samhället i helhet. Inom området har tidigare studier primärt fokuserat på de ekologiska och ekonomiska aspekterna samtidigt som social hållbarhet inte fått lika stort fokus. Tidigare forskning belyser att social hållbarhet inte är lika långt utvecklad och saknar strategier för hur sociala hållbarhetsarbeten ska implementeras i SME.  Syfte:  Studiens syfte är att erhålla ökad förståelse för hur SME i Sverige arbetar med social hållbarhet idag samt bidra till utvecklingen av social hållbarhet genom att föreslå specifika faktorer till SME som är centrala i arbetet kring social hållbarhet. Metod: Studien är en deskriptiv kvalitativ flerfallstudie men kombinerats men en kvalitativ studie. Studien har anmanat en abduktiv ansats. Utifrån intervjuer och enkäter har studien samlat ihop det som utgör empirin för denna studie. Empirin har sedan analyserats med hjälp av teorin för att kunna besvara studiens forskningsfråga.  Slutsats: SME arbetar idag med social hållbarhet men mer på en generell nivå. Primärt sker arbetet genom aktiviteter som bland annat socialt ansvar, goda arbetsförhållanden och jämställdhet. Trots att arbetet sker mer på en generell nivå visade studien att SME förstår vikten av att arbeta med social hållbarhet men det som hindrar SME att arbeta mer effektivt med social hållbarhet är främst resurser. Dessa resurser används som underlag för att utveckla arbetet kring social hållbarhet i SME. Vidare indikeras att SME behöver riktlinjer och rätt kompetens för att CSR-arbetet skall utvecklas och anpassade efter SME behov och resurser.

The Sharing Economy is an innovative social, economic and technological paradigm which is shaping worldwide production and consumption patterns of many industries. Its strength relies on factors of competitiveness such as the use of idle capacity, temporary access to resources without transfer of ownership, the flexibility and adaptability of its models, and the participation of a growing number of players allowed by peer-to-peer digital platforms. From the management perspective, the conditions for lasting competitiveness lies on sustainability, the paradigm integrating the supply, demand, and technological dimensions in a holistic, or ecosystem, perspective. Tourism is among the industries making extensive use of sharing digital platforms and experiencing changes that foster the sustainability debate. The PhD Thesis aims to investigate the relationships between competitiveness and sustainability in the tourism and hospitality accommodation industry in the Sharing Economy Era. Its investigation is multifaced and is addressed through three studies adopting a post-modernist perspective that builds on qualitative approaches and strategies for data collection and analysis. The Part I of the Thesis explores the Sharing Economy concept’s evolution and the sustainability issues through an in-depth review of the literature. Results reveal the leading economic-technological evolution of the paradigm over the social one, and its dual links with sustainability in relation to the extensive use of peer-to-peer digital platforms. Therefore, the evolution of the Sharing Economy activities have shown that today competitiveness is built on the interactions of an ever-increasing number of actors and factors, both off-line and on-line, within a complex ecosystem for the creation of – shared – value. The tourism industry strongly challenges this relationship between extended competition and sustainability. The Part II evaluates the competitiveness model and its evolution during the Sharing eTourism Era in the tourism and hospitality accommodation sector introducing an ecosystem perspective for the creation and distribution of shared value. Specifically, it investigates how the non-traditional and informal tourist services have affected the structure of the industry and have altered the competition among the actors, through semi-structured in-depth interviews. Results show that competitiveness is given by the balance among the complex interactions of internal and external ecosystem’s actors and factors. On a micro level this imply that businesses must adopts an ecosystem vision compensating for negative externalities which translate into the adoption of Business Models promoting sustainability for the creation of sustainable shared value. Therefore, the Part III investigates through the use of an illustrative case study how peer-to-peer digital platforms in the tourist accommodation service can boost profitability while strengthening economic, social and environmental sustainability by applying the innovative Business Model for Sustainability. The research sheds light on the complex Sharing Economy literature and lays the theoretical foundations for the implementation of managerial strategies aimed at promoting extended sustainable competition-cooperation.

Purpose - The current unsustainable environment demands a sustainability transition. Municipalities are critical players in this transition. By fostering the development of sustainability competencies through improving the learning culture in Swedish eco-municipalities, this research aims to foster the sustainability transition. Design/methodology/approach - This research aims to understand the current learning culture of Swedish eco-municipalities using semi-structured interviews and focus groups. Both methods also provided insights for recommendations to improve the learning culture in eco-municipalities. For validation of these recommendations, quantitative data analysis is used. The sample includes practitioners and experts in the field. Findings - The research provides insights into the high relevance of interpersonal competency for the sustainability transition. Moreover, practitioners in municipalities focus on strategic thinking competency and topical knowledge, whereas experts in the field focus more on systems thinking and intrapreneurial competence. Further, continuous learning opportunities, collaboration, and inquiry play a big role in the learning environment. Finally, the research provides seven validated recommendations to foster the learning culture to support learning for sustainability. Quality/value - This research supports (Swedish) municipalities in their sustainability by providing insights into challenges in the current learning culture and developing practical recommendations. Further, the study emphasizes the importance of integrating learning into the vision, values, and strategy of municipalities, involving leaders and practitioners. Ultimately, the research highlights that building sustainability competencies requires a comprehensive understanding of learning as an ongoing process integrated into the organizational culture.

This study aims to explore the future of sustainability reporting in emerging economies. The purpose is to better understand factors influencing sustainability reporting and its practice. Stakeholders' interest in sustainability has seen a rise in recent years. The study employed a qualitative research design, where sustainability reports and disclosures and semi-structured interviews were used to gather data for the thematic analysis. The study's finding reveals a variation in approach to the sustainability reporting practice in the Bangladeshi clothing industry, especially in how they are disclosed, where most sustainability reports produced are limited to financially involved stakeholders. NGOs like the BGMEA play an influential role in how sustainability reporting is practiced in the Bangladeshi clothing industry. Challenges that were revealed from this study were the profit-driven focus of the sustainability reporting practice, resource constraints within the companies, and lack of guidelines and expertise. The findings contribute to understanding sustainability reporting in the clothing industry in Bangladesh and suggest avenues for further research and development opportunities in reporting practices.

This report mainly introduces how I, as a designer, use the meta-design theoretical framework and design methods to explore my board game design. Introduction “The most important challenge today and in the future concerns sustainability – to create a world that is good for both people and the environment, locally and globally”. -Linnaeus University I am a design student from China studying in Sweden. It is a challenge for me to go abroad and come to a new country and city to study and live, but also an interesting change. This thesis was inspired by some of my experiences in Sweden. As a newcomer to another country. I have no particular knowledge of Swedish. Although I did some research before coming to Sweden, all I know is that Sweden is a neutral country. It is a country that likes to maintain social distance. It is a country that pays great attention to environmental protection and sustainable development. It is a country with a very lovely language. But just knowing these things cannot help me to study and live in Sweden well. I realized I needed some help from the locals. So here came my first question. How can I get in touch with the locals? For me as a student, the best connection resources are already in front of me. That is my classmates. But as a new student who just arrived in the class, I did not have enough courage to take the initiative to ask the local students about how to live in Sweden. However, I was lucky. Most of my classmates are very enthusiastic. From the conversations with them, I can feel their curiosity about me. Maybe it was because we are about to spend three years studying together, or maybe it was out of kindness to others. Compared with my luck, other friends around me who also came to Sweden to study felt a little bit lost. They found it difficult to integrate with local students. They did not know how to open the topic, and they did not know how to find a common language. They found that local students were more likely to hang out with friends from their own country. During the two years I spent in Sweden, I felt the warmth of the local people. Of course, there are also many cultural differences. I also heard from many friends around me that they think it is difficult to really integrate into Sweden. They could feel a sense of social powerlessness. So, I started thinking, as a design student, what design changes can I make for this? Is it possible to use design to make an experimental intervention game? For example, integrating the simple board games we used to play as children, and redesigning and integrating them into an activity that can be made and played together in a social place. Of course at the same time, I also discovered some small games that Swedish students like to play at parties. Like an icebreaker, everyone is happily participating. But the materials these games require are not particularly environmentally friendly. For example, disposable plastic cups, plastic ping pong balls. Especially during the epidemic, every time a party was held, some students were infected with the virus. So, I was thinking, what kind of games do not require close physical proximity, are interactive and are environmentally friendly and can be used sustainably? With this question, I started my game design journey.

Communication around climate change is a challenging area. It is beneficial for companies to present themselves as more environmentally sustainable than they are, leading to greenwashing. Type 1 ecolabels, as described in the ISO standard 14024, try to mitigate this problem by providing independent verification of a company’s claims. TCO Certified is a type 1 environmental label, so ensuring that the organization behind TCO Certified, TCO Development, does not contribute to greenwashing is critical. TCO Certified has created a tool called the “benchmarking functionalities”. Using this tool, brand owners in the IT industry can compare their certified products using Sustainability Performance Indicators (SPIs) defined by TCO Development. Misinterpretations by brand owners using the “benchmarking functionalities” must be minimized to ensure the tool does not contribute to greenwashing. The design activity framework has been used for this study to create an alternative version of the benchmarking functionalities. The focus of the design process was to create a visualization that maximizes user comprehension to ensure the data cannot be misinterpreted and misused for greenwashing without compromising on usability. The alternative version was compared to the original version of the benchmarking functionalities in a user study. The results indicate that the original version of the benchmarking functionalities has a better System Usability Scale (SUS) score, and users could solve tasks quicker than with the alternative version. However, the users performed the tasks better with the alternative version. The difference between the correctness of the answers and the user’s confidence that their answer to a task was correct was larger for all tasks for the original version, indicating that there might be a false sense of comprehension in the original version of the benchmarking functionalities. To further understand the results, understanding how learning has impacted the study’s outcome is needed. Another relevant direction to study further is how stakeholders from different cultures, in terms of company and country, interpret and use visualizations for sustainability data. / Kommunikation kring klimatförändringar är ett utmanande område. Det finns incitament för företag att framställa sig som mer ekologiskt hållbara än de faktiskt är, vilket leder till grönmålning. Med hjälp av miljömärkningar av typ 1 som är definierade enligt ISO-standarden 14024, kan konsumenter få hjälp med att förstå huruvida ett företags påståenden om hållbarhet stämmer genom oberoende verifikation. TCO Certified är en typ 1 miljömärkning. Därmed är det viktigt för organisationen bakom TCO Certified, TCO Development, att se till att de inte är med och bidrar till gröntvättning på något sätt. TCO Certified har utvecklat ett verktyg för produktjämförelse och konkurrensanalys. Med hjälp av detta verktyg kan varumärkesägare inom IT-industrin med certifierade produkter jämföra sina produkter med varandra med hjälp av hållbarhetsindikatorer (SPIer) som har definierats av TCO Development. Det är viktigt att denna data inte kan misstolkas av varumärkesägare. I denna studie har designriktlinjerna definierade i ramverket för designaktiviteter använts, för att skapa en alternativ design av verktyget för produktjämförelse och konkurrensanalys. Huvudfokus i designprocessen var att skapa en visualisering som maximerar användarens förståelse av hållbarhetsdata, utan att kompromissa med användarvänligheten. Samtidigt är det också viktigt att utveckla visualiseringen så att användaren inte kan misstolka data på ett sätt som kan användas för grönmålning. Den alternativa versionen jämfördes med originalversionen av verktyget för produktjämförelse och konkurrensanalys i en användarstudie. Resultaten visar att användarna upplevde originalversionen som mer användarvänlig, och användarna löste uppgifter snabbare än med den alternativa versionen. Men användarna kunde lösa uppgifterna bättre med den alternativa versionen. Skillnaden mellan hur rätta svaren var och hur säkra användarna var på att de svarat med rätt svar skilde sig dock mycket i originalversionen, för alla uppgifter. Detta pekar på att användarna kan uppleva en falsk känsla av förståelse för hur originalversionen av verktyget för produktjämförelse och konkurrensanalys ska användas. För att vidare förstå resultaten från denna studie behövs det undersökas vad inlärning har för effekt på användarnas upplevelse av verktyget. En annan relevant riktning som kan undersökas i framtida studier är hur intressenter från olika kulturer, likväl företags- som geografisk kultur, tolkar och använder visualiseringar med hållbarhetsdata.