In recent years Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been the subject of much attention and the concept has been referred to as a global movement and mega-trend, which has resulted in a long and diverse history in the academic literature. However, little attention has been paid to the part media plays in the construction and popularization of CSR. The aim of the thesis is to draw insights on how media frames and present the concept of CSR. In order to examine this a quantitative content analysis has been performed on two leading business papers in Sweden, during the years 2005-2014. The thesis builds on a previous study by Grafström and Windell (2011) in which they analyze how CSR is defined in English business press. The findings of this thesis suggest that corporations are the main actors in framing CSR and that Swedish business press mainly stress CSR as a management idea, containing several arguments for incorporating CSR. As oppose to Grafström and Windell (2011) our study presented some differentiating results, which might be explained by different institutional environments.

Scientist and decision-makers on the international and national arena agree that the climate is changing and will continue to change over this century. In fact, even if greenhouse gas emissions are brought to a halt today, the earth is already, to an extent, locked in towards climate change over the next 30-40 years, as a result of the emissions that have been released during the development of the modern society. The next 20 to 30 years efforts to respond to climate change will decide the long-term effects of global warming (IPCC, 2007). Sweden and the Swedish business sector have now the opportunity to set an example for other countries, also concerned with sustainable development, by taking advantages of the possibilities to “climate-proof” business activities within commercial boarders. This qualitative study has examined the Swedish businesses’ understanding of the need to respond to climate change, with focus on mitigation and adaptation strategies. The study is based on eleven in-depth interviews with respondents that represent businesses within the sectors housing (including infrastructure), forestry industry (including paper and pulp production) and transport (including public transportation). The sectors were selected on the basis as they were particularly exposed to climatic impacts, but also with the aim to cover a large span of business activities. By applying a conceptual model of how a response process can take place in an organizational context (based on the parameters awareness and concern, idea of response strategy and response options), the understanding of the respondents was analyzed and assessed. The result indicates that the awareness of climate change is now high among the respondents, while the concern of its impacts varies in the sectors. In general, climate change is perceived as a wide-ranging external threat, that foremost changes conditions in the external context. Hence, in the perspective of the respondents, the largest reverse climate effects will not take place in “their backyard”, but will impact others directly and business indirectly. For that reason they do not consider themselves as exposed to direct impacts, but connect climate change to a need to reduce energy consumption and fossil fuel dependency. Hence, in many cases, the climate change issue has transcended from being treated as an environmental issue to an energy issue. Finally, the results indicate that there is a strong link between adaptation and mitigation in a business context. As climate change is perceived as one by many external factors that can impact activities, businesses will not handle it differently from any other external challenges. For this reason, the concept of examining a systems’ totally response capacity, as has been the focus in this study, could improve further studies on businesses’ perspectives on dealing with climate change.

Bakgrund: IT-branschen är en viktig del av Sveriges ekonomi och förväntas växastadigt, det gör dessa företag relevanta att studera. Ekonomistyrning är en viktigfunktion och om den inte fungerar kan det leda till skadliga konsekvenser för företaget.Det har konstaterats att det finns ett gap mellan hur ekonomistyrningen ser ut i teorinoch hur den används i praktiken. Dock finns det inte mycket tidigare forskning om hurekonomistyrningen ser ut i små svenska IT-företag och därför blir det relevant attundersöka detta. Syfte: Denna uppsats syfte är bidra med forskning om hur små svenska IT-företagsekonomiska styrning ser ut. Genomförande: Uppsatsen är genomförd genom en flerfallstudie på sex små svenska ITföretag. Den utgår ifrån ett realistiskt forskningsperspektiv med en kvalitativforskningsstrategi och en abduktiv ansats. Empirin har samlats in genom ett målstyrturval där två semistrukturerade intervjuer per företag har genomförts. Den enaintervjurespondenten per företag var en högt uppsatt chef och den andraintervjurespondenten per företag var en lägre anställd inom IT. Slutsats: Uppsatsens resultat kommer fram till slutsatsen att det finns stora likheter i hursmå svenska IT-företags ekonomiska styrning ser ut. Det finns ett betydande fokus påicke-finansiella aspekter och det egna ansvaret är något som verkar dominera, det finnsdessutom en stark användning av företagskultur. / Background: The IT industry is an important part of Sweden’s economy and is expectedto steadily grow, therefore justifying the relevancy to investigate these companies.Management control systems are important functions and if they are not workingproperly it could lead to devastating consequences for the company. It has been statedthat there exists a gap between how management control systems are perceived intheory and how they actually are implemented in practice. Considering the lack ofprevious research on how the management control systems are being used in smallerSwedish IT-companies, it makes this topic relevant to investigate. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to contribute with research about managementcontrol systems in small Swedish IT businesses. Completion: The thesis is completed through a multiple case study on six small SwedishIT businesses. It uses realism as its research perspective with a qualitative researchstrategy and an abductive reasoning. The empirical evidence has been gathered througha targeted selection where two semi-structured interviews per business has beenconducted. One of the interviewees per business was a highly positioned manager andthe other interviewee per business was a lower employee in IT. Conclusion: The results of this thesis indicate that there are large similarities betweenmanagement control systems in small Swedish IT businesses. There is a heavy focus onnon-financial aspects and autonomy in the management control systems. There is also astrong use of corporate culture.