Despite the high rate of deforestation and directed critique toward its industrial practices, the Swedish forest industry is declaring itself to be an accelerator of a green transition in the race toward carbon-zero. Seemingly, there is a discrepancy between the general perception of forest management and the actor's presentation. Within our research, we question how sustainability in the industry is reasoned and enacted. Bioeconomy has been identified as an increasingly popular concept within the forestry scene that intends to enable a low-carbon society. Two Swedish cluster organizations working within this context became insightful cases. By applying an inductive and qualitative approach we interviewed 13 experts. Through their accounts, we uncovered the prevailing motives for their sustainability work. Drawing upon previous scholarly contributions in the discourse around a green economy, we learned that the dichotomy of industrialism and sustainability is abandoned in the forest industry's perception. The applied practices are deeply rooted in green growth and weak sustainability rationales. Thereby, the industry is contributing to the economization of forests. The alignment of sustainability and growth endeavors results in the paradoxical justification that only harvesting can lead to a low-carbon and fossil-free economy. We encourage future research to continue raising awareness about the problematic dynamics arising from weak sustainability approaches and work together with the industry toward more transformative trajectories.

Bakgrund: Investeringsbeslut är ett av de viktigaste besluten som tas av chefer i företag. Besluten grundar sig på investeringskalkyler, som ryms inom begreppet kapitalbudgetering. I företagsekonomisk litteratur beskrivs sällan samband mellan kapitalbudgetering och annan ekonomisk styrning, vilket innebär att det finns ett tomrum inom forskningsområdet. Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är att beskriva hur företag inom den svenska skogsindustrin utformar och använder kapitalbudgetar som beslutsunderlag samt utreda och förklara sambandet mellan kapitalbudgetering och annan ekonomisk styrning. Metod: I studien har kvalitativ metod och fallstudier använts. Empirin grundas på datainsamling genom fyra semistrukturerade intervjuer av respondenter från fallföretagen SCA, Stora Enso, Holmen och Billerud. Slutsatser: Kapitalbudgetering som det beskrivs i företagsekonomisk litteratur är ingen adekvat definition. Kapitalbudgetering består i själva verket av två delprocesser, vilka är investeringsbudgetering och investeringsprocessen. Det finns tydliga samband mellan kapitalbudgetering och annan ekonomisk styrning genom att ”action controls”, ”results controls”, ”boundary systems” och ”diagnostic control systems” används. Kapitalbudgetering är ett ekonomiskt styrsystem för att skapa och upprätthålla målkongruens inom en organisation. / Background: Investment decisions are among the most important decisions made by managers in companies. These decisions are based upon investment appraisals that are a part of the capital budgeting concept. Within Business administration research relationships between capital budgeting and management control are rarely described and there is a gap in theory. Aim: The purpose of this thesis is to describe how companies within the Swedish Forest Industry perform and use their capital budgets and to investigate and explain relationships between capital budgeting and management control. Method: For this study qualitative method and case studies have been used. The empirical findings were based on four semi structured interviews with respondents from the cases SCA, Stora Enso, Holmen and Billerud. Conclusions: Capital budgeting as it is described in Business administration research is not an adequate definition. As a matter of fact, capital budgeting is divided to two partial processes, which are investment budgeting and the investment process. There exist obvious relationships between capital budgeting and management control in the sense that action controls, results controls, boundary systems and diagnostic control systems are used. Furthermore, capital budgeting is a management control system used in order to maintain goal congruence.