Abstract Today's society is developing towards a more conscious and dedicated attitude concerning the need for sustainable businesses. To ensure that the construction business who is responsible for massive impacts to environment and the society, the legislation demanding sustainability reporting has been passed in the EU. The purpose of this legislation is to force companies to include the environmental and social aspects of their operations and not just the economic. The purpose of this study is therefore to investigate how the construction companies in Sweden has been affected due to the legislation on sustainability reporting. The aim of this study is, through a qualitative working method, to answer which governing instruments the construction companies use in order to implement sustainability in the entire organisation on a day to day basis. The study has investigated four construction companies largely based in and around the three biggest cities in Sweden, Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö. The interviewees in each company has a role in which they are involved in the strategic operations towards sustainability. The aim is here for the study to answer which governing instruments has been the most influential and successful. The results of the study reveals that beyond the legislation each company has a very different approach and layout concerning the sustainability reporting. The reason for this is because each company has different guidelines through frameworks and certification standards. Depending on what they consider to be vital elements to report, the reportings differ leading to different forms of governing throughout the companies. This also shows that the most successful governing instruments differ as well. Although the study concludes that the companies have mutual governing instruments in the form of education for the employees to enhance competence. It also shows that they all use instruments impacting employee values which leads to a comprehensible understanding of the company’s visions and guidelines.

Le travail réalisé dans le cadre de cette thèse propose une démarche de sélection de partenaires (fournisseurs et prestataires) dans une chaîne logistique durable en boucle fermée. Il s’agit d’évaluer les partenaires en fonction de critères économiques, environnementaux, et sociétaux puis de sélectionner ceux qui interviennent dans la chaîne logistique en respectant un ensemble des contraintes. Nous développons une méthode d’évaluation et de classement des partenaires basée sur une approche hybride en utilisant les méthodes AHP et PROMETHEE, dans un environnement flou. Ensuite, nous proposons un modèle mathématique multi-objectif qui permet non seulement de minimiser le coût total de la chaîne logistique, mais également de maximiser la valeur totale de l’approvisionnement, minimiser les émissions de gaz à effet de serre et maximiser le bénéfice sociétal. Nous utilisons une approche max-min pondérée pour résoudre le modèle proposé à l’aide de l’outil de modélisation et d’optimisation GAMS. / Reverse logistics network design is a crucial issue in which it is important to take into account the selection of the most appropriate partner with sustainability concerns. This partner can be a supplier or a third-party reverse logistics provider (3PRLP). However, research works that consider reverse logistics (RL) network design, partner selection, and sustainability issues simultaneously are rather limited till now. This research work proposes an integrated sustainable approach for partner selection and closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) network configuration, particularly in the case of outsourcing reverse logistics process to third-party provider. We propose a trade-off between sustainability criteria for both supplier and 3PRL provider selection. A multi-objective mixed-integer programming (MILP) model is also proposed to configure CLSC network and to select the best partners. The model minimizes the total cost of sourcing, and the total greenhouse gas emissions, while it maximizes the total value of reverse logistics, and the number of new job opportunities. A numerical example is also presented to illustrate the proposed approach.