This thesis is an exploration of the extent to which Paul�s terminology of Inheritance [(...)] in Romans, and its associated imagery, logic and arguments, functioned to evoke socio-political expectations that were alternative to those which prevailed in contemporary Roman imperial discourse. There are two parts to this study. The first is to take seriously the context of Empire and the claims being made by the Roman Empire in the first century. In particular, what were some of the messages conveyed by the Roman Empire with regard to the structure and purpose, the hopes and expectations, of first-century society? The Christians in Rome were daily exposed to the images and message of Caesar and his successors and there is therefore a need to consider how Paul�s language of Inheritance would have sounded within this environment. Second, this study gives attention to the content of Paul�s use of the word "inheritance" as it occurs in Romans. In order to address this question, three interrelated ideas are explored. First, for Paul, what does the inheritance consist of? The traditional understanding is that the concept is an entirely spiritualised or transcendent reality. This study proposes a more this-worldly, geographical nature to the word. Second, there is the closely related question of the political nature of inheritance. If it is the case that the language of inheritance has to do with the renewal of the land, then who inherits this land? These two questions raise a third issue-how will the inheritance transpire? Paul�s inheritance language contributes to notions of lordship, authority and universal sovereignty for the people of God. Conceivably, the path to this dominion could mirror the hegemonic intentions of imperial Rome which envisages the triumph of one group of people (the strong) over another (the weak). Is this the case with Paul�s inheritance language, or does it somehow undermine all claims to power and control? There are five undisputed uses of [...] and its cognates in Romans-Rom 4:13, 14; Rom 8:17 (three times) and there is one textual variant in Rom 11:1 where the word [...] is used in place of [...]. This study finds that, to varying degrees in each of these texts, the inheritance concept is not only a direct confrontation to other claims to rule, it is also simultaneously a reversal of all other paths to lordship and rule. This study then considers the use of the concept in the two other undisputed Pauline letters where it occurs (Galatians and 1 Corinthians) and also in the disputed letter to the Colossians. The overriding impression is that there is nothing in Galatians, 1 Corinthians or Colossians which significantly challenges the this-worldly, political nature of the language of inheritance in Romans. In these epistles and in Romans Paul employs the language and politics of inheritance in order to subvert the message of Empire.

<p><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong>  </strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></p><p><strong>Datum:           </strong>2009-05-29</p><p><strong>Författare:     </strong>Sanne Jotorp, sjp07001@student.mdh.se</p><p>                        Linnéa Olsson, lon08004@student.mdh.se</p><p><strong>Handledare:   </strong>Ann-Sofi Paul</p><p><strong>Titel:               </strong>Ett företagsperspektiv på bestyrkt hållbarhetsredovisning - Vilka motiv kan finnas till ett bestyrkande</p><p><strong>Nivå:               </strong>Kandidatuppsats i ekonomistyrning</p><p><strong>Syfte:              </strong>Syftet med undersökningen är att utifrån ett företagsperspektiv beskriva vilka motiv som kan tänkas finnas till ett bestyrkande. Ambitionen är att försöka förstå vad ett bestyrkande kan innebära för företagets interna hållbarhetsarbete och för förhållandet till interna och externa intressenterna.</p><p><strong>Metod:</strong>            Undersökningen har formen av en förstudie och en kvalitativ undersökningsmetodik har tillämpats. Till grund för den teoretiska referensramen ligger en litteraturstudie. Empirin grundar sig på semistrukturerade intervjuer som har genomförts med ett urval av företag. I analysen fångas en helhetsbild av de samband och mönster som kan utläsas ur insamlade data.</p><p><strong>Slutsats:          </strong>De tendenser som kan skönjas i undersökningen visar att legitimitet för företagets handlingar kan stärkas i förhållande till både interna och externa intressenter. De motiv till ett bestyrkande som tydligast kan urskiljas är dels att hållbarhetsrapporteringen och det interna hållbarhetsarbetet kan säkerställas och effektiviseras. Dessutom kan de interna intressenternas förståelse för hållbarhetsfrågor öka och transparensen gentemot externa intressenter öka.</p><p><strong>Nyckelord:</strong>     Hållbarhet, hållbarhetsredovisning, bestyrkande, legitimitet, intressenter.</p> / <p> </p><p><strong>Date:               </strong>2009-05-29</p><p><strong>Authors:         </strong>Sanne Jotorp, sjp07001@student.mdh.se</p><p><strong>                        </strong>Linnéa Olsson, lon08004@student.mdh.se</p><p><strong>Tutor:             </strong>Ann-Sofi Paul<strong></strong></p><p><strong>Title:               </strong>A Corporate Perspective on Assurance of Sustainability Reporting - What kind of motives might there be for an assurance<strong></strong></p><p><strong>Level:             </strong>Bachelor Thesis in Management Accounting<strong></strong></p><p><strong>Purpose:         </strong>The purpose of the essay is to describe, from a corporate perspective, what kind of motives there might be for an assurance. The ambition is to try to understand what an assurance can mean for the internal corporate sustainability work and the corporate relationship to internal and external stakeholders.<strong></strong></p><p><strong>Method:         </strong>The essay has the form of a preliminary study and a qualitative study method has been used. A scholarly literature study forms the base of the theoretical reference frame. Semistructured interviews have been made with a sample of corporations to form the base of the empirical material. In the analysis the connections and the patterns that can be interpreted has been captured to give a general picture.<strong></strong></p><p><strong>Conclusion:    </strong>The tendencies that can be discerned shows that legitimacy for the actions of a corporation can be strengthened in the relationship to both internal and external stakeholders. The motives for an assurance that most clearly can be discerned are partly that the internal sustainability reporting and internal sustainability work can be ensured and made more effective.<strong> </strong>Furthermore the internal stakeholders understanding of sustainability questions can increase and the transparency towards external stakeholders can increase.</p><p><strong>Keywords:</strong>     Sustainability, sustainability reporting, assurance, legitimacy, stakeholders.</p>

<p>Background: Ambiguity and confusion of ideas within the area of social responsibility have led to that companies not really know how to work with these types of questions. One way for companies to deal with their social responsibility is to affiliate to an initiative that exists and through this show their standpoint. One of these is Globalt Ansvar, a Swedish governmental initiative that is based on Global Compact’s principles and the guidelines of OECD. What does it mean for the companies when showing their point of view? Is this a way to gain legitimacy?</p><p>Purpose: The purpose with the thesis is to judge if organisations’ work with Corporate Social Responsibility gains more legitimacy by affiliating to Globalt Ansvar.</p><p>Research method: A survey made through telephone interviews with representatives from all of the fifteen Swedish companies which today are affiliated to Globalt Ansvar.</p><p>Conclusions: In order to give the affiliated companies more legitimacy, Globalt Ansvar has to be a legitimate initiative. Today Globalt Ansvar has problems with their legitimacy due to external and internal communication. The internal communication falls short while the companies have a lack of conceptual ideas. In addition the internal conversations do not create incentives sufficient enough to create a common platform. Globalt Ansvar hasn’t led to any concrete activities and the roles in the cooperation are indistinct. The external communication is lacking because of the failure in packaging the brand [Globalt Ansvar] in a successful way but also due to poor marketing.</p>

<p>Postmodernism and neo-liberalism is often thought of as two opposite conceptions of the reality and the world. This thesis takes on a critical view of this assertion and the main purpose was to perform a correlation between postmodernism and neo-liberalism. With different theoretical assumptions about constructions of thoughts, agency and structure and the welfare-state a theoretical framework was created. According to this framework the two isms were correlated to each other and the welfare-state to see if there where similarities or dissimilarities between the isms. The assumptions of this thesis are that there are correlations between postmodernism and neo-liberalism in the constructions of thoughts, namely similar view on epistemology. The two isms also show similarity between each other towards the foundations upon which the modern welfare-state rests. This is mainly manifested in their common view of the institutions of the welfare-state, which the isms both finds problematic. This results in a mutual problematic view on positive freedom, the foundation of legitimacy, the means and economic democracy as they are manifested in a given welfare-state. However, the motive for criticism rests mostly on different justifications for the two isms. Anyhow, their views share doubts about the legitimacy of the welfare-state in common. This even though postmodernism is partly a result of the welfare-politics. This thesis also shows why postmodernism and neo-liberalism at least in a theoretical perspective can not continue to develop side by side.</p>

<p> </p><p>The purpose of this essay is to study the republican and socialist Northern Ireland political party Sinn Féin and to examine its legitimacy in the eyes of the citizens of Northern Ireland. Is it possible to have a political agenda that includes violence and still maintain legitimacy? The Irish Republican Army’s (IRA) military struggle was for a long time a part of the party’s political agenda. This strategy has been described as to have a ballot paper in one hand and an Armalite in the other, and successfully made Sinn Féin one of the province’s largest political parties. I have examined the time period from 1989 to present time. My concept of legitimacy is based on a theory by the political scientist Mikael Axberg, who describes legitimacy to be a concept that contains three different parts: a legal, a democratic and a sociological perspective. Methodically this essay is both a qualitative and quantitative study. </p><p>The main question of the essay is:”Can Sinn Féin be considered to be a political party of a legitimate foundation in the eyes of the citizens?”. In order to examine this question I have used three sub questions:</p><p>1) Is Sinn Féin, from a legal understanding of legitimacy, a legitimate party?</p><p>2) Is Sinn Féin, from a democratic understanding of legitimacy, a legitimate party?</p><p>3) Is Sinn Féin, from a sociological understanding of legitimacy, a legitimate party?</p><p>Of course this is not the only way to understand legitimacy and approach this problem, but it is the way I find most useful in order to answer the question. The sub questions have a wide range and include three different perspectives, which provides a good foundation for answering the main question of the essay.</p><p>The essay comes to the conclusion that Sinn Féin is a legitimate party in the eyes of the citizens, if the polarisation of the society is considered. Catholic and protestant citizens have very different views on the legitimacy of Sinn Féin. The essay concludes that if a society is as polarised as Northern Ireland, that has to be taken into account when questions of legitimacy are examined.</p><p> </p>

<p>This study deals with sustainability reporting in three governmental and three non-governmental Swedish companies in different industries. With increasing demands from the society regarding company’s CSR - Corporate social responsibility, the perspective of accounting gets broader and covers even non-financial information to meet not only the owners’ demands but also others stakeholders' requirements. Sustainability has become an important tool for creating company’s business value and a positive sustainable external image. Different requirements in the field of such accounting for state and non-state enterprises make the phenomenon interesting to study. The purpose of this study was to find out how the sustainability reporting differs between governmental and non-governmental Swedish companies and how it is influenced by the legitimacy and stakeholders’ perspective.</p><p>The six companies included in the case study were state-owned SAS, Vattenfall and TeliaSonera and non-governmental Peab, Alfa-Laval and RNB Retail and Brands. To understand the phenomenon and explain the empirical data the using of legitimacy and stakeholder theories were helpful. Furthermore, mandatory and optional regulations in the area were presented, as well as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines, which are becoming more recognized as a standard for sustainability reporting. The Empirical data was taken from interviewing the qualified people from the respective companies, corporate sustainability reports and other sustainability-related information. After the completed research it revealed that sustainability reporting is different depending on the type of company, its business and its stakeholders. The non-mandatory regulation in the area creates flexibility for the company, which gives companies greater capacity and opportunity for self-regulation within the CSR field.</p>

<p>In recent years there have been many corporate scandals from environmental and social aspects. Corporate irresponsible behavior has led to major public discussions on responsibility and these pressures made that many companies wanting to show that they are working for a sustainable development by voluntarily reporting economic, environmental and social and social issues in the financial statement. They hope this will create credibility for the companies. In the current situation, there are a number of guidelines that companies can use to report sustainability. One of these is the GRI guidelines which is an international framework that covers many accounting areas and allows companies to compare their sustainability reports with other companies.</p><p>The purpose of this study is to determine if all state-owned companies follows the government’s requirement that these companies must form a sustainability report under the GRI guidelines, and the sustainability report must be audited and certified by an outside party. To answer the purpose of our study, we have chosen to investigate all these companies’ sustainability reports which are available in the corporate website for the year 2009 but also 2008 to see if there is any development between these periods. The sustainability reports were examined in three categories that would give the answer to our question and this was shown in a table. The theories that we have used is the intuitional theory and legitimacy theory at finding out if they can explain the empirical results. In our conclusion, it appeared that not all the companies had acted in accordance with the requirement applicable to the three aspects that were investigated in 2008; none of these issues had been fully recognized by the companies. For 2009, it emerged that the companies had become much better at reporting under the guidelines. All companies reported fully under the requirement in two of the three categories.</p>

<p>This thesis examines the concept of legitimacy and its evolution over time in the context of the banking sector of the transition economy of Latvia, where Swedish banks are the dominant player. After an economic boom starting at the turn of the millennia, which was to a great extent financed by the Swedish banks, the Latvian economy has now completely turned around, in the wake of numerous unanswered signs of overheating and the global economic crisis. Although they acted within legal limits, the Swedish banks and their behavior have become the object of criticism in Latvia as well as in Sweden. To study the evolution of the legitimacy granted by their stakeholders, we make use of Suchman's legitimacy theory and rely on a mix of interviews and secondary data to obtain an overview of the events that occurred and understand what the public opinion is regarding these. We then propose an empirical framework to define the aspects of legitimacy that have been damaged, before suggesting strategies to repair it. Our main conclusions are that cognitive and moral legitimacy are the types that were harmed the most, although some ways exist to repair this damage. The results also show that the processes of legitimation are somewhat different in the case of a transition economy, but that the general public's expectations from the banking sector remain similar to that of Western countries. Furthermore, it seems pointless to try to seek a scapegoat for what went wrong; instead, it would be more useful to look for means to prevent this type of events from repeating in the future.</p>

Thesis (doctoral)--Humboldt-Universität, Berlin, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 261-273).

<p>Uppsatsens problemställning utgår från en eventuell brist i utbildning eller kunskap om gällande doktriner för svenska förband i utlandstjänst. Uppsatsen har ansatsen att visa på en ögonblicksbild av hur ett svenskt förband tolkar begreppet legitimitet och hur det arbetar med att stödja detta i genomförandet av verksamheten. Jämförande underlag och även analysverktyg utgår från ett brett urval inom forskning om upprorsbekämpning och även amerikanska doktriner samt reglementen.</p><p>Uppsatsen utgår från att begreppet legitimitet har stor betydelse för teorier kring upprorsbekämpning och även för den använda amerikanska doktrinen. Begreppet legitimitet har definierats med hjälp av tre frågeställningar, <em>Legitimitet för vem, Vem ska uppfatta vad som legitimt?</em> samt<em> Vem genererar legitimiteten åt vad? </em></p><p><p>Resultatet visar på att det svenska förbandet i det undersökta exemplet har en bred syn på begreppet legitimitet och kopplar det till såväl sig själva som statsmakten i värdlandet och detta både mot befolkningen i hemlandet och också i operationsområdet. Skillnaderna mot vad som i uppsatsen redovisas som COIN teori eller amerikansk doktrin är små. En viktig del är dock att uppsatsen visar på att det svenska förbandets huvudsakliga definition av legitimitet inom ett COIN-perspektiv är stärkandet av landets säkerhetsorganisationers legitimitet kontra den egna befolkningen. Detta skulle skilja sig mot ovan redovisad teori och doktrin.</p></p> / <p>The essay presentation of a problem proceed from a possible lack of training or knowledge about valid doctrines for Swedish units conducting service abroad. The essay have the goal to give a snapshoot picture of how a Swedish unit interpret the concept of legitimacy and how the unit works with different aspects to support this. Relating material and also the tool for conducting the analysis are gathered from a wide selection of science in counterinsurgency and also American doctrines.</p><p>The paper assumes that the concept of legitimacy is important in theories surrounding counterinsurgency and also for the used American doctrine. The concept of legitimacy has been defined by three issues, <em>Legitimacy for whom</em>, <em>Who will perceive what is legitimate</em>? and <em>Who generates legitimacy for what</em>?</p><p>The result shows that the Swedish unit in the examined example has a width of vision of the concept of legitimacy and linking it to both themselves as the state of the host country and that both the population in both the home and area of operation. The differences of what is in the paper are reported as COIN theory or the American doctrine is small. An important part is that the paper shows that the Swedish's unit primary definition of legitimacy in a COIN perspective, are the strengthening of the country's security organizations legitimacy versus its own population. This would differ from the above reported theory and doctrine.</p>