This study investigates the application of life cycle thinking (LCT) and life cycle assessment (LCA) in the field of waste management from perspectives based in the social sciences. LCT is explored through the theoretical construct of regimes, drawing theoretical resources from a combination of the ‘pragmatic turn’, the economics of conventions and transition theory.This work is based on eight papers treating theoretical arguments, qualitative and quantitative analysis, case studies and semi-structured interview data. LCT is placed in the context of contemporary societies. LCA is seen as an instrument of quantification and evaluation used by actors which have both similar and disparate objectives, and who offer justifications for its use through arguments embedded in conflicting pluralities of worth. Furthermore, this work analyses LCA as a tool for the qualification of the waste hierarchy; a waste management principle articulating a convention based on closed material cycles. This study argues that the technological trajectory of waste management regimes has been significantly influenced, inter alia, by actors’ institutional articulation of the waste hierarchy at national and territorial levels. It discusses the legitimacy of LCA, and the quantitative application of LCT, as an intermediary object used to qualify the waste hierarchy. Furthermore, LCT is placed in a prospective context which may be used to assist in the transition toward sustainable waste management. / <p>QC 20121127</p>

Doctors, academically educated and authorized, assert that there is more to being a real doctor than having fulfilled the formal criteria. It has been said that there is a particular doctor's ethos, which is based not only on thorough medical education but also on traditional know-how, internalized ethics and good character. This paper contains several studies of the efforts of Swedish physicians to define themselves as doctors, individually and collectively, during the period 1890-1960 and to identify the ethos of their profession. The empirical material consists mainly of texts written by doctors for doctors on different social and political questions pertaining to the profession's interests. Studying the identities, interests and ideals that have been expressed by Swedish doctors in society and on the professional and individual level made it possible to distinguish and describe different aspects of their particular ethos. The starting point for these studies was the discussions during the inter-war period – held above all in Germany but also in Sweden – about the crisis of medicine and of the medical profession (chapter 1). Developments in legislation concerning the authorization of doctors show the ambiguity of the Swedish doctor's legal identity (chapter 2). The Swedish medical profession's efforts to hold on to the concept of internalized ethics meant that formal ethical rules were not accepted until 1951 (chapter 3). A study of medical obituaries revealed that the ideal doctor was seen as a man and a good colleague with his ethics rooted in antiquity (chapter 4). The heterogeneous medical profession has not been able to reach a consensus as to a common identity or common interests and ideals. The efforts of leading men amongst Swedish doctors gain charismatic, traditional and legal legitimacy for the profession have been opposed. After 1960, however, doctor's legitimacy in the scientific field has gained ground (chapter 5). Debate concerning the ethos of the doctors served as a strategy to unite the profession and to draw boundaries against those considered to be unqualified actors in the field of the healing arts. This, in itself, is part of this ethos.

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? Purpose: The purpose with the thesis is to judge if organisations’ work with Corporate Social Responsibility gains more legitimacy by affiliating to Globalt Ansvar. Research method: A survey made through telephone interviews with representatives from all of the fifteen Swedish companies which today are affiliated to Globalt Ansvar. 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.

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. 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.

Mirrors of Change is a cross-sectional study of micro and macro institutional environments that envisages to analyse shifts in the sources of institutional legitimacy since the 1960s. The main aim is to understand whether homogenising macro institutions are adopted at the micro institutional levels. In order to do this, the study examines the heterogenising elements that are specific to local environments. At the micro level, the focus is on two industry associations, namely, the Cámara de Industrias del Uruguay (CIU) and Sociedad de Fomento Fabril (SFF). At the macro level, the investigation is centred on what is termed in this study as ‘World-Culture’, composed of a group of global institutions. As the study shows, World-culture is a source of new social identities, norms, rules and values through which individuals and organisations rationally organise and pursue their interests. An important question is whether the role of the nation-state in Chile and Uruguay has changed since the 1960s. The study concludes that there is a clear shift from national to global and regional sources of legitimacy. In both cases, the intensity of interaction with macro institutions (World-culture) has been greater in the 1990s compared to the 1960s. The role of the state as prime source of institutional legitimacy at the national environmental level has decreased since global institutions through carriers like International Organisations that are beyond the reach of the state. While the homogenising exogenous institutions wielded greater influence in Chilean and Uruguayan environments, the clashes with traditional domestic institutions had a different character that stimulated new and particular forms of ‘remix’. The CIU went through a process of NGOisation, while the SFF increased its interaction with the state and the region. The two cases examined in this study show distinct responses to common problems owing to different cultural environments.

Datum:           2009-05-29 Författare:     Sanne Jotorp, sjp07001@student.mdh.se                         Linnéa Olsson, lon08004@student.mdh.se Handledare:   Ann-Sofi Paul Titel:               Ett företagsperspektiv på bestyrkt hållbarhetsredovisning - Vilka motiv kan finnas till ett bestyrkande Nivå:               Kandidatuppsats i ekonomistyrning Syfte:              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. Metod:            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. Slutsats:          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. Nyckelord:     Hållbarhet, hållbarhetsredovisning, bestyrkande, legitimitet, intressenter. / Date:               2009-05-29 Authors:         Sanne Jotorp, sjp07001@student.mdh.se                         Linnéa Olsson, lon08004@student.mdh.se Tutor:             Ann-Sofi Paul Title:               A Corporate Perspective on Assurance of Sustainability Reporting - What kind of motives might there be for an assurance Level:             Bachelor Thesis in Management Accounting Purpose:         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. Method:         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. Conclusion:    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. Furthermore the internal stakeholders understanding of sustainability questions can increase and the transparency towards external stakeholders can increase. Keywords:     Sustainability, sustainability reporting, assurance, legitimacy, stakeholders.

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.

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.

A tentative historicalpolicy analysis is developed to generate knowledge about local government policies and political legitimacy, as well as to contribute to policy analysis methodology. Social indicators, institutions and actors are used to gain knowledge about the phenomena. What local governments do to deal with and try to solve local problems is assumed to contribute to political legitimacy. The basic question that structures the thesis is to investigate whether, and to what extent, problem-orientated and "problem-effective" local government policy can contribute to political legitimacy. Time-series analysis shows that social malaise problems (poverty and unemployment) have fluctuated over the last 120 years, increasing in some periods and/or communities and decreasing in others. In contrast, problems concerning health and the environment decreased over the same period. Social policies appear to be closely related to local problems during the first hundred years (i.e. from 1874-1970), which indicates that local government policy is problem-orientated. After 1970 the connection between problems and social policy starts to loosen up. During the 1980s local infrastructure and industrial policy begin, for the first time, to follow social malaise problems in the municipalities. Earlier, infrastructure policy grew when problems were small or decreasing. The analysis indicates that municipalities were generally more successful in coping with local problems a hundred years ago. Health policies appear to have contributed towards solving local health problems up until 1970. Social malaise policies, on the other hand, have not directly contributed to solving local problems. Indirecdy, however, the latter type of policies contributed to economic development and promoted the development of local industry during the first hundred years. After 1970, only certain aspects of social malaise policies show positive effects on local problems. Instead, these policies generally seem to have exacerbated local problems. Attempts to resolve social problems, together with social service delivery, turn out to become part of the problem. The interpretation that legitimacy can be reached through problem-orientated and problem-effective policies has some empirical support in the period prior to 1900 and today. However, under predemocratic regimes, as well as during periods when democracy was highly centralized, the support for, and trust in, legality seems to be the dominate source of political legitimacy. / digitalisering@umu

This Master’s thesis explores environmental corporate social responsibility (ECSR) in the alpine sport industry. A mixed methods case with a single alpine sport provider in Quebec was performed. The first study is a qualitative examination of how and why ECSR is employed and communicated. Results indicate ECSR is strategically motivated, and as such, the focal organization runs the risk of using several greenwashing techniques in communications that could jeopardize gaining competitive advantage. The second study quantitatively investigates alpine sport consumers’ environmental expectations, engagement with environmental products, and perceptions of the focal organization’s environmental reputation. The results show the focal organization’s customers do indeed have environmental expectations, but believe the focal organization’s environmental reputation remains neutral. The thesis supports arguments of corporate social responsibility (CSR) being strategically motivated and other findings of skiers having conflicting environmental values. Lastly, the thesis provides insight regarding greenwashing, a phenomenon that remains unexplored in sport management.