Increased international competitiveness to host sport mega-events indicates their perceived value in stimulating regional and national economic, social and cultural development. In the context of broader governmental public opinion management strategies, sport mega-events hold the potential to mobilize soft power resources of the host country, expressed in values, culture and policies, and engage with and influence the publics of other countries. This thesis investigates the significance of sport mega-events for the host country’s public diplomacy strategies and practice by exploring the concepts of public diplomacy, sport mega-events, soft power and national image within a multi-disciplinary conceptual framework. The analysis of scholarly literature, official and media reports reveals how aspects of reputation, credibility, and legitimacy guide both foreign public opinion and the practice of public diplomacy in conjunction with sport mega-events. Moreover, international reputation of the host nation, including status, prestige and image, appeared to benefit the most as a result of strategic application of sport mega-events to public diplomacy. This can be achieved by proving functional reputation though demonstration of financial and organizational success. Alternatively, social reputation of the host is at risk of sustaining considerable damage as a result of resistance from social activists groups, thus requiring extensive damage control efforts of the host country's image. The conclusions drawn from this study raise significant questions about the potential of sport mega-events being effectively used for public diplomacy and the experience of the host governments, revealing functional competence as having the greatest potential to influence public diplomacy strategy built around hosting sport mega-events.

This thesis investigates whether more open trade policymaking processes that include non-governmental entities, by virtue of the divergence of interests represented, lead to a stronger, more legitimate and qualitatively enhanced international trade system. The European Union stands out among major trading powers for its significant and dramatic response to new demands for access and participation. The thesis examines whether improvements in the political opportunity structure for ‘progressive’ Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) result in more legitimate external trade policymaking in the European Union (EU). Legitimacy is assessed along two lines: the way policy is made (procedural legitimacy) and the projected outcomes of policy (substantive legitimacy). The role of NGOs is evaluated in two important cases in the context of World Trade Organization negotiations since 2000. The first concerns the formulation of the formal European Communities’ (EC) position on trade related intellectual property rights (TRIPS) and access to medicines. The second concerns the EC’s requests for water services liberalization in the context of General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) 2000 negotiations. Through a critical evaluation of the role of NGOs in these cases, the thesis argues that there is clear potential for NGOs to represent citizens’ demands, constitute a basic form of popular representation and hold decision-makers accountable to a broader public. However, they cannot determine policy outcomes in this arena. This thesis challenges a theoretical perspective on public policymaking called Cosmopolitanism. Grounded in democratic and normative theory, it conceives of Global Civil Society, and NGOs in particular, as major conduits for democracy and social justice in global and/or regional governance. The thesis builds upon the insights of Constructivism to advance an alternative account of the significance of NGOs in the EU’s external trade policymaking process. In particular, it argues that epistemes, the deepest level of the ideational world, dominate the external trade policymaking process. NGOs succeed only when their attempts to achieve more democratic, just, equitable and fair external trade policies in the EU conform broadly to the dominant legal/liberal episteme. When they seek to overrule that episteme, they fail, regardless of their formal involvement in the external trade policymaking process.

Med utgångspunkt i den livliga debatt som fördes kring bonusutbetalningar i samband med finanskrisen och det skadade förtroende för rörliga ersättningar den resulterade i syftar denna studie till att undersöka hur man idag återskapar legitima rörliga ersättningssystem. Studien ämnar även svara på frågan varför organisationer, trots stora kostnader, väljer att använda sig av rörliga ersättningssystem. Med agentteorin och nyinstitutionell teori som referensramar genomfördes en kvalitativ undersökning vilken bestod av sex semi-strukturerade expertintervjuer. Tre av dessa intervjuer genomfördes med representanter för tre olika organisationer, två av intervjuerna gjordes med oberoende konsulter som specialiserat sig på utformning av rörliga ersättningssystem och slutligen intervjuades en jurist som arbetar med föreskrifter gällande rörlig ersättning inom den finansiella sektorn. Analys av intervjuerna hanterades med etnografisk kvalitativ metodik som utgångspunkt för att skapa ett kodschema kopplat till vår teori. Två analysmodeller användes sedermera på de koder vi fick fram: Den komparativa analysen och den idealtypcentrerade analysen. I studien framkommer att organisationer alltmer använder sig av transparenta system för sina rörliga ersättningar i syfte att legitimera dessa. Alltfler anställda tenderar även att innefattas i det rörliga ersättningssystemet, oberoende av vilken befattning och funktion de har i organisationen, detta för att skapa en större acceptans för systemet. Resultatet visar att det dock fortfarande finns en klick anställda som i många fall står utanför de nyskapade rörliga ersättningssystemen: den högsta ledningen. Vidare finner vi i studien att organisationer använder rörliga ersättningssystem som en styrteknik; i och med att de kopplat ersättning till måluppfyllnad skapas en acceptans för systemet och ifrågasättande av de uppsatta målen minskar. / Based on the lively debate on bonus payments that took place due to the financial and damaged the trust for variable compensation systems, this study aims to answer the question of how to recover legitimate variable compensation for this present day. The study also intends to answer the question of why organizations, despite great expense, choose to use variable compensation systems. Using the New Institutional theory and the Agency theory as frameworks, a qualitative study is performed consisting of six semi-structured expert interviews. Three of these interviews were conducted with representatives of the three organizations, two of the interviews were conducted by independent consultants specializing in the design of variable compensation systems and the last interview was conducted with an expert on variable compensation in the financial sector. The analysis of the interviews was performed with an ethnographic quantitative methodology as a basis to create a coding scheme linked to the proposed theories. From this approach, the interviews were narrowed down to codes which were then analyzed with two different analytical models: the comparative analysis and the ideal type centered. The study shows that organizations tend to increasingly exceed the transparency in the compensation system in order to legitimize them. In addition, variable compensation systems tend to include a greater number of employees, at various levels and functions within the organization, with the purpose of creating a greater acceptance of the system. Despite this, there are still a group of employees which, to some extent, are outside the system: the top management and directors. Furthermore, this study finds that organizations tend use variable compensation as a control technique, due to the connection between compensation and performance that creates an acceptance of the system and decreases the questioning of goal-setting.

När kraven från omvärlden ökar hittar organisationer nya sätt att vara såväl det mest effektiva som det mest legitima företaget. Detta gäller gentemot kunder, anställda, konkurrenter och samhället i stort. Syftet med denna kandidatuppsats är att med hjälp av nyinstitutionell teori undersöka hur ett kommunalt bostadsbolag jobbar med arbetsmiljö. Fokus ligger på att belysa hur arbetsmiljöarbetet samverkar med legitimitetsskapande faktorer, exempelvis standardisering av arbetsmiljöarbetet. Kandidatuppsatsen är en kvalitativ studie och utgörs av dokumentstudier samt intervjuer. Genom att koda materialet kunde våra frågeställningar besvaras. Våra slutsatser är att bostadsbolaget har ett antal rutiner som pekar på att ett systematiskt arbetsmiljöarbete bedrivs. Vidare utför bostadsbolaget enligt oss en stor del av sitt arbetsmiljöarbete för att upprätthålla sin legitimitet, även om en viss del även utförs av effektivitetsskäl. Införandet av en standard skulle inte nödvändigtvis förändra det praktiska arbetet i någon större grad, men ge ett ökat fokus på arbetsmiljöarbete vilket i sin tur skulle kunna förbättra arbetsmiljöarbetet i organisationen, möjligtvis till priset av ökad administration. / When demands of the surrounding world increase organizations find new ways to be the most effective and legitimate. This applies to customers, employees, competitors and society as a whole. The aim of this bachelor thesis is to investigate how a public housing company1 handle issues concerning the work environment. The focus of this paper is to illustrate how the occupational safety and health work interacts with legitimacy-building factors, for example standardization. To explain this, we use neoinstitutional theory with its concepts we find relevant. This bachelor thesis is a qualitative study, consisting of document studies and interviews. By encoding the material our three initial questions were answered. The conclusions suggest the public housing company retain systematic routines when working with occupational safety and health. Further, according to us, the company executes a large part of their occupational safety and health work in order to maintain its legitimacy, although some is also carried out for reasons of efficiency. The introduction of a occupational health standard would not necessarily cause significant change in the organization's daily work routine, but give an increased focus on occupational health and safety work, which in turn could improve the work environment of the organization. 1 Note that "public housing" in Sweden (allmännyttiga bostadsbolag)not is reserved for people under a certain income level. This form of housing tenure makes up 20% of all homes in Sweden.

This thesis aims at answering the following questions:1) How can the existence of a state be justified?2) To what extent does the state have the right to restrict individual´s liberty of action?3) To what extent does the state have the right to restrict or redistribute any kind of "goods", and if so, which restrictions should be allowed on which"goods"?4) Can a moral theory be "goal-directed", and are there moral reasons that it should be "goaldirected"? In order to answer these questions, I will analyze Robert Nozick´s and Michael Walzer´s answers to these questions, as presented in Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974) and Spheres of Justice (1983). My answers, which are founded on an argument for the necessity of freedom of choice and ambition-sensitivity in theories of justice, are results of a compromise between the ideas in these theories, but also partially on criticism of both theories.

This thesis investigates whether more open trade policymaking processes that include non-governmental entities, by virtue of the divergence of interests represented, lead to a stronger, more legitimate and qualitatively enhanced international trade system. The European Union stands out among major trading powers for its significant and dramatic response to new demands for access and participation. The thesis examines whether improvements in the political opportunity structure for ‘progressive’ Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) result in more legitimate external trade policymaking in the European Union (EU). Legitimacy is assessed along two lines: the way policy is made (procedural legitimacy) and the projected outcomes of policy (substantive legitimacy). The role of NGOs is evaluated in two important cases in the context of World Trade Organization negotiations since 2000. The first concerns the formulation of the formal European Communities’ (EC) position on trade related intellectual property rights (TRIPS) and access to medicines. The second concerns the EC’s requests for water services liberalization in the context of General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) 2000 negotiations. Through a critical evaluation of the role of NGOs in these cases, the thesis argues that there is clear potential for NGOs to represent citizens’ demands, constitute a basic form of popular representation and hold decision-makers accountable to a broader public. However, they cannot determine policy outcomes in this arena. This thesis challenges a theoretical perspective on public policymaking called Cosmopolitanism. Grounded in democratic and normative theory, it conceives of Global Civil Society, and NGOs in particular, as major conduits for democracy and social justice in global and/or regional governance. The thesis builds upon the insights of Constructivism to advance an alternative account of the significance of NGOs in the EU’s external trade policymaking process. In particular, it argues that epistemes, the deepest level of the ideational world, dominate the external trade policymaking process. NGOs succeed only when their attempts to achieve more democratic, just, equitable and fair external trade policies in the EU conform broadly to the dominant legal/liberal episteme. When they seek to overrule that episteme, they fail, regardless of their formal involvement in the external trade policymaking process.

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.

Human rights are commonly taken to include both behavioral freedoms, such as a right to express opinions, and safeguards against the behaviors of others, such as a right not to be tortured. I examine the claim by Allen Buchanan and others that democracy should be considered a human right. I discuss what human rights are, what they do, and what they obligate moral agents to do, comparing this framework to attributes of democracy. I conclude that while democracy itself is both too nebulous and too specific to be the subject of a human right, it may be proper to speak of a human right to state self-determination.

The purpose of this paper is to through a conceptual definition, outline the meaning of integrated reporting. The empirical study aims to identify the development of integrated reporting in terms of driving forces and participants. We also intend to identify and explain the effects of integrated reporting and to describe, analyze and create an understanding of what is required of companies and the challenges an application of integrated can bring. To achieve the purpose of this paper, we have formulated a central question; What is integrated reporting and what will this development mean for companies?  To answer the central question of this paper we have chosen to apply a qualitative approach with case studies as a research strategy. We have in the case study focused on four separate companies. The theoretical framework of this paper describes the stakeholder theory and legitimacy theory, which describes the relationship between the company and its stakeholders. The empirical study consists of two separate chapters; the perspective of experts and the corporate perspective of integrated reporting. In these chapters, we discuss and analyze the theoretical framework along with both of the empirical chapters. In the analysis we highlight and discuss the concept of integrated reporting, the driving forces of its development, problems and complications regarding the implementation of integrated reporting and the positive effects it can bring. The paper concludes that an integrated report should represent the company’s primary report, which includes all aspects of a company’s business. The company’s financial and non-financial factors are related to each other and therefore the company demonstrates its business in a comprehensible and transparent manner. The development of integrated reporting is driven by stakeholders as it is primarily the company’s stakeholders who require a transparent accounting that include the information about how the company works with sustainability. The main requirement for success with integrated reporting is considered a change in mindset, which has to start in top management. / Syftet med uppsatsen är att genom en begreppsbestämning redogöra för innebörden av begreppet integrerad rapportering. Uppsatsens empiriska undersökning syftar att redogöra för utvecklingen av integrerad rapportering genom att identifiera utvecklingens bidragande drivkrafter och aktörer. Vi syftar även att identifiera och förklara vilka konsekvenser integrerad rapportering får för företag samt beskriva, analysera och skapa förståelse för vad som krävs av företag och vilka utmaningar en tillämpning av integrerad rapportering kan innebära. För att uppnå uppsatsens syfte har vi formulerat huvudfrågan: Vad är integrerad rapportering och vad kan denna utveckling komma att innebära för företag?  För att besvara huvudfrågan har vi valt att tillämpa en kvalitativ metod med flerfallsstudier som forskningsstrategi där vi fokuserat på fyra fallföretag. Den teoretiska referensramen redogör för intressentteorin och legitimitetsteorin, vilka beskriver relationen mellan företag och dess intressenter. Den empiriska referensramen består av två empiriska kapitel; normgivarnas perspektiv samt företagens perspektiv av integrerad rapportering. Analyskapitlet sammanför den teoretiska referensramen tillsammans med de två empiriska kapitlen. De områden som diskuteras i analysen är innebörden av begreppet integrerad rapportering, de drivande faktorerna till dess utveckling, problematiken kring införandet av integrerad rapportering samt vilka positiva effekter integrerad rapportering kan medföra.  I uppsatsens slutsats konstateras att en integrerad rapport bör utgöra företagets primära rapport där de finansiella och icke finansiella faktorerna sätts i relation till varandra. Företaget demonstrerar därmed verksamhetens helhet på ett tydligt och transparent sätt. Utvecklingen av integrerad rapportering är intressentstyrd då det främst är företagets primära intressenter som efterfrågar en transparent redovisning som inkluderar företagets hållbarhetsfrågor.  Det huvudsakliga kravet för lyckas med en integrerad rapportering anses vara ett förändrat synsätt, vilket först och främst krävs i högsta ledningen.

The concept of partnership has emerged to highlight donor-recipient relationships within international development, where both large and small actors has adopted the concept that defines a contractual relationship on equality where partners have chosen to work collaboratively with agreed objectives, roles, and responsibilities. However, a common cited constraint to the formation of partnerships is the distorted power relationship in the form of e.g. differences in resources, motives and control between Northern and Southern partners. The overall aim of this study is to show how the partnership rhetoric is reflected in the development cooperation between Swedish Forum Syd and two of their partner organisations in Tanzania under prevailing circumstances. In doing so, the study focuses on theories of legitimacy, resource-dependency and social control. Linked to the empirical results of the studied partnerships, the thesis attempts to examine whether a desired authentic partnership discourse really has been possible to accomplish on the ground or not. Three qualitative methods have been used in this study, semi-structured interviews, ethnographic text analyses, and participant observations. The results that have been analysed with the theoretical framework of choice, shows that it is difficult to form any "authentic partnership" when there are differences regarding power, motives, needs and access to information between the partners, which in turn are the result of scarcity of resources and the dependency on them.