Bakgrund: I dagens rådande klimat- och artkris ökar förväntningarna på skogsindustrins hållbarhetsarbete och därmed även kvaliteten på dess hållbarhetsredovisningar. Ingen information som kan tänkas påverka intressenternas beslut får uteslutas och inte heller bestå av endast selektiv vald information som bara speglar gynnsamma aspekter av företaget. Tidigare studier har påvisat brister inom skogsindustrin och andra branschers hållbarhetsredovisningar, bland annat kring hur företagen redogör för negativ information. Informationen förskönas, mörkas och vinklas med hjälp av olika legitimeringsstrategier, detta för att påverka intressenternas uppfattning om företaget. Studien utgår från legitimitetsteorin och företagens användande av olika legitimeringsstrategier. Den bidrar till ökad förståelse och kunskap kring hur dessa strategier används av svenska skogsbolag. Syfte & Problemformulering: Uppsatsens syfte är att beskriva hur skogsbolagens negativa påverkan betonas i hållbarhetsredovisningen och därmed få en djupare förståelse över hur informationen framhålls. Frågan som undersöks är hur redogörs negativ information i svenska skogsbolags hållbarhetsredovisningar? Metod: Studien bygger på en kvalitativ innehållsanalys av svenska skogsbolags års- och hållbarhetsredovisningar. Utifrån dessa redovisningar identifierades den negativa informationen som sedan klassificerades in efter olika legitimeringsstrategier och därefter analyserades på en djupare nivå. Slutsats: Studien påvisar att skogsbolag använder legitimeringsstrategier när de redogör för sin negativa information. De tre vanligaste strategierna är angivande av fakta, rationalisering och korrigerande åtgärder. Vid vissa tillfällen får intressenterna en mer detaljerad bild av problemet men i de flesta fall är informationen försumbar och det saknas ingående förklaringar. Korrigerande åtgärder är den vanligaste strategin eftersom det oftast uppdagas någon form av åtgärd kopplad till den negativa informationen. Genom att företagen påvisar dessa bristerförsämras hållbarhetsredovisningens kvalitet. De försöker på ett missvisande sätt försköna sin verksamhet genom olika legitimeringsstrategier vilket är något som intressenterna behöver ha kunskap om för att kunna ta ställning kring verksamhetens påverkan. / Background: In today's current climate and species crisis, expectations of the forest industry's sustainability work and thus also the quality of its sustainability reports increase. No information that may affect the decisions of the stakeholders may be excluded, nor may it consist only of selectively selected information that only reflects favorable aspects of the company. Previous studies have shown shortcomings in the forest industry and other industries' sustainability reports, including how companies report the negative information. The information is refined, darkened and angled with the help of various identification strategies, in order to influence the stakeholders' perception of the company. This study is based upon the theory of legitimacy and the corporations´ usage of different legitimation strategies. It contributes to increased understanding and knowledge of how these strategies are used by Swedish forest companies. Purpose & Research question: The purpose of the thesis is to describe how the forest companies’ negative impact is emphasized in the annual and sustainability report and thereby a deeper understanding of how the information is emphasized. The question that is investigated is how is negative information reported in Swedish forest companies' sustainability reports? Method: The study is based on a qualitative content analysis of Swedish forest companies annual and sustainability reports. Based on these reports, the negative information was identified, which then classified according to different identification strategies and then analyzed at a deeper level. Conclusion: The study shows that forest companies use legitimation strategies when they report their negative information. The three most common strategies are indicating facts, rationalization, and corrective action. At certain times, the stakeholder gets a more detailed picture of the problem, but in most cases the information is negligible and there are no detailed explanations. Corrective action is the most common strategy because some form of action link to the negative information is most often detected. As companies demonstrate these shortcomings the quality of sustainability reporting deteriorates. They try in a misleading way to refine their operations through different legitimation strategies, which is something that the stakeholders need to have knowledge of in order to be able to take a position on the impact of the operations.

This research explores how an open strategy approach can be used to manage organisational legitimacy in a pluralistic context, characterised by the competing demands of key stakeholders. Open strategy demonstrates an interest in strategising processes becoming more inclusive and transparent (Hautz et al., 2016). Open strategy work to date has focused on its uses and implications, and how strategic inclusion and transparency are being displayed in different organisational contexts. Much open strategy literature also associates the central purpose of open strategising activity with organisations seeking to manage legitimacy (e.g. Chesbrough and Appleyard, 2007; Whittington et al., 2011; Tavakoli et al., 2017), particularly through ensuring that their actions are desirable in the opinion of key stakeholders (Suchman, 1995). Whilst a small number of studies have explicitly focused on open strategy and legitimacy, these do not go beyond illuminating legitimacy as a potential effect (Gegenhuber and Dobusch, 2017) or outcome (Luedicke et al., 2017). Absent has been research attempting to specifically understand open strategy as a process of legitimation (Uberbacher, 2014), and there remains a need to unpack and elevate the significant potential of open strategy approaches for managing legitimacy further. To address this gap, this research presents an in-depth single case analysis of an organisation undertaking the development of a new four-year strategic plan using an open strategy approach. A number of data collection methods were used, including completion of 30 semi-structured interviews, participant observations, and collection of significant social media and documentation data, to explicate the concepts of open strategy and organisational legitimacy, addressing the question; How does an open strategy approach represent a process of legitimation for managing the competing demands of organisational stakeholders? . A pluralistic context, a UK-based professional body, is the basis for the empirical work. It is acknowledged that interrogating the intricacies of strategising in pluralistic contexts, and the inherent competing demands of stakeholders, might offer new perspectives, and a useful means of expanding the contextual base of practice-based strategy work (Jarzabkowski and Fenton, 2006). However, studies of open strategy in pluralistic contexts remain near non-existent in the literature (Lusiani and Langley, 2013). In the organisational legitimacy literature, there is much discourse on how legitimacy is managed and gained through specific legitimation processes and strategies, and increasingly such a focus has been adopted to recognise how organisations might manage legitimacy demands in contexts defined by plurality, amidst diffuse power and divergent objectives (Denis et al., 2007). In this study, a practice-based activity theory framework is used (Jarzabkowski 2005; Jarzabkowski and Wolf, 2015) to explore legitimacy in relation to organisational direction and priorities, and as a means of redefining the organisation s core goals in an enactment of strategic openness. The work here conceptualises how the case organisation has adopted a plethora of open strategising practices for legitimacy effects (Suddaby et al., 2013), providing a detailed account of how different dynamics of open strategising activity connect to specific forms of legitimation over time. The findings indicate that different open strategy dynamics represent the case organisation switching between distinct approaches to legitimation, as a means of managing the competing legitimacy demands of organisational stakeholders in a flow of activity. Through this narrative, a greater perception of legitimation as a core purpose of open strategy is provided. Overall, this research offers an important contribution by accentuating the principal relevance of organisational legitimacy in open strategising, particularly through elevating legitimacy beyond being understood as an effect or outcome in open strategy work. Further, this more explicitly brings open strategy into close alignment with the organisational legitimacy literature and its theoretical conceptions (Lawrence et al., 2009; Suddaby et al., 2013), which is imperative for understanding the potential importance of open strategy as a means of legitimation.