The new EU Forest Strategy for 2030, one of the flagship initiatives of the European Green Deal, has put EU forest policy in a new expansionary phase with ambitious goals for future forest management in Member States. This thesis analyzes contestation over the EU Forest Strategy for 2030 in Sweden to understand how discursive representations of forests are interlinked with justice perceptions. By utilizing poststructuralist discourse theory and the logics framework, and analyzing EU forest policy documents, Swedish parliamentary debates, and interviews with Swedish forest stakeholders, this thesis shows how sustainable forest management functions as a floating signifier and how different discursive understandings of this concept leads to different understandings of justice in forest management and thus how a just transition in forestry should look like. In the Swedish reception of the new Strategy, a commodity discourse and a conservation discourse could be identified where both highlighted the importance of the private forest owner in relation to justice perceptions in Sweden. The results show how the discourses attempt to invest the role of private forest owners with different meanings. Thus, this thesis contributes to the literature on just transitions by showing how justice perceptions are discursively interlinked with understandings of the role of forests, and how political contestation over this takes place.

Despite the high rate of deforestation and directed critique toward its industrial practices, the Swedish forest industry is declaring itself to be an accelerator of a green transition in the race toward carbon-zero. Seemingly, there is a discrepancy between the general perception of forest management and the actor's presentation. Within our research, we question how sustainability in the industry is reasoned and enacted. Bioeconomy has been identified as an increasingly popular concept within the forestry scene that intends to enable a low-carbon society. Two Swedish cluster organizations working within this context became insightful cases. By applying an inductive and qualitative approach we interviewed 13 experts. Through their accounts, we uncovered the prevailing motives for their sustainability work. Drawing upon previous scholarly contributions in the discourse around a green economy, we learned that the dichotomy of industrialism and sustainability is abandoned in the forest industry's perception. The applied practices are deeply rooted in green growth and weak sustainability rationales. Thereby, the industry is contributing to the economization of forests. The alignment of sustainability and growth endeavors results in the paradoxical justification that only harvesting can lead to a low-carbon and fossil-free economy. We encourage future research to continue raising awareness about the problematic dynamics arising from weak sustainability approaches and work together with the industry toward more transformative trajectories.

The purpose of the study has been to investigate how well guidelines are observed in practice and also to see how the agents experience these and what they see for deficiencies and opportunities for improvement. This study is based on two studies. 34 items where guidance for rejuvenation harvesting took place were checked in the field. 104 representatives were asked to answer a questionnaire in which the questions focused on problems related to nature considerations and opportunities for improvement regarding the guidelines. The results show that the guidelines have been followed to a great extent and that the agents feel that they have benefited from the guidelines. The deficiencies in the guidelines were perceived to be too long and compact texts and that considerations described in the text were not highlighted in the map. Failure to observe the objects may, in the agents 'opinion, be partly due to the forest owners' opinions differing from the suggestions in the guidelines.

Abstract Title: The relationship between Open innovation and Swedish forest companies - Why do Swedish forest companies choose to either implement or to not implement Open innovation? Course: 2FE897, Master`s thesis in Entrepreneurship, Department of Business Studies. Key Words: Open innovation, closed innovation, innovation process, collaborative innovation, Swedish forest companies.  Purpose: Aims to identify the reasons why or why not Swedish forest companies implement open innovation, but also to find out if there is an ideal open innovation form among Swedish forest companies. Methodology: Abductive approach and qualitative method. Semi structured interviews areconducted with managers from five Swedish forest companies and one startup. Theoretical perspectives: We collected and created a theoretical framework based on open and closed innovation models. We will also bring up different forms of open innovation. Empirical foundation: The empirical data in this thesis are based on our semi structured interviews. Conclusions: Companies prefer a mix of open and closed innovation. Why companies use Open innovation: cost effective, more efficient, boost brand reputation and remain competitive with external knowledge. Why companies continue to use closed innovation: Easier to measure results, keep control, manage and estimate budgets. Collaborative innovation is concluded to be the ideal open innovation form.

Bakgrund: Investeringsbeslut är ett av de viktigaste besluten som tas av chefer i företag. Besluten grundar sig på investeringskalkyler, som ryms inom begreppet kapitalbudgetering. I företagsekonomisk litteratur beskrivs sällan samband mellan kapitalbudgetering och annan ekonomisk styrning, vilket innebär att det finns ett tomrum inom forskningsområdet. Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är att beskriva hur företag inom den svenska skogsindustrin utformar och använder kapitalbudgetar som beslutsunderlag samt utreda och förklara sambandet mellan kapitalbudgetering och annan ekonomisk styrning. Metod: I studien har kvalitativ metod och fallstudier använts. Empirin grundas på datainsamling genom fyra semistrukturerade intervjuer av respondenter från fallföretagen SCA, Stora Enso, Holmen och Billerud. Slutsatser: Kapitalbudgetering som det beskrivs i företagsekonomisk litteratur är ingen adekvat definition. Kapitalbudgetering består i själva verket av två delprocesser, vilka är investeringsbudgetering och investeringsprocessen. Det finns tydliga samband mellan kapitalbudgetering och annan ekonomisk styrning genom att ”action controls”, ”results controls”, ”boundary systems” och ”diagnostic control systems” används. Kapitalbudgetering är ett ekonomiskt styrsystem för att skapa och upprätthålla målkongruens inom en organisation. / Background: Investment decisions are among the most important decisions made by managers in companies. These decisions are based upon investment appraisals that are a part of the capital budgeting concept. Within Business administration research relationships between capital budgeting and management control are rarely described and there is a gap in theory. Aim: The purpose of this thesis is to describe how companies within the Swedish Forest Industry perform and use their capital budgets and to investigate and explain relationships between capital budgeting and management control. Method: For this study qualitative method and case studies have been used. The empirical findings were based on four semi structured interviews with respondents from the cases SCA, Stora Enso, Holmen and Billerud. Conclusions: Capital budgeting as it is described in Business administration research is not an adequate definition. As a matter of fact, capital budgeting is divided to two partial processes, which are investment budgeting and the investment process. There exist obvious relationships between capital budgeting and management control in the sense that action controls, results controls, boundary systems and diagnostic control systems are used. Furthermore, capital budgeting is a management control system used in order to maintain goal congruence.

Background and problem: There is a need for more research that is specific to a particular branch of industry when it comes to capital budgeting. Especially when it comes to mapping how companies within the Swedish forest industry proceed capital budgeting when investing in tangible fixed assets. The reason for this is that the research regarding the subject within the industry is either made abroad, focusing only on a few companies or excluding the non-financial considerations that are made during the capital budgeting process. It is not reasonable to not take these considerations into account, due to the fact that it has a great impact on the capital investment decision. Besides this, it is through both the financial and the non-financial consequences that the complex reality can be captured. In other words, capital budgeting can only be studied in large when including both financial and non-financial considerations at the same time as there is a need to delimit the research to one industry and one country.  Purpose: The purpose of this study is to map how companies within the Swedish forest industry handle capital budgeting when investing in tangible fixed assets. The mapping will be done by determining which calculation methods that are frequently used and what financial and non-financial considerations that are made. The purpose is also to define the reasons as to why the Swedish forest companies prioritize precisely these considerations when managing capital budgeting. The ambition is to make sure that the research’s conclusions depict capital budgeting in the industry and trought that contribute to a greater understanding of the practical application of capital budgeting within Swedish forest industry.  Method: The thesis is primarily described as a qualitative research that is based on interviews. The empirical data is mostly gathered through semi structured interviews with respondents from different Swedish forest companies and the interviews are supplemented with information from various websites, annual reports and internal documents.  Conclusions: Swedish forest companies are influenced by a number of factors which in turn affects how they handle capital budgeting when investing in tangible fixed assets. The financial considerations are mainly found through the usage of different investment calculation methods, where the payback method followed by the net present value method are most commonly used. The non-financial considerations are mainly characterized by industry specific conditions together with a focus on environment, security and competitiveness.

A food web was constructed for a boreal-forest dominated national park in south-eastern Sweden, called Tyresta national park and its surrounding nature reserve. Due to increasing threats to mammalian species and their critical role in the food web mammals were used as the outset of the food web, and from there branching out to taxa trophically interacting with mammals directly and indirectly. The outset of the food web was constructed using available inventory data, focusing on mammals. From inventory data and 53 interaction sources, consisting of mostly primary literature a food web was created that includes 32 mammalian taxa, six bird families, five invertebrate taxa, fish, amphibians, fungi, reptiles, detritus and 9 different basal plant taxa. The results of the literature review was that the most consumed staple taxon of all were hexapods, with it being a staple food for 15 taxa, six of them being bats preying mainly on dipterans. There are a wide variety of ways that interspecific competition could come to affect taxa in the study area, for example through intraguild predation, increased dietary breadth or avoidance, or a combination of these. This method could serve as a complement to existing food webs or the construction of new ones in a cheaper, less intrusive and less time-consuming way, albeit missing local adaptations. The constructed food web structure and findings of interspecific competition in Tyresta can be used for further analyzing certain links or branching the web out even further, with increased depth or quantification of certain taxon.

Forests are key providers of terrestrial ecosystem services such as climate regulation, water purification, natural pest control, habitats for biodiversity, as well as different forms of wood based materials and food. Nevertheless forests are dangerously exposed to great pressures from various kinds of societal activities. This report examines the importance of forests for the (i) maintenance of life supporting functions of the biosphere as well as for (ii) providing a flexible resource base for the satisfying of human needs on more and more sustainability-driven markets. How can Swedish forestry be managed such that those two essential roles of forests become mutually supportive? The report also relates the results to three relevant and well-citied protocols for the subject: the Sustainable Development Goals in UN’s Agenda 2030, the Swedish Environmental Quality Objectives, and the Swedish National Forest Program. The approach applied Maxwell’s process design for qualitative research. Data have been collected from literature search and interviews of experts and the analytical instrument for modeling of data was the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD). The report concludes: Sustainable development for forestry relies on a paradigm shift in civilization’s perception of forestry to a practice where planning departures from envisioning a future where natural forest functions to sustain higher life forms and civilization are safeguarded and prioritized before other usages of forestland, and where diversity is enhanced in terms of tree age and species to foster more resilient and high-quality timber forests. When the above points are achieved, the higher diversity of more resilient forests should also have potential to supply markets with various kinds of resources offered to more and more sustainability driven markets. Furthermore, this development of society’s forest use increases the chances for civilization to be sustainable also with relatively smaller forest areas put aside for no forestry at all. In such a situation forestry and society have prioritized forest products and usages with long life spans before such with short. A future sustainable Swedish forest sector has recognized the above, and drawn an essential conclusion from it: the interdependency of forests with society’s overall sustainability performance calls for a cooperative approach that departures from an understanding of basic sustainability principles that are shared across sectors and disciplines. The Sustainable Development Goals, the Swedish Environmental Objectives and the Swedish National Forest Program all fail to take the above broad- systems perspective when it comes to proposing measures for the future, including how to advise further research to explore what the sustainable Swedish forestry could entail. The study arrives at pointing out an overall approach to analyses, planning and further research in those regards, rather than evaluating details on the path towards sustainable forestry. / Skogen är en nyckelresurs i den landbaserade naturen som förser samhället med ekosystemtjänster såsom klimatreglering, vattenrening, naturlig skadedjursbekämpning, habitat för biologisk mångfald, likväl som olika former av träfiberbaserade material och mat. Samtidigt är skogen hotad av kraftigt tryck från olika aktiviteter i samhället. Den här rapporten undersöker skogens betydelse för (i) upprätthållande av biosfärens livsuppehållande funktioner, samt som (ii) flexibel resurs när det gäller att förse mänskliga behov på alltmer hållbarhetsdrivna marknader. Hur bör skogen skötas så att dessa två roller stödjer varandra? Rapporten relaterar också resultaten till tre relevanta och vanligt citerade protokoll: hållbarhetsmålen i FNs Agenda 2030, de svenska miljömålen och det svenska nationella skogsprogrammet. Forskningen har strukturerats med hjälp av Maxwells process-design för kvalitativ forskning. Data har samlats in genom litteraturstudier och från intervjuer med experter. Modellering av data har gjorts genom att använda ramverket för strategisk hållbar utveckling (FSSD) som analysinstrument. Rapporten kommer fram till att: Hållbar utveckling för skogsbruket är beroende av ett paradigmskifte. En skogsskötsel där (i) planering utgår från att föreställa sig en framtid där skogens funktioner för högre liv på jorden är säkrade och satta före annan användning av skogsmark, och (ii) mångfald är främjad gällande trädens ålder och antalet arter så att mer resilienta skogar kan bidra med högkvalitativt timmer. När skogen förvaltas på det sättet så bör de mer diversa och resilienta skogarna ha möjlighet att förse marknader med olika resurser som kan visa sig vara viktiga på alltmer hållbarhetsdrivna marknader. Vidare borde denna utveckling av samhälles skogsanvändning öka chanserna för civilisationen att bli hållbar med relativt mindre ytor reserverade för att skyddas mot skogsbruk. Med en sådan förvaltning har skogsägare och samhället i stort prioriterat produkter och användningsområden med långa livslängder före sådana med korta livslängder. En framtida hållbar svensk skogssektor har insett allt ovanstående och dragit en väsentlig slutsats från det: beroendet mellan skogen och samhällets övergripande hållbarhetsarbete kräver samarbete utgående från grundläggande hållbarhetsprinciper som delas över sektors- och disciplingränser. Hållbarhetsmålen i Agenda 2030, de svenska miljömålen och det svenska nationella skogsprogrammet saknas alla ett tillräckligt brett systemperspektiv när det gäller att föreslå åtgärder för framtiden, inklusive att ge rekommendationer för framtida forskning om hållbart svenskt skogsbruk. Studien pekar snarare ut en övergripande inriktning för analyser, planering och forskning om hållbart svenskt skogsbruk, än utvärderar de exakta stegen på vägen dit.