Swedish firms have become increasingly accountable for their impacts on the economy, society, and environment. Since the year 2016, Corporate Sustainability has emerged as a relatively new phenomenon forcing SMEs that meet certain criteria to report annual sustainability metrics. However,sustainability reporting has not yet become standardized. Previous literature acknowledges the importance of sustainability orientation for the firm and the managers’ role in developing a general understanding of how sustainabilitypractices add value to the firm. Moreover, the particular organizationalpractice of sustainability reporting is still immature and have scarcely been attended by contemporary literature. This study aims to develop an understanding of how sustainability reporting practices look like in the firm, and whether sustainability reporting practiceshas affected today’s innovation management. To answer the research questions, a mixed research method were chosen with an inductive approach.Three kinds of data was collected and analyzed – sustainability reports, survey, and firm-level interviews – in a step-wise manner to explore the complexities of sustainability reporting practices and its’ impact on firms’ innovation management. In this study, we found that there are complexities in establishing clear routines in the sustainability reporting practices due to the multiple internal and external actors involvement, and because of knowledge gaps within the firm. In addition, sustainability reporting practices positively impactinnovation management through the building of general awareness, or even culture towards sustainability. In turn, this has boosted the firms’ creativity in sustainable innovations. Moreover, sustainability reporting practices impact New Product Development in particular, through stakeholder engagement in reporting the contents included in the sustainability reports. This study contributes to an updated understanding of Sustainability Reporting practices in general and its’ role in Innovation Management in particular. The adoption of sustainability reporting transfer activities that are intertwined and embedded with organizational- and managerial perspectives when pursuing alignment of Corporate Sustainability in an already complex system. Therefore, we conclude that sustainability reporting is vital indeveloping stakeholder engagement for firms aiming at incorporating sustainability practices. Moreover, this subsequently influences the outcomes in New Product Development.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hh-47670 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Sollin, Alexander, Håkansson, Kevin |
| Publisher | Högskolan i Halmstad, Akademin för företagande, innovation och hållbarhet |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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