Hållbarhetsredovisningens budskap : en komparativ studie av Vattenfall och E.ON

Sammanfattning: Companies today are expected to communicate their responsibility to the world around them. Society’s expectations differ and stakeholders are demanding that companies act responsibly on matters related to climate, work environment and human rights. The purpose of sustainability reports is that companies should measure, present and take responsibility in relation to their internal and external stakeholders. It is intended that a reasonable picture of the company's sustainability performance should be communicated, containing both positive and negative effects. Companies efforts with sustainability issues is industry-dependent and industries with significant environmental problems perform the most advanced environmental statement. Energy industry and its producers have in many contexts been declared as some of the biggest environmental culprits. Therefore, it is likely that the players in this market are assumed to take a leading role in terms of reporting their sustainability performance. Sustainability reports usually include more descriptive text than numerical information and this study therefore intends to use a text analysis called "open coding" to study the language of sustainability reports published by the electricity companies Vattenfall and E.ON for the years 2004 and 2008. The study also includes a comparison of the perspective of state and private ownership. Categories in form of identified keywords, which describe the texts communicated message, provide the empirical material for the study. One conclusion that can bedrawn from the survey is that similar meanings are communicated through various keywords. Further to be noted is that the sustainability reports are produced exclusively for the stakeholders. The impact from stakeholders is crucial for the design of the sustainability report. The key words developed in the study communicate overall a positive message which confirms the results from previous studies. Finally to be noted is that there are differences in the texts from the sustainability reports, both between the companies and over time. However, we cannot see any differences in the study caused by the differential structure of ownership.