How does S/CR communication influence corporate action in Sweden? An explorative study of the OMX Stockholm Large Cap companies.

Sammanfattning: Recent S/CR scandals in Sweden point at an interesting paradox: Although Swedish companies have a vast amount of publicly available S/CR materials in place, there are indications that the companies do not practice what they preach. Therefore, this thesis aimed to explore how S/CR communication influences corporate action. Due to the lack of existing theoretical and empirical insights, a two-step grounded theory approach was used to answer the research question. In the first research phase, 9000 pages of publicly available materials were assessed. The second research phase was based on the the themes derived from the initial phase, particularly the influence of S/CR targets and policies. In this phase, a selected number of S/CR executives were interviewed. The empirical results showed that in most cases, S/CR communication did not seem to influence S/CR action to a large extent - it highlighted the companies' ambitions and priorities, but was not directly connected to actions concerning S/CR. Assessing our findings through selected theoretical perspectives connected to motivations for public S/CR disclosure allowed us to generate preliminary insights concerning how Swedish companies' S/CR communication influenced corporate action. Firstly, we gained the insight that although S/CR targets and policies were two of the most prevalent forms of S/CR communication in Sweden today, they were currently not covered by literature. Secondly, we could establish to which degree the different theoretical perspectives were in line with our empirical findings. Thirdly, we saw that established literature had not focused on the link between GRI and its influence on corporate action.