Socialt ansvar ur ett hållbarhetsperspektiv -En kvalitativ innehållsanalys av hållbarhetsrapporteringen inom svenska storföretag

Sammanfattning: During the 21st century the attention of sustainability and social responsibility has increased. Therefore, it is interesting to study how the responsibility is expressed in sustainability reports within today's companies. In this study we examine the motives behind the sustainability work in order to identify the driving forces of the companies, but also to illustrate possible variations between industries. The study is based on qualitative content analyzes of sustainability reports from eight companies, operating in four different industries. Research in the area shows that small and medium-sized companies represent 90 percent of the world's companies and the motives for working sustainably are related to firm size. Therefore, it is interesting to study companies that fall into the considerably smaller category, large companies. There is also research which suggests that social responsibility can be a business-oriented motivation or a form of resource efficiency which further generates both internal and external benefits. The previous research also shows that the sustainability phenomenon is more developed in Sweden compared to other countries, which is another interesting aspect to why we examine the Swedish context. Our result indicates that the motives behind social responsibility are related to a specific company, rather than being an industry-specific phenomenon. The study also highlights that there are variations regarding both the degree and form of responsibility, which can be found within the social sustainability aspect.