Transparensens förändring inom hållbarhetsredovisning : En kvalitativ innehållsanalys av skogsbruksbranschen

Sammanfattning: The transparency within sustainability reporting has been criticized during a long period of time. This can be explained by, among other things, inadequate comparability, balance and clarity in sustainability reporting. When the transparency is inadequate, the stakeholders can lose the reliance in the companies which could adversely affect the companies. Within the Swedish forestry industry, there is a great deal of tension between the companies and its stakeholders. It partly depends on the great number of parties who must share the areas of the forest. The stakeholders therefore demand greater transparency regarding the companies’ environmental impact and preventive environmental work. The lack of transparency resulted in introducing a new Swedish law in 2017. The new law aims to improve the transparency by making sustainability reporting mandatory. Previous studies believe that the introduction of regulatory sustainability reporting will improve the quality of the reports and thus transparency will increase. It is these changed conditions in sustainability reporting that have led to the research question: How has the transparency been affected by mandatory sustainability reporting within the Swedish forestry industry? In order to answer the research question, a qualitative content analysis was conducted on five forestry companies’ sustainability reports between the years 2015-2018. The qualitative content analysis is based on comparability, balance and clarity which all contribute to the transparency. The three concepts have been operationalized through a categorization matrix. This matrix has been used to analyze the 20 sustainability reports. The study has also applied both the legitimacy theory, and the stakeholder theory to create understanding of how the introduction of mandatory sustainability reporting has affected the transparency. The result showed that the transparency overall stayed relatively unchanged throughout the four years. The comparability showed a slight negative change, while the clarity showed a slight positive change. The balance was almost unchanged throughout the studied years. This can be explained by companies’ pursuit for legitimacy leading to an undermining of the transparency. Another possible explanation is that the new law has had no effect after two years and that transparency will improve over time. The study also showed that the transparency is deficient both before and after the introduction of the new law.