Companies today face more and more demands from society and stakeholders. It is no longer about just satisfying shareholders, sales and making a profit. Consumers are becoming more aware of products effects and the consequences it has on humans, our environment and the generation ahead of us. NGO:s and society request that companies take responsibility and actions toward a more sustainable business. Many investors analyze companies’ sustainability regarding social and environmental issues when it comes to choosing a company to invest in. Sustainability has been an issue that companies today need to consider in their strategies, and several companies today develop a sustainability report on the side of their annual report. The intent with this report is to show stakeholders that they handle non financial issues such as environmental issues, social rights and business ethics but also what they do and do not do regarding the surrounding environment. How and to what extent they do this is the company’s choice. Since non government owned companies in Sweden do not need to develop a report, it is a free option. Even so, sustainability reporting is a common strategy and complement for companies today.

The aim for this study is to study the possible effect that central stakeholders hold on companies’ sustainability reports. We also study what companies and stakeholders think about sustainability development and what the expression stands for. This study was undertaken through a literature-study with relevant theories and an empirical study on five non government owned companies that have a sustainability report available on the internet. We have also interviewed four stakeholders, whom according to the companies we interviewed are the most central. By this we receive stakeholder’s perspectives and opinions.

Our study showed that stakeholders have an impact on the overall sustainability-work but not much impact on the sustainability report. Stakeholders that claimed they had effect on the report were the shareholders and NGO: s. Among other findings was that both stakeholders and companies supported the dialogue and relationship between each other as the main strategy for enhancing sustainability. However the dialogue and relationship did not seem as relevant in the actual creation of a sustainability report. To what extent the report is used by stakeholders and its actual purpose is therefore an aspect we are analyzing.

Implications of this study show that stakeholders have little impact on sustainability reports and it is stakeholders with most power that have an impact; however, companies agree that stakeholders have impact on the overall sustainability development. Demands from stakeholders are then discussed through dialogues and cooperation. Limitations of this study could be that we focused on stakeholders that companies found most central, maybe we missed some perspectives from other stakeholders. We used telephone and email interviews and that could be a limitation. We could have missed some face to face expressions and opinions that are hard to catch over telephone and e-mail. The main value of this paper is that we interview both companies and central stakeholders and the possible impact they have on sustainability reports. By this we get a wide range of perspectives from both parts, which we have not found in article and theories before.