Transparency in Global Value Chains : A Case Study on How Swedish Firms in Global Value Chains Perceive Their Level of Transparency

This thesis is a qualitative case study on how Swedish companies operating in global valuechains percieve their level of transparency concerning social- and environmental aspects, andhow they manage this work. The thesis contributes to existing literature since it draw attentionto the role of transparency concerning social- and environmental aspects and study howcompanies operating in global value chains actually perceive their level of transparency. Theanalysis and results in this thesis is based on interviews with sustainability experts within fivedifferent Swedish companies operating in global value chains. The companies in this studydiffer in size and belong to different industries. The result shows that companies in this studydo not perceive transparency as an issue in itself; rather the ability to control the chains has animpact on the level of transparency. The level of control seems to depend on resources andstakeholders pressure, and differ depending on industry and size of the company. In thisstudy, the larger companies have more resources to control their chains than the smallercompanies and therefore they have a higher level of transparency