The Relationship Between a Governmental Investment Organization and the Concept of Sustainability: The Operationalization of Sustainability in the Case of the Swedish Pension System

Abstract

This thesis aims to contribute to the understanding of how the relationship between a governmental investment organization and the concept of sustainability has effects on both national and global scales. The thesis discusses the first four funds within the Swedish Pension System, which secures Sweden’s pensions through investing money retrieved from citizens’ income. The thesis has one overarching research question, and three sub-research questions: How do the first four funds within the Swedish Pension System utilize the concept of sustainability throughout their management? What definitions do the first four funds of the Swedish Pension System operate with regarding sustainability throughout their annual reports? How does the definition of sustainability provided in the Agenda 2030 correspond with the one provided in the Swedish pension system’s first four funds’ annual reports? What implications does the Swedish Pension System’s first four funds’ implementation of policies regarding sustainability have for the funds’ sustainability-related goals? Through the framework of legitimacy theory, the thesis analyzes the funds’ annual reports from 2016-2019. They manage the pensions’ financial aspects through elaborated strategies and investments, simultaneously as they invest in hazardous industries. Thus, along with previous research, the analysis notes a perceived contradiction within the funds where their acclaimed behavior does not instinctively match their investments. The thesis concludes that the perceived inherent contradiction, in fact, is no contradiction and that they, as governmental investment organizations, are inseparable from Swedish society. The funds arguably both are and are not sustainable while having effects on both national and global scales.