Swedish Match Sustainability

“In a truly great company profits and cash flow become like blood and water to a healthy body: They are absolutely essential for life but they are not the very point of life”–Jim Collins. This quote points to the fact that the long-run success of the business is found in a balanced combination between profit-seeking and sustainability goals. As the Corporate Sustainability section of Swedish Match illustrates, responsibility and sustainability embraced by a culture of transparency across the value chain are the two main pillars of successful operations. In the following paragraphs, the Corporate Sustainability report of Swedish Match will be discussed from a metaphor perspective in an attempt to outline the main messages this report aims to

Now we will simply jump to another dimension of sustainability – the environment. An interesting metaphor is found in the following excerpt: “Swedish Match ‘s water footprint is low”. It is a direct transfer of meaning from something obvious and concrete such as a footprint to something abstract such as the impact of the company on water resources. It indicates that the company conducts business in a responsible and sustainable way with minimum repercussions for the natural resources. Even though companies are considered to be mainly profit-seeking, through this metaphor they encourage us to draw the conclusion that the environmental impact is deliberately tracked across the value chain on a regular basis so as to keep a balance between the business operations and their consequences on the planet. Consideration of the Planet, the third P of sustainability, is brought up to show that Swedish Match is following global trends that shape the future, because without water there is no

For this reason, they state: “ The Company is impacted by and impacts a broad area of sustainability-related factors, including issues related to its role as a tobacco company, addressing, for example, relative risks of tobacco on health as well as providing less harmful alternatives to cigarette smoking”. In this case, they describe the company as it was an influential leader, capable of impacting and addressing serious societal issues on his way of making his vision a reality. The fact that in the annual report this excerpt is followed by mentioning “human rights issues”, “community initiatives”, “education and training” simply tells of the purpose of the company to show their huge contribution to the general