Abstract:
Mining activities generate significant social concerns in terms of employee safety and
stakeholder scrutiny has increased considerably in recent years. Social and environmental
accounting research is largely dedicated to environmental issues and the study of other
components of social accounting is limited. This study examines safety disclosures in the
annual reports, sustainability reports, and reactive corporate press releases of South African
mining organisations following two major mining accidents occurring at Harmony Gold and
Gold Fields’ mines. Results show that organisations react to perceived legitimacy threats
through increased safety disclosures. The entire mining industry evidences an increase in
disclosure levels after the incidents, suggesting that organisations do respond to increased
stakeholder scrutiny threatening their legitimacy. Furthermore, our results provide evidence
of an association between safety disclosure levels and firm size, social performance, risk, and
number of fatalities, while the media attention devoted to mining accidents appears to be
unrelated to safety disclosure levels. It is possible that stakeholder pressure, which motivates
corporate social disclosures according to legitimacy and stakeholder theories, consists of
various factors, which combined form the motivation to report. Media attention, therefore,
cannot be considered in isolation as a driver of disclosure. Rather, a combination of variables
such as size, social responsibility performance, number of fatalities, risk, and media attention
could serve as a proxy for social pressure.
