Lonmin CSR Reporting Practices and the Marikana Massacre

Abstract

In the last decades, corporations have been increasingly reporting on their social and environmental activities, to highlight transparency and accountability towards their business activities. This positive trend is strongly driven by stakeholder pressuring in various dimensions. However, in the context of major crisis/incidents, questions have been raised on how companies may use Corporate Social Responsibility disclosures to regain legitimacy and restore reputation towards those negative situations. This study will rely on an example of a legitimacy-threatening event: the Marikana massacre (2012) associated with Lonmin. This study will analyse how Lonmin’s CSR disclosures have evolved, both quantitatively and qualitatively, within the timeframe “before, during and after” the incident. Findings extend and corroborate the previous literature research on the legitimacy theory, by demonstrating that the company did, in fact, changed its CSR disclosure patterns and strategies, presumably by attempting to regain legitimacy after the incidents.