The Impact of Sustainability Reporting Determined from the Response of Mining Corporations to Environmental Risk

Abstract

The corporate social responsibility movement promotes the principle that corporations should be responsible for the impact of their activities. Sustainability reporting is one way in which companies can demonstrate accountability to company stakeholders and society in general. Social contract, stakeholder and legitimacy theories provide explanations for the motivation of companies to commit to sustainability reporting. This chapter describes a study of sustainable reporting in Australian mining companies. The purpose of the research was to determine why mining companies adopted sustainability reporting, what do they report as ‘sustainability’, what actions do they take, and do they engage with their stakeholders?