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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.
Highlights
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a concept that has been evolving both in theoretical and practical terms
The analysis of these results led to the conclusion that, and in line with literature supporting legitimacy theory, Lonmin increased its CSR disclosures at the time of the incident: for sustainability reports (SR) and annual reports (AR), Lonmin’s volume of disclosures reached its peak in 2012, with values of 604 and 323 sentences, respectively
The purpose of this study was to examine how Lonmin publicly reacted through its CSR disclosures in the face of a major adverse event, in order to regain legitimacy
Summary
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a concept that has been evolving both in theoretical and practical terms. In a context of major negative incidents, fluctuations in the quantitative and qualitative factors of social and environmental disclosures of the firms involved may suggest that these types of disclosures could be used as an instrument to tackle backlash, reputation and the deterioration of financial performance. This has been extensively analysed in major cases such as the Siemens AG corruption scandal [4], the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill [5] or the Fukushima nuclear disaster [6]. It aims at analysing whether there is a positive correlation between the negative occurrence and the total amount of corporate disclosures and, on the other hand, to assess which and how legitimation strategies were used
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