Methodology
The project has to date focused on desk-based research and the content analysis of mining company social, ethical and environmental reports, revealing the language and constructs used by the mining industry to frame its responsibility to the environment and community and role in possible conflicts. A temporal analysis of the recent trends in social, ethical and environmental disclosure, using a case study of the top ten mining companies in the world, was undertaken to demonstrate how the nature and content of such disclosure has changed, and to compare and contrast companies’ progress towards comprehensive reporting on the sustainability of their operations. This led to a simple classification of reporting companies, from ‘leaders’ to ‘laggards’.
