MINING FIRMS AND SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING IN GHANA

Purpose: Despite the significant contribution of mining to Ghana's development, little is known about sustainability-reporting disposition of players in the Ghanaian mining industry. The objective of this study is to assess the sustainability-reporting performance of selected mining firms operating in Ghana. This study therefore offers one of the rare works, from the Ghanaian context that documents how mining firms seek to turn the tides on the negative publicity regarding sustainability issues through disclosures. Design/methodology/approach: We employed a multiple case study approach, where more than one unit of analysis (case) was studied as the research design. The study involved two sets of cases: foreign and local. The foreign case consists of six firms: AngloGold Ashanti, Goldfields, Newmont, Perseus Mining Limited, Azumah Resources and Pelangio Exploration Incorporated. The second case has four local mining companies: Bloomfield Mineral Resources, West Line Mining, Western Precious Metals and Ghana Manganese Company (GMC). Archival data were gathered via the websites of the mining firms studied. We analysed the data using pattern matching. Findings: The findings indicate that in Ghana, foreign-owned mining firms tend to report more on their sustainability initiatives than their local counterparts. Furthermore, we noted that foreign-owned mining firms operating in Ghana disclose more environmental sustainability information irrespective of the size of firm. Research/practical implications: Our findings suggest that sustainability reporting practices among local mining firms are still at the embryonic stage and they need to adopt standardised guidelines for reporting their sustainability initiatives. The study's major limitation was the emphasis on only the online reports of the firms. Further studies could be conducted where a combination of media reportage such as printed reports, newspaper articles, and magazines are examined in addition to the company websites. Again, for reasons of generalisation, future studies can be conducted on the sustainability reporting idiosyncrasies of all the mining firms operating in Ghana. Originality/value: This study through multiple case research design has documented how well mining firms in Ghana are faring on the sustainability reporting ladder because most studies on sustainability in the Ghanaian literature have focussed on reporting in tertiary institutions (e.g. Hinson et al., 2015) and the environmental costs of mining activities (Boachie, 2012).