Social Responsibility of Mining Companies at a Time of COVID-19: Dear Shareholders!

Irena Jindřichovská and Eva Eckert
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Irena Jindřichovská: Department of Financial Management, Metropolitan University Prague, Dubečská 900/10, Strašnice, 100 31 Praha, Czech Republic
Eva Eckert: School of Humanities & Social Sciences, Anglo-American University, Letenská 120/5, MaláStrana, 118 00 Praha, Czech Republic

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 14, issue 1, 1-19

Abstract: This paper examines annual reports (ARs) of multinational mining companies Glencore, Rio Tinto and BHP framed by the challenge of COVID-19 in 2020. We apply a linguistic analysis to screening the letters of chairmen and CEOs that encapsulate an ideology of mining, prioritize the message of sustained and prospective financial success, and display commitment to employees and communities. Using critical discourse analysis, we explore how corporations involved in destructive activities managed to mask the nature of their conduct and promote positive PR when expected to document an on-the-ground involvement with employees and local communities due to the global pandemic. We accounted for the ideology of mining natural resources, the central message foregrounded in the reports, the selection and distribution of key topics and keywords, and relexicalization of critical concepts and descriptions. The CDA revealed “smart management” of COVID-19 aimed to hide facts related to the destruction of the environment and to manipulate people in exchange for education, financial rewards and social improvement. The critical contribution of our paper is that the COVID-19 crisis became an opportunity for corporations to display resilience as well as to manage, dominate and render local populations dependent and vulnerable.

Keywords: annual reports; critical discourse analysis; mining multinationals; natural resources; social values; keywords; relexicalizing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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