Sustainbility Reporting in South Africa: A Comparative Study of the Mining and Manufacturing Industries

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to determine the nature and extent of sustainability reporting in the mining and manufacturing industries in South Africa. The top ten mining and manufacturing companies by market capitalisation were used to represent the respective industries and the checklist of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange’s (JSE) Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) Index was used to represent a measure of sustainability reporting. The paper compared the extent of disclosure both pre and post the implementation of the King Report III for the two industries. The research found that over the five years examined, companies in both industries increased their sustainability disclosures in the two categories of the JSE SRI Index, namely environmental and social indicators. However, overall, mining companies provided more information in their reporting. T-tests were performed to see if the extent of reporting was significantly different. Although the samples were small, the results of the t-tests showed that the sustainability reporting by the mining companies is significantly more than that of the manufacturing industry, and that the King Report III did have a significant impact on the sustainbaility disclosures provided by both industries. However, for the combined industries, there was no notable improvement in the reporting pre King Report III when compared to the reporting post King Report III.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n25p92