Abstract/Summary

Corporate governance (CG) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) have remained hotly debated subjects since their emergence. Evidence from these debates points to no apparent end in sight in the ongoing sustainability agenda. This research aims to augment the debate by filling existing gaps in research such as site-specific geographical social, environmental and ethical reporting of Ghana‘s high impact mining industry. The research seeks to analyse interviews to assess engagements between stakeholders and multinational mining firms in the context of appreciating accountability and transparency. It is difficult to deny that there has been a modest surge in the field of mainstream social and environmental accounting in the last three decades or so, and it is still considered a growing domain within accounting research. Social and environmental accounting is seen here as a vehicle to reveal intertwined corporate and social events aimed at liberating and guiding society towards a just, accountable, transparent and sustainable pathway. This research applies Habermas‘ theory of communicative action and postcolonial theory in the critical examination of the practice of CG and CSR. Through qualitative content analysis of corporate annual/integrated reports of multinational mining firms with operations in Ghana and analysis of interviews with stakeholders of the mining industry, the research reveals colonised features of the industry by multinational firms and in extreme cases racial issues. These issues represent obstacles to the attainment of accountability and transparency between firms and their stakeholders. The thesis proposes a corporate accountability framework reminiscent of indigenous local and international best practices towards a more stakeholder-centric model of multinational corporate accountability and transparency in the 'Third-world'.