Nowadays sustainability reporting can be used for communication purpose in marketing and to show transparency of the company (Kolk, 2000). These types of reports published by organization to disclosed more information on non-financial performance. These report highlighted the company’s commitment towards stakeholders. Various industries throughout the world started disclosing non-financial performance (sustainability reporting) by using various different types of frameworks like Dow Jones index or global Reporting Initiative. In the 21st century sustainability reporting becomes important but in India it’s still in nascent stage. Out of all industries mining should be disclose information on the non-financial performance because of put direct negative impact on society and environment. Moreover mining is considered as one of the most polluting industries in the world. The objective of this paper is to examine and compare the level of sustainability reporting of sample private mining companies and sample public mining companies as GRI framework. It involves an explorative research design to understand the trend and variation in the quality and extent of sustainability disclosure information by top 100 Indian mining companies.
This study uses the content analysis methodology for analyzing annual reports, websites and stands alone reports of top 100 mining companies as per net sales have been studied for 2007-2012 and sustainability disclosure index to analysis the extent and quality of sustainability reporting as per GRI in India. Moreover, independent t-test and simple t-test have been used to compare the disclosure practices between and within the sample private and public mining. The results of the analysis show that there are significant variations in sustainability disclosure practices as per GRI framework within and between the public and private mining companies. The study revealed that sustainability reporting disclosure practices are more in public sector as compared to the private sector mining companies. The study observed that sustainability disclosure by public mining companies are more as compared to the private mining companies but as far as content quality is concerned private mining companies disclosed limited but relevant information on sustainability disclosure as per GRI.