Sustainability reports versus sustainability practices: impact of organised hypocrisy & organisational facades on sustainability behaviour of Australian mining companies

Using content analysis, this study aims to investigate the existence of any gaps between corporate talk, decisions and actions in the sustainability reporting of the Australian mining sector and provide explanations for the existence of these gaps (if any). Prior research on sustainability reporting has focused on the theoretical frameworks of legitimacy, stakeholder and institutional theories, while this study uses a more nuanced theoretical framework of organised hypocrisy and organisational facades to investigate the divergence between talk, decisions and actions relating to the sustainability behaviour of two large Australian mining companies over the period 2012-2017. It also investigates whether these companies create organisational facades to meet the conflicting demands of their different stakeholder groups. The findings suggest that there is a divergence between talk, decisions and actions and while these gaps are less evident within each facade, they become more obvious across facades. Moreover, the evaluation of the disclosures finds that companies meet the conflicting demands of their stakeholders by engaging in organised hypocrisy, i.e., satisfying some stakeholders with corporate talk and decisions and others with corporate actions. The findings will help stakeholders better evaluate the sustainability disclosures and enable a constructive dialogue between the organisations and their stakeholders to improve the quality of their sustainability reporting.