Recent tragedies in the United States have turned public attention to safety and accountability in the mining industry. This intense concern and focus on a particular industry after a disaster is nothing new, says author Natalia Yakovleva, a research associate with Cardiff University’s ESRC Center for Business Relationships, Accountability, Sustainability and Society. Improving safety standards and social performance after a human or environmental disaster, she writes, becomes “viewed as a matter of business survival.”
The mining industry touches many aspects of a community, from environmental protection, health, and safety to employee relations and community development. In this book, Yakovleva examines the history and progress of mining companies as many are transformed from government-owned enterprises to private, often international, corporations. She also looks at systematic ways that companies can begin to mitigate disasters and decrease risk, such as issuing public reports of key health and environmental statistics and disclosing the economic impact of their operations. The book is divided into two parts, “Mining and the Environment” and “Corporate Social Responsibility Strategies in Mining.”
Yakovleva includes cases that illustrate and document corporate change on myriad fronts: political, social, cultural, and environmental. A case on the Russian Federation (specifically the Republic of Sakha, a vast region occupying three time zones in the northeast of Russia) highlights the complexities of the issues. Mining is well established in Russia, but this fascinating case shows the industry within the context of a country moving from a planned to a market economy and from a communist to a democratic system. This case (as with the bulk of the book) focuses specifically on the gold and diamond mining industries.
The style of Yakovleva’s book is academic and includes extensive notes, graphs, and citations. Each chapter includes a bulleted summary of key points. While this book may be too detailed for those not accustomed to in-depth case studies, the many insights may help managers learn about CSR developments in the mining industry.
- Manda Salls