Corporate disclosures: Royal/Dutch Shell oil spills in Nigeria

Purpose

This paper analyses corporate disclosures of a Multinational (MNC) corporation Royal/Dutch Shell in the context of a developing country Nigeria.

Design/methodology

/approach

Adopts a social constructionist approach of Royal/Dutch Shell’s public discourse including: sustainability reports and annual reports over a period of ten years. In addition, a response letter (2010) to a major shareholder is also analysed. Fairclough’s (1989, 1993 and 1995) Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is the main method used to analyse this data.

Findings

The key finding of this study illustrates that Shell’s disclosures practices differ according to the category of identified oil spills. The results of this study are particularly important for corporate disclosures in developing countries.

Originality/value

This paper contributes to the limited literature on the corporate disclosures of MNC operating in developing countries.