Mapping the Literature on Social Responsibility and Stakeholders’ Pressures in the Mining Industry

Abstract

Mining activities can be good for the local economy, but they can also have a negative impact, which has created increasing pressure from stakeholders. A constructive and positive engagement between a company and its stakeholders is important for sustainability issues and can provide a shared understanding of sustainable development. This review aims to examine the growth trajectory, the most influential documents, and the conceptual framework of the literature on stakeholder engagement and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the mining industry. Moreover, tries to answer the following research questions: What research streams have been followed? Which theories and research paradigms have been used? A bibliometric analysis was performed using 149 documents extracted from the Web of Science and Scopus databases. The documents obtained were analysed using Bibliometrix software. The results suggest that the most studied constructs within the mining industry are related to sustainability issues, management and legitimacy concerns, and the importance of stakeholders, particularly local communities, and the social impacts that mining generates. The study contributes to the literature by reviewing prominent cited references and documents that cited them, the authors provide the landscapes and research gaps of major research lines for further development.

1. Introduction

Commonly, the literature on social responsibility and its relationship with stakeholders in the mining industry shows that this industry should adapt its activities to the new paradigm of sustainability. However, the complexity of many sustainability issues, may require collaboration between stakeholders. Moreover, bringing a large number of stakeholders into management dialogues can contribute to sustainability (Matikainen 2022). This line of thought is in line with the basic requisites of the sustainable development discourse, which are: (1) environmental integrity (related to not compromising the natural environment), (2) social equality/equity (equal access to resources and opportunities), and (3) economic prosperity (productive capacity of organizations to provide a reasonable quality of life for individuals) (Bansal 2005).

Therefore, in organizational/business terms, this question culminates in the concepts of social responsibility and stakeholders within the mining industry, which are important to define. Thus, the definition of social responsibility was adopted by Raufflet et al. (2014), who postulate that this responsibility in the mining industry refers to voluntary actions undertaken by them in order to improve the living conditions (economic, social and environmental) of local communities and to reduce the negative impacts of their operations. This means that a socially responsible company cares about the interests and concerns of its stakeholders (Gaweł et al. 2015), which can be internal (e.g., shareholders, managers, employees) or external (e.g., customers, suppliers, communities, associations) (Hąbek et al. 2019). Additionally, Hąbek et al. (2019) advocated that the environment is also part of the company’s relations, being the silent stakeholder.

Under these circumstances, the theoretical framework of this research is the stakeholder theory (Freeman 1984, 2010), which analyses the nature of the relationships between organizations and their stakeholders from the point of view of the beneficial outcomes that this relationship provides (Hąbek et al. 2019). Also, according to this theory, organizations manage their operations based on lasting and transparent relationships with them (Freeman 1984). Moreover, the stakeholder approach is very relevant to discuss how CSR policies can address the main issues affecting sustainability, such as environmental deterioration, social vulnerability, and inequality (Mutti et al. 2012). In this context, “the idea of creating value for stakeholders based on sustainability is inspired by both stakeholder theory and sustainability management” (Horisch et al. 2014, p. 339). Moreover, in this context, sustainability-based value creation for stakeholders creates economic value while contributing to sustainability.

Concerning the mining/extractive industry, it is considered strategic worldwide and crucial to the livelihood of many families living in communities and representing an important role in regional and global economic growth (Rodrigues and Mendes 2018; Yang and Chen 2022). However, mining operations can have both positive and negative impacts in terms of sustainability (Matikainen 2022). In fact, these industries assume a transient nature due to the depletion of reserves and non-renewable resources and a high social and environmental impact. Moreover, “the dark history of inappropriate practices in the field, primarily based on a development model exclusively focused on profits in the extraction of primary natural resources with no rehabilitation plan in the surrounding environment affected by the extractive activity is no longer acceptable” (Segura-Salazar and Tavares 2018, p. 2). In other words, being a socially responsible mining industry is an ongoing challenge for its shareholders and managers (Vintró et al. 2014).

The sustainable development principles established by the International Council on Mining and Metals have helped mining companies to approach and manage particular aspects of sustainability. Verifiable outcomes of the application of these principles are presented in “The Australian minerals industry framework for sustainable development” (ICMM 2015). These 10 principles are: Implement and maintain ethical business practices and sound systems of corporate governance; Integrate sustainable development principles into company policies and practices; Uphold fundamental human rights and respect cultures, customs and values in dealings with employees and others who are affected by our activities; Implement risk management strategies based on valid data and sound science; Seek continual improvement of our health and safety performance; Seek continual improvement of our environmental performance; Contribute to the conservation of biodiversity and integrated approaches to land use planning; Facilitate and encourage responsible product design, use, re-use, recycling and disposal of our products; Contribute to the social, economic and institutional development of the communities in which we operate, (with an inclusive engagement strategy that supports the assessment of the social impacts and benefits of the operation and the development and implementation of management strategies over the life of the operation); Effective and transparent engagement, communications and independently verified reporting arrangements with stakeholders

Given this scenario, the mining industry is under constant pressure (Moomen and Dewan 2017), and the interest of academia in studying this topic has grown exponentially. Not surprisingly, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and stakeholder engagement are continuously gaining significance in the business world (Ansu-Mensah et al. 2021). Stakeholder engagement, perceived as a constructive and positive engagement between a firm and its stakeholders (Matikainen 2022), is at the heart of effective CSR and sustainability (Strand et al. 2015). However, the extensive literature on the same has not exhausted the emergency to prepare a systematic literature review that positions state of the art in the mining industry on the constructs of social responsibility and stakeholders. Corroborating this argument, Turker (2009) argued that there is a scarcity of theoretical studies in this area; also, Rodrigues and Mendes (2018) suggested the existence of a gap in studies focused on the social and environmental dimensions and its relationship with stakeholders. Notwithstanding these gaps, most existing studies are geographically contextualised and represent single case studies (Alves and Rodrigues 2017, 2019; Devenin and Bianchi 2018; Dong et al. 2014; Mzembe and Meaton 2014; Viveros 2016) that do not allow the generalisation of the results (Rodrigues and Mendes 2018). Finally, previous studies did not include the paradigms that guide research in the accounting field. Thus, and based on Hopper and Powell’s taxonomy (Hopper and Powell 1985), three distinct paradigms were considered, which are: positivist research, interpretive research, and critical research. Thus, this study tries to answer the following research questions: Which theories and research paradigms have been used? What research streams have been followed, to form the conceptual framework of the literature on stakeholder engagement and CSR in the mining industry? Under these circumstances, this study aims to map the existing literature on social responsibility in the mining industry and its relationship with stakeholders, and present a future research agenda for this theme, using the Prism method (Donato and Donato 2019).

The article is organized as follows: After this brief introduction, the literature review, the methodology, the results, and the main conclusions of the review are presented.

2. Literature Review

2.1. CSR Theories

There is no single theory that can explain CSR, and several theoretical perspectives have emerged over the years. Identifying the most appropriate theory to adopt for a research project, therefore, depends largely on the particular context of the research in question and can be quite complex. Melé (2009) suggest four CSR theories, which can be considered contemporary mainstream theories:

Corporate Social Performance is a theory grounded in sociology. Carroll (1979) introduced this concept and suggested that an entire range of obligations that business has to society must embody the economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary/philanthropic categories. According to this theory, it is important to pay attention to social expectations regarding company performance and concern for social needs. It is also emphasized that society gives companies license to operate and, consequently, companies should serve society by contributing to social needs and meeting social expectations. Wood’s (1991) CSP model is probably one of the most representative within this theory.

Shareholder Value Theory (or Fiduciary Capitalism) is a theory rooted in economics. This theory argues that CSR is about making profits to increase the economic value of the company to its shareholders. Usually, the “shareholder value oriented” approach is associated with the Agency Theory (Ross 1973) where the owners are the principal, and the managers are the agent. “The principal can limit divergences from his interest by establishing appropriate incentives for the agent and by incurring monitoring costs designed to limit the aberrant activities, of the agent” (Jensen and Meckling 1976, p. 308).

Corporate Citizenship theory is rooted in political studies and comes from the political concept of citizen. Before applying the term citizenship to corporations, it is useful to have a better understanding of this concept (Matten and Crane 2005). According to Melé (2009), the notion of citizen evokes individual duties and rights within a political community, but it also contains the more general idea of being part of a community, where the idea of citizenship already makes more sense. However, it is difficult to make sense of something like “corporate citizenship”, since social and political rights cannot be regarded as an entitlement for a corporation. This can only be achieved if corporations can be seen as powerful public actors that have a responsibility to respect individual citizen’s rights (Matten and Crane 2005). The term ‘corporate citizenship’ was introduced in the 1980s into the business and society relationship mainly through practitioners (Altman and Vidaver-Cohen 2000).

Stakeholder theory, in its normative version is grounded in several ethical theories. Unlike the ‘Shareholder Theory’, the ‘Stakeholder Theory’ takes into account all individuals or groups with a ‘stake’ in or claim on the company. According to Altman and Vidaver-Cohen (2000), the concept of the firm’s responsibility to a broader group of stakeholders, beyond just shareholders, was introduced in 1984 with Freeman ‘now well-known stakeholder framework. Stakeholder theory was first presented as a management theory, which came to provide a new way of thinking about strategic management (Freeman 1984). However, it is also a normative theory that requires management to have a moral duty to protect the firm as a whole and, the legitimate interests of all stakeholders. Despite these arguments, if we take the broad concept of CSR, then stakeholder theory can be considered a CSR theory because it provides a normative framework for a responsible organization toward society. With Stakeholder theory, the firm is seen as an ‘abstract entity’ where a variety of interests converge rather than as a ‘set of contracts’ (Melé 2009). Stakeholders are distinguished by their interests in the affairs of the firm” and it is assumed that “the interests of all stakeholders have intrinsic value” (Donaldson and Preston 1995, p. 81).

Stakeholder theory differs from other theories in fundamental ways, and in order to show the differences, Donaldson and Preston (1995) established three uses: descriptive/empirical (used to describe, and to explain, specific corporate characteristics and behaviours), instrumental (in conjunction with descriptive/empirical, is used to examine the connections between stakeholder management and the achievement of traditional corporate goals) and normative (used to interpret the function of the corporation, including the moral or philosophical guidelines for the operation and management of corporations).

Stakeholder theory has been one of the most widely used theories to explain CSR (Pfajfar et al. 2022). Garriga and Melé (2004) shows that in the last decade, CSR-related management-focused research has more frequently turned to stakeholder management to theoretically address the relationships between conceptualizations of the common good and the inherent profit motives of the business corporation. Moreover, according to Jones and Haigh (2007), being an organisation-centred concept, stakeholder analysis assesses the importance of ecological systems from the perspective of threats to the firm rather than from a perspective of the firm’s threat to ecological systems.

Melé (2009) suggests several strengths of stakeholder theory. “First, this theory seems ethically superior to maximizing shareholder value because it takes into consideration stakeholder rights and their legitimate interests, and not only what is strictly required by law in manager—stakeholder relations. Consequently, managerial duties are wider than management fiduciary duties to the shareholders. In addition, the consideration of property rights fits better with justice requirements than the Shareholder Value Theory. Finally, this theory, is more respectful of human dignity and rights” (p. 13). Another strength is that the stakeholder theory has supplanted the conceptual vagueness of CSR by addressing concrete interests and practices and visualizing specific responsibilities to specific groups. A final strength that we can point out, is that this is not merely an ethical theory disconnected from business management, but a management theory related to business success. The normative approach comes later and is closely connected with managerial decision-making. Stakeholder management is well accepted in many companies and provides a guideline which can lead to business success in the long term.

2.2. CSR in the Mining Industry

The mining activity generates high social and environmental concerns and involves a growing number of stakeholders, who demand to express their present and future concerns (Coetzee and van Staden 2011). In this sense, Fitzpatrick et al. (2011) considered that it is increasingly crucial that the importance of sustainability in the mining industry is recognised, which means that the involvement of stakeholders is a construct that facilitates the implementation of socially responsible actions (Kepore and Imbun 2011). This facility allows this type of industry to obtain the much sought-after internal and external legitimacy to continue its operations (e.g., Bansal 2005; Claasen and Roloff 2012; McDonald and Young 2012; Yang and Rivers 2009). A recent study concluded that obtaining and maintaining this dual legitimacy leads to achieving the so-called social license to operate (continuity of operations in the long term) (Rodrigues and Mendes 2018). This concept differs from CSR which refers to relations with a wide range of external and internal stakeholders, whereas the main characteristic of social license to operate is to create positive relations abroad—with the local society (Wozniak and Jurczyk 2022).

In this sense, the concern with social responsibility in the mining industry is increasingly a key issue (Devenin and Bianchi 2018), so when aiming to make a public commitment to social responsibility, these industries should identify the requirements and expectations of their stakeholders and include them in their decision-making processes (Hąbek et al. 2019), so that there is co-creation of shareable value in this process and that this industry responds to the challenge imposed on it (Rodrigues and Mendes 2018). It is perceived, then, that social responsibility encompasses: (1) the internal dimension (Amponsah-Tawiah and Mensah 2015), which is interconnected with health, safety, investment in human capital, quality management, change management and responsible management of natural resources; (2) the external dimension (Amponsah-Tawiah and Mensah 2015), which extends to the local community, business partners, public authorities (European Commission 2001), non-profit organisations (NGOs) and the environment (European Commission 2001).

Targeting the stakeholders, previous studies have reported that, particularly the local communities, are expecting the mining industries to be socially responsible (Imbun 2007; Kepore and Imbun 2011; Sharma and Bhatnagar 2015) and indicated that CSR interventions seem to have had a significant effect on the neighbourhood surrounding the mines (Ansu-Mensah et al. 2021). These expectations translate into the understanding that the relations with the surrounding communities of mining industries suggest that the company itself understands the perspectives of that community through the creation of a dialogue so that there is mutual understanding between both parties (Kemp 2010). The response to the surrounding local communities is a driving vehicle to obtain local legitimacy (Gifford and Kestler 2008; Mzembe and Meaton 2014; Raufflet et al. 2014), which can be obtained from social investments, both in tangible and intangible resources, in these communities (Owen and Kemp 2012). However, there must be a balance between the concerns of communities and the imperative of environmental protection, with the need for mining industries to make a profit (Jenkins 2004), which is a further challenge for these (Govindan et al. 2014). Several topics have been addressed in previous research, for example, the link between social responsibility and the perceived impact of mining activities (Viveros 2016), practical social responsibility initiatives (Govindan et al. 2014), stakeholder engagement (Ventura and Saenz 2015), resistance and conflicts (Moomen and Dewan 2017), and initiatives originating from mining industries in various countries (Imbun 2007; Mzembe and Meaton 2014). Management actions should be guided by both environmental and stakeholder needs, because generating economic value through current stakeholder interests can lead to an unbalanced distribution of current and future resources and therefore be unsustainable (Matikainen 2022).

Additionally, the potential of sustainability reporting has been widely recognised among the mining industry (Jonek-Kowalska 2016) due to growing expectations about activity transparency and stakeholder engagement (Hąbek et al. 2019). This recognition is associated with the need for companies to demonstrate their commitment to social responsibility based on clear and verifiable data and information (Hąbek and Wolniak 2016) and thus gain legitimacy from stakeholders and society in general (Amoako et al. 2017).

3. Methodology

In recent years, Systematic Literature Reviews (SLR) have become an important research methodology since they have a clear advantage over traditional literature reviews (Mallett et al. 2012). However, SLRs may not be as objective as they seem, and their strengths must be balanced against their limitations. A critical element in applying this methodology is to mitigate threats to the validity of the findings. Consequently, one of the mechanisms of ensuring the level of scientific value in the findings of an SLR is to rigorously assess its validity. Thus, adherence to principles of rigor, transparency, and replicability can improve the quality and strength of literature reviews. All research, but especially for systematic reviews, should be reported in a comprehensive and transparent manner to allow readers to assess the research’s strengths and weaknesses (Liberati et al. 2009; Kroon et al. 2021).

In this study, the following strategies were used to overcome the limitations of the SLRs: (1) A protocol for the study was established during the planning phase and was reviewed and discussed by all team members. This protocol allowed us to define a priori, the planned methods of research, screening, data extraction, and evaluation; (2) Inclusion and exclusion criteria were defined and reviewed to reduce error in identifying primary studies; (3) All papers were checked in order to detect and remove duplicate papers; (4) Two databases (WoS and Scopus) and several software programs (R. Bibliometrix, RStudio) were used to reduce human errors during the research and data processing phase; (5) A search method that combined automated search with manual search (snowball search) was developed; (6) During the study, all decisions and results were confirmed by at least two people, to avoid the risk of bias assessments.

This study is a SLR, so we used an approach that involves exploring existing studies with attention to theoretical background, purpose, sources of data, research methods, research paradigm, to refine or revise existing knowledge. The systematic review allows for a rigorous, unbiased and comprehensive assessment of the literature (Donato and Donato 2019). In the first phase, we used the software R. Bibliometrix, which has scientific articles as its unit of analysis (in this case, the research focused only on scientific articles) and consists of a grouping of documents with a common and hardcore purpose (Grácio 2016). This kind of analysis is used to identify, evaluate, and analyse content in specific areas and to systematize the concepts, theories, and practices (Rowley and Slack 2004). This software is a clustering tool to generate word clusters for the initial search in WoS and Scopus, by applying eligibility criterion 1 (

Table 1. List of eligibility criteria.

Items
Eligibility Criteria 1
Period:	No chronological filter
Online databases	WoS (Web of Science) and Scopus
Keywords:	(“social responsibility” and “stakeholders” and “mining industry”)
Systematisation by category:	BUSINESS OR MANAGEMENT OR BUSINESS FINANCE OR MINING MINERAL PROCESSING
Systematisation by type of document:	Articles and Review
Language:	English
Eligibility Criterion 2
Keywords:	Only articles whose keywords include the exact search term were selected

), which is shown in Figure 1.

The analysis of Figure 1 shows that the words mining, and corporate social responsibility are the most used in the 149 articles selected (red colour), followed by mining industry (blue colour), sustainability (brown colour), stakeholder engagement (yellow colour), stakeholder theory and legitimacy (green colour). In contrast, the words of the purple and pink nodes show a weak frequency. This means that the greater the size of the nodes shown in Figure 1, the greater their coupling in the selected articles. Given this scenario and to answer the defined objective, it is drawn from this coupling and clustering that the articles that include the words of the string used to filter the documents (eligibility criterion 1) are the most focused on the topic under study. This argument directs the search to the definition of the eligibility criterion 2 (Table 1).

Systematic reviews should be reported in a comprehensive and transparent manner and to achieve this transparent systematization, this paper follows the method outlined in the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic review and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) Statement (Liberati et al. 2009). The PRISMA flowchart that illustrates the various steps in this systematic literature review is shown in Figure 2, and the inclusion/exclusion criteria used, is shown in Table 1.

Given this scenario, the final base of scientific articles under analysis will be 31 documents (Figure 2) and, among all existing methods, the PRISMA method was adopted as a support for their eligibility, which consists of a “minimum set of evidence-based items to report in systematic reviews and meta-analyses. PRISMA consists of, among other things, a checklist and a flow chart (Donato and Donato 2019). The flowchart allowed for the design of a protocol with the eligibility criteria for the systematic review, which are essential to obtain relevant and primary studies on the topic under study (Adiyarta et al. 2020). The Prism method consists of 5 steps followed in this research, and they are (1) Defining eligibility criteria; (2) Defining information sources; (3) literature selection; (4) data collection; and (5) Selecting data items (Liberati et al. 2009). Figure 1 displays the protocol and the steps followed, whose search in the databases was performed on 18 August 2022.

In the data collection step, a search was performed in Scopus and WoS, with the following filters: TOPIC: (social responsibility AND stakeholders AND mining industry) and refined by: WoS CATEGORIES = (business or management or business finance or mining mineral processing) and DOCUMENT TYPES = (article or review) AND LANGUAGES = (english). These search and filtering equations were applied to both WoS and Scopus. From these filters resulted 82 articles from WoS and 98 from Scopus.

The collected data were downloaded in BibTeX format from Scopus. Subsequently, R Studio software (version 1.2.5042, Boston, MA, USA) was used to eliminate duplicates and create a unified database. Then, the data were subjected to a network analysis, which was carried out with RBibliometrix 3.0. The next step was categorical content analysis. However, before carrying out this analysis, the data had to be homogenized, as there are differences in data presentation among journals (including details such as full stops, commas, spaces between words, numerations in authors’ affiliations, etc.).

We joined the two databases using RStudio software. The databases were exported to excel using the R Studio and RBibliometrix software and 31 duplicates were eliminated. Thus, the final database was left with 149 articles to be read, after reading these 106 were excluded, taking into account that only articles were wanted. Only articles whose keywords exactly include the search term were elected. The remaining articles were removed.

Thus, 43 articles were eligible, and 12 were excluded for not having the pdf available or for not addressing the theme under analysis in a concrete way. This manuscript eligibility process was reviewed by all the article’s peers.

The description of the figure shown above, and the eligibility criteria followed are shown in Table 1.

The exclusive adoption of the English language is supported in the arguments of Deng (2012), who explained that adopting this language is a good choice because these articles are peer-reviewed, in addition to the fact that they will be accepted in journals of greater impact (SJR) (Lopez-Morales 2018). Also, the use of only two databases is grounded in Guz and Rushchitsky (2009) explanation, who argued that these two databases are the most widespread in different scientific fields.

Different kinds of information were collected for each included article, and these were introduced into the database. The first kind is fundamental data, which includes: author (s), keyword, county, publication year, journal names and number of citations. Next, and to perform the content analysis purposes and analyses the most significant contributions: the study main purpose, background theory, methodology. Finally, each article was also classified into one of the following three categories, according to the type of research paradigm used: Positivism, interpretivism and critical research.

As in other studies (Rodrigues et al. 2021), the taxonomy of Hopper and Powell (1985) was used to classify the research paradigms used in the empirical studies published. These authors point to the existence of three research paradigms in accounting research: the mainstream, the interpretive paradigm and the critical paradigm. To put this classification into practice, we used the criteria defined by several authors (Orlikowski and Baroudi 1991; Rodrigues et al. 2021), namely, whether the article used primary data; the nature of the empirical study developed (quantitative or qualitative), and the methods used.

4. Results

4.1. Descriptive Analysis

Of the 31 eligible documents, it was found that 2014 2017 and 2018 were the years with the most publications, which highlights the relevance and timeliness of this theme (Figure 3).

Additionally, the first article that meets all the defined eligibility criteria (Figure 2 and

Table 2. Citations per article (n = 31).

Authors/Title	SJR	Quartile	h-Index	WoS Citations	Scopus Citations	Total of Citations
Magness (2006)	1.46	Q1	83	154	0	154
Magness (2008)	1.86	Q1	147	46	58	104
Kemp (2010)	1.67	Q1	58	97	0	97
Yakovleva and Vazquez-Brust (2012)	1.86	Q1	147	41	40	81
Mzembe and Meaton (2014)	1.67	Q1	58	37	25	62
Dong et al. (2014)	1.62	Q1	150	50	0	50
Dobele et al. (2014)	2.17	Q1	84	49	0	49
McDonald and Young (2012)	1.62	Q1	150	49	0	49
Fitzpatrick et al. (2011)	1.62	Q1	150	33	0	33
Viveros (2016)	1.67	Q1	58	15	16	31
Kepore and Imbun (2011)	1.67	Q1	58	29	0	29
Coetzee and van Staden (2011)	0.74	Q2	35	27	0	27
Mzembe (2016)	1.67	Q1	58	13	12	25
Rodrigues and Mendes (2018)	1.62	Q1	150	15	0	15
Song and Wen (2020)	1.95	Q1	82	14	0	14
Ranängen and Zobel (2014)	1.62	Q1	150	14	0	14
Asmeri et al. (2017) 1				0	13	13
Adler et al. (2017)	1.46	Q1	83	0	13	13
Pons et al. (2021)	1.46	Q1	80	1	7	8
Amoako et al. (2017)	1.2	Q1	15	0	5	5
Selmier and Newenham-Kahindi (2017)	0.33	Q2	21	5	0	5
Sutantoputra (2022)	0.58	Q2	53	3	2	5
Devenin and Bianchi (2018)	1.67	Q1	58	2	2	4
Lorenc and Sorokina (2015)	0.35	Q2	6	0	4	4
Duarte (2010)	0.43	Q2	23	3	0	3
Yudarwati and Tjiptono (2017)	0.58	Q2	59	1	1	2
Ranängen and Lindman (2018)	1.62	Q1	150	2	0	2
Amponsah-Tawiah and Mensah (2015) 1				0	2	2
Morales et al. (2018)	0.2	Q3	9	1	0	1
Hąbek et al. (2019)	0.41	Q2	16	0	1	1
Saenz (2019)	1.67	Q1	58	0	0	0
				701	201	902

¹ WoS Emerging Sources Citation Index.

) is Magness (2006), whose content reveals an investigation on social responsibility disclosure policies, soon after the commitment undertaken by the International Council on Mining and Metals, in 2004.

Figure 4 shows the journals in which the eligible articles were published.

Of the total 31 articles, almost half (13 articles) were published exclusively in two journals, Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, with an impact factor (SJR) of 1.67, quartile 1; and the Journal of Cleaner Production, with SJR of 1.62, quartile 1. This concentration in the two journals (about 47%) is associated with the scope of the journals.

Regarding Figure 5, it can be seen that China has only one author with publications, which corroborates Rodrigues and Mendes (2018), who concluded that this country still has a shortage of studies on the mining sector while being one of the biggest contributors to the global mining industry.

On the other hand, viewing the countries of origin of researchers (1st author) (Figure 6) compared to the country of hosting the journals (Figure 5), it is clear that the countries with more authors publishing on the topic under analysis are Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, as a reflection of being countries rich in natural resources, which will have aroused the interest of researchers based there, while the country of hosting is the Netherlands.

Table 2 below shows the total citations per article, the SJR of the journals of publication and other relevant information that allows the understanding of the quality and importance of the 31 articles included in this research

The most cited author is Magness (2006, 2008), with 258 citations, whose country of origin is Canada (strong mining sector) and whose articles are empirical. These studies used a quantitative research methodology. Additionally, the h-index is an author-level metric that attempts to measure the productivity and citation impact of the scholar publication (Hirsch 2005), in which it is highlighted that for the majority (22) of the articles under analysis, this index is greater than 50.

4.2. Content Analysis

A qualitative content analysis of the 31 articles obtained through the PRISMA method is presented below. The conceptual structure (

Table 3. Conceptual framework (n = 31).

Authors	Keywords	Goal	Theory Used	Type of Study	Methodology	Research Paradigm
1. Magness (2006)	Social responsibility, Accounting, Mining industry, Financial performance, Disclosure, Canada	Examine the reactions of stakeholders when accidents occur.	Stakeholders Theory	Empirical	Quantitative	Positivism
2. Magness (2008)	Stakeholder theory, corporate social responsibility, legitimacy perspective	To test Ullmann’s hypothesis in light of stakeholders and inherent disclosure of social responsibility reports.	Legitimacy Theory	Empirical	Quantitative	Positivism
3. Kemp (2010)	stakeholder engagement, community relations, mining, sustainable development; corporate social responsibility, public relations, community development	Exploration of a conceptual and pedagogical framework for community-business interaction, with distinct constructs.	Does not mention	Empirical	Qualitative	Interpretivism
4. Yakovleva and Vazquez-Brust (2012)	Corporate social responsibility, Corporate social responsibility orientation, Mining Stakeholders	Investigate the conceptualisation of corporate social responsibility in the context of multinationals in Argentina.	Stakeholders Theory	Empirical	Quantitative	Positivism
5. Mzembe and Meaton (2014)	Corporate social responsibility (CSR), Malawi, mining, sustainable development, stakeholder engagement	To examine the predictors of the corporate social responsibility agenda pursued by Paladin (Africa), a subsidiary of an Australian multinational mining company, operator of the first uranium mine in Malawi.	Stakeholders Theory	Empirical	Qualitative	Interpretivism
6. Dong et al. (2014)	China Mining and Minerals Industry, CSR, Reports, Stakeholder, Theory Stakeholder Salience	To investigate the influence of key stakeholder groups on CSR disclosure in mining and mineral companies in China.	Stakeholders Theory	Empirical	Quantitative	Positivism
7. Dobele et al. (2014)	Corporate social responsibility, mining, environment, stakeholder engagement, case study	To explore the efforts of a company in a sector with significant environmental impacts to implement a socially responsible way of operating and associated actions.	Stakeholders Theory	Empirical	Qualitative	Interpretivism
8. McDonald and Young (2012)	Corporate social responsibility, cross-sector collaboration, Environmental partnerships, Nonprofits	To explore the 30-year journey undertaken by the giant mining company Alcoa of Australia’ in terms of its approach to social and environmental issues.	Legitimacy Theory	Empirical	Qualitative	Interpretivism
9. Fitzpatrick et al. (2011)	Sustainability, Policy, Learning, Mining Association of Canada, Mining, minerals	Investigation of changes in the sustainable development approach undertaken by the Mining Association of Canada over a 20-year period.	Does not mention	Empirical	Qualitative	Interpretivism
10. Viveros (2016)	Corporate social responsibility; sustainable development; stakeholder engagement; stakeholder perceptions; mining; Chile	Provide a better understanding of the perceptions of multiple stakeholders on CSR.	Legitimacy Theory, Stakeholders Theory	Empirical	Qualitative	Interpretivism
11. Kepore and Imbun (2011)	Community engagement discourse; corporate social responsibility; environmental impact; indigenous local communities; multinational mining companies	Assessment of the effectiveness of voluntary social responsibility in Papua New Guinea.	Stakeholder Theory	Empirical	Qualitative	Interpretivism
12. Coetzee and van Staden (2011)	Safety, disclosure Social, responsibility, Mining Accidents, Legitimacy Stakeholder theory	Observation of safety disclosures in annual sustainability reports and corporate lobbying in mining industries.	Media-agenda Theory, Legitimacy Theory, Stakeholders Theory	Empirical	Quantitative	Positivism
13. Mzembe (2016)	Corporate social responsibility; Malawi; mining; stakeholder engagement; sustainable development	To test stakeholders’ perspectives on responses to shareholder requests for accountability in developing countries in mining companies.	Stakeholder Theory	Empirical	Qualitative	Interpretivism
14. Rodrigues and Mendes (2018)	Corporate social responsibility, Mining industry, Bibliometric analysis, Systematic literature review, Content analysis	To identify the most researched topics in academia on social responsibility in mining operations, from 1998 to 2017, through a bibliometric review.	Stakeholder Theory, Legitimacy Theory	Theoretical	Qualitative	Interpretivism
15. Song and Wen (2020)	Communication strategy, controversial industry, corporate social responsibility, social media, stakeholder engagement	This study attempts to reveal the corporate social responsibility (CSR) programming and communication strategies of companies from controversial versus noncontroversial industry sectors and stakeholders’ responses to these online CSR communications.	Stakeholder Theory	Empirical	Quantitative	Positivism
16. Ranängen and Zobel (2014)	CSR, sustainability management systems, ISSO 26000, stakeholder management, mining industry	Obtain evidence on whether the adoption of integrated management systems is useful for putting stakeholder management into practice.	Stakeholder Theory	Empirical	Qualitative	Interpretivism
17. Asmeri et al. (2017)	Corporate social responsibility disclosure, profitability, environmental performance, Indonesia.	To obtain empirical evidence on the effect of profitability and environmental performance on corporate social responsibility disclosure.	Legitimacy Theory	Empirical	Quantitative	Positivism
18. Adler et al. (2017)	Biodiversity, Disclosure, Mining, Reporting, Environment, Australia	To explore the practices and trends in the biodiversity reporting of the top 50 Australian mining companies before and after the United Nations declared the period 2011–2020 as the “Decade of Biodiversity.	Legitimacy Theory	Empirical	Qualitative	Interpretivism
19. Pons et al. (2021)	CSR, Mining, Twitter, Big data, Sentiment analysis	This paper aims to examine CSR communication in the mining sector on Twitter and identify the main topics of CSR and the main participants in the creation of content.	Dialogic theory of public relations	Empirical	Quantitative	Positivism
20. Amoako et al. (2017)	Mining industry, Content analysis, Sustainability reporting, Mining plants, Triple bottom line reporting, Website reporting	Identify and account for the content of sustainability reports disclosed by the mining industry.	Institutional isomorphism	Empirical	Qualitative	Interpretivism
21. Selmier and Newenham-Kahindi (2017)	Corporate social responsibility, Sustainable Development Goals, mining industry, business ethics, Africa, communities as stakeholders.	Illustration of the progress of the problems of two mining multinationals in Africa.	Does not mention	Empirical	Qualitative	Interpretivism
22. Sutantoputra (2022)	Environmental reporting, Environmental disclosure, Environmental performance, Stakeholder management, Australia	This exploratory qualitative study investigates the possible reasons for the environmental disclosures of nine companies listed in the top 200 Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) companies.	Stakeholder Theory	Empirical	Qualitative	Interpretivism
23. Devenin and Bianchi (2018)	Collaborative adaptive management, copper mining, corporate social responsibility, effectiveness, legitimacy, stakeholder engagement	To examine the perceptions of stakeholders in the mining sector concerning intended results from social responsibility initiatives.	Legitimacy Theory, Stakeholders Theory	Empirical	Qualitative	Interpretivism
24. Lorenc and Sorokina (2015)	Sustainable development (SD), corporate social responsibility (CSR), value of mining enterprise	Discussion of the concept of sustainable development and the need for its implementation in the mining industries.	Stakeholder Theory	Empirical	Qualitative	Interpretivism
25. Duarte (2010)	Corporate image, Social responsibility, Organisational culture, Mining industry, Brazil	Study two distinct narratives about social responsibility in Brazil	Does not mention	Empirical	Qualitative	Interpretivism
26. Yudarwati and Tjiptono (2017)	Corporate Social Responsibility, Public Relations, enactment theory, mining industry, community, Indonesia	Gauging on: (1) how companies perceive Corporate Social Responsibility and Public Relations; (2) how companies perceive the interconnectedness between these functions; and (3) what factors contribute to their perceptions.	Enactment Theory	Empirical	Qualitative	Interpretivism
27. Ranängen and Lindman (2018)	Mining, Corporate sustainability, CSR, Corporate social responsibility, Stakeholder interests, Social licence to operate	Study the Nordic mining industry and its stakeholders to find out whether their interests are taken into account.	Stakeholder Theory	Empirical	Qualitative	Interpretivism
28. Amponsah-Tawiah and Mensah (2015)	Social Responsibility, mining	To conclude about the meaning of the concept of social responsibility to stakeholders in Ghana’s mining industries and whether there is a link between social responsibility and health and safety.	Social License Theory	Empirical	Qualitative	Interpretivism
29. Morales et al. (2018)	Social conflict, Culture, Mining, Corporate social responsibility, Peru, Foreign direct investment	Presentation of a country’s mixed history of colonialism and cultural heritage as a backdrop for managing community engagement in a mining company.	Does not mention	Empirical	Qualitative	Interpretivism
30. Hąbek et al. (2019)	Corporate social responsibility, stakeholders, CSR report, communication, mining industry	Assess how stakeholders are involved in the process of disclosure of social responsibility reports in the mining industry.	Stakeholder Theory	Empirical	Qualitative	Interpretivism
31. Saenz (2019)	Creating shared value, materiality, mining, social responsibility, strategy	Explain how the material issues of the mining industry are intertwined with issues of social responsibility and co-shared value creation.	Stakeholder Theory	Empirical	Qualitative	Interpretivism

) and the main contributions of the articles (

Table 4. Contributions of the articles (n = 31).

Authors	Conclusions	Limitations	Future Clues
Magness (2006)	Faced with the occurrence of accidents, the responses of company executives were quicker than those of shareholders. On the other hand, accidents led to increased disclosure of social responsibility practices	n.a.	n.a.
Magness (2008)	Companies that use press-release disclose more information than others, but there is no evidence that the content of the information disclosed is mediated by financial performance.	No assessment of social performance; The press release is just one form of strategic posture	Use of other measures that provide something more about the decision-making process.
Kemp (2010)	Conceptually, community relations must be dissociated from public relations in order to have strength as an area of professional work	n.a.	n.a.
Yakovleva and Vazquez-Brust (2012)	The analysis suggested that environmental obligations are the critical element of social responsibility in Argentina’s mining sector	Not all stakeholders were interviewed	Study social responsibility strategies, stakeholder engagement, social performance, corporate image and why conflicts differ between domestic and foreign companies
Mzembe and Meaton (2014)	The social responsibility agenda in the mining sector in Malawi is strongly influenced by externally generated pressures, such as civil society organisation activism and community expectations; although it is clear that other factors, such as public and private regulations and pressure from financial markets, also play a role in coercing Paladin to adopt a social responsibility agenda	Single case study, which does not allow the generalisation of the results;	Empirical studies at the remaining Paladin energy subsidiaries.
Dong et al. (2014)	In addition to local government, key stakeholders have a significant impact on reporting disclosure in China, specifically foreign stakeholders over domestic stakeholders	Failure to take into account possible conflicts between stakeholders. Short time coverage (4 years); Non-generalisation of results	Filling of the abovementioned limitations
Dobele et al. (2014)	The results highlight that managers committed to social responsibility, play a crucial role in guiding operations in a socially responsible manner.	n.a.	More studies are still needed on the extensions of the social responsibility model; Explore how managers’ personal traits affect the success of social responsibility initiatives.
McDonald and Young (2012)	Identification of a successful and long-term environmental partnership; highlighting the role of employees in achieving legitimacy; there is a positive effect of the evaluation of social practices	n.a.	n.a.
Fitzpatrick et al. (2011)	Recognition of the importance of sustainability of mining companies in Canada	n.a.
Viveros (2016)	The results reveal that shareholders perceive negative social and environmental impacts in contrast to positive perception about economic impacts. Corporate social responsibility is addressed in terms of social and environmental responsibilities but is also perceived negatively as mere rhetoric or simply as a marketing campaign. These perceptions reflect an anti-trade-off sentiment, revealing that CSR cannot be used as a tool to offset the negative impacts of mining.	A single case study in Chile; Heterogeneity of communities with different cultures;	Replication of studies in other geographical contexts (Argentina, Peru), in the same sector and in different sectors; Control the cultural heterogeneity of communities
Kepore and Imbun (2011)	Importance of communities as a vehicle, particularly to facilitate socially responsible actions	n.a.	n.a.
Coetzee and van Staden (2011)	Organisations show reactive attitudes to threats to their perceived legitimacy. Thus, there is an increase in the disclosure of data on safety in the mining industry after the accidents, so that there is no loss of legitimacy in the eyes of stakeholders	Small sample size; Non-generalization of results; No consideration of information additional to that disclosed on the websites;	Increase the sample size by using other companies with a similar reputation to those of this study; Use of other available information;
Mzembe (2016)	More attention needs to be paid to factors specific to business, community and civil society if there is an effective engagement of mining industry stakeholders in developing countries.	Single case study (Malawi); Non-generalization of results;	Studies at other Ashford’s subsidiary mines to conduct a comparative investigation.
Rodrigues and Mendes (2018)	Identifies two main lines of research: (i) relationships with local communities and (ii) CSR reporting.	Use of the WoS database only	A social network analysis would be a promising approach to studying collaborative and multilevel governance configurations due to its ability to understand structural patterns of stakeholders, thus allowing to address research questions that cannot be adequately explored through traditional stakeholder analysis.
Song and Wen (2020)	Generally, various CSR communication strategies are not strongly associated with the volume of stakeholder comments but the valences of their attitudes. Specifically, CSR videos that (a) use an information strategy, (b) take a company-dominant perspective, and (c) describe high fit CSR programs are more likely to receive negative and skeptical comments.	Although the purposive sampling procedure was carried out properly and the researchers had reliable coding, it is necessary to point out certain limitations of the study.	Future research can examine different platforms to determine how messages fit in with the company’s social media repertoire as well as their entire communications program. A more comprehensive analysis of the entire organizational picture would truly reveal insights into how a company communicates its CSR programs.
Ranängen and Zobel (2014)	Certified tools can be effective in implementing social responsibility management, although they do not cover all operational issues and fair practices with the surrounding community	Use of ISSO 26000; The interviewees were only in strategic roles; Difficulty in obtaining documentation from subsidiaries	n.a.
Asmeri et al. (2017)	Environmental performance is a determinant of the degree of social responsibility disclosure in Indonesia, and this is a way to gain organisational legitimacy.	Use of only annual social responsibility disclosure reports	Use of other types of media
Adler et al. (2017)	The aggregate reporting typically conducted by the mining industry produces obscure information that is not useful to stakeholders affected by their activities or to policymakers responsible for protecting and maintaining the world’s biodiversity.	Focus on voluntary disclosures;	n.a.
Pons et al. (2021)	The results show the CSR debate is increasingly growing in developing countries and in countries with a bad reputation of environmental and health mining conditions.	Our research has some practical limitations, since it only considered the Tweets collected within a specific period of time and the Tweets written in English and Spanish.	it would be interesting for further research to include more languages and more filters in order to extend the list of initial words to search within the Tweets.
Amoako et al. (2017)	Sustainability reports are scarce in financial information; in addition, there is no similarity between the contents. Thus, standardised templates are needed to see improvements.	The theoretical framework (coercive isomorphic pressure) is vulnerable to misinterpretation.	Empirical on-site study to understand the disparities in the reports; Understand why extractive industry reports are produced, how and by whom they are used, and how they should be improved.
Selmier and Newenham-Kahindi (2017)	Many improvements are needed for the industries in Minas Gerais to reach the desirable level of social responsibility and legitimacy	n.a.	n.a.
Sutantoputra (2022)	The fndings in this study have revealed that the frms attempted to address the issues of concern from their stakeholders. Although it is impossible for frms to be responsible for all environmental issues, the companies could be seen to be responsible for minimizing and rectifying the environmental problems that they have caused directly from their operations and that indirectly relate to their business operations and products	The small sample size in this study should be taken into account in generalizing the disclosure behaviours of firms in Australia.	Perform further case study analysis on an industry-specifc basis.
Devenin and Bianchi (2018)	The results show three ineffective situations that emerged from empirical contrasts of social responsibility initiatives declared by industries in sustainability reports and the real impact on beneficiaries in the communities, which are: (1) failure of initiatives to contribute to the real needs of beneficiaries in the community; (2) failure of initiatives adjusted to the socio-cultural characteristics of the beneficiary group; and (3) failure of initiatives to ensure long-term sustainability.	Analysis of only companies located in Chile and Australia; Some interviewees from the companies were also part of the local community	Replication of the study in other geographical contexts; Inclusion of other mining industries, particularly those in natural resources;
Lorenc and Sorokina (2015)	Mining companies should focus on seeking economic benefits in their operations without neglecting social and environmental issues.	n.a.	n.a.
Duarte (2010)	The study revealed that the official narrative emerging from the key informant’s ‘corporate performances’ was consistently positive. The divergent narrative portrayed the company negatively and was revealed through web searches and further reflection in the post-fieldwork period.	The selection of participants was not fully controlled by the investigator	n.a.
Yudarwati and Tjiptono (2017)	Social responsibility and public relations are perceived as forms of community relations to obtain and maintain organisational legitimacy from communities and shareholders. Three factors shape these forms: (1) social and political changes in Indonesia, (2) the collective culture of communities, and (3) the nature of the mining industry.	Only focused on companies and their organisational environment	More studies with communities and other stakeholders for the understanding of their interpretation about the company: Replication of the study in other sectors of activity
Ranängen and Lindman (2018)	The practice of social responsibility fulfils to some extent the interests of stakeholders. However, the sustainable use of resources and other components still need improvements at the legal level.	n.a.	Continued studies on this topic, based on the argument that creating value for stakeholders is important for the social license to operate.
Amponsah-Tawiah and Mensah (2015)	Most mines operating in Ghana are beginning to commit to social responsibility and some programs have already outlined with the community. However, it is important to have a balance between the internal and external dimensions of social responsibility.	Semi-structured interviews, which may have promoted consistency of responses; Different responses on some issues by different stakeholders	Conducting an empirical study on the mediation of social responsibility in employees’ perceptions of quality of life, health, safety and well-being.
Morales et al. (2018)	Conflict in mining industries is a complex issue and a strategic problem that requires an analysis of causal variables and a deeper understanding of underlying historical and cultural forces. The transactional responses of community engagement are not always adequate to maintain the social license of a mining project.	n.a.	n.a.
Hąbek et al. (2019)	The involvement of stakeholders in the preparation of social responsibility reports is positive since it opens space for their improvement. However, the feedback mechanism is still underused.	Immense unavailability of data; Heterogeneity of the content and format of reports;	Analyse the stakeholder groups taking into account the cultural context of the reporting companies.
Saenz (2019)	It points out which strategies for creating shared value can be used given materiality in the mining industry as an aid for managers to identify priority social issues and the correct allocation of resources to them.	Survey only focused on one sector of activity;	Identify other strategies with other theoretical frameworks (e.g., bottom-of-the-pyramid theory or triple-bottom-line theory); Extend research to other sectors of activity

) can be seen in the following tables.

Reading Table 3 and Table 4 provides the following elations:

(1) As we can see, the stakeholder theory is usually used as a theoretical framework in studies on social responsibility, and stakeholders’ engagement in the mining industry. This prevalence may be related to the assumptions of this theory, since it allows it to assess the nature of relationships with all groups of stakeholders (internal and external), their durability, transparency and, finally, the results arising from them (Freeman 1984; Hąbek et al. 2019). Moreover, according to Mutti et al. (2012), the stakeholder approach is very relevant to discuss how CSR policies can address sustainability issues such as environmental deterioration, social vulnerability and inequality. Recently the idea of creating stakeholder value based on sustainability has emerged, based not only on stakeholder theory but also on sustainability management (Horisch et al. 2014). The legitimacy theory was also used in some studies directed to how the disclosure of local responsibility practices improves the internal and external legitimacy of the mining industry since it allows explaining the motivations of managers to make environmental and social disclosures (Deegan 2002; O’Dwyer 2002).

(2) Most studies are empirical, single case studies and in very specific countries, such as developing countries. This makes it difficult to generalise the results and for the contributions to be effectively useful for a globalising context. Moreover, these aspects are highlighted in the limitations of most studies (e.g., Devenin and Bianchi 2018; Mzembe 2016; Viveros 2016).

(3) The use of the qualitative methodology in studies on social responsibility is perceptible by adopting the interpretive research paradigm. In general, interpretive research uses qualitative methods, using an interactive process involving a field study, which is interpreted in its context from the perspective of the various actors (Rodrigues et al. 2021). This growing interest may result from the fact that case studies allow studying complex social phenomena (Yin 2015), as is the case of social responsibility.

(4) From the 31 studies analysed, it was found that social responsibility has been widely associated with stakeholder concerns, namely local communities, and the importance of its disclosure to obtain legitimacy and the social license to operate. This means that stakeholders’ concerns should be part of the mining industry’s operational strategy to mitigate any potential conflicts and the loss of legitimacy (e.g., Dashwood 2013; Kemp et al. 2011; Rodrigues and Mendes 2018). Put another way, good management of stakeholder expectations is key to relations between companies and communities (Garvin et al. 2009; Humphreys 2000; Jenkins 2004), with the necessary feedback from both parties as argued by Hąbek et al. (2019). Of course, this feedback is only likely to coexist with the disclosure of sustainability reports (Boiral 2016; Sethi et al. 2016).

Finally, Figure 7 presents the conceptual structure of the articles based on eligibility criterion 2, exhibiting three distinct groups. The first (red colour) shows that the most studied constructs within the mining industry are related to sustainability, management and its legitimacy, the second (green colour) and the third (blue colour) respect to stakeholders, particularly local communities and the social impacts that mining generates.

Additionally, the analysis of this figure shows that some of the suggestions identified in Table 4 have been neglected by academics (green and blue colour). For example, Dong et al. (2014) and Magness (2008) have highlighted the importance of engaging in studies that explore social conflicts (green colour) among stakeholders, Amponsah-Tawiah and Mensah (2015) and Ranängen and Lindman (2018) suggest that increasing knowledge about the so-called social license to operate is essential and should be part of the constructs associated with social responsibility, Viveros (2016), Magness (2008) and Hąbek et al. (2019) consider it pertinent to study the cultural factor associated with mining activity and stakeholders, given that divergences persist between managers and communities, home and host countries of investors, Dobele et al.(2014) concluded that the commitment of managers has a direct relationship with the initiatives of social responsibility, so it should be studied in the future.

5. Conclusions

The Prism method allowed the scientific mapping of social responsibility literature and its relationship with stakeholders within the mining industry. This mapping highlighted that the eligible studies are single case studies in geographical contexts with high mining activity, which suggests that future research should involve the development of multiple case studies so that the generalisation of the results is possible and thus further enrich the scientific knowledge of this topic. On the other hand, this is still a controversial topic with heterogeneous results since the institutional and cultural context of mining activity strongly influences the typology of social responsibility initiatives and practices. Additionally, this context influences the degree of social and environmental concerns of stakeholders and the disclosure of sustainability reports.

Talking about sustainability and social responsibility in the mining industry addresses a continuous and crucial challenge impacting future generations. A challenge because a balance has to be found between the main objective of the business, profitability, and the social license to operate approved by stakeholders. In other words, for the mining industry to be socially responsible effectively and efficiently, it has to conduct its operations with a dual legitimacy—internal and external—which is strongly influenced by stakeholders, such as the surrounding communities. Therefore, this dual legitimacy tends to direct business management towards the management of stakeholders’ expectations and the co-creation of common and added value, which represents another challenge to be overcome by managers in these industries.

Like any study, this one is not exempt from limitations. The first one refers to the search being limited only to the WoS and Scopus databases. The use of only two databases is due to the fact that many authors (e.g., Guz and Rushchitsky 2009) consider that they are the most widespread in different scientific fields. The second limitation is related to the Bolerian linking of keywords only with And. Using the Boolean operators AND OR, we guarantee that at least one of the concepts from the first part and one from the second part is included (Kroon et al. 2021). In this case, the use of only one Boolean operator is a limitation since it reduces the scope of the search.

As this is a fertile subject for future research, it is suggested that the scope of databases (e.g., PubMed, Google scholar) be widened, as well as the search terms (e.g., CSR or social responsibility) and that a bibliometric review be conducted using RStudio software or other appropriate software. Another future suggestion is to compile all the empirical evidence from the 31 articles analysed and to carry out a comparative study of all of them, obviously divided by topics of analysis, in order to overcome the weak external validity of single case studies. Finally, research that considers new constructs (e.g., legislation, culture, communication between stakeholders, standardisation of disclosures) would bring added value. Also, the suggestions given by the academics (Table 4) are lines of future research not to be neglected.