THE VOLUNTARY SOCIAL DISCLOSURE AND FUKUSHIMA NUCLEAR ACCIDENT: A CASE STUDY OF THE ELETRONUCLEAR

Abstract

Faced with facts like that expose negatively its product or service, such as the nuclear accident in Fukushima, the legitimacy theory states that companies tend to use strategies that aim to regain their legitimacy in society, through voluntary disclosure of information to demonstrate social responsibility in their activities. Thus, this study aims to conduct an exploratory research on the reports from Eletrobrás Thermonuclear SA (Eletronuclear), concerning to the exercises from 2006 to 2010, in order to verify how the company used voluntary disclosure to address negative issues related to its activities. Consistently with previous studies, the results suggest that the company’s managers, consciously or unconsciously, increased the disclosure in its management reports about the following categories: environment, products and energy, and utilized during the period analyzed the second and third disclosure strategies proposed by Lindblom (1994). In addition, after the accident, they increased the voluntary disclosure with the improvement of its sustainability report and the preparation of other related documents. The result observed in the case study contributes to the literature studied as it demonstrates that there cannot be significant differences between the social disclosure strategies used by (1) public and private companies, and (2) companies that cause environmental accidents and those that belong the same industry, in the quest to maintain their social legitimacy in the face of social questions about their activities or products sold, even at different times, in the last three decades.