AN EVALUATION OF CORPORATE SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ACCOUNTABILITY BY LISTED NIGERIAN CONSTRUCTION AND BUILDING MATERIALS COMPANIES

The Construction and Building Materials sector of the global economy has lots of adverse impacts which include depletion of natural resources, destruction of biodiversity, waste generation, noise and hazardous emissions that cause serious damages to environment and human beings among others. Indeed, the sector accounted for 36% of global final energy use and 39% of final energy related carbon emissions in 2018. However, the KPMG Survey on Corporate Responsibility (CSR) Reporting 2017 reported that the sector recorded 69% rate of corporate social responsibility reporting. This is a remarkable improvement on 1999 KPMG reporting which stated that the sectors contribution to CSR reporting is too small to make a statistically valid statement on. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the CSR reporting of this sector in a developing country Nigeria to see how the sector is accounting for its social and environmental activities. Secondary data on CSR reporting from the annual reports and accounts of sampled companies are collected while modified word content analysis was carried out to collect data on volume and themes of social and environmental disclosure. Descriptive statistics are utilized to present collected and analysed data while legitimacy theory underpinned the study.