The study aims to explore how cultural differences help us understand stakeholders’ lived experiences of extractive businesses’ impacts in an emerging economy context.
The study adopts interviews with public actors within the Ghanaian extractive industry for data collection and analysis and explains the results using the African Ubuntu/Biakoye cultural notion of accountability.
We find that the unique characteristics of the Ubuntu/Biakoye cultural heritage which should have promoted positive accountors’ accountability and business sustainability practices have rather been subverted. The subversion, consequently, resulted in cultural conflict, tension and confusion, which culminated in cultural assimilation and appropriation and subsequent cultural corruption. Thus, the Ubuntu/Biakoye values that could have compelled the extractive firms to uphold genuine accountability and business sustainability practices have been misrepresented rendering the practices ineffective. The implication is that the re-visitation and strengthening of the Ubuntu/Biakoye heritage will empower traditional institutions to act appropriately to curtail the situation.
The implication is that the re-visitation and strengthening of the Ubuntu/Biakoye heritage will empower traditional institutions to act appropriately to curtail the situation.
The authors make a significant contribution to the less explored business sustainability accounting discourse by applying the Ubuntu/Biakoye cultural theory to explore accountability and business sustainability practices in the Ghanaian context. This contribution has significant implications for the extractive industry, regulators, academia, society and traditional rulers from the cultural lens.
