Purpose

A royal charter of incorporation imposing public benefit/social responsibilities established the privately owned British South Africa Company (BSAC), in return for power to exploit a huge territory using low-cost local labour. This study explores the dual principal–agent problem of how the BSAC used annual report narratives to report on its conflicting economic responsibilities to investors versus its public benefit charter responsibilities to the British Crown.

Design/methodology/approach

Having digitised the dataset, the research analyses narratives from 29 BSAC annual reports spanning a continuous 35-year royal charter period, using computer-aided keyword content analysis to identify economic-orientated versus public benefit-orientated annual report narratives. The research analyses how the annual report narratives shifted according to four key contextual periods by reference to the changing influence of private investors versus the British Crown.

Findings

There are two key findings. First, economic primacy. At no point do public benefit disclosures outweigh economic disclosures. Second, the BSAC's meso-corporate context and macro-social/political context can explain patterns in public benefit disclosures. The motivation for producing public benefit information is not altruism. Rather, commercial interests motivate disclosure. The BSAC used its annual reports to sustain what proved ultimately unsustainable – royal charter-style colonialism.

Originality/value

This accounting history study contributes to an understanding of corporate narrative reporting using one of the earliest known cases of such analysis and shows how accounting plays a central role in facilitating a company in sustaining its interests. This 100-year lookback may be a portend of the future for modern-day annual report corporate social responsibility narratives in, say, mining and oil and gas company corporate reports, especially if these natural resources run out.

中文翻译：

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公司向王室汇报：来自非洲殖民地的纵向案例

目的

一项具有公共利益/社会责任的皇家成立公司宪章成立了私有的南非公司（BSAC），以换取使用低成本本地劳动力开发大片土地的权力。这项研究探讨了双重委托代理问题，即BSAC如何使用年度报告叙述来报告其对投资者的经济责任与对英国王室的公共利益宪章责任之间的矛盾。

设计/方法/方法

对数据集进行数字化之后，该研究分析了连续35年皇家宪章时期的29份BSAC年度报告的叙述，并使用计算机辅助关键字内容分析来确定经济导向和公共利益导向的年度报表。该研究通过参考私人投资者与英国王室的影响力变化，分析了年度报告叙述根据四个关键背景时期的变化。

发现

有两个主要发现。首先，经济至上。公益披露绝对不会超过经济披露。其次，BSAC的中型企业环境和宏观社会/政治环境可以解释公共利益披露的模式。产生公益信息的动机不是利他主义。而是，商业利益促使披露。BSAC使用其年度报告来维持最终被证明不可持续的皇家特许状殖民主义。

创意/价值

这项会计历史研究有助于利用最早的此类分析案例来理解公司的叙事报告，并说明会计在促进公司维持其利益方面如何发挥核心作用。这100年的回顾可能是现代年度报告公司社会责任叙述在诸如采矿和石油天然气公司报告中的未来的预兆，特别是如果这些自然资源用完的话。