How can companies improve their approach to earning the Social Licence to Operate?

Any project producing environmental or social change within a community has the potential to cause contestation. The Social Licence to Operate (SLO), while ill-defined in the literature, is an intangible concept indicating ongoing project acceptance by stakeholders, may facilitate conflict reduction.
The research aimed to identify and understand the affected communities and other stakeholders, analyse the engagement between the various parties and develop a just and pragmatic schema for earning and granting the SLO.
Addressing gaps or equivocality in the literature through a justice lens, formulated on the African ethical concept of ubuntu, four broad research questions are posed:
1. What is the current understanding of the SLO in the literature and in the way it is being practised?
2. Who are the community/stakeholders that grant the SLO?
3. Why do community/stakeholders support or oppose the company/project?
4. How, through what just engagements, can the company/project earn the SLO?
An interpretive and constructivist approach examines three case studies covering different industries in distinct geographic locations and demonstrates significant commonalities in the many distinct community groupings identified, providing new insights. The communities’ motivations ranged from self or community benefit or impact to significant environmental and ecological concerns. Identifying and understanding the various parties facilitates just engagement.
Engagement requires Procedural, Interactional, Environmental and Distributive Justice, and is not unidirectional, requiring all parties to treat each other with respect and dignity in line with ubuntu’s underpinning principles cohesion and reciprocal value. The ubuntu lens provides a decolonised basis for considering justice, providing the insight that, while communities have the right to award or withdraw the SLO, their actions may affect their rights.
The research concludes with the IUE (Identify, Understand & Engage) Model providing a new understanding of how the SLO is earned and pragmatic enough to be understood and adopted in practice.