The Corporate Purpose of Social License

This Article deploys the sociological theory of social license, or the acceptance of a business or organization by the relevant communities and stakeholders, in the context of the board of directors and corporate governance. Corporations are generally treated as “private” actors and thus are regulated by “private” corporate law. This construct allows for considerable latitude. Corporate actors are not, however, solely “private.” They are the beneficiaries of economic and political power, and the decisions they make have impacts that extend well beyond the boundaries of the entities they represent. Using Wells Fargo and Uber as case studies, this Article explores how the failure to account for the public nature of corporate actions, regardless of whether a “legal” license exists, can result in the loss of “social” license. This loss occurs through publicness, which is the interplay between inside corporate governance players and outside actors who report on, recapitulate, reframe and, in some cases, control the company’s information and public perception. The theory of social license is that businesses and other entities exist with permission from the communities in which they are located, as well as permission from the greater community and outside stakeholders. In this sense, businesses are social, not just economic, institutions and, thus, they are subject to public accountability and, at times, public control. Social license derives not from legally granted permission, but instead from the development of legitimacy, credibility, and trust within the relevant communities and stakeholders. It can prevent demonstrations, boycotts, shutdowns, negative publicity, and the increases in regulation that are a hallmark of publicness — but social license must be earned with consistent trustworthy behavior. Thus, social license is bilateral, not unilateral, and should be part of corporate strategy and a tool for risk management and managing publicness more generally. By focusing on and deploying social license and publicness in the context of board decision-making, this Article adds to the discussions in the literature from other disciplines, such as the economic theory on reputational capital, and provides boards with a set of standards with which to engage and address the publicness of the companies they represent. Discussing, weighing, and developing social license is not just in the zone of what boards can do, but is something they should do, making it a part of strategic, proactive cost-benefit decision-making. Indeed, the failure to do so can have dramatic business consequences

Women In Mining Manual: A Guide to Integrating Women into the Workforce

This document presents a guide to integrating women ino the workforce. In July 2007, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, entered into a three-year partnership with Lonmin, the world's third largest primary platinum producer, based in South Africa. The goal of the partnership is to promote the sustainable development of Lonmin's workforce and the communities that surround its mining operations. Considering that Lonmin has a legislative requirement, set by the South African Department of Mining, to integrate women into its workforce so that they make up 10 percent by 2010, a key focus of the partnership is to develop a Women in Mining (WIM) program. The Lonmin IFC Women in Mining Program seeks to promote the employment and retention of women in Lonmin's workforce. The target audiences for this manual are practitioners in the mining sector, development organizations and governments that are planning to integrate women into the mining workforce. This manual is written with an emphasis on women in mining, but can be applied to other extractive sectors and other heavy industries

Public Opinion on National Exam Policies in Indonesia

Abstract Every new policy by Indonesian government in National Examination (NE) implementation always obtains different respond from public. Since the implementation, NE system already experienced many changes, but in recent years this system receives serious critiques. As a result, government then abolished this system as graduation determinant in 2014. This research analyzes public opinion, in the form of positive and negative sentiment toward NE policy, and factors that drive the opinions. Data in this research obtained from online news media from 2012 to 2015. The result shows that public sentiment fluctuating from year to year and depends on three important factors, i.e. political pressure, extreme events, and media coverage

Corruption manual for beginners: "Corruption techniques" in public procurement with examples from Hungary

This paper develops 30 novel quantitative indicators of grand corruption that operationalize 20 distinct techniques of corruption in the context of public procurement. Each indicator rests on a thorough qualitative understanding of rent extraction from public contracts by corrupt networks as evidenced by academic literature, interviews and media content analysis. Feasibility and usefulness of the proposed indicators are demonstrated using micro-level public procurement data from Hungary in 2009-2012. While the prime value of this broad set of indicators is the possibility of combining them into a robust composite indicator of high-level corruption, the high degree of detail also reveals that many regulatory interventions have succeeded in changing the form of corruption, but not its overall incidence

Beyond ‘the Beamer, the boat and the bach’? A content analysis-based case study of New Zealand innovative firms

In this paper we will use case studies to seek to understand the dynamic innovation processes at the level of the firm and to explain the apparent 'enigma' between New Zealand's recent innovation performance and economic growth. A text-mining tool, Leximancer, (version 4) was used to analyse the case results, based on content analysis. The case studies reveal that innovation in New Zealand firms can be best described as 'internalised', and the four key factors that affect innovation in New Zealand firms are ‘Product’, ‘Market’, ‘People’ and ‘Money’. New Zealand may be an ideal place for promoting local entrepreneurship, however, many market/technology opportunities cannot be realized in such a small and isolated economy, hence the poor economic performance