ABSTRACT
The assumption that corporations are disingenuous in their commitment to international standards is too convenient. Our exposure to both corporate and operational business units suggests that these positions within the corporate structure reflect fault lines within these organizations, and that practice is negotiated by applying a range of different arguments and logic. For this reason, we take community relations practice as a legitimate attempt to enact corporate policy. We accept, as we have stated in the introduction, that in any industrial setting, a range of barriers and confounding factors will press upon and limit practical action, and that the industrial ethic can override attempts to enable principled practice. Our interest in community relations departments is their unique position between the countervailing force of principled policy, the industrial ethic of operations, and the potential for countervailing power to emerge when stakeholder interests are compromised by the mine. The application of our framework holds the tension and explores issues that emerge within the tension, rather than assuming faults in the linear “policy to practice” pathway.
