ABSTRACT
The social licence To operaTe began as a metaphor to bring attention to the need for companies to earn acceptance or approval from their host communities. Today, the social licence is emerging as a management framework for complex times. We are still at the beginning of our knowledge about the social licence. The continuing interplay between research and practice will yield better tools and more insights in the future. But for now, here’s what I know. The social licence looks at stakeholder and community relations through a political lens. If a company is to engage effectively with its local communities and stakeholders it must negotiate and ensure a fair and equitable distribution of benefits
and impacts from its presence, over the near and longer term.
