How to Earn and Maintain a Social License to Operate: A One-Day Master Class

Stakeholder Research

2013 Learning Program

“The research carried out by ACCSR gave us a baseline of our social license to operate and provided unique insight into our stakeholders’ issues and connections. We have since recommended ACCSR’s Stakeholder 360® research to others.”

Sara Parrott,
Manager, Community Relations,
Xstrata Coal


“What ACCSR brings is specialist knowledge – ACCSR can show people a different way of doing things - this is the way we saw them have a significant impact. The biggest impact ACCSR is likely to have at the outset is in the way stakeholder analysis is done and how the information collected directly links into future plans and activities. It is really valuable that ACCSR brings people along and shows clients how they can be successful by using the tools that they employ.””

Merrill Gray,
Managing Director,
Syngas Limited
The term ‘social licence to operate’ was coined in the mining industry but is now used extensively by all sections of industry and government as the key driver for CSR and community relationships and to underpin the business case for industry engagement with social, community and environmental issues.

ACCSR is at the forefront of global practice in working with companies and industries to measure and manage the social license to operate. Together with our Senior International Associate, Dr Robert Boutilier, we have provided powerful strategic advice to companies across Australia based on our unique and validated measures of the social license.

Definition of the social license to operate

The social license is the level of acceptance or approval continually granted to an organisation’s operations or project by the local community and other stakeholders. It varies between stakeholders and across time through four levels from lowest to highest: withdrawal, acceptance, approval and psychological identification.

The social license to operate is inversely correlated with social risk – the higher the social license, the lower the social risk.

We routinely incorporate measures of social license to operate into social impact assessments, stakeholder mapping and stakeholder perception surveys based on our much-praised Stakeholder 360® framework.

Our advice includes steps you can take to retain, strengthen or repair your organisation’s social license to operate.

For more information, contact Dr Leeora Black