“Corporate social responsibility”, an unremittingly contested concept since its inception, has attracted global interest in a progressively integrated world economy. The aim of this study is to explore and critique recent claims of a move towards corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives by multinational mining corporations (MNMCs). Today, MNMCs are expected to promote and practice CSR for the socio-economic consequences of their activities in host countries. The study will also investigate how (if at all) host-country political and regulatory environments affect CSR initiatives undertaken by MNMCs. Previously, mineral developers merely insured full compliance with host-country environmental regulations. However, there is a growing recognition that full legal compliance is insufficient in meeting society’s demands with regards to mining issues. Thus, mineral developers are increasingly expected to gain a ‘social license to operate’ (SLO) from local communities in order to avoid potentially costly conflict and exposure to social risks. In order to achieve the aim of the study, a comparative-case analysis of the activities of the Anglo-American giant, AngloGold Ashanti in South Africa and Ghana will be employed. Furthermore, by drawing particular attention to CSR and SLO, the study will explore how international norms such as CSR evolve, are appropriated and sometimes operationalized by powerful actors and agents within the international system.

The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate how a subsidiary of a multi-national corporation (MNC) achieved a social licence, in a Sub-Saharan host country undergoing agrarian transformation. Several foreign companies lost their land to communities in the wake of land conflicts between the legal owners and surrounding communities. However, this is a case of one of a few big landowners that have survived and continued to operate, without suffering substantial vandalism from communities. The study argues this to be an instrumental case of achieving and maintaining a social licence in a context characterised by heighted resource nationalism sentiments. Extant literature acknowledges that communities’ expectations are rising, rendering a legal licence insufficient. Emphasis is on the need for firms reliant on finite natural resources, such as land, to seek a social licence from communities. Yet, the processes through which such a licence could be achieved and maintained are little understood. The social licence is conceptually and theoretically underdeveloped. Anchoring on legitimacy theory, this study looks across two literatures on social licence and corporate community engagement. It empirically demonstrates how and under what conditions corporate community engagement processes deliver phases of a social licence. An embedded case study is utilised to capture processes from the perspective of both the firm and the community. The study advances theory of social licence by exploring the processes of an instrumental firm in an understudied but critical agriculture industry. The study identified transactional, transitional and transformational engagement processes, as essential in building legitimacy and trust which are the basis of dynamic phases of social licence. The researcher proposes three new constructs: context specific community expectations, engagement legitimacy, and corporate community visibility, to advance scholarship on social licencing processes. The study distinguishes firm legitimacy from engagement legitimacy. This paves way for future studies to further develop these concepts in social licence process research. Managers in agriculture and other extractive firms will use the theory built from this study to understand how they can achieve social licence at various levels, thereby mitigating the high social risk associated with losing a social licence. / Thesis (DPhil)--University of Pretoria, 2020. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / DPhil / Unrestricted

Society is increasingly calling for organisations to demonstrate corporate social responsibility (CSR). To fulfil this demand, organisations need to be accountable, democratic and transparent to their stakeholders. This can be achieved using a number of tools including communication about the environmental, social and economic impacts of an organisation’s actions and activities. Yet despite the importance of communicating environmental information, and society’s heightened environmental awareness, organisations are still demonstrating an insufficient commitment to environmental reporting, continuing their reluctance to be open and accountable about their environmental impacts. This suggests organisations currently have little understanding of why they should report, what they should report and/or how they should report. For environmental reporting progress to be achieved it is important that we have knowledge of how various factors influence voluntary environmental reporting engagement. This research, in contributing to and extending the body of environmental reporting knowledge, aims to provide an understanding of the Why, What and How of voluntary environmental reporting by specifically examining: why organisations should, and why organisations do, voluntarily report environmental information; what environmental information organisations should, and what environmental information organisations do, voluntarily report; and how organisations should, and how organisations do, voluntarily report environmental information. In using a combination of research methodologies this research extends prior CSR reporting studies – closing the gap between voluntary environmental reporting practice and theory, providing better insights into the underlying reasons and motivations for voluntary environmental reporting, and providing improved knowledge of the considerations made by companies as part of the voluntary environmental reporting process. In doing so, this research presents a more recent examination of voluntary environmental reporting in the annual reports of New Zealand and Australian publicly listed companies. Aspects of voluntary environmental reporting that have not been extensively examined before, particularly in Australasia, are examined. These include a focus on content-quality (as opposed to reporting quantity), an investigation of the effect of public pressure (using a combination of three proxy measures), and, through the use of qualitative research, an expansion of the insights obtained from quantitative data. This research finds that New Zealand and Australian publicly listed companies continue to have an insufficient and incorrect understanding of why they should report, what they should report and/or how they should voluntarily report environmental information. This deficient understanding results in voluntary environmental reporting in their annual reports which is inadequate – the reporting lacks meaning and purpose (i.e. has form but little or no substance), and reflects managers’ incorrect perceptions about the environmental impact of their company’s actions and activities. As a result voluntary environmental reporting in the annual reports of New Zealand and Australian publicly listed companies fails to “… give an understanding, which is not misleading, …” of the environmental consequences of an organisation’s actions and activities (adapted from Alexander & Jermakowicz, 2006, p. 132), providing little accountability to stakeholders, and serving neither external stakeholders nor those reporting well. As the demand for organisations to demonstrate accountability to stakeholders continues to increase over time it is important to develop informed environmental reporting guidance and undertake further examinations of the Why, What and How of environmental reporting.