Sara Bice

No More Sun Shades, Please: Experiences of Corporate Social Responsibility in Remote Australian Mining Communities

Abstract Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is often touted as the solution to social and environmental ills associated with Australia’s mining boom. This paper extends prior research concerning mining’s social impacts and related CSR programmes by investigating the emergence of new institutional arrangements in pre-existing rural communities which are now dominated by the mining industry. The paper finds that major Australian mining companies’ increasingly decentralised management approaches to CSR policies and programming lead to crucial and sometimes troubling implementation gaps between the intentions of corporate headquarter level policies and their carrying out at the community level. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for remote communities in relation to how mining companies’ CSR programmes are currently implemented. The discussion offers suggestions for improving long term outcomes for remote communities through better targetted CSR programs.

Social impact assessment, social development programmes and social licence to operate: tensions and contradictions in intent and practice in the extractive sector

In the past decade, the extractive sector has embraced social responsibility. Despite this, broad-based support for many extractive projects and operations remains elusive. Community opposition to resource projects appears to be increasing, even where compliance-based social impact assessments (SIAs) and generous benefits are in place. In seeking to understand this, the authors explore unintended contradictions in the implementation of regulatory SIA and the social development programmes (SDPs) being pursued by many extractive companies. Communities continue to mistrust extractive companies in the face of escalating regulation and offsetting development agendas. The authors contend that trust can only be attained by mobilising a companys core competencies, achieving credibility through total transparency, and maintaining appropriate roles and responsibilities of companies, governments and communities. The article presents an alternative approach, centred on the trust-building necessary to a social licence to operate. Such an approach involves ‘collaborative moderation’, aligns with the ‘creating shared value’ concept advocated by Porter and Kramer, utilises best practice SIA and uses SDP only where appropriate.

Social licence to operate and impact assessment

This article reviews historical and recent developments in the understanding and employment of ‘social licence to operate’ (SLO), particularly as it relates to impact assessment (IA). It canvasses the ways in which concerns about SLO are beginning to overlap with or be incorporated into IA processes. In so doing, the article has two aims. First, it establishes a research agenda for SLO in IA by posing a series of timely, critical questions to assist IA practitioners grappling with increased proponent and community concerns about an SLO. Second, the article reviews the contributions to this Special Issue of Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal and the ways in which they mark an important touchstone from which the IA profession may consider, more formally, the growing implications of SLO for the field. In particular, a future research agenda for SLO and IA should consider: measuring and monitoring SLO, tensions and synergies between SLO and IA, potential of SLO to improve stakeholder engagement and proponent accountability and the possible role of SLO in regulation linked to IA.

A global call for action to include gender in research impact assessment

Global investment in biomedical research has grown significantly over the last decades, reaching approximately a quarter of a trillion US dollars in 2010. However, not all of this investment is distributed evenly by gender. It follows, arguably, that scarce research resources may not be optimally invested (by either not supporting the best science or by failing to investigate topics that benefit women and men equitably). Women across the world tend to be significantly underrepresented in research both as researchers and research participants, receive less research funding, and appear less frequently than men as authors on research publications. There is also some evidence that women are relatively disadvantaged as the beneficiaries of research, in terms of its health, societal and economic impacts. Historical gender biases may have created a path dependency that means that the research system and the impacts of research are biased towards male researchers and male beneficiaries, making it inherently difficult (though not impossible) to eliminate gender bias. In this commentary, we – a group of scholars and practitioners from Africa, America, Asia and Europe – argue that gender-sensitive research impact assessment could become a force for good in moving science policy and practice towards gender equity. Research impact assessment is the multidisciplinary field of scientific inquiry that examines the research process to maximise scientific, societal and economic returns on investment in research. It encompasses many theoretical and methodological approaches that can be used to investigate gender bias and recommend actions for change to maximise research impact. We offer a set of recommendations to research funders, research institutions and research evaluators who conduct impact assessment on how to include and strengthen analysis of gender equity in research impact assessment and issue a global call for action.

University sustainability reporting: taking stock of transparency

This paper interrogates the case for improved and broadened public sustainability reporting by universities, and explores whether and how global performance measures capture the institutional attitudes and activities pertinent to universities’ contributions to sustainability. The analysis explores all stand-alone, English language reports produced by universities world-wide since 2007. The analysis focuses primarily on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) index. The paper finds that those universities which have adopted the GRI share a distinct conceptualisation of their role in society. The GRI framework is helpful in capturing universities’ environmental impacts and benefits, but is lacking in relation to universities’ human rights and social concerns. The paper identifies value in universities adopting a globally accepted sustainability reporting framework and makes specific suggestions as to how the framework might be better adapted for universities.

Bridging corporate social responsibility and social impact assessment

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social impact assessment (SIA) share foundational values. Yet even where a single corporation espouses CSR and carries out SIA, the two often pass like ships in the night. Drawing upon recent literature and experiences from a decade of applied social research in CSR and SIA in the resources industry, this professional practice paper identifies three key bridging points through which CSR and SIA could be better linked and strengthened in future: policy–practice gaps, voluntary versus involuntary regulation and internal versus independent implementation.

Defining Asia Capabilities for Australia's Public Service

Twenty-three years ago, questions posed in this journal asked whether and how the Australian public service was prepared to engage effectively in Asia. More recent meta-analyses of public policy scholarship suggest that Western policy scholars and administrators continue to pay limited attention to Asian policymaking, despite the rise of Asia in the 21st century. This article contributes a research-derived Asia capabilities framework for Australias public service, distilled from a qualitative study with public administration leaders at Commonwealth, state, and local government levels. It taps scholarly literature in ‘cultural intelligence’, global leadership competencies, and training to provide a robust conceptual underpinning for the framework. The framework defines the knowledge, skills, capabilities, and experiences vital for Australias public service to engage effectively with the region in a rapidly changing policy environment.

A Capabilities Framework for a Globalised Public Service

Today’s public administrators and policymakers face challenges of climate change, global health epidemics, terrorism, migration and economic failure while still retaining the charge of providing sound government and services at the national, state and local levels. This chapter explores that context by turning the focus to the public servants whose daily work makes public policy possible. It reviews the literature on cultural intelligence (CQ) and global leadership and draws upon in-depth interviews with 23 opinion leaders working with Australia’s public service to offer a capabilities framework for a globalised public service. This framework sets out the skills, capabilities, knowledge and experiences that will support effective public administration leadership in the twenty-first century.

Risky Business? On the Interplay Between Social, Actuarial and Political Risks and Licences

The concepts of ‘corporate social responsibility’ (CSR) and ‘social licence to operate’ (SLO) have moved from obscurity to the business mainstream in recent years and indeed become cornerstones of many companies’ risk management strategies. Notwithstanding both concepts’ steep ascent, gaps in our understanding remain not only of their commonalities and differences but also of their politicality and conflicted nature.

Conclusion: Five Emergent Themes for Public Policy in the Asian Century

The Asian Century holds the potential to generate a paradigm shift in how we understand public policy, administration and governance, equivalent to the impacts of neo-liberalism and the New Public Management (NPM) of the late twentieth century. The futures that this book imagines for public policy in the Asian Century require an openness of perspective, a willingness to acknowledge the values and histories that sit behind diverse countries’ approaches to public policy, and an embrace of collaboration and knowledge exchange. To this end, this chapter attempts to draw together the central threads of this volume, to acknowledge its limitations and to set out five emergent themes that we believe are imminent in the Asian Century and ripe for exploration by future research.