The Formation of the Mechanism of Cooperation between Socially Responsible Business and Regional Authorities in the Arctic Zone of the Russian Federation

In the current development conditions, the issue of distributing social functions between the state and a business is the most relevant. There are several institutions through which the state transfers social functions to organizations: social entrepreneurship, nonprofit organizations, and corporate social responsibility. These processes are the most important for the RF Arctic zone, which is resource oriented, and it is characterized by a special vulnerability to technogenic, biogenic, and socio-cultural threats. Mining companies adopt a voluntary social responsibility policy more often than companies from other industries. The results of the analysis of conducted studies show that a little attention is paid to issues of cooperation between socially responsible companies and regional authorities. This work is devoted to studying processes of the formation of mechanisms defining cooperation between socially responsible companies and regional authorities of the RF Arctic zone. Primary and secondary sources of information served as the informational basis. To collect primary data, we used in-depth unstructured interviews. Secondary data sources were official data from government and companies' websites, legal acts, and internal documentation of companies (annual reports, ordinances, regulations, policies, and reports on sustainable development). Content analysis of strategies, synthesis, and structural approach were used as methods of data interpretation. Access to company's internal documentation and the lack of updates on government and companies' official websites were restrictions of the research. Despite the existing bottlenecks in the research, the results are interesting for the further study of the mechanism of influence of business' social responsibility on the territories' socio-economic development and actualization of strategies for the Arctic regions' development.