Earning a social license to operate in mining: A case study from Peru

There are three different types of stakeholder theory, namely, descriptive, instrumental and normative. However, there is little research on how these three stakeholder theories are related. The purpose of this paper is to understand how the above three theories are interrelated and how companies can use them to earn the social license to operate (SLO) in mining projects. Additionally, this paper presents a comparative case study analysis of three mining operations in Peru. This analysis is qualitative in nature and is complemented with insights from key informant interviews (n = 22), the emerging literature on SLO and stakeholder theories. The findings show that a mining project that starts with the normative stakeholder theory and then moves on to the instrumental stakeholder and descriptive stakeholder theories would operate with SLO. On the other hand, companies that start with the descriptive stakeholder theory would operate without SLO. The challenge for mining companies to obtain the SLO, as found by some previous studies, remains.