Social License and Environmental Protection: Why Businesses Go Beyond Compliance |
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| Authors: | Neil Gunningham Robert A. Kagan Dorothy Thornton |
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| Affiliation: | Neil Gunningham;holds professorial research appointments in the Regulatory Institutions Network, Research School of the Social Sciences, and the School of Resources, Environment, and Society at the Australian National University. Robert A. Kagan is professor of political science and law at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of the Center for the Study of Law and Society. Dorothy Thornton holds a Ph.D. in health services and policy analysis from the University of California, Berkeley, and currently is a research associate in Berkeley's School of Public Health. The authors are grateful to scores of pulp mill managers, regulatory officials, industry consultants, and environmental activists–all of whom must remain anonymous–for their cooperation and insight. Biyi Abesina provided valuable research assistance. The Center for the Study of Law and Society, University of California, Berkeley, provided space, administrative assistance, and social support for the research project that led to this article, and the Smith Richardson Foundation provided primary funding for our research. This article draws on research and analysis previously published in Gunningham, Kagan, and Thornton 2003 and Kagan, Gunningham, and Thornton 2003. |
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| Abstract: | This article examines the concept of the corporate "social license," which governs the extent to which a corporation is constrained to meet societal expectations and avoid activities that societies (or influential elements within them) deem unacceptable, whether or not those expectations are embodied in law. It examines the social license empirically, as it relates to one social problem–environmental protection–and as it relates to one particular industry: pulp and paper manufacturing. It shows try the social license is important, the circumstances in which it may encourage companies to go "beyond compliance" with regulation, how its terms are monitored and enforced, and how it interacts with what we term the regulatory and economic licenses. Overall, this research demonstrates that corporate environmental behavior cannot be explained purely in terms of instrumental threats and moral obligations to comply with the law, and that the increasing incidence of "beyond compliance" corporate behavior can be better explained in terms of the interplay between social pressures and economic constraints. |
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