Pinning down the social license to operate (SLO): The problem of normative complexity

The ‘social license to operate’ (SLO) concept, whilst ubiquitous in industry and academia, to this day, continues to defy clear definition. This ambiguity encourages the proliferation of conflicting claims to such a license and complicates the assessment of their legitimacy. Observing that a dimension of SLO's ambiguity is normative, this paper seeks to explore this normativity aspect further, with a view to discerning the disagreements on what...