Can Corporate Social Responsibility Lead to Social License? A Sentiment and Emotion Analysis

The term social license (SL) refers to the acceptance or approval by a community of a company's presence. It is generally assumed in the literature that effective corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions will lead to an SL. In this study we examine the CSR-SL relationship at the local community level and establish boundary conditions on the effectiveness of local CSR in creating an SL. Using consent-based micro-social contract theory, we theorize that commitment to local CSR improves the level to which a local community grants an SL to a multinational corporation (MNC), but the impact is moderated by the global legitimacy of the parent company, the nature of institutions in the host country, and the degree of polarization within the focal community. Based on 3696 articles regarding 43 global mining MNCs operating in 523 local communities between 2008 and 2020, we use natural language processing and sentiment analysis to evaluate the degree to which a local community grants an SL. Our empirical evidence indicates that local CSR does positively influence the granting of an SL, but the effect is reduced when there is strong rule of law or high community polarization and increased when the focal firm has strong global legitimacy.