Determining the Consequence of Socio-Economic Sustainable Development Initiatives on Gold Mining Organizations in Africa

Abstract

Gold mining companies continue to pour billions of dollars into sustainable social and economic initiatives or CSR programs to attain a social license to operate. However, mining operations in West Africa continue to experience business interruption from local communities and invasion of active mining areas by small-scale artisanal miners. Due to limited knowledge of guiding principles for implementing the social license to operate, (Wilburn K. M., 2011, p. 11) suggests that by using a “…process based on alignment of the norms of the company and the norms and micro social contracts of the vested stakeholder groups, social licenses to operate can be negotiated..." This research aims to determine how a gold mining company's management identifies and categorizes stakeholders for developing sustainable socio-economic or CSR initiatives to assess whether such initiatives are successful and sustainable in ensuring social license to operate for gold mining operations. The study utilized a mixed-methods research design. The participants include the senior management of the West African business units of a leading global gold producer and a selection of the company's stakeholders. The results show that the process used by the management of gold mining organization for identifying and categorizing stakeholders should be reviewed for consistency with the principles of Stakeholder Theory and proposes that the Mining Value Chain be utilized to determine the impact of Artisanal Small Scales Miners (ASM) as primary stakeholders on the organization as such guide how sustainable socio-economic initiatives should be derived to ensure sustained social license to operate.