Short answer
Manage social licence like a project risk. Measure trust and acceptance place by place, with periodic surveys for calibration and the project’s own engagement records in between. When it moves, diagnose whether legitimacy, credibility or trust is under strain and treat that, not the score. Keep a register of every commitment made to a community and close each one with evidence. Give it an executive owner and triggers that force a response.
Social licence to operate has a definition problem that becomes a management problem. Because it is unwritten and granted by no single authority, organisations file it under values and communications rather than risk and operations. Then a project loses community acceptance, approvals stall, and everyone understands the intangible thing was load-bearing. For the foundations, see our explainer, What is a Social Licence to Operate? This article is the next step: a working framework for organisations that want to manage it with the rigour they apply to safety or schedule.
How do you measure social licence?
By treating it as a reading that moves, not a box a project sits in. Thomson and Boutilier’s widely used model describes levels from withheld through acceptance and approval to psychological identification. The practical refinement is to treat acceptance as something you hold, or fail to hold, through every construction notice, incident and news cycle.
Periodic perception surveys remain the calibration: baseline trust, understanding and acceptance before engagement, and measure again after, reported by area. Between surveys, use the signals the project already generates: complaint themes, sentiment across calls, correspondence and community channels, and participation in engagement. Watch the rate of change as well as the level. As we argued in Why Sentiment Velocity Matters More Than Sentiment Scores, a stable negative is a known quantity; an accelerating decline needs attention now.
What actually drives social licence?
Legitimacy, credibility and trust. In the Thomson and Boutilier model, legitimacy is whether the community accepts your right to operate at all, credibility is whether your information and conduct are believed, and trust is whether the community believes you will act in its interest when nobody is watching. CSIRO research by Moffat and Zhang in an Australian mining region found trust central to acceptance, with the quality of contact with the company and procedural fairness among the things that build it. A sentiment score is the shadow these cast, and reacting to every dip with communications mistakes the symptom for the condition.
So when the record shows deterioration, ask which driver is moving. A legitimacy problem, where a community questions whether the project should exist, needs genuine options and visible responsiveness, not a newsletter. A credibility problem, usually the residue of a broken commitment or a surprise, needs acknowledgement and changed behaviour. The community’s own language tells you which: “they never asked us” is legitimacy, “they said it would be finished by March” is credibility, “they only show up when they need something” is trust.
The framework at a glance
- Survey periodically to calibrate; read the engagement record in between.
- Watch trajectory, not just levels; investigate acceleration promptly.
- Diagnose which driver is moving: legitimacy, credibility or trust.
- Measure and report it by place, not project-wide.
- Track every commitment to closure, with evidence.
- Govern it like risk: an owner, a standing report and triggers that force a response.
Why is social licence held place by place?
Because each community experiences the project differently and grants or withholds acceptance separately: the town beside the quarry, the suburb under the haulage route, the region promised the jobs. Averaging across them produces a number that describes nobody and hides the community where acceptance is collapsing. Measure, report and manage it by place, using the mapping approach in Mapping Community Sentiment, and let engagement effort follow the map.
Why run a commitments ledger?
Because nothing erodes social licence faster than the gap between what a project said and what it did, and most of that gap is administrative rather than malicious. Promises made in community sessions, complaint resolutions and approval conditions get scattered across minutes, inboxes and notebooks until they quietly expire. Keep a single ledger of every commitment made to a community, each with who made it and when, an owner, a due date and a closure record, reported with the same discipline as safety actions. The share of commitments kept, closed on time and communicated back is the most controllable input to credibility a project has, and it is the one communities audit themselves. Our guide to what a commitments register should include sets out the fields.
How should social licence be governed?
Like risk, because it is. That means a named executive owner; a standing item in project or board reporting showing trends by place, open commitments and the fastest-moving issues; and pre-agreed triggers, such as a defined rate of decline or a driver-level deterioration, that require a documented response. Organisations that weather difficult projects are those where a community signal reaches a decision-maker while the response is still cheap, as illustrated in How Early Warning Helps Prevent Costly Project Delays.
None of this requires AI. It requires discipline and a complete record. What tools change is the cost of the discipline: capturing every interaction, linking it to place and commitment, and seeing trends across thousands of records are the workloads that otherwise need a dedicated analyst.
Where VivoAI fits
VivoAI keeps every conversation and commitment on record, linked to the stakeholder, property and issue. Commitments carry who made them, when, an owner and a status, with apparent contradictions flagged for your team. Trust and understanding can be baselined and measured again after engagement, reported by area, and sentiment velocity and the map view show where concern is building.
See how it works for resources and energy operators.
Frequently asked questions
Can social licence to operate be measured?
Not directly, but its components can. Periodic surveys of trust, understanding and acceptance, baselined and repeated by area, give a calibrated reading. Between surveys, the signals a project already generates, such as complaint themes, sentiment and the rate at which concern is changing, show where it is moving.
What drives social licence?
A widely used model by Thomson and Boutilier describes levels from withheld through acceptance and approval to psychological identification, underpinned by legitimacy, credibility and trust. Research by CSIRO’s Moffat and Zhang in an Australian mining region found trust central to acceptance, with the quality of contact and procedural fairness among its drivers.
Why do commitments matter so much to social licence?
Because the gap between what a project said and what it did erodes credibility faster than almost anything else, and most of that gap is administrative: promises scattered across minutes, inboxes and notebooks. A single register of commitments, each with an owner, a due date and closure evidence, is the most controllable input to credibility a project has.
Who should own social licence in an organisation?
A named executive, with a standing item in project or board reporting that shows trends by place, open commitments and fast-moving issues, and pre-agreed triggers that require a documented response, in the same way safety triggers do.
Sources
- Moffat, K. and Zhang, A., The paths to social licence to operate: An integrative model explaining community acceptance of mining (Resources Policy, 2014)
- Thomson, I. and Boutilier, R. G., Social licence to operate, in SME Mining Engineering Handbook (Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration, 2011)
Next step
Show your community what you kept
See commitments tracked to closure, outcomes reported by area, and early warning where acceptance is thinning.