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Synonyms

Legitimacy; Permission to operate; Social license to operate

Definition

In many textbooks and articles about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), “license to operate” is a frequently used concept used to indicate the limit of behavior established for a company to gain recognition and acceptance in its surroundings. More specifically, a “license to operate” may be defined as “Grant of permission to undertake a trade or carry out a business activity, subject to regulation or supervision by the licensing authority.” However, this definition does not take into account the numerous social aspects and the dynamics embedded in the concept from a theoretical and practical perspective. In the following text we get deeper into the meaning of the concept from an institutional and legitimate perspective.

Introduction

In most countries, business licenses are granted to companies by government authorities on the basis of their professional competence and abilities to meet certain...

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Correspondence to Anne Ellerup Nielsen .

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© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Nielsen, A.E. (2013). License to Operate. In: Idowu, S.O., Capaldi, N., Zu, L., Gupta, A.D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Corporate Social Responsibility. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28036-8_502

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28036-8_502

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-28035-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-28036-8

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