“Social licence to operate” and the human services: A pathway to smarter commissioning?

Abstract

Externalised service provision is now an embedded feature of Australia's service delivery architecture. However, the lessons drawn from two decades of contracted service delivery suggest that “competition” is an imperfect platform for the delivery of public services, especially where issues of trust in government come into play. Could the concept of a “social license to operate” (SLO), which has been in use in the natural resources sector for over two decades, help to facilitate the conferral of greater trust, credibility and legitimacy upon governments, and externalised service providers in social policy spaces?

The moral, the political and social licence in digitally‐driven family policy and intervention: Parents negotiating experiential knowledge and ‘other’ families

“…Earlier we noted the issue of othering in the logic of social licence, with its undergirding politics of consensus, and its separation into an 'us' of child protection agencies and a 'them' of families in need of support and preventive intervention (Butcher, 2019). As we have seen in our discussion of groups of parents discussing data linkage and predictive analytics, experiential knowledge could also involve differential 'us and them.'…”

“…Yet research into public attitudes to data uses in the United Kingdom shows that clear information to improve public understanding does not necessarily result in positivity but rather can make people more critical and wary (Kennedy et al, 2022). Perhaps this is why some data linkage proponents assert that dissent needs to be managed (Ballantyne & Stewart, 2019; Butcher, 2019), which moves us on to the critical question of what role social licence plays in governance?…”

Introduction

“…We also consider the utility of social licence to operate (SLO) as a means for framing demonstrations of stakeholders' trust in collaborative processes (Butcher 2018). Originally pioneered as a mechanism for enterprises to gain the permission of affected communities for mining operations-particularly indigenous communities-SLO has now spread to other resource industry sectors, such as forestry and renewable energy, and is also being applied in the international aid and development space.…”

Innovating for the greater good: Examining innovation champions and what motivates them

“…Many public service‐oriented organisations are facing the twin demands of dynamic external environments and pressures for innovative responses to societal problems. For example, not‐for‐profit organisations in Australia and in many developed nations are operating under more restrictive and competitive funding regimes, are requiring more ‘professionalised’ operations, and face an increasingly diverse set of stakeholders (Butcher, 2019; Jaskyte & Liedtka, 2022; Svensson et al., 2020). These trends are accompanied by for‐profit organisations increasingly moving into service domains traditionally ‘owned’ by not‐for‐profits (Choi & Choi, 2014; McDonald, 1999; Shea & Wang, 2016; Shier & Handy, 2015b).…”