Mining for Closure: Policies, practises and guidelines for sustainable mining and closure of mines

3.1.1 latent stakeholders

Legitimacy is generally based on contract, ex- change, legal title, legal right, moral right, at-risk status, or moral interest in the harms and benefits generated by company actions (Mitchell, 1997). Here, this term will generally imply a perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are de- sirable, proper or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs or definitions. 64 Individuals, organizations or socie- ties can hold such norms. Urgency implies terms such as compelling, driving, imperative and is related to two key conditions: time sensitivity – the degree to which manage- rial delay in attending to the claim or relation- ship is unacceptable to the stakeholder, and criticality – the importance of the claim or the relationship to the stakeholder or as such, the degree to which stakeholder claims call for im- mediate attention. 65 A representation of stakeholder groups developed for the context of this document is shown in Figure 3.1. These constellations, the manner in which they have been derived, and some important implica- tions of the model applied are discussed in the fol- lowing pages. Note that for simplicity, the terms ap- plied in Mitchell et al (1997) have been maintained in the application of the model here. The descrip- tors are not intended to be derogatory. • •

A first category of stakeholders to be addressed in this discussion include powerful actors lying “at rest” (dormant stakeholders), respected actors who depend on support granted at the discretion of others (discretionary stakeholders), and angry or upset stakeholders who despite the importance of the issue to them, lack power or a legitimate status (demanding stakeholders). Members of this group are described as latent stakeholders and form the outer ring in Figure 3.1. More detailed delineation of these categories and examples with a mining context are included below. Dormant stakeholders can be said to be those who possess power to impose their will upon an organi- zation, but lack a legitimate relationship or an ur- gent claim. Power can be held by those that have significant financial resources (utilitarian power), or can command the attention of the media (sym- bolic/normative). If such actors acquire urgency or legitimacy, or both, then they can quickly shift to a status of great importance to an organization. Stakeholders relevant to mining activities in this regard include powerful international NGOs cur- rently dealing with other issues, senior governmen- tal actors currently satisfied with the status quo, or not immediately responsible for mining activities, internal actors with direct access to the media, and so forth. Discretionary stakeholders can be said to be those that possess the attribute of legitimacy but lack power and urgent claims. Such groups are those most likely to be the recipients of discretionary cor- porate social responsibility (giving) activities. In a mining context, actors in this category can include: schools and similar institutions receiving material resources from a mining actor, capacity building activities supplied to ethnic or indigenous groups from miners, sector NGOs or academic institu- tions as recipients of research grants or other fund- ing to support generation of “best environmental practice” documentation, and so forth. 64. As such, following Suchman (1995). 65. Criticality is an important concept where examples aid in understanding. Examples of why a stakeholder might view its relationship with an organisation to be critical include: the stake- holder providing firm-specific assets that lose their value if used by another firm or in a different way; sentiment due to the involve- ment of family members in firm activities over several genera- tions; expectation of continued great value such as employment and benefits; and so forth.

Dormant

e.g. international NGOs & senior governmental actors

POWER

Dominant resources

Dangerous e.g. militant groups & radical NGOs Definitive

ministries & social leaders

Stakeholders

Discretionary e.g capacity developers & welfare distributors LEGITIMACY

URGENCY

Dependent e.g. affected

Demanding e.g. anti-developers & single interest groups

citizens/commun- ities & nature

Stakeholder groups for mining & environment after Mitchell, Agle & Wood, (1997)

Figure 3.1 Stakeholder groups & attributes for min- ing and environment

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MINING FOR CLOSURE