Abstract
Public relations is recognized as an organizational boundary-spanning function accountable for communication engagement with diverse stakeholders in ways that facilitate social relationships, co-creation, and communication. It is this perspective that underpins the claim that social license and social impact have utility for public relations theory, as organizational decisions have intended and unintended impacts on communities. This perspective also underscores the need for organizations to find better ways to understand and attend to public expectations in an authentic manner. The notion of an organization or industry having a social license to operate and needing to consider their social impact has never been more important. This special section in Public Relations Review on Engagement, Social License to Operate (SLO) and Social Impact responds to the call to articulate the utility of SLO and social impact by situating and conceptually strengthening these concepts within public relations scholarship and outlining future research for public relations theory building. This editorial conceptually situates SLO and social impact for public relations and engagement, and identifies future research opportunities. The papers in this special section are introduced, highlighting the links between the concepts and public relations.
1. Introduction
Organizations, whether they realize it or not, can have a significant social impact – positive or negative – on the communities in which they function, and on society more broadly. Anticipating social impact underscores the imperative for organizations - and public relations - to be responsive to societal expectations (Heath, 2018; Hurst, Johnston, & Lane, 2020; Johnston & Lane, 2018a, 2018b; Taylor, 2011). Societal expectations reflect individual, group, and community concerns, that work to conceptually parallel social license to operate. Yet these expectations and therefore social license/s, may not always align with what is technically lawful or politically endorsed (Bice, Brueckner, & Pforr, 2017; Wright & Bice, 2017). Current and historical cases describing misalignments between community expectation and organizational actions underscore the importance of engagement. These cases also acknowledge the need to consider, communicate, interact with, and respond to diverse perspectives that generally exist in a social environment in order to determine societal expectations and the potential (or actual) impact of the organization or industry.
