Understanding organizational and socio-cultural contexts: A communicative constitutive approach to social license to operate among top Hong Kong companies

•Approaching social license to operate through a constitutive view to communication.•Provided socio-cultural meanings in SLO via engagement.•Explored the construction of engagement and aspirations in SLO.•Situated in an East-Meets-West cultural context for cultural discourse analysis. Embracing a co...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Public relations review 2021-09, Vol.47 (3), p.102055, Article 102055
Main Authors: Mak, Angela K.Y., Chaidaroon, Suwichit (Sean), Poroli, Alessandro, Pang, Augustine
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aspiration
Business schools
Cultural discourse analysis
Discourse analysis
Engagement
Languages
Legitimacy
Public relations
Social aspects
Social license to operate
Socio-cultural meaning
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Summary:•Approaching social license to operate through a constitutive view to communication.•Provided socio-cultural meanings in SLO via engagement.•Explored the construction of engagement and aspirations in SLO.•Situated in an East-Meets-West cultural context for cultural discourse analysis. Embracing a constitutive view of communication, this study explores how organizations in Hong Kong make sense of and negotiate their corporate societal commitment. It does that by examining how the considered organizations construct their engagement in society and talk of their aspirations on identified society-oriented doings by cultural discourse analysis. Findings show that the studied Hong Kong companies constructed their engagement by communicationally relating to other societal actors, establishing we-ness in community engagement actions, incorporating elements of the local cultures (languages and places) and in their reasoning and disclosing emotion-rich considerations. Aspirations were instead presented through a constant reference to stakeholders’ interests and concerns and local and international standards’ precepts. Companies also tended to recognize that interventions had to be undertaken steps by steps, while searching for credibility in “more-balanced” vision-statements. This study offers a socio-cultural perspective complementary to studying social license to operate in public relations research.
ISSN:0363-8111
1873-4537
DOI:10.1016/j.pubrev.2021.102055