Social License (SLO)
Categories: Ethics/Morals
When we see the acronym “SLO,” maybe we think of San Luis Obispo, that lovely spot near the California coast where Hearst Castle lives. Rosebud.
But “SLO” can also stand for Social License to Operate, or, if we’re being casual about it, just plain old social license. In a nutshell, “social license” basically means that society in general (and certain groups of society in specific) approves of what is going on within a company and is going to allow it to continue. The company has a “social license” to continue its operations as per usual. No one’s staging huge protests outside their HQ, no one’s filing class action lawsuits to get them shut down, no one’s lambasting them on cable news for all the horrible things they’ve done.
There’s no clear or mathematical way to determine whether an organization has social license, because there are no permits, applications, indexes, formulas, or anything else that can tell us “yes, we have it” or “no, we do not have it.” It’s more of an intangible thing that we can sorta kinda get to by answering questions like these:
Does the organization have a good reputation in the community?
Does the organization do good things for the community?
Do the employees working there like it?
Do they get treated well?
Is this organization diverse/environmentally responsible/fair/honest/scrupulous?
And how about the board of directors and company leadership...are they diverse/environmentally responsible/fair/scrupulous?
The more of those questions we answer in the affirmative, the more likely that organization is to have social license.
Related or Semi-related Video
Finance: What is a Moral Obligation Bond...7 Views
Finance allah shmoop what is a moral obligation bond So
one of our writers totally messed this one up and
we started a video about promises to pay dentists So
a moral obligation bond is one that gets paid because
well you have good morals or you feel morally obligated
to pay hey if you don't necessarily legally have to
pay it but you're morally obligated Teo do so let's
think about this Hospitals universities do gooder projects of all
shapes and sizes that is on a lone dusty highway
west of omaha a tiny city wants to build a
trucker parking hub with excellent hot dogs clean ish showers
and a mud flap emporium They need three million bucks
to build this thing for the kindly loving truckers while
it's still human beings doing nothing and well on their
own city can't afford it the state realizing how good
this depot would be for commerce in business coming into
and out of the state they decide to guarantee the
bonds of that little city The city is backing it
without reams of paper a forest full of paper sign
contracts or any other major structural legal limits in practice
The bonds air publicized as a gift to the area
and they create extreme embarrassment to the politicos who backed
it Should that bond ever fail That is whoever's managing
the facility and supposed to collect the you know shower
tuition from the truckers stops collecting it and or the
truckers find somewhere else to go with mohr cleanest showers
or this is a municipal moral obligation bond but the
term applies to bonds that are not government backed as
well The holy rollers church of greater baltimore is raising
money to replace all the stained glass windows that have
been broken by you know errant baseball's from the neighboring
field They get each of their congregants toe loan the
church three grand and no they're not passing contracts along
with the collection plate there's nothing in writing saying that
the church will use that money to replace the windows
they promised or because the members let the church get
their dough back The church has a moral obligation to
pay back the money that they were loaned to make
good on their promise and if they default well they'll 00:02:10.823 --> [endTime] have to answer to the big guy in charge