Social License and the Impact of Corporate Change

This chapter presents an impactful case study in close detail to illustrate the effect of corporate change on perceived normative social values, focusing on a construction company that operated under the mission statement of building ordinary homes for ordinary people in Norway as a social cooperative. In summary, following restructuring and movement into the luxury housing market at the beginning of the 2020s, the company expressed a desire to deviate from the established business model of the cooperative company, causing a powerful bottom-up reaction in terms of a member revolt that threatened the social license to operate and consequently the viability of the company.