Characteristics of the Social License

This chapter describes characteristics of the social license, positing that sources of license authority are a combination of people and knowledge and the perspective of source credibility proposes that people use individual characteristics to assess whether a claim is trustworthy by influencing in terms of source expertise and credibility as stakeholders. The substance of social license is a matter of messages and their contents that can represent either conflict or cooperation, with value found in both the defensive and the offensive dimensions. Consequently, here the authors argue that the social license refers to conformance with norms, values, and guidelines that apply within the society, allowing for blurred lines between the legal and the social license to operate. Without a chance to assign legal liability, assigning social liability is an alternative—with blurred lines between social expectations and public regulations bridged.