In the third quarter of this year, Xstrata Copper expects to begin developing a $4.2bn copper mine in the Apurimac Region of southern Peru. Construction of the Las Bambas project will be the culmination of a seven-year process to obtain not only regulatory consents, but the critical support of a local community that must be relocated to allow the opencast pits to be dug…At Las Bambas, the drive to win a social “licence to operate” has gone hand in hand with the legal process of obtaining regulatory permits for mineral extraction. The effort has been thorough, because it is founded on a long-standing recognition among mining companies of the need to build community goodwill if they are to win new regulatory consents. The latter are needed to sustain their businesses long term. But Professor Matt Gitsham, director of the Ashridge Centre for Business and Sustainability at Ashridge Business School in the UK, says building this social, or informal, licence to operate is essential for every business.“If you have a bank of goodwill and trust, when things go wrong – and with the best will in the world someday things will go wrong – you are more likely to be forgiven,” he says...The response is a substantial shift in big companies’ approach to value creation. Talking about shareholder value alone is out of fashion. Today, many organisations argue that “acting in the interests of a wide range of your stakeholders is how to build the most durable value for shareholders”, says Prof Gitsham. [also refers to Body Shop, Google, KPMG, Starbucks, Standard Chartered]