Early history 1215 1689 1776 1789 1792

1800s early 1900s 1919

1939-1945 1948 1949 1951 1961 1978 1970s - 2000

A Short History of the Human Rights Movement

The evolution of the social contract

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must undergo the fatigues of supporting it”

- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, 1777

About my book• Businesses and other organizations are increasingly aware that they

need more than just a legal licence for their activities. The concept of the “social licence” is transforming power relationships and explains how organizations can acquire or lose the legitimacy in the eyes of society that they need to be able to operate effectively.

• A social license cannot be directly managed, but is the result of interactions between a number of factors – factors that John Morrison shows business can manage, but which mainstream Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) often struggles to frame correctly.

• With examples ranging from the Gulf of Mexico to the Niger Delta, Morrison shows how the social license is dynamic, and why managers must start by focusing on the rights of those directly impacted by their activities. He provides clear guidance on understanding, measuring and integrating legitimacy into a company’s strategy.

What’s wrong with CSR?

“ [CSR] implies that business ... has no inherent social utility, but requires a sanitising ‘add-on’—something which enables it to ‘give back’ to society, a sentiment frequently heard on the lips of corporate leaders apparently unaware that this suggests that their own core activities are parasitic, which, without appropriate policies and principles relating to the whole of their impact, they may indeed be.” - Sir Geoffrey Chandler (2003)

Where to buy my book

The book "The Social License: How to Keep Your Organization Legitimate" (ISBN-10: 1137370718) was published on 8 September 2014 by Palgrave MacMillan and can be found at a range of book sellers.

www.johnmorrisonbooks.com