Mining and Social Performance: A Review

In 2018, the SMI’s Unlocking Complex Ore Bodies cross-cutting program seeded an exploratory research project enabling CSRM to document the “state of play” of social performance functions within global mining companies.

The three project outputs are:

  1. Establishing the Foundations for Effective Social Performance in the Global Mining Industry. This document provides a frame of reference for the project. A Powerpoint summary is available here.
  2. A Snapshot Study: Organising for Social Performance in the Global Mining Industry. We captured insights from a series of confidential interviews with 13 of the global mining industry’s most senior social performance leads, across 10 mining companies.
  3. A Rapid Desktop Scan of Social Performance of 14 extractive companies. This PowerPoint compiles our findings from a scan of public domain documents.

The project raises important questions about the mining industry’s approach to social performance. Areas for further research include:

  • the impact of organisational structure on social performance
  • the authority and influence of social performance relative to other disciplines
  • the risks of configuring social performance in the absence of a clear “purpose”
  • involvement of boards and executive leadership teams in critical social performance decisions
  • the visibility of commitments to avoid, minimise and manage harm to communities
  • the level of integration between social performance and other units of the organisation.

CSRM will continue to pursue these research questions as part of its transformational research agenda.

 


 

Establishing the foundations for effective social performance in the global mining industry Cover

Establishing the foundations for effective social performance in the global mining industry

In a context where mining companies may be looking to build, or rebuild, their communities and social performance capability after a period of cutbacks in this area, it is important to ensure that the resources devoted to the task are well spent. This paper sets out the factors that companies need to consider if they are to establish, and maintain, the foundations for effective social performance.

View the paperView the powerpoint summary

 


 

 A snapshot study

Organising for social performance in the global mining industry: A snapshot study

This study focuses on a sample of 10 global mining companies, nine of which are members of the ICMM and most of which are either members of the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) and/or the Mining Association of Canada (MAC). The focus of the study was to explore how CSP is: (i) delineated, (ii) organised and (iii) integrated into corporate and other business structures and processes. After describing our sample and methodology, we address each of these topic areas in turn.

View the paper

 


 

Rapid Desktop Scan

A Rapid Desktop Scan of Social Performance

This PowerPoint presentation provides a high-level review of commitments and leadership structures of 14 companies, using publicly available documentation.

View the presentation