This article focuses on the participatory rights of local people living in the areas of extensive oil industry operations in the Izhemskii district of the Komi Republic in Russia. The district has long been suffering from oil leaks and resulting negative environmental impacts. Lukoil-Komi bought the business directly after the Soviet era and inherited the ecological threats related to old and rusty pipelines. Lukoil-Komi has promised to put things in order, but a great deal remains to be done.

This article scrutinizes how statutory law and private governance interact in protecting the participatory rights of local people living in the vicinity of oil production in Komi. First, we evaluate what participatory rights Russian legislation guarantees to local people when oil production arrives in a new area or when new wells are being explored or opened. Second, we elaborate how the major oil company in the region – Lukoil-Komi – fulfills its corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the area of participatory rights and how local people feel about their possibility to exercise their participatory rights. As participatory rights, we discuss both procedural justice with public hearings and distributive justice in the form of benefit-sharing between the company and local community. The wider perspective on participation is due to Russian CSR practices. In Russia, companies tend to earn their Social License to Operate (SLO) through benefit-sharing, often within private governance. This practice is based on the social partnership agreements between authorities and companies. These contracts have path-dependent features resembling earlier Soviet solutions. The same can be claimed to apply to a wider SLO with more focus on local communities. We argue that Lukoil-Komi has not yet been able to achieve an SLO (local acceptance) due to the lack of participatory rights and continuing environmental problems. Most local people are not willing to trade a clean environment and participatory rights for the social benefits the company offers. However, the social partnership agreement concluded between Lukoil-Komi and a local NGO, Izvatas, could be a step forward in achieving a local SLO.

Two systems working in parallel have contributed to implementation difficulties in Swedish water governance. While the old system is designed to be predictable and stable over time, the new system is intended to be transparent and holistic, guided by the principles of Integrated Water Resource Management. The paper disentangles the challenges in Swedish water governance and proposes a blueprint for future research. The proposed research project is unique in the sense that it explores the imbalances between the new and the old water governance systems from a multi-disciplinary perspective, elaborating upon the clashes between the traditional, nationally based regulatory system and the new holistic water governance system from legal, political and economic perspectives.

Examining the oil and gas industry in the Russian Arctic, this article investigates the gap between corporate social responsibility (CSR) as articulated in corporate offices and implemented at the local level. In Russia, global CSR norms interact with weak formal institutions and the strong informal expectations of state officials and local communities that companies bear responsibility for welfare and infrastructure. As a result, the concept of citizens as ‘stakeholders’ is underdeveloped. Instead, local residents remain subjects within a neo-paternalist system of governance that mimics some elements of the Soviet past. Compensation for damages to indigenous peoples has blurred legal obligations and the voluntary nature of CSR. However, the CSR in the region is constantly developing and formal methods of compensation may assist in clarifying the scope and practice of CSR

Proactive contracting is a practice-oriented research stream, and scholars focused on proactive contracting have suggested fundamental changes for corporate contracting. Researchers have proposed that companies should improve their contracting capabilities and corporate lawyers should serve business objectives instead of preparing for possible litigation. The research reported in this paper focuses on two key areas of proactive contracting: the purpose of the project contracts; and the role of lawyers contributing to project contracts. The research goal was to find out whether business managers and corporate lawyers recognize a need for evolution in project contracting as suggested by the proactive contracting literature. The research data were collected using a survey of commercial contracting professionals, and the research results indicate that managers and lawyers share the same view – that contracts are made for business objectives and benefits. However, it was found that the perspectives of managers and lawyers differ with regard to the role of lawyers in preventing and resolving disputes.

PurposeThe objective of this paper is to increase our understanding of the main challenges of the contracting process and project contracts in the context of project business characterized by a high level of complexity and uncertainty. We argue that understanding contracting as a flexible process and as a business tool will contribute to creating more value in projects which are implemented in constantly changing circumstances or which require gradual and iterative development.Design/methodology/approachThis is a conceptual paper with illustrative examples from the software industry.FindingsA prevailing approach for both managing contracts and the contracting process focuses on careful planning and drafting of contracts that protect each party in the case of conflicts and disagreements. The underlying assumption is that all activities can be planned and documented in a formal contract. According to this approach, the contracting process is seen only as a bargaining negotiation and the project contract as a detailed agreement of the responsibilities and safeguarding clauses to protect one’s position in the event of conflicts and failures. However, in the context of project business characterized by complexity and uncertainty, there is a need for flexible project contracts. We suggest that there are two fundamentally different approaches to implementing flexibility in both the contracting process and the project contract: postponing the decision until there is adequate information for decision making or making decisions that allow flexible adaptation to changes during the project lifecycle.Practical implicationsWe suggest that organizations in project business should pay closer attention to how contracts are formed and how flexibility is introduced to projects. Organizations are encouraged to see contracts as a business tool, not as rigid documents which are taken into use in case something goes wrong.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to our understanding of how to adapt the contracting process to overcome challenges related to uncertainty, especially during the early phases of the project lifecycle. We provide a novel perspective on contracting as a process that extends over the lifecycle of a project and on the project contract as an agreement between parties formed during the contracting process. This perspective includes formal contract documents as well as various other documents, oral communication, commitments, actions and incidents.

Mining industry needs a social license to operate (SLO) on local, national and global levels. In this research we study six companies in three different countries in the Kolarctic Area. All except one company seem to focus on getting the social license at the local level with agreements with other land users and local communities. For new companies a local social license seems to be more difficult to earn, but the old ones have gained it with their earlier behavior. In Sweden and Finland companies also focus on global standards, mostly because of the pressure from financers. In the mining branch, endusers are not yet interested in social responsibility of the companies. Globally functioning multinationals have, however, been alerted to develop industrial standards under the pressure of NGOs. In some mining sectors such as gold mining, international standards already play a significant role. In gaining the social license, the involvement of NGOs, which now is rather modest, might be one way to develop global standards and improve reputation. Companies, which are successfully focusing on the local level, might also gain from NGO cooperation on the national level, where the reputation of the mining industry in Sweden and especially in Finland has suffered from sporadic bad performers. Russian companies have their own challenges because of the weak formal institutions of the country. There both good national relations with the power structures and a strong role in developing the surrounding areas are fundamental