Search

Transnational higher education is big business. However, it is unclear what transnational universities must do to behave in a responsible way or to gain a social licence to operate. Examining the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC) and Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU), we discuss what universities could do to gain approval from host communities. They have to meet home and host country regulations, and the expectations of local communities and other stakeholders. Consideration of their social licence and of the negative and positive social impacts they create will contribute to their reputation and ability to access local knowledge. To earn a social licence to operate and grow, universities must understand and respond to their local context, share benefits with local communities, and have effective community engagement practices. In the universities we studied, there was limited information provided to community stakeholders and poor stakeholder engagement. However, high levels of trust from residents existed, partly because of the good reputation of universities generally.

Purpose: This paper aims to discuss how transnational universities create negative and positive social impacts on their host communities and what this means for campus sustainability and the expectation that universities contribute to sustainable development and to their local communities. Design/methodology/approach: Using mixed methods, a multiple case study approach and qualitative meta-analysis, this study considers six transnational university campuses in China in terms of their relationship with local communities. Findings: Because of the good reputation of universities generally, local residents tended to accord a social license to operate (i.e. approval) to new university campuses. However, universities generally do not manage their social impacts, as well as many other industries and generally fail to consider the corporate social responsibility issues and the environmental, social and governance aspects of their activities. To improve their social license to operate and grow and to meet expectations around "university social responsibility", campus developments should observe key international principles and human rights standards: full disclosure of information; effective community engagement; appropriate resettlement and livelihood restoration; effective harm reduction procedures; provision of local benefits (benefit sharing); monitoring and adaptive management and implement a grievance redress mechanism. Originality/value: This paper encourages broader thinking about sustainability in a higher education context and about what university social responsibility entails. Specifically, this study argues that the relationship between universities and their host communities also needs to be considered, especially during campus construction.

Social impact assessment is a field of applied social research that is now over 50 years old. With its ongoing evolution in practice and thinking, social impact assessment is a valued part of project development and will continue to be so. Over time, there has been a shift in understanding, from social impact assessment being a regulatory tool to now being the process of managing social issues throughout the life of a project. The range of issues considered has become much wider, now also including human rights. More than a tool or approach, social impact assessment is a discourse, a body of scholars and practitioners, a paradigm, and a philosophy about development and the rights of affected communities. The proper consideration of social impacts is now expected by all project stakeholders and is a requirement of international standards and project financing. There is now recognition of the need for projects to gain and maintain social acceptance, or a social license to operate and grow. Key current issues include: human rights; doing good rather than just doing no harm; benefit-sharing arrangements; Indigenous-led social impact assessment and community-based social impact assessment; and gender, LGBTQI+, two-spirit people, and intersectionality. Social impact assessment is increasingly being used to assist communities in negotiating Impact and Benefit Agreements (or Community Development Agreements). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social impact assessment can greatly contribute to sustainable regional and urban planning. However, social impact assessment is used primarily in the context of pre-determined projects, while social impact assessment's role in informing regional and urban plans before projects are even conceived is under-estimated. Moreover, a narrow understanding of the social impacts of projects leads social impact assessment practitioners to consider such impacts as being the outcomes only of the technical characteristics and risks of projects and their implementation, rather than also of broader social, cultural and political-institutional processes. In this article, we reflect on these gaps in social impact assessment. We expand the conceptualization of the social impacts of projects to better consider how social impacts are also influenced by the social dimensions of risk and resilience, and by the knowledge processes and governance strategies that inform and regulate projects. We conceptualize these processes and strategies and design new conceptual models to derive the social impacts of projects. Finally, we reflect on the strategic role social impact assessment can have in enabling social learning and sustainability transformation in localities (i.e. community resilience) and across multiple governance levels (i.e. social resilience). With this article, we contribute to building a key role for social impact assessment in disaster risk reduction, climate action and sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnic tourism is being advocated in China to assist regional development and poverty alleviation. However, the arrival of tourism developers who are largely external to local communities has led to changes in economic and governance arrangements at the local level. To understand how local communities are impacted and how they respond to and potentially recover from these changes, we examined Miao (Hmong) villages in Hunan Province, China. We consider how Chinese ethnic communities can simultaneously be vulnerable and yet still display resilience when they are exposed to tourism-induced structural changes that disempower them. We found that ethnic tourism created opportunities for knowledge sharing, which facilitated family businesses and skill enhancement. However, lack of local capital created dependence on external developers, and tourism increased the vulnerability of ethnic communities. Nevertheless, local people developed coping strategies to address the long-term economic and governance changes induced by tourism, despite also experiencing increasing disempowerment and vulnerability. We show that, even with top-down tourism governance models that are typically associated with the marginalization of local communities, everyday economic life was characterized by hybridity – simultaneous resilience and susceptibility, empowerment and disempowerment, and self-organization and dependency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enhancing disaster risk reduction (DRR) and community resilience are fundamental for sustainable development. However, cultural and political‐institutional barriers hinder governments from progressing towards sustainability. We propose a redesign of social impact assessment (SIA) to make it more applicable to the field of regional and urban planning, and we discuss the role SIA can have in enhancing community resilience to achieve DRR and sustainable development in localities. We argue that, to convert SIA into a tool that can inform regional recovery and development planning, a rethinking of SIA and of the role of SIA practitioners is needed. We therefore expound the SIA Framework for Action and we enhance it to be a community‐based process focussed on informing regional policies and plans and decisions about the projects to be included in such plans. Application of the SIA Framework for Action will help governments overcome the barriers to DRR and sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue contributes to building an integrated social science perspective on resilience and resilience‐building. The articles in this issue provide theoretical reflections and empirical insights on two dimensions that characterize resilience in society. The first (local community dimension) comprises the set of community resources, services, adaptive, transformative and coping capacities, processes, actions and behaviors that enable communities to learn from crises, disasters and past failures and transform toward sustainability in localities (community resilience). The second (governance dimension) comprises the set of adaptive and transformative governance strategies and assessment frameworks that enable social learning and sustainability transformation to be strengthened in localities and scaled up across multiple governance levels (social resilience). This special issue provides a theoretical common‐ground and practical pathways to define resilience and to support recovery and development planning to enhance resilience in society in order to achieve effective disaster risk reduction and climate action for sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to rapid growth, megacities make large investments in mega urban transport projects. To ensure positive social outcomes, e.g., accessibility for all, an integrated approach to transport and spatial development is needed. This paper identifies the institutional barriers and opportunities to using an integrated approach, using Ostrom's Institutional Analysis and Development Framework (IAD). We investigated a metro (subway) project in Seoul, South Korea, a rapidly-growing metropolis that has established an extensive transport network. Our analysis revealed that various rules have led to imbalances between transport and spatial planning, contributing to undesirable outcomes. Incongruence in scope between transport and spatial development, a lack of clear procedures for integrated planning, and institutional ambiguity regarding the responsibilities of the various actors affected social outcomes. We conclude that achieving desired social outcomes from mega urban transport projects requires institutional harmonization across sectors and levels, and local capacity to operationalize an integrated approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]