Mining managers’
causal attributions of socio-environmental conflicts and intergroup perceptions
Percepciones
intergrupales y atribuciones causales de conflictos socioambientales por
gerentes mineros
Federico R. León federicorleone@gmail.com
Universidad San
Ignacio de Loyola, Perú
Fanny Barrantes febs@speedy.com.pe
Universidad Peruana de
Ciencias Aplicadas, Perú
Mining
managers’ causal attributions of socio-environmental conflicts and intergroup
perceptions
Interdisciplinaria, vol. 38, núm. 2, pp. 25-40, 2021
Centro
Interamericano de Investigaciones Psicológicas y Ciencias Afines
Esta obra está bajo una Licencia Creative
Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 4.0 Internacional.
Recepción: 05 Agosto 2019
Aprobación: 08 Marzo 2021
Abstract:
The unprecedented mining boom of the 1990s in Latin America may
or may have not contributed to socioeconomic development in the region, but it
has certainly been accompanied by increased socio-environmental conflicts.
Economists and sociologists have developed taxonomies for such conflicts and
have attempted to explain them based on theories of resource mobilization,
rational options, social cohesion, and identity construction applied to
settings of generally extreme poverty. This study developed and tested
psychological hypotheses based on personal values, attribution theory,
reputational concern of the firm, intergroup threat theory, and UV radiation
theory entailing mining managers’ reactions to socio-environmental conflicts in
Peru and effects of latitude and altitude. Forty-three Corporate Social
Responsibility managers of the 49 mining corporations registered in the Society
of Mining, Petroleum, and Energy of Peru filled-in a 20-minute questionnaire in
the presence of one of the investigators at company offices (December 2017).
100 % of respondents were male, most of them middle-aged. A 3-factor structure
of political, economic, and ecological concerns sustained the attributions of
cause whereas mine’s surrounding populations were perceived as moral,
incompetent, and positive; in balance, these perceptions represent favorable
conditions for conflict resolution. However, contrary to expectations, firm’s
experience of socio-environmental conflicts was not associated with these
outcomes. Rather, geography emerged as a moderator of the relationship between
the level of socio-environmental conflict experienced and managers’ perceptions
of the surrounding populations. These results suggest that mining managers more
affected by socio-environmental conflict strengthened racial stereotypes in
response to the external challenge.
Keywords:
mining,
socio-environmental conflict, managers, intergroup perceptions.
Resumen: Los economistas discuten si
la enorme expansión de la minería de los años 1990s en América Latina
–generalmente a base de capital extranjero– ha contribuido o no al desarrollo
socioeconómico de la región, pero en lo que ellos y otros científicos sociales
están de acuerdo es en que tal expansión ha estado acompañada de crecientes
conflictos socioambientales. Economistas, sociólogos, y antropólogos han
desarrollado taxonomías de los conflictos y han intentado explicarlos usando teorías
de movilización de recursos, opciones racionales, cohesión social, y
construcción de identidad aplicadas a ambientes de extrema pobreza, como lo son
generalmente los circundantes a las minas. Sin embargo, los estudios se han
concentrado en los comportamientos de estas poblaciones. En este estudio la
pregunta es cómo perciben los gerentes mineros peruanos el origen de los
conflictos socioambientales. ¿Como causados por el deseo de las comunidades de
preservar el ambiente, proteger sus fuentes de agua, mantener su estilo de
vida, participar en los beneficios económicos de la mina, responder a una
agenda política, corregir los errores ambientales verídicos o esperados de la
mina? En segundo lugar, se desarrollan y se prueban hipótesis psicológicas
sobre las reacciones de los gerentes ante conflictos socioambientales. Una
hipótesis, basada en la teoría de la atribución y la de preocupación
reputacional de la firma, fue que su percepción de los conflictos dependería de
la medida en que sus minas experimentaron conflicto. Otra hipótesis, basada en
la teoría de la amenaza intergrupal, fue que la percepción que tienen los
gerentes de los atributos personales de las comunidades vecinas sería más
negativa en función de la magnitud de los conflictos experimentados. Tercero,
se predijo que las reacciones de los gerentes variarían en función de la
latitud y altitud de las minas; la teoría de la radiación UV predice menor
inteligencia de la población con la altura sobre el nivel del mar y con la
distancia a la línea ecuatorial. Cuarenta y tres gerentes de Responsabilidad
Social Corporativa de las 49 corporaciones mineras registradas en la Sociedad
de Minería, Petróleo, y Energía del Perú llenaron un cuestionario de 20 minutos
de duración en presencia de uno de los investigadores en sus oficinas
(Diciembre 2017). En su totalidad, eran hombres, la mayoría de mediana edad.
Una estructura de factores políticos, económicos y ecológicos sostuvo las
atribuciones de causa de los conflictos; en efecto, pese al pequeño número de casos,
el análisis confirmatorio de factores identificó consistentemente un factor
político (políticos y organizaciones no-gubernamentales movilizan reclamos por
daños supuestos o reales causados por las minas), un factor económico(reclamos
de propiedad y aspiraciones de participación de las comunidades en los
beneficios económicos de las minas ante la pasividad del gobierno), y un factor
ecológico (preocupación por la conservación del ambiente y las fuentes de agua
de las comunidades). Las poblaciones vecinas fueron caracterizadas por rasgos
de personalidad que las tipificaban como morales, incompetentes y positivas.
Estas percepciones son más positivas que las que tienen estudiantes
universitarios respecto a la población peruana en general y representan condiciones
favorables a la resolución de conflictos. Ni estos resultados ni las
caracterizaciones de causas de los conflictos dependieron de la experiencia de
conflicto de los gerentes. Esto se puede entender considerando que los
contactos frecuentes que tienen los gerentes mineros entre sí probablemente
promocionan la estandarización de sus visiones sociales. Por su parte, la
geografía moderó la relación entre la experiencia de conflicto y las
percepciones intergrupales, sugiriendo que los gerentes más afectados por los
conflictos socioambientales fortalecieron sus estereotipos raciales en
respuesta al desafío externo si estaban cerca de la línea ecuatorial o a gran
altura sobre el nivel del mar.
Palabras clave: minería, conflicto socioambiental, gerentes, responsabilidad
social.
Introduction
In the 1990s, the global mining industry underwent an
unprecedented expansion, emerging in countries which had never shown a history
of mineral commerce; the registry of countries with mining activity increased
from 105 in 1990 to 151 in 1994 (Acselrad,
Das Neves & Muñoz, 2010). This expansion was made possible by price
rises of minerals in response to the increasing demand as well as by
privatizations promoted by international financial institutions that
facilitated foreign investment in the exploitation of previously inaccessible
natural resources (Azamar & Carcaño,
2007). Latin America became the most important destiny of mining capital
investment and a survey conducted by the Fraser
Institute (2016) placed Peru as the top Latin American country in economic
attractiveness considering its mineral reserves, followed by Chile, Mexico, and
Colombia.
Mining activities not only represent substantial contributions
to national economies but also play a positive role in the activation of
subsidiary industries, growth of internal markets, and development of human
resources in the territorial areas of influence of the mining projects during
their effective lives (Santillana, 2006).
However, the relationship between extractive industries and country development
is far from simple. Whereas governments and some academic groups believe in
their potential for development at national and local levels, critics of mining
conclude that countries who depend on mining exports continue to show lower
development rates (Bebbington, 2007a, 2007b), that indicators of development or
quality of life have not improved in regions with long mining history (Ross, 2001), and that the rapid mining
boom has imposed high social and environmental costs to local communities (McMahon & Remy, 2001).
Mining and socio-environmental conflicts
The mining boom has been accompanied by socio-environmental
conflicts that some have viewed as a series of events organized by interest
groups and others have attributed to legitimate environmental concerns (Navarro & Pineda 2009). Diverse
methods for assessing the environmental damage of mining are widely available
(e.g., Damigos, 2006; Gorova, Pavlychenko & Borysovs’ka, 2013),
mining projects can qualify for ISO14001 (Newbold,
2006), and governments generally require an Environmental Impact Report as
a condition for granting permit to initiate a mining project. In Peru, the government
regulates extractive activities in the context of neoliberal policies.
Nonetheless, mining projects have been persistently confronted by
environmentalist groups. Bebbington (2009;
Bebbington & Bebbington, 2009)
formulated diverse forms of environmentalism originated in different ways of
perceiving the relationships between environment, society, and market.
Conservationism seeks to conserve certain types of ecosystems, species, or
biogeographic niches. Nationalist populist environmentalism is concerned with
who has access to the natural resources and their monetary value and who exerts
control on them; this type of environmentalism is nationalist because of its
explicit objective of securing national control of the environment and the
earnings derived from it. A third environmentalism, akin to Martínez Alier’s (2002) “ecology of the
poor”, is the ecologism of the means to survival; this entails a concern for
the quality of and access to the natural resources that sustain the life of the
various population groups concerned, viewed as threatened by mine exploitation.
The fourth environmentalism, called socio-environmental justice, is concerned
with inequality; it has its roots in a notion of inequity in the relationships
between society and the environment and criticizes economic models that
discriminate specific social groups. Finally, deep ecologism assigns greater
value to ecosystems, ecological processes, species, and biodiversity than any
other form of environmentalism; in fact, it assigns to nature the same right to
live as to persons. A simpler classification is provided by Perlaviciute, Steg, Contzen, Roeser, and
Huijts (2018, p. 4): “Energy projects may particularly have implications
for four types of values: biospheric values, in which case people particularly
care about protecting nature and the environment; altruistic values, which
implies people mostly aim to safeguard the well-being of others; egoistic
values, which implies safeguarding personal resources such as wealth and
status; and hedonic values, which implies that people are especially seeking
pleasure and comfort”.
The conflicts between mining companies and surrounding
communities fearing environmental deterioration have increased at the rhythm of
growth of the industry itself. A total of 63 socio-environmental conflicts have
been reported in Ecuador and Colombia (Environmental
Justice Atlas, 2016). There were 12 socio-environmental conflicts in Chile
(INDH, 2016). The emblematic Mexican cases of Wirikuta and Cananea are well
known (Azamar & Carcaño, 2007). A
report of Peru’s National Ombudsman indicates that the number of
socio-environmental conflicts increased from 21 in 2006 to 46 in 2016; of
these, 65.1 % corresponded to conflicts related to mining activity and 15.8 %
to exploitation of hydrocarbons (Defensoría
del Pueblo, 2016). Recent gridlocks of giant mining projects Conga (Morales, Kleit, & Rees, 2018) and Tía
María (Bedregal & Scott, 2013) had
ample resonance in Peru’s media and polarized politicians. Understanding of
these processes may be facilitated by knowledge that, in the Peruvian provinces
with mining activity, 12 % of the population are in extreme poverty, 40 % are
very poor, and 36 % are poor. Only 1 % of the population in Peruvian provinces
with mining activity achieve a satisfactory level of well-being. Hence, a key
to the conflicts may reside in the contrast existing between the wealth of the
mining investments and the poverty of the surrounding communities. In Peru,
conflicts occur despite that the central government transfers a large fraction
of the mining taxes to the subnational governments in the mining areas and
encourages mining firms to assume an active role in local development (Arellano-Yanguas, 2011).
De Echave, Diez, Huber,
Revesz, Lanata, and Tanaka (2009) combined sociological theories of
resource mobilization and rational options with theories of social cohesion and
identity construction to explain socio-environmental conflicts. The inception
of mining into an ecosystem would cause macro-social changes characterized by
the production of structural contradictions which deteriorate the quality of
life. Simultaneously, changes in values and identities would create new
aspirations and sensibilities and the ensuing feelings of relative deprivation
would lead to processes of social mobilization which would materialize or not,
depending on the perceived benefits and costs. De Echave et al. (2009) provided insights
into the dynamics of social unrest as they applied their theoretical framework
in analyses of four types of mobilization against mining projects in Peru. The
literature on the topic has rapidly increased in recent years (e.g., Andreucci & Kallis, 2017; Arellano-Yanguas, 2011; Conde & LeBillon, 2017; Dupuy, Roman & Mougenot, 2015; Martínez-Alier et al., 2016; Muradian et al., 2011; Sosa et al., 2016; Ide, 2016).The most recent review (Morales, Kleit & Rees, 2018) assigns
extraordinary importance to cultural differences between the mine owners and
personnel vis-à-vis the local populations and provides a case study of the
Conga conflict in Peru.
Psychological hypotheses
Psychology has contributed strategies with the potential to lead
to improved understanding and management of environmental problems. A recent
strategy emphasizes the role of emotions and their origins in the processes of
resistance to change (Perlaviciute et al.,
2018). Emotions are normal reactions of people to changes in the
environment and the responses of either part of an environmental conflict to
them “can be ineffective if they are based on inaccurate or erroneous
assumptions about where these emotions come from and whether and how they can
be addressed” (Perlaviciute et al., 2018,
p. 2). At the base of such emotions are personal values that a company’s
project or the public’s reaction to it violates or supports: biospheric values,
altruistic values, egoistic values, and/or hedonic values. Virtually all the
empirical studies of socio-environmental conflict involving the mining industry
in Latin America have focused on the attitudes and behaviors of populations
rising against mining projects. Contrariwise, virtually nothing is known about
the reactions of their counterparts, the mining corporations, to the crisis
that a socio-environmental conflict represents to them. The psychological
principles formulated to explain public reaction to a project, however, may
apply to managers as well. Thus, the present study addresses various possible
responses of mining managers to socio-environmental crises following Perlaviciute et al.’s (2018) general
principle that “emotions are evoked by the extent to which different project
characteristics … violate or support people’s core values” (p. 3).
Attribution of source of conflict
How do managers perceive the origins of socio-environmental
conflicts? As caused by the communities’ desire to preserve the environment,
protect their sources of water, maintain their life style, participate in the
economic benefits of the mine, respond to a political agenda, correct a mine’s
actual or expected environmental errors? Corporations all over the world are
interested in establishing and maintaining a favorable environmental reputation
and researchers frequently recur to attribution theory to understand the
mechanisms used by firms to achieve this objective (Kumar, 2018). Socio-environmental
conflicts can be viewed as crises that not only threaten to disrupt a
corporation’s operations but also pose a reputational threat. The essential
question in this context pertains to crisis responsibility. Was the crisis a
result of external factors or something the organization could have controlled
better? People search for the causes of events and make attributions influenced
by the emotions associated with the nature of the events. Situational Crisis
Communication Theory offers a framework for understanding the dynamics of
responsibility attributions affecting organizations (Coombs, 2007). The reputational threat to
a corporation augments as the attributions of crisis responsibility to the firm
intensifies (Coombs & Holladay, 2002)
and preventable crises have the most negative effects on organizational
reputation (Claeys, Cauberghe &
Vyncke, 2010). When managers select certain factors to emphasize, they are
said to be framing the issue. A mining manager may frame the issue by
emphasizing certain cues: whether or not certain external agent or force caused
the crisis, whether the crisis was a result of accidental or intentional
action, or whether the cause of the accident was technical or human error.
Generally, he or she will assume one of three roles: victim, unintended agent,
or purposeful agent. The present study tested the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1. Managers of mining corporations will attribute
more responsibility of socio-environmental conflicts to external agents
vis-à-vis mining activities depending on the extent of socio-environmental
conflict experienced by the mine.
Intergroup perception
How do managers perceive the surrounding population of a mine,
usual base of socio-environmental mobilizations? Are such perceptions
influenced by the presence of socio-environmental conflict? Social
psychologists distinguish between the in-group (to which one believes/feels to
belong) and the out-group (the differentiated “others”). A person belongs to
several in-groups: the family, the firm, the career, the club, the nation.
Out-groups that possess the power to harm the in-group may be a threat to its
very existence. The social mobilizations against mining can be conceived as an
instance of this severest threat; to the extent that the out-group succeeds,
the mine could be closed and disappear as a social entity. W. G. Stephans’
revised intergroup threat theory distinguishes between realistic and symbolic
threats (Stephan, Ybarra, & Morrison,
2009). The human groups behind socio-environmental conflicts represent a
realistic threat to members of the mining organization, who may feel exposed to
the two types of realistic threat defined by Stephan and Renfro (2002): threat to the
individual and threat to the group as a whole. Realistic group threats
encompass potential damage to the group’s power, resources, and welfare.
Realistic individual threats include threats to health or personal security as
well as economic loss or deprivation of valued resources. Research has shown
that a range of responses follow the perception of realistic threat from an
out-group. Stephan and Stephan (2000)
originally concentrated in changes in attitudes toward the out-group.
Subsequently, impacts on other attitudes and behaviors were studied. Of
particular interest to the topic of this article are the possible cognitive
changes among mining managers. It has been shown that the perception of threat
is followed by changes in stereotypes (Quist
& Resendez, 2002), dehumanization of the out-group (Shamir & Sagiv-Schiffer, 2006; Skitka, Bauman & Mullen, 2004), and
other cognitive biases (Ybarra, Stephan,
Schaberg, 2000) that usually lead to increased conflict. Persons of higher
social status undergo more intensive changes in their perceptions of the
out-group than persons of lower status (Riek,
Mania & Gaertner, 2006). In the present study, the presence of the
simplest response was tested:
Hypothesis 2. Managers of mining corporations will attribute
negative traits to the mine’s surrounding population depending on the extent of
socio-economic conflict experienced by the mine.
Geographical variables
Latitudinal psychology (Van
de Vliert & Van Lange, 2019) has identified latitude as an important
source of psychological outcomes and has proposed extremes of temperature and
rain as the possible mediators. Alternative economic (Andersen, Dalgaard & Selaya, 2016) and
psycho-geographic theories (León, 2019)
focus on UV radiation. The closer to the equatorial line is a population, the
poorer, the sicker, the less educated, and the less intelligent are its
members, both at worldwide level (Andersen
et al., 2016; León & Burga-León,
2015) and within Peru (León, 2012,
2015, 2019; León
& Burga León, 2014), apparently due to greater exposure to ultraviolet
radiation (Andersen et al., 2016; León, 2018a, 2018b; León & Antonelli-Ponti, 2018; León & Burga-León, 2018; León & Hassall, 2017). Another
geographic variable with important socioeconomic consequences is altitude above
sea level. Terrain ruggedness makes agriculture, construction and transport
more difficult (Nunn & Puga, 2012)
and high altitude exposes the population to greater ultraviolet radiation (León & Avilés, 2016). By making local
populations poorer, and thus prone to see greater inequity compared to the
wealth of miners and their employees, latitude and altitude can be expected to
enhance socio-environmental conflicts related to mining. The following
hypothesis was tested:
Hypothesis 3. Latitude and altitude will moderate the
relationships expected in hypotheses 1 and 2.
Method
Subjects and procedure
Only 49 mining corporations are registered in the Society of
Mining, Petroleum, and Energy of Peru. A formal letter of invitation was sent
to Corporate Social Responsibility managers of the 49 mining firms inviting
them to fill in a 20-minute questionnaire (December 2017); they were offered
anonymity and 43 of them provided their informed consent and completed the
questionnaire in the presence of one of the investigators at company offices.
100 % of respondents were male, most of them middle-aged.
Measurements
Socio-environmental conflict
Information on whether any project of the organization faced
socio-environmental conflict in each year from 2008 through 2017 was obtained
from annual reports of the National Ombudsman (Defensoría del Pueblo, 2008-2017). The
mining organization was the unit of analysis throughout the study on two
grounds: because the study had one informant per organization and because CSR
is not handled per project in the Peruvian mining industry.
Attribution of source of conflict
A list of 11 possible causes of socio-environmental conflicts
was derived from the literature, from “Concerns of communities regarding the
use of water” and “Political interests external to the communities” to “Damage
caused by the mining industry” and “Mining companies’ breach of compromises”.
The question was framed in reference to the general case and managers were
asked to provide an opinion using a 5-point Likert scale (Never: 1, Always: 5): “Several statements
regarding mining conflicts appear in the following lines. Please, answer
tracing a circle around the number (1, 2, 3, 4 or 5) corresponding to the
opinion that best reflects yours. (There are no correct or incorrect answers).
1. The possession of a territorial space that communities consider theirs.
Etc.”
Intergroup perception
The National Autostereotypes Scale (Espinosa, Acosta, Valencia, Vera, Soares,
Romero & Beramendi, 2016) encompasses 22 items formed by adjectives and
their antonyms (e.g., honest-dishonest, sociable-non sociable). The task is
presented to the informant as a choice to be made from a gradation of 7 points
between an adjective and its antonym. Studies in several Latin-American
countries have shown that various versions of the scale satisfy common
requirements of construct validity (Espinosa
et al., 2016; Genna & Espinosa,
2012). Cueto (2017) revised the
scale linguistically and expanded it to reach 29 items. A pilot study in Lima
led to the exclusion of five items due to difficulties to ascertain a positive
versus negative evaluation and exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of
responses from university students in Lima (N = 401) and Ayacucho (N = 408)
yielded three reliable dimensions: Moral (good people, hard-working,
trustworthy, honest, brave, supportive, pacific, environmentalist, not
resentful), Competent (successful, glad, capable, intelligent, enterprising,
sharp, creative, sociable),and Negative (corrupt, unpatriotic, backward,
discriminator, alienated, unreliable). A further item (not in the previous
lists) was discarded to improve the reliability of one of the dimensions and
the scale was rechristened as Collective Stereotypes Scale.
Geographic variables
Measurements of latitude were obtained for each mining project,
using district as referent, from Latitude
and Longitude of a Point (2018). Altitude data came from Peru’s National
Institute of Statistics and Informatics (2018).
Other data
The questionnaire also included questions about the informant
(age, sex, education, time with the organization) and questions about the
corporation (presence in the Lima Stock Exchange, assets, and
national-international capital).
Results
Preliminary analyses
Only two firms had more than one mining project (none exceeded
two) in the 2008-2017 period. Considering the number of years under conflict,
the firms were categorized into Low Conflict (0-1 year, N = 14), Medium
Conflict (2-7 years, N = 15), and High Conflict (8-10 years, N = 14). Conflict
level correlated .96 (p < .001, two-tailed) with raw number of years under
conflict. Only 12 firms had their shares transacted in the Lima Stock Exchange;
14 were national and 29 international companies. The 11 items entailing source
of socio-environmental conflicts were submitted to an exploratory factor
analysis using Principal Components Analysis; the resulting 3-factor solution
explained 63 % of the variance and suggested a structure whose model fit was
satisfactory according to the semi-confirmatory FACTOR program (Ferrando & Lorenzo-Seva, 2017) using
unweighted least squares (see Appendix 1) as well as according to a
confirmatory factor analysis using maximum likelihood in AMOS 24.
Figure 1.
Results of structural equation modeling of managers’ causal attributions of socio-environmental conflicts.
Notes: Coefficients relating factors to
observable variables are provided. Dotted arrows indicate correlations between
factors. Remainder information pertains to model fit.
*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p <
.001, two-tailed, after bootstrapping.
Factor 1 was defined by “NGO’s interests served by communities”,
“Political interests external to communities”, and “Damage caused by mining
activity”. Factor 2 entailed “Possession of territorial space that communities
consider is theirs”, “Communities’ desire to participate in economic benefits
of mining projects”, and “Government’s passivity in preventing conflicts”.
Factor 3 encompassed “Communities concern with the use of water” and
“Communities’ desire to preserve the environment and avoid ecological damage”
(see Figure 1). These dimensions presented adequate
reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) despite the small numbers.72, .70, and .68,
respectively. Considering that factors 1 and 2 encompassed three items each
whereas Factor 3 encompassed only two items, averages rather than sums were
computed to make the factors comparable. The same was done with the Collective
Stereotypes Scale’s dimensions. The reliabilities of the latter were
satisfactory among the managers: α = .82 for Moral, α = .74 for Competent, and
α = .67 for Negative.
Managers’ age was positively correlated with education and time
in the organization and decreased with mine’s altitude above sea level. Time
with the firm, in turn, was associated with presence in Lima Stock Exchange and
with Factor 2 and decreased with mine’s altitude above sea level. Conflict
level was greater at higher altitude, where international firms had a greater
presence, whereas assets and presence in the Lima Stock Exchange were greater
with distance from the equator. The three conflict factors were importantly correlated,
as were the three traits, as expected considering common method variance (Podsakoff, McKenzie & Podsakoff, 2012).
The Negative trait correlated positively with Factor 3 and negatively with the
Competent trait. “Investing in infrastructure for the communities” was the most
frequently chosen among the five most demanding CSR activities (56 %).Managers
who selected this item attributed socio-environmental conflicts to economic
interests of surrounding communities, viewed surrounding populations as less
competent and more negative, and had more operations in northern than southern
Peru.
Hypotheses 1 and 3
It can be seen in Table 1 that the managers
attributed the causes of socio-environmental conflicts mainly to the external
political agents encompassed by Factor 1; attributions to mining firms came in
8th and 9th places. All the partial correlations between
managers’ ratings and the firm’s level of conflict were non-significant. Factor
3 (M = 3.21, SD = .80) presented lower scores than Factor 1 (M = 3.39, SD =
.82) and Factor 2 (M = 3.43, SD = .73), but the differences were not
significant.
Table 1
Item |
M |
r |
Communities’ interest in participating in
project’s benefits |
4.09 |
-.15 |
Passivity of government to prevent conflicts |
4.02 |
.18 |
Political interests external to the
communities |
3.65 |
-.00 |
Communities’ concern with water utilization |
3.58 |
.17 |
Possession of territorial space communities
consider is theirs |
3.47 |
-.04 |
NGO’s interests which mobilize communities |
3.40 |
.17 |
Communities’ desire to protect their means
of survival |
3.16 |
-.19 |
Damage caused by mining activity |
3.12 |
-.10 |
Mining firms’ failure to honor commitments |
3.00 |
.02 |
Communities’ desire to protect the
environment |
2.84 |
-.21 |
Communities’ desire to avoid changes in
their traditions |
2.74 |
-.12 |
Notes: Ratings were provided on a five-point Likert scale (from Never to Always). Conflict Level
entails the duration of conflicts experienced by the mines in 2008-2017. The
variables set constant were: respondent’s age, education, time with
organization, firm’s assets, national-international, in Lima Stock Exchange,
absolute latitude, and altitude above sea level.
The results of hierarchical multiple regression analyses shown
in Table 2 failed to uphold hypotheses 1 and 3: neither
conflict level nor its interactions with latitude or altitude explained
managers’ perceptions of sources of socio-environmental conflicts.
Table 2
Predictor |
Conflict type |
|||||
Factor 1 |
Factor 2 |
Factor 3 |
||||
ΔR2 |
β |
ΔR2 |
β |
ΔR2 |
β |
|
Step 1 Age Education Time
in the organization Conflict level Assets International firm In Lima Stock
Exchange Absolute latitude Altitude above sea level |
.21 |
.07 -.02 .06 -.16 .13 .39+
.27 -.13 -.01 |
.22 |
.13 |
.05 .01 .13 .07 .18 -.08 -.00 -.34 .07 |
|
Step 2 Conflict level x
Absolute latitude Conflict level x Altitude above sea level |
.00 |
.25 .03 |
.01 |
.41 .31 |
.04 |
-.90 -.03 |
Total R2 n |
.22 43 |
.24 43 |
.17 43 |
Notes: Ratings were provided on a five-point Likert scale (from Never
to Always). Conflict Level entails the duration of conflicts experienced by the
mines in 2008-2017. The variables set constant were: respondent’s age,
education, time with organization, firm’s assets, national-international, in
Lima Stock Exchange, absolute latitude, and altitude above sea level.* p < .05, two-tailed+ p < .10,
two-tailed, after bootstrapping.
Only International Firm increased Factor 1 with borderline
statistical significance. Managers’ ratings entailing Factor 2 decreased with
age but increased with time in the organization. No predictor was able to
account for Factor 3 ratings.
Hypotheses 2 and 3
The Moral factor (M = 20, 95 % CI = 3.94; 4.45) presented higher
scores than the Competent (M = 3.43, 95 % CI = 3.23; 3.64) and Negative factors
(M = 3.69, 95 % CI = 3.45; 3.93), but the differences between the latter were
not significant. Main effects did not explain the attribution of population
traits to surrounding communities, but interactions did, upholding Hypothesis 3
(Table 3).
Table 3
Predictor |
Population trait |
|||||
Moral |
Competent |
Negative |
||||
ΔR2 |
β |
ΔR2 |
β |
ΔR2 |
β |
|
Step 1 Age Education Time
in the organization Conflict level Assets International firm In Lima Stock
Exchange Absolute latitude Altitude above sea level |
.10 |
-.08 .08 .08 -.15 -.04 .13 .07 .22 -.04 |
.22 |
.36 -.11 -.09 .10 .13 -.10 -.14 -.24 -.10 |
.21 |
.36 -.13 -.26 .27 .06 .08 .00 -.31 -.15 |
Step 2 Conflict level x
Absolute latitude Conflict level x Altitude above sea level |
.13+ |
.61 -1.41+ |
.16* |
-1.53* .77 |
.13+ |
-.63 1.41* |
Total R2 n |
.23 43 |
.31* 43 |
.34+ 43 |
Notes: Ratings were provided on a five-point Likert scale (from Never
to Always). Conflict Level entails the duration of conflicts experienced by the
mines in 2008-2017. The variables set constant were: respondent’s age,
education, time with organization, firm’s assets, national-international, in
Lima Stock Exchange, absolute latitude, and altitude above sea level.* p < .05, two-tailed+ +p < .10,
two-tailed, after bootstrapping.
As for the interactions, the correlation between Conflict Level
and the Competent trait decayed from low to high latitude; the correlation
between Conflict Level and the Moral trait decayed with altitude; and the
correlation between Conflict Level and the Negative trait increased with
altitude.
Discussion
This study was purported to throw light into mining managers’
causal attributions of socio-environmental conflicts. A novel finding emerging
from the research was the 3-factor structure of managers’ causal attributions
of socio-environmental conflict. Factor 1 was political; it entailed politicians
and NGOs taking advantage of possible environmental damage caused by mining
activity. Factor 2 was economic; it implied communities’ claims of territorial
property and demands to participate in the mine’s benefits. Factor 3 was
ecological; it involved protection of the environment and utilization of water
resources. These concepts are simpler than Bebbington’s
(2009) taxonomy of environmental movements and have the potential to
introduce order into the processes of conflict resolution promoted by
governments. The small number of cases, considering inadequate across the board
by some methodologists (e.g., Bagozzi &
Yi, 2012), may bea source of concern, although the doubts can be dispelled
to a certain extent taking into account that the commonalities among the items
could have compensated for the low number of cases (MacCallum, Widaman, Zhang & Hong, 1999)
and that the sample size was close to the minimum recommended of 50 (Iacobucci, 2010, p. 92). Moreover, three
different modalities of analysis yielded virtually the same results.
Nonetheless, future studies should determine whether the emerging 3-factor
structure of causal attributions of socio-environmental conflict is robust
across sample sizes, industry sectors, countries, and management levels.
The study tested the hypothesis that the interest of
corporations in establishing and maintaining a favorable environmental
reputation would lead mining managers to externalize crisis responsibility and
this would be strengthened by the extent of conflict experienced by the firm in
the past 10 years. The study, however, revealed rigid attributions of cause
which did not vary as a function of experience of socio-environmental conflict;
this can be understood considering that contacts between mining managers are
likely to promote a standardization of social views. On the other hand, the
results suggested that managers of international firms, compared to managers of
national firms, tend to emphasize the political causes, younger managers make
more economic attributions than older managers, and longer job tenure at the
organization is associated with stronger economic attributions; this apparent
contradiction can be understood considering that the effect of tenure is
calculated holding age constant. The findings suggest that, whereas managers’
views of political and economic causes depend on the national or international
origin of the firm and managers’ age and tenure, the views entailing ecological
causes are more uniform.
The study also tested the hypothesis that the experience of
conflict would be associated with some typical reactions to realistic group and
individual threats from out-groups. Against the expectations, the experience of
socio-environmental conflict did not affect managers’ attributions of personal
characteristics to the mines’ surrounding populations. Managers viewed the
surrounding populations as more moral than competent or negative regardless of
the level of conflict experienced by the firm. These perceptions can be compared
to those of other population groups in Peru extant in Cueto’s 2017 dissertation. Compared to
mining managers’ perceptions of surrounding populations, university students
viewed Peruvians as less moral (M = 3.81, SD = .81, t = -3.06, p = .002,
two-tailed), more competent (M = 4.93, SD = .85, t = 11.33, p = .000,
two-tailed) and more negative (M = 4.45, SD = .93, t = 8.69, p = .000,
two-tailed). That is, mining managers showed more positive views of surrounding
populations than university students did of Peruvians, with the exception of
the competence trait. The latter can be understood considering that mines’
surrounding populations reside in rural communities and, hence, exhibit poorer
levels of education. The present results regarding intergroup perceptions also
have a potential of use in the conflict resolution tables promoted by the
Peruvian government.
On the other hand, geography emerged as an important moderator
of the relationship between the level of socio-environmental conflict
experienced by the mining firm and managers’ perceptions of the surrounding
populations. Greater attributions of competence were associated with the
experience of conflict only when the mine was located in northern Peru. Since lower
intelligence of the general population has been demonstrated for northern than
southern Peru (León, 2015; León & Burga León, 2014), this
finding suggests that the emergence of conflict may have modified managers’
perception of the surrounding population as incompetent, which would have not
occurred in southern Peru because its population was not seen in such negative
terms. In turn, the presence of socio-environmental conflict emerged associated
with a view of the surrounding population as less moral, more negative at high
altitude. Since national/regional stereotypes in Peru assign weaker morality
and more negativity to peoples residing at high altitude, who are mainly
Amerindians (Huayhua, 2014; Weismantel
& Eisenman, 1998), these results suggest that mining managers more affected
by socio-environmental conflict strengthened such stereotypes in response to
the external challenge.
Conclusions
Clearly distinguishable political, economic, and ecological
causes of socio-environmental conflict exist in the minds of mining managers;
these concepts have a potential for use as tools to organize discussions in the
conflict-resolution encounters of miners and communities promoted by
governments. Managers’ perceptions of the morality and positivity of mines’
surrounding populations represent favorable conditions for conflict resolution,
whereas viewing them as incompetent does not because it implies their potential
manipulability by politicians and NGOs.
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