Making sense of community risk: Mining MNEs in Armenia managing community relations

Using cases from mining MNEs in Armenia, this paper contributes by conceptualising community risk, providing an alternative to conventional risk management approaches to managing local communities. Conventional risk management approaches have been struggling to capture the increasingly complex risks originating from local communities situated close to the mine site, defined as communities of place, and communities of interest, who are outside interest groups either opposing or supporting mining. Community risks arise when communities of place take action against the mining MNE, based on how they perceive and create meaning about the riskiness of the changes the MNE has introduced into their physical and social environment. In contrast to the conventional perspective of risk management that investigates primarily objectively identifiable risks, this meaning creation sometimes prompts communities of place to take action that can lead to the disruption of company operations and thereby pose a risk to the company. Arguing that community risk is to be regarded as a precursor to political, financial and cultural risk, and that communities of place engage with the more organised communities of interest in order for them to commit resources which will spur financial, political and cultural actors to engage with the mining MNE.