The literature review section will be structured as follows:

It begins with an overview of the CSR concept, its various definitions, history, development and its integration in the chosen industry. Then, a discussion on the Social License to Operate (SLO) concept will be done to cover the following items.

• SOL is hypothetical construct that is associated with acceptance and approval by the local community rather than a written grant from the government.
• Discussion on its emergence, background (SLO was coined by Jim Cooney with relevance to the mining industry) and its correlation to the gas and oil industry will be provided.
• The “pyramid” model of SLO proposed by Thomson & Boutilier (2011) will be analyzed.
• How the SLO reflects the importance of stakeholders.
• The concept includes elements of the stakeholder as well as the resource based view of the firm theories. Therefore, reference to these theories will be made in the discussion.

This section will also explore the theory of Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) (Hall and Soskice, 2011). I will join the debate on how state, market and societies are organized differently across capitalist systems either on the basis of liberal market economies (LME) or coordinated market economies (CME), and how this arrangement influences business strategy and behavior. The rational behind choosing the theory is to examine how CSR related practices of MNCs differ when they operate outside 1the shores of their home countries and in a completely different political and economic set up.