Robert Boutilier, PhD

Robert Boutilier is a researcher, author, and social research consultant. Prior to joining the Centre for Sustainable Community Development, he spent 15 years forecasting socio-economic trends, analyzing markets, researching public opinion, and devising long-term strategies for Canadian credit unions, banks, governments, and mining and petroleum companies. His current work applies concepts like social capital and network analysis to the socio-political challenges organizations face in promoting sustainable development, defined both as ecological footprint reduction and poverty reduction. It is described in his most recent book, Stakeholder Politics (2009, Stanford University Press and Greenleaf Publishers).

Robert has developed and validated a system for measuring the levels of social capital in an organization’s relationships with its stakeholders, and among the stakeholders themselves (http://www.stakeholder360.com). His research in Papua New Guinea and Peru inspired an analytic framework that applies to communities economically dominated by a transnational corporation operating in their area. By identifying the emergence of phenomena like anti-company protests, self-serving community elites, community dependence on a company, and progress towards sustainable community development, it provides guidance regarding social capital building interventions to increase the chances of more widespread sustainable development. In the developed world, he has used the approach to help urban Australian utility companies focus their sustainability enhancing efforts by identifying which overlapping groups of stakeholders are concerned about which overlapping sets of issues.

Robert currently spreads his time between Vancouver and Cuernavaca, Mexico, while while developing online courses and workshops for resource company managers on how to earn and maintain a social licence to operate (SLO).