2478 • Participation of the Community: Mechanisms that grant communities involvement in some form or another, and direct interests in the development and outcomes of projects, fostering co-operation in the development, and reducing adversarial dynamics between operators and local populations. • Quality of Contact: Engagement processes that validate and ensure community participation. • Quantity of Contact: The frequency and regularity of interactions between management and community members, which builds trust and ensures that diplomatic actions are perceived as sustained commitments rather than isolated gestures. 2.2. Legitimacy as an Intangible Asset The result of these actions is legitimacy, defined as the social acceptance the organization earns from community members. The statistical model confirms that this variable is what ultimately has a favorable impact on business performance. Without legitimacy, transaction costs (conflicts, blockades) become infinite, rendering any project unfeasible, regardless of the quality of the mineral deposit. However, the model also warns of 'organizational obstacles' that hinder the implementation of these actions. In the current Peruvian context, these obstacles are both external (bureaucracy/permitting) and environmental (insecurity), which demands an adaptation of managerial strategy toward integration and scale. 2.3. Applied Propositions: From the Model to the Cluster Context From this framework, two applied propositions are derived for the cluster context. Proposition 1 (derived from H1): The formation of a mining cluster amplifies the capacity to implement the infrastructure improvement dimension of CDA, as the financial surpluses generated by operational synergies—estimated at US$ 95 million annually—provide the critical mass required to finance shared public infrastructure (roads, water, energy) that isolated projects cannot afford individually. Proposition 2 (derived from H3): Cluster integration reduces the moderating effect of organisational obstacles by distributing regulatory and social costs across multiple operators. Where a single project faces the full burden of a 62-year permitting timeline alone, a cluster can pool resources, share legal capacity, and exercise greater institutional leverage, thereby attenuating the obstacle variable in the model. These propositions connect the theoretical model directly to the empirical analysis that follows. The Northern Mining Cluster (Normin) is not merely a financial efficiency proposal—it is, at its core, a corporate diplomacy strategy: by generating the scale needed to execute infrastructure improvement at a territorial level, it operationalises the very mechanism that the McDonald & Rivera-Camino model identifies as the path from managerial decision to social legitimacy to business viability. Section 4 tests whether the financial and operational parameters of the Normin cluster are consistent with these propositions. 3. BARRIERS DIAGNOSIS: REGULATORY SUFFOCATION AND INSECURITY Before proposing the cluster solution, it is necessary to accurately measure the barriers that currently prevent investment from flowing. The report 'From Promise to Production' (IPE, 2025) offers a detailed diagnosis: 3.1. The “Permitting” Labyrinth Mining regulation in Peru has become so dense that it now acts as a structural brake. • Regulatory Density: The 100 essential Administrative Procedures (AP) required to develop a mine are currently governed by 130 regulations and depend on the intervention of 19 different government entities. • Actual vs. Statutory Timelines: There is a critical disconnect between the law and reality. For example, the approval of a detailed Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA-d) has a statutory reference period of 7.5 months. However, in practice, files submitted in 2023 took an average of 18 months to be approved.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM0Mzk2