Towards a repertoire of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices in the extractive industries

•Companies being considered exemplary implement whole repertoires of CSR practices.•Among them, two meta practices stand out: stakeholders’ engagement, and innovation.•Stakeholders’ relationships are anchored in numerous organizational structures.•CSR-driven innovations are technological, but also organizational and institutional. The objective of this article is to contribute to a repertoire of exemplary corporate social responsibility practices in the extractive industries. It seeks to enrich knowledge on how to carry on extractive operations while ensuring positive contributions to local communities and to society, and reducing harmful disturbances, notably to the environment. Results are based on a case study of 4 companies known for their corporate social responsibility: two mining companies and two forestry companies based in Quebec (Canada). The article offers two contributions. First, it lays the foundation for a repertoire of corporate social responsibility practices that companies might want to consider implementing. Secondly, it identifies two meta-practices: stakeholder engagement, and innovation. The results show in a concrete manner how companies engage with their stakeholders and how they innovate to implement CSR. In the cases studied, the companies all adopted a collaborative approach for developing projects and in implementing corporate social responsibility. Collaboration was also essential to innovation. Although most often associated with technology, the observed innovations were also organizational and institutional in nature.