A social LCA framework to assess the corporate social profile of companies: Insights from a case study

Abstract

Inevitably, companies’ operations and strategies cause a great number of social impacts which influence various stakeholder groups. These social impacts can either directly or indirectly mould the corporate social profile as well as affect a company’s social ‘license to operate’. In this context, the present paper proposes a new methodological framework which facilitates managers in assessing the social impacts which accrue from a company’s daily activities and assists them in building a strong corporate social profile. It combines the life cycle thinking approach and benchmarking techniques in order to develop a widely applicable social life cycle assessment framework. A case study was designed to evaluate the social profile of a sample of companies so as to demonstrate the structure and effectiveness of the proposed framework.