Abstract
The relevance of adopting environmentally friendly manufacturing process to economic development has been studied and established in many research. Empirical studies have also confirmed that organisations adopting green technology or clean production are benefiting from increasing economic growth and job creation. However, the studies of the benefits of social development to economic growth and manufacturing sustainability have not been adequately captured or itemised in the literature. With the aim of contributing to this research streams, this paper applied the principles of social economy and reciprocity, and the theories of motivation and social exchange to guide the integration of social aspects into sustainability analytical equations. The Herzberg two-factor theory of motivation was adopted to classify the negative and positive social impacts of the workers’ stakeholder category. Further, the approach aligns the Herzberg extrinsic factors with the negative and regulated social aspects and intrinsic factors with the positive and unregulated social aspects. This contribution provides an initial theoretical framework that will enable practitioners to capture and calculate the social impact coefficient of an organisation. The result can be used to assess the social impacts on productivity, and corporate social responsibility towards the employees. It will also provide an input for analytical or simulation models to assess the consequential effects of social aspects on other sustainability dimensions.
Highlights
Sustainable development has been posited by various researchers to anchor on the three sustainability pillars: environmental, economic and social
In the past the industries had focused more on the economic aspects in gaining and sustaining their competitive positions, this has changed in the recent years following the Brundtland report which centered on incorporating the sustainability of the future generations into our decision for meeting today’s needs [2]
The manufacturing production processes have been identified as social hotspots which are associated with both high risks of negative social impacts and high opportunities for positive social impactsS.uDstaeinpabeinlitdy 2in01g8, o10n, xtFhOeRsPtEaEkReRhEoVlIdEWers’ category in the product lifecycle, the assessment a3nodf 2r1emedial actions of the impacts are critical to sustainable product development
Summary
Sustainable development has been posited by various researchers to anchor on the three sustainability pillars: environmental, economic and social. The legislation and government regulations coupled with the changes in consumers’ preference for ethical and environmentally friendly products are other factors that are changing the way companies and organisations perceive and drive their competitive goals [4] Another challenge is the dynamism of the manufacturing environment and the need to balance the business competitive goal with sustainability requirements. According to [5], the performance of social, economic and environmental dimensions must be interdependently assessed in an analytical equation for effective decision-making [1]. Social impact assessment of a product/process needs to reflect both the intrinsic and extrinsic social aspects in order to support effective assessment and improvement decisions [16,17].
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