On the Assessment of Social Impact. Approach to the state of the question

Abstract

The objective of this article is to explore the concept of social impact, from the meaning attributed to the term, the fields in which it is used, as well as the existing methodologies for its calculation. In this way, and taking into account the existing professional and academic work, the aim is to establish a theoretical base as a frame of reference that allows the future development of a methodology for evaluating social impact. In this way and in relation to the term, a contextualization of the meaning itself is carried out to determine what is used. Likewise, the best-known methodologies that are considered, highlighting the differences between them and identifying possible shortcomings and the stages that may be improved. Given the growing importance of the impact assessment processes applied in economic, social and environmental terms, and at the same time taking into account what it was observed in this work, the existing methodologies have a lack of standardized model that offers quantitatively homogeneous results that allow comparison between entities, companies or projects.