Characterisation of social impacts in LCA. Part 2: implementation in six company case studies

• Published in: The international journal of life cycle assessment 2010-05, Vol.15 (4), p.385-402
• Main Authors: Dreyer, Louise Camilla, Hauschild, Michael Z., Schierbeck, Jens
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Case studies; Earth and Environmental Science; Environment; Environmental Chemistry; Environmental Economics; Environmental Engineering/Biotechnology; Geographical distribution; Life cycle analysis; Life cycles; Social behavior; Social impact; Societal Life Cycle Assessment
• ISSN: 0948-3349; 1614-7502
• DOI: 10.1007/s11367-010-0159-4

Background, aim and scope A characterisation model based on multi-criteria indicators has been developed for each of four impact categories representing the labour rights according to the conventions of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) covering: forced labour, discrimination, restrictions of freedom of association and collective bargaining and child labour (Dreyer et al., Int J Life Cycle Assess , 2010a, in press). These impact categories are considered by the authors to be among the obligatory impact categories in a Social LCA. The characterisation models combine information about the way a company manages its behaviour towards some of its important stakeholders, its employees, with information about the geographical location and branch of industry of the company and the risk of violations of these workers' rights inherent in the setting of the company. The result is an indicator score which for each impact category represents the risk that violations occur in the company. In order to test the feasibility and relevance of the developed methodology, it is tested on real cases. Materials and methods The developed characterisation models are applied to six cases representing individual manufacturing companies from three different continents. Five of the case companies are manufacturing companies while the sixth is a knowledge company. The application involves scoring the management efforts of the case company in a multi-criteria scorecard and translating the scores into an aggregated performance score, which represents the effort of the management in order to prevent violations of the workers' rights to occur in the company. The company performance score is multiplied by a contextual adjustment score which reflects the risk of violations taking place in the context (in terms of geographical location or industrial branch or sector) of the company. The resulting indicator score represents the risk that violations take place of the labour right represented by the impact category. Results The social impact characterisation is performed for each of the six case studies using the methodology earlier developed. The procedure and outcome are documented through all the intermediary results shown for all four obligatory impact categories for each of the six case studies. Discussion The results are judged against the risk which was observed during visits and interviews at each of the six case companies, and their realism and relevance are discussed. They are