Social organizational LCA (SOLCA) as complementary approach for boosting social LCA

Current product related social life cycle assessment (SLCA) addresses social aspects from a life cycle perspective, but it is not yet broadly implemented in decision relevant practice. We propose a complementary,... [ view full abstract ]

Current product related social life cycle assessment (SLCA) addresses social aspects from a life cycle perspective, but it is not yet broadly implemented in decision relevant practice. We propose a complementary, organizational perspective to boost SLCA—the social organizational LCA (SOLCA).
The paper addresses those challenges of SLCA which may be overcome by an organizational perspective. An analysis of the indicators proposed by SLCA revealed that existing SLCA case studies do not really evaluate the social performance of products. From the 189 indicators proposed in SLCA methodological sheets, only eight refer to the product level, while 127 and 69 refer to the organizational and country level (including overlaps). This is a clear indication, that an organizational approach to social LCA might be more straightforward than a product focussed approach.
First ideas for a conceptual framework for SOLCA are developed. The two underlying methodologies: the guidelines for SLCA of products and the guidance on organizational LCA (OLCA)—which adapts product LCA to the organizational perspective—were reviewed, compared and adapted to a social organizational perspective. Based on this, different implementation pathways were identified, showing how SOLCA could be applied in practice by considering different levels of organizations’ experiences with social and environmental assessments. Three SOLCA implementation pathways are proposed. Existing experience of organizations in social organizational approaches —like Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) or product SLCA— and environmental approaches —like environmental management systems (EMS) or OLCA— can be used as starting points as they can provide useful information on the organization´s structure, value chain, etc.
Methodologically, SOLCA may streamline allocation, data collection, and application in practice. The conceptual framework for SOLCA is focused on scope and inventory, which were found to differ most from SLCA and OLCA; all relevant steps like definition of unit of analysis or multi-functionality are addressed.
In conclusion, SOLCA helps to overcome some major challenges of SLCA and thus is a promising approach for putting it into practice. The frameworks of SLCA and OLCA can be integrated into SOLCA, and existing experience from organizations can be used for implementing it. However, new challenges arise. This includes potential difficulties for primary data collection in complex organizations with many different sites or the difficulty to distribute or aggregate social aspects within the organization. Further development and testing of SOLCA is therefore recommended - not as a substitute for SLCA, but as a complementary win-win approach.