Teaching Social Impact Measurement to Enable Socially Savvy Decisions in Business

Jing Betty Feng () and Xu Zhang ()
Additional contact information
Jing Betty Feng: Farmingdale State College (SUNY)
Xu Zhang: Farmingdale State College (SUNY)

Chapter Chapter 5 in The Palgrave Handbook of Social Sustainability in Business Education, 2024, pp 89-107 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract As methodologies for quantifying and valuing social sustainability are not yet well established, it is important for business education to offer courses that emphasize social impact evaluation and decision-making. This chapter provides a general educational framework to teach social impact measurement and to aid students in learning to make socially savvy decisions through an applied learning project. Following the Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) framework, students learn to evaluate social impacts related to society and labor practices, including employment, workforce development, local communities, social equity, and quality of well-being using quantifiable indicators. The teaching practice includes two major concepts: stakeholder analysis that focuses on the jointness of stakeholder interests to create value for stakeholders, and Cost–Benefit Analysis (CBA) that quantifies the value of all impacts of an initiative, in monetary terms, to all individuals in society. This practice can be effectively integrated into business courses to educate managers to be socially responsible and capable of considering the broader impact on society and various stakeholders in their decision-making process. This chapter aims to correspond directly to United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 8 (Decent work and economic growth), 10 (Reduced inequalities), and 16 (Peace, justice and strong institutions) but may go beyond them because the measurement can also be applied in various social sustainability perspectives.

Keywords: Social impact measurement; Cost–benefit analysis; Stakeholder theory; Social sustainability; Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-031-50168-5_5

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783031501685

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-50168-5_5

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().