Systematic literature review in social life cycle assessment

According to Farace and Frantzen (2005), grey literature regards “information produced on all levels of government, academia, business, and industry in electronic and print formats not controlled by commercial publishing, i.e., where publishing is not the primary activity of the producing body” and includes the following documents: technical and project reports, working papers, discussion papers, technical manuals, information sheets, conference papers, and theses.

“Type I” IA method assesses social impacts on the base of a score that is attributed by using performance reference points, taken from international and national standards and best practices. Also, internationally accepted minimum performance levels are taken as a reference (e.g., those contained in ILO conventions, ISO 26,000 guidelines, and OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises) (Parent et al. 2010). “Type II,” closer to E-LCA, assesses social impacts identifying the relations between cause and effect, called pathways, including an easily observed variable and the effect or impact related to it. Pathways are formulated on the basis of scientific evidence (Parent et al. 2010; Chhipi-Shrestha et al. 2015).

“Social impacts” are caused by changes in the context, which originate effects related to changes in life expectancy, health, social status, etc. Because of the difficulty of the authors to obtain all data useful for calculations, they stopped at an intermediate point, therefore neglecting the evaluation of a part of the impacts. To acknowledge the inability to calculate the true social impact when this concern is relevant, the term “social effect” instead of “social impact” will be used. “‘Social performances’ are neither social effects nor social impacts of changes. Social performances are […] features of a situation in a relevant organization (or features of the value chain of organizations shaping the life cycle), referring more or less to social issues” (Macombe et al. 2013, p. 205).

Can be defined as “methodology” a guideline for solving problems, through specific components (e.g., phases, tasks, methods, techniques, and tools) (Robson 1997).

Jørgensen et al. (2010) consider the child labor indicator as a context-related positive impact, given that it can be considered as a positive impact in some situations (e.g., helping children to develop discipline, responsibility, self-confidence, and independence; teaching them how to manage money; and providing them with working skills) (Di Cesare et al. 2016).

Footprint is defined as the sum of “all the negative impacts of pollution released and resources consumed over the entire supply chain and life cycle of the product” (Norris 2013, p. 125).