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Abstract
More and more attention is being paid to scholars and companies as regards to the phenomenon of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and to the measurement of social impact. The object of this review is to present and to shed light on social impact assessment methods and their limits that still today are present in literature. The descriptive review highlights that there is different classification of social impact assessment methods. Numerous studies have focused on these methods and on limits of application. The current status of the discussion offers new opportunities for future researches, which could be addressed toward the investigation of the real use of these methods by the companies for test the diffuse or not application about any of each.
Keywords: corporate social responsibility; social impact; social impact assessment method; sustainability performance; limits of application.
1.Introduction
For some time, it has been clear that the value produced by each company is larger than that merely economic - financial (Friedman, 2007). In fact, it is necessary to consider the social value enjoyed by the different types of stakeholders with which the company constantly relates.
When, in the context of the results achieved, companies do not understand and do not verify, those of a social nature lose important opportunities for innovation, growth and social and environmental impact as well as economic (Porter and Kramer, 2011). The emerging phenomenon is that of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Corporate Sustainability Integration (CSI), which envisages the inclusion of the social and environmental aspect in the company strategy (Baskentli et al., 2019; Boccia and Sarno, 2013; Engert et al., 2016; Muda et al., 2018; Weerts et al., 2018) which is therefore no longer based only on economic dimensions. Hence the need for companies to consider the social impact of the achieved actions. There are several reasons why companies should be interested in measuring their social impact. Among these, consider: the contribution to the positioning and good reputation of the company in the collective imagination and in the territory in which it operates (Zamagni et al., 2015), the increase in the productivity of the work of its employees (Oswald et al., 2013) or according to recent studies by Hou (2019) and Man and Bogeanu-Popa (2020) also an increase in...