IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v6y2014i10p6973-6984d40939.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Efficient Assessment of Social Hotspots in the Supply Chains of 100 Product Categories Using the Social Hotspots Database

Author

Listed:
  • Catherine Benoît Norris

    (New Earth, 11 Lois Lane, York, ME 03909, USA)

  • Gregory A. Norris

    (Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA
    These authors contributed equally to this work.)

  • Deana Aulisio

    (University of New Hampshire, Environmental Research Group, 35 Colovos Road, Durham, NH 03824-3534, USA
    These authors contributed equally to this work.)

Abstract

Data collection, or the inventory step, is often the most labor-intensive phase of any Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study. The S-LCA Guidelines and numerous authors have recommended generic assessment in this first phase of an S-LCA. In an effort to identify the social hotspots in the supply chains of 100 product categories during just a few months’ time, adopting a streamlined approach was essential. The Social Hotspots Database system was developed by New Earth over 5 years. It includes a Global Input Output (IO) model derived from the Global Trade Analysis Project, a Worker Hours Model constructed using annual wage payments and wage rates by country and sector, and Social Theme Tables covering 22 themes within five Social Impact Categories—Labor Rights and Decent Work, Health and Safety, Human Rights, Governance and Community Impacts. The data tables identify social risks for over 100 indicators. Both the ranking of worker hour intensity and the risk levels across multiple social themes for the Country Specific Sectors (CSS) within a product category supply chain are used to calculate Social Hotspots Indexes (SHI) using an additive weighting method. The CSS with the highest SHI are highlighted as social hotspots within the supply chain of the product in question. This system was tested in seven case studies in 2011. In order to further limit the number of hotspots, a set of prioritization rules was applied. This paper will review the method implemented to study the social hotspots of the 100 product categories and provide one detailed example. Limitations of the approach and recommended research avenues will be outlined.

Suggested Citation

  • Catherine Benoît Norris & Gregory A. Norris & Deana Aulisio, 2014. "Efficient Assessment of Social Hotspots in the Supply Chains of 100 Product Categories Using the Social Hotspots Database," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 6(10), pages 1-12, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:6:y:2014:i:10:p:6973-6984:d:40939
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/6/10/6973/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/6/10/6973/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stephanie W. Barrientos, 2005. "Impact assessment and labour: developing a learning approach," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 17(2), pages 259-270.
    2. Catherine Benoit-Norris & Deana Aulisio Cavan & Gregory Norris, 2012. "Identifying Social Impacts in Product Supply Chains:Overview and Application of the Social Hotspot Database," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 4(9), pages 1-20, August.
    3. Richard Locke & Matthew Amengual & Akshay Mangla, 2009. "Virtue out of Necessity? Compliance, Commitment, and the Improvement of Labor Conditions in Global Supply Chains," Politics & Society, , vol. 37(3), pages 319-351, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Somayeh Rezaei Kalvani & Amir Hamzah Sharaai & Ibrahim Kabir Abdullahi, 2021. "Social Consideration in Product Life Cycle for Product Social Sustainability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(20), pages 1-22, October.
    2. Dami Moon & Masayuki Sagisaka & Kiyotaka Tahara & Kenichiro Tsukahara, 2017. "Progress towards Sustainable Production: Environmental, Economic, and Social Assessments of the Cellulose Nanofiber Production Process," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(12), pages 1-16, December.
    3. Roope Husgafvel, 2021. "Exploring Social Sustainability Handprint—Part 1: Handprint and Life Cycle Thinking and Approaches," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(20), pages 1-36, October.
    4. Katsuyuki Nakano, 2018. "Future risk of dengue fever to workforce and industry through global supply chain," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, vol. 23(3), pages 433-449, March.
    5. Jun Kono & York Ostermeyer & Holger Wallbaum, 2018. "Trade-Off between the Social and Environmental Performance of Green Concrete: The Case of 6 Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(7), pages 1-14, July.
    6. Rebeka Kovačič Lukman & Vasja Omahne & Damjan Krajnc, 2021. "Sustainability Assessment with Integrated Circular Economy Principles: A Toy Case Study," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(7), pages 1-22, March.
    7. Schlör, H. & Venghaus, S. & Zapp, P. & Marx, J. & Schreiber, A. & Hake, J.-Fr., 2018. "The energy-mineral-society nexus – A social LCA model," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 228(C), pages 999-1008.
    8. Grubert, E. & Zacarias, M., 2022. "Paradigm shifts for environmental assessment of decarbonizing energy systems: Emerging dominance of embodied impacts and design-oriented decision support needs," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    9. Irene Huertas-Valdivia & Anna Maria Ferrari & Davide Settembre-Blundo & Fernando E. García-Muiña, 2020. "Social Life-Cycle Assessment: A Review by Bibliometric Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(15), pages 1-25, August.
    10. Ya-Ju Chang & Annekatrin Lehmann & Lisa Winter & Matthias Finkbeiner, 2018. "Application Options of the Sustainable Child Development Index (SCDI)—Assessing the Status of Sustainable Development and Establishing Social Impact Pathways," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 15(7), pages 1-21, July.
    11. Pauline Deutz & Giuseppe Ioppolo, 2015. "From Theory to Practice: Enhancing the Potential Policy Impact of Industrial Ecology," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-15, February.
    12. Vibeke Grupe Larsen & Valentina Antoniucci & Nicola Tollin & Peter Andreas Sattrup & Krister Jens & Morten Birkved & Tine Holmboe & Giuliano Marella, 2023. "A Methodological Framework to Foster Social Value Creation in Architectural Practice," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-25, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Datu Buyung Agusdinata & Wenjuan Liu & Sinta Sulistyo & Philippe LeBillon & Je'anne Wegner, 2023. "Evaluating sustainability impacts of critical mineral extractions: Integration of life cycle sustainability assessment and SDGs frameworks," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 27(3), pages 746-759, June.
    2. Jianing Wei & Jixiao Cui & Yinan Xu & Jinna Li & Xinyu Lei & Wangsheng Gao & Yuanquan Chen, 2022. "Social Life Cycle Assessment of Major Staple Grain Crops in China," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 12(4), pages 1-22, April.
    3. Fu Jia & Yan Jiang, 2018. "Sustainable Global Sourcing: A Systematic Literature Review and Bibliometric Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(3), pages 1-26, February.
    4. Vibeke Grupe Larsen & Valentina Antoniucci & Nicola Tollin & Peter Andreas Sattrup & Krister Jens & Morten Birkved & Tine Holmboe & Giuliano Marella, 2023. "A Methodological Framework to Foster Social Value Creation in Architectural Practice," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-25, January.
    5. Anthony Goerzen & Michael Sartor & Kristin Brandl & Stacey Fitzsimmons, 2023. "Widening the lens: Multilevel drivers of firm corporate social performance," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 54(1), pages 42-60, February.
    6. Albert V. Ramazanov* & Askar N. Mustafin & Margarita N. Maksimova, 2018. "Development of Youth Entrepreneurship in Russia in the Conditions of Digital Economy," The Journal of Social Sciences Research, Academic Research Publishing Group, pages 99-102:5.
    7. Kunz, Nathan & Chesney, Thomas & Trautrims, Alexander & Gold, Stefan, 2023. "Adoption and transferability of joint interventions to fight modern slavery in food supply chains," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 258(C).
    8. Ming Tang & Huchang Liao & Zhengjun Wan & Enrique Herrera-Viedma & Marc A. Rosen, 2018. "Ten Years of Sustainability (2009 to 2018): A Bibliometric Overview," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(5), pages 1-21, May.
    9. Philip James & Lilian Miles & Richard Croucher & Mark Houssart, 2019. "Regulating factory safety in the Bangladeshi garment industry," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 13(3), pages 431-444, September.
    10. Anja Hansen & Jörn Budde & Annette Prochnow, 2016. "Resource Usage Strategies and Trade-Offs between Cropland Demand, Fossil Fuel Consumption, and Greenhouse Gas Emissions—Building Insulation as an Example," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(7), pages 1-24, June.
    11. Stefan Gold & Thomas Chesney & Tim Gruchmann & Alexander Trautrims, 2020. "Diffusion of labor standards through supplier–subcontractor networks: An agent‐based model," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 24(6), pages 1274-1286, December.
    12. Alexander Barke & Walter Cistjakov & Dominik Steckermeier & Christian Thies & Jan‐Linus Popien & Peter Michalowski & Sofia Pinheiro Melo & Felipe Cerdas & Christoph Herrmann & Ulrike Krewer & Arno Kwa, 2023. "Green batteries for clean skies: Sustainability assessment of lithium‐sulfur all‐solid‐state batteries for electric aircraft," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 27(3), pages 795-810, June.
    13. Daniel Berliner & Aseem Prakash, 2012. "From norms to programs: The United Nations Global Compact and global governance," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 6(2), pages 149-166, June.
    14. Amengual, Matthew, 2010. "Complementary Labor Regulation: The Uncoordinated Combination of State and Private Regulators in the Dominican Republic," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 405-414, March.
    15. Gaëlle Petit & Caroline C. Sablayrolles & Gwenola Yannou-Le Bris, 2018. "Combining eco-social and environmental indicators to assess the sustainability performance of a food value chain: A case study," Post-Print hal-01813496, HAL.
    16. Staelens, Lotte & Louche, Céline & D’Haese, Marijke, 2014. "Understanding job satisfaction in a labor intensive sector: Empirical evidence from the Ethiopian cut flower industry," 2014 International Congress, August 26-29, 2014, Ljubljana, Slovenia 182815, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    17. Chunyun Li & Sarosh Kuruvilla, 2023. "Corporate codes of conduct and labour turnover in global apparel supply chains," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 61(3), pages 481-505, September.
    18. Moana S. Simas & Laura Golsteijn & Mark A. J. Huijbregts & Richard Wood & Edgar G. Hertwich, 2014. "The “Bad Labor” Footprint: Quantifying the Social Impacts of Globalization," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 6(11), pages 1-27, October.
    19. Yi Han & Enying Zheng & Minya Xu, 2014. "The Influence from the Past: Organizational Imprinting and Firms’ Compliance with Social Insurance Policies in China," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 122(1), pages 65-77, June.
    20. Salo Coslovsky, 2013. "Enforcing Food Quality and Safety Standards in Brazil," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 649(1), pages 122-138, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:6:y:2014:i:10:p:6973-6984:d:40939. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.