Social Organisational Life Cycle Assessment and Social Life Cycle Assessment: different twins? Correlations from a case study

Purpose Social Organisational Life Cycle Assessment (SO-LCA) is a methodology to evaluate the social and socio-economic aspects of the activities of a whole organisation (or a portion of it) from a life cycle perspective. Although introduced in 2015 and outlined in the Guidelines for Social Life Cycle Assessment of Products and Organisations 2020, SO-LCA is still poorly applied. This work is an attempt to implement SO-LCA and analyse the correlations between Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) and SO-LCA. Method SO-LCA was implemented starting from an existing S-LCA case study. The social performance of the companies involved in the supply chain of the analysed product line was assessed through Subcategory Assessment Method considering Workers, Local Community, Consumers and Value Chain Actors stakeholders. Then, the emerged correlations from the S-LCA and SO-LCA case studies were discussed. Results and discussion SO-LCA and S-LCA have many similarities on a methodological level, although they are different with regard to the scope of the analysis. This work shows that although the distinction between the two methodologies is clear from a theoretical point of view, when implementing the existing differences are blurred. Indeed, as expected, SO-LCA results might not be different from those of S-LCA when the following conditions are met: the product portfolio includes the product already assessed in an S-LCA case study; the defined system boundaries are the same as well as the organisations involved in the considered processes, and the same Reference Scale Approach is used to assess both S-LCA and SO-LCA. Conclusions SO-LCA results should be verified when the study is conducted with different methodological choices compared to those of the previous S-LCA case study. Further development should give attention on understanding how and to what extent a different study setup could bring to results different from those of S-LCA.