Deusto researchers develop a guide to help companies measure their social value and impact

Helping companies measure and manage their social value under the new European Union regulations is the aim of the guide "Medición y gestión del valor social en las empresas", developed by researchers at the University of Deusto as part of the European project ReSChape. This project was launched in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic to analyse and assess the impacts and disruptions in supply chains, and provide tools to help make them more resilient and sustainable.

The business environment is undergoing a transformation in which society and regulatory frameworks are increasingly demanding in terms of sustainability, transparency and social responsibility. Regulations such as the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) define essential frameworks in this new context. In this scenario, this guide has been developed as a tool that highlights the importance of companies being able to quantify in monetary terms the social value they generate in their value chains. This approach provides, in a direct and practical way, information on the social value created, facilitating its understanding by all stakeholders and contributing to a more transparent and effective communication of the business impact on the environment.

«Companies no longer simply contribute to the economy; they must also be guided by responsible standards, which need to be communicated and understood by the people and audiences they interact with», explains Alberto de la Calle, researcher at the University of Deusto and head of the working group behind this guide. Furthermore, he underlines that its application allows «detecting gaps between the real and potential contribution of each supplier to the value of a company and its environment, as well as proposing improvement strategies».

The guide uses the Polyhedral Model methodology, which provides a comprehensive view of social value by measuring the value created for each specific stakeholder group. A key aspect of the proposed model is that it is based exclusively on information already available in the organisations such as the number of people employed, accounting data and the specific weight of each supplier in the total volume of purchases.

The guide "Medición y gestión del valor social en las empresas" is one of the practical tools developed within the ReSChape Project, which has also produced manuals to help in the responsible outsourcing of services, innovation strategies to transform processes in the supply chain or a report on social, environmental and climate factors that affect the resilience of the supply chain. A summary of this guide can be found on the ReSChape website. The full document is available on request at [email protected].   

This article was first published on 3 September by University of Deusto.