ESG
THE HISTORY OF SOCIAL IMPACT
Reporting standards imperative It ’ s all very well an organisation measuring social impact , but every company will have its own methods and views on what ‘ good ’ actually looks like . That ’ s why it ’ s imperative to have reporting standards , like those established by Global Reporting Initiative ( GRI ) – an international body that helps businesses and other organisations ( including the EU and Indian Stock Exchange ) take responsibility for their impacts , by providing them with the global common language to communicate those impacts .
The first use of the term ‘ social impact ’ was more than half a century ago , in 1969 , at Yale University during a seminar on ethics for institutional investors . The following year , the Social Impact Assessment was born in the US – a legal requirement to report on the social impact of business and industry .
Interest in social impact in the US corporate world waned in the mid 1980s , following deep economic recessions , but the concept caught on elsewhere – with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund ( IMF ) adopting the principles on their own activities in the 1990s .
Since then , many standards have emerged from the likes of B Lab , while one of the most widely adopted and respected globally is the Global Reporting Initiative ( GRI ).
sustainabilitymag . com 69