ISO 14075 and social sustainability: balancing organizational and product approaches in Social Life Cycle Assessment

Abstract Purpose The study evaluates whether the recent ISO 14075:2024 standard, emphasizing a product-specific approach to Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA), sufficiently captures social sustainability impacts. The goal is to address the Standard’s scope and effectiveness of employing product-specific versus organizational indicators in capturing social sustainability impacts across different stakeholder groups. Method The study conducted a classification of social indicators listed in the latest version of the methodological sheets. Indicators were classified based on their alignment with organizational or product-specific approaches. Each stakeholder group, i.e., Workers, Local Community, Society, Consumers, Value Chain Actors, and Children, was separately analyzed to determine the suitability and applicability of ISO 14075’s recommended product-centric approach against organizational-focused approaches. Results Analysis indicates that approximately 60% of social indicators are predominantly organizational, about 30% are explicitly product-specific, and the remainder are applicable to both categories. Findings revealed that Workers and Society stakeholders align more with product-specific indicators, while Local Community, Consumer, Value Chain Actors, and Children stakeholders predominantly align with organizational indicators. It is evident from the classification that while product-specific indicators have increased since the initial guidelines, the dominance of organizational indicators underscores the extensive influence of corporate policies and organizational behavior on social sustainability outcomes. Conclusion ISO 14075:2024 advances the standardization of S-LCA but presents methodological ambiguity by exclusively promoting a product-specific approach. This focus neglects crucial organizational-level social indicators essential for comprehensively assessing social impacts. Clarification and integration of both organizational and product-specific approaches within the ISO standard are urgently required to provide comprehensive and clear guidelines for practitioners. Recommendations. It is recommended that ISO 14075 expands its scope by incorporating site-specific organizational data. This expansion would better reflect actual organizational impacts on employees, local communities, and consumers, thus enhancing the applicability of social sustainability assessments. Further discourse on integrating Social Organizational-LCA methodologies within or alongside ISO 14075 is essential for methodological clarity.