The EU’s position as a leader in building sustainable economies is at risk, warn impact leaders, as complex sustainability laws are threatened by the bloc’s drive to become more competitive.
IMPACT 101: What does ‘social value’ actually mean? How is it used in practice? Stephanie Robertson and Ada Yip, co-chairs at Social Value International, have the answers in our latest explainer.
The more that impact measurement is relied on to shape investor decisions, the more worried we should be, says Dr Jess Daggers: the information gathered does not necessarily correspond with reality, and yet few take this risk into account.
Most companies’ sustainability reports still fail to capture what matters to the people who actually experience the impacts. Assurance can help us put them and their wellbeing high up on the agenda – and push us to keep improving.
Failures may feel scary, excusable and something to ignore – but they also provide insights into how to use resources better. Adam Richards, Bonnie Chiu and Jeremy Nicholls on rewiring our thinking to account for unintended negative outcomes.
The financial accounting system we use today is hurtling towards irrelevance, undermined by the very inequality to which it has contributed. It's time to change how profit is calculated – before it's too late.
Social Value International adds explicit requirement to ‘be responsive’ – as too few organisations have reached the stage of managing, not just measuring, their impact.
Efforts to engage stakeholders are sometimes ok, sometimes awful, says our columnist. Twelve failings to avoid – and how a focus on power and rights can make engagement matter.
The woman who acts as a contact point between the social enterprise and voluntary sector and the UK government emphasises the economic case for the role of the sector in delivering public contracts at the UK National Social Value Conference.
