Social Consciousness

Social Consciousness

Welcome aboard!

Social consciousness is crucial for ensuring safe and responsible progress during breakthroughs. It plays a vital role in planning and realizing developments, guiding organizations to manage and improve their mutual impact effectively. This concept is summarized in the embedded video.

Social Impact Assessment (SIA)

Illustration: Interaction Effects in SIA
Figure 1: Interaction Effects in SIA (courtesy: C. P. Wolf)

Figure 1: Interaction Effects in SIA (courtesy: C. P. Wolf)

Interaction Effects in SIA (courtesy: C. P. Wolf¹) diagram interactions effects in Social Impact Assessment. Interactions comprise historical facts of the situation, the project, the impacts, adaptable effects, and exogenous factors. It is harder to say what the starting conditions were because people who are affected might react socially in different ways, the public might be against the plan and want it changed, the plan might have an effect and then change, and there could be random or systematic outside factors that affected the results. This makes it harder to say if the effects seen were the result of planned interventions.

The diagram illustrates the interaction effects in Social Impact Assessment (SIA), encompassing historical facts, project impacts, adaptable effects, and external factors. These interactions highlight the complexity of assessing social impacts, as various factors can influence outcomes differently.

Quote to Consider:

“When stakeholders take part in the decision-making of resource developments and ensure the project is consistent with their values and livelihoods, their experience of those developments is more positive and their attitudes toward projects more supportive.”
— Daniel Franks, Senior, The University of Queensland, Australia

Definitions

Social Consciousness, through Social Impact Assessment (SIA), aims to enhance an organization’s long-term global welfare for communities and society. It shifts the focus from profit-only to community and societal rewards.

Managing and improving an organization’s mutual impact is a key marketing strategy. This involves addressing corporate responsibility issues such as transparency, social involvement in branding, environmental initiatives, and stakeholder relationships. SIA is a broad research process focusing on social or community concerns about proposed benefits, often leading to disagreements among elites that need clarification.

Further Definitions:

1. Glasson²: “The consequences to human populations of any public or private actions that alter how people live, work, play, relate to one another, organize to meet their needs, and cope as members of society.”
2. Vanclay³: “Social Impact Assessment (SIA) includes the processes of analyzing, monitoring, and managing the intended and unintended social consequences, both positive and negative, of planned interventions. Its primary purpose is to bring about a more sustainable and fairer biophysical and human environment.”
3. C. Roche⁴: “The systematic analysis of the lasting or significant changes – positive or negative, intended or not – in people’s lives brought about by an action or series of actions.”

Peter Drucker emphasized that free enterprise must justify itself as being good for society, not just for business. Leadership should recognize that the core purpose of any business is to serve society, not just to create jobs or value for stakeholders. Mismanagement occurs when this purpose is forgotten.

Details

Graphical Details:

Think of Figure 1: The direct impact
The direct impact represents a change in initial conditions, but if analysis stops there, it distorts the reality of SIA. Continuing effects of readjustment and adaptive change create a feed-forward effect. Differential social responsiveness by affected units and public opposition can influence project planning and outcomes. Exogenous variables, whether random or systematic, further complicate attributing measured effects to planned interventions.

Challenges

SIA reports often vary significantly from expected principles due to complexities and missing reference documents. However, using our Personal Influence Scanner (PI-Scanner), we can standardize outcomes by generating powerful core values for comparison. Businesses operating from a self-deceptive standpoint (CUER) do not last unless they perpetually work out of a vicious cycle. Successful businesses invest in both individual and public spectrums (PUER), considering societal impacts.

The most challenging aspect of SIA is identifying new technologies before implementation, which will be discussed next.

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Identifying Social Impacts

Inventing new technology is a key driver for businesses seeking a competitive advantage. However, analysing the expected consequences is crucial, as it can have diverse impacts, including potential loss of life. This assessment is challenging due to organizational Personal-Influence (PI). If an organization operates under CUER (Pathological Narcissism and Altruism SIA), decisions may be deceptive. Conversely, PUER (compliant characters) predicts outcomes with high accuracy, though the process is time-consuming. The PI-Scanner identifies nine SIA Organizational Character Zones, grouped into CUER and PUER.

Leadership SIA Influence

Leadership plays a significant role in creating crises. PUER characters are reliable and can redefine projects by conforming to nature, ensuring good SIA judgment. PUER emphasizes sound core values for diverse subjects, including leadership, mergers, and trust.

Peter Drucker⁵ supports this by stating, “The first job of management is to identify and expect effects coldly and realistically.” The question is not “Is what we do right?” but “Is what we do what society and the customer pay us for?” Activities not integral to the institution’s purpose and mission should be considered social impacts and undesirable.

Technology Assessment

Technology assessment involves identifying social and economic effects of new technology at its introduction. There is great interest in anticipating the impact and side effects of new technology before proceeding. However, Drucker cautions that this attempt can lead to encouraging the wrong technologies and discouraging necessary ones, as future effects are often beyond imagination.

Practice

While general SIA generation is fundamental, some elites are more specific in accomplishing SIA, used as a starting point. Organizations operating under CUER often disregard SIA provisions. Key indicators, core values, and principles for development proposed by Prof. Frank Vanclay guide SIA practice.

Social Consciousness Principles

Social Consciousness Principles⁶

Principles specific to SIA practice include:

1. Fairness: Fundamental in impact assessment and development planning, preferably operating from PUER.
2. Prediction: Social effects of planned interventions predicted in advance, preferably through strategic thinking.
3. Modification: Planned interventions adjusted to reduce negative social effects and enhance positive ones.
4. Integration: SIA should be integral to the development process, involved in all stages from inception to follow-up audit.
5. Sustainability: Focus on socially sustainable development, with SIA contributing to determining the best development alternatives.

Further Principles

1. Community Building: Planned interventions should build social and human capital and strengthen democratic processes.
2. Beneficiary Consideration: Ways to turn affected peoples into beneficiaries should be investigated.
3. Alternatives: Due consideration given to alternatives of planned interventions, especially when unavoidable effects are likely.
4. Mitigation: Full consideration of potential mitigating measures for social and environmental effects.
5. Local Knowledge: Incorporate local knowledge, experience, and cultural values in assessments.
6. Non-Violence: No use of violence, harassment, intimidation, or undue force in assessments or implementations.
7. Human Rights: Development processes should not infringe on human rights.

These fundamental startup key points guide SIA, emphasizing the need to operate from PUER and discourage CUER. Enthusiastic consideration of these principles can prevent technologies like GMOs from advancing beyond the strategic thinking stage.

SIA Principles Detailing

Observations in key international agreements and declarations are essential for Ultimate Enterprise. SIA is complex due to people’s synergy or discord, sometimes involving loss of life. Leadership must take it seriously to achieve synergistic outcomes rather than discord.

Jessica Glicken Turnley⁷ states, “SIA can be conducted at any stage in a decision-making process,” citing Endter-Wada et al⁸. “As an ongoing, process-oriented assessment approach… where scientific analysis is continuous and used to evaluate the outcomes of management decisions and to revise and improve future management actions.”

SIA involves researching society’s impact experience, making research & development (R&D) foundational not only in SIA but also in accompanying links covered in this book.

R&D will be discussed next.