Social Consciousness

Social consciousness is the governor of staying within safe zones during breakthroughs. It is another necessary link because it controls the planning and realization of developments.

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SIA (Social Impact Assessment), Social Consciousness Illustration

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

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

SIA (Social Impact Assessment)

Consider the quote:

“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.”

-By Daniel Franks Senior – The University of Queensland, Australia

Definition

Social Consciousness (Social Impact Assessment (SIA)) is a business assessment-seeking enhancement to the Organization’s long-term global welfare to communities and a society. Ultimate Enterprise shows its supremacy by moving from a profit-only standpoint to one that focuses on communities and society’s reward.

Therefore, the ability to manage and improve an organization’s mutual impact is one of the marketing strategies. This involves examination of key issues in corporate responsibility, such as how to achieve optimal transparency while protecting proprietary information, leverage social involvement in branding, improve operational efficiency through environmental initiatives, and strengthen stakeholder relationships. SIA is very broad; mostly it is a research process concentrating on social or community concerns about proposed benefits. By definition, SIA creates disagreement among elites that we want to clear the existing semantic confusions.

Further Definitions

Glasson define SIA as “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” by Glasson¹ adopted from – The Inter-organizational Committee on Guidelines and Principles for Social Assessment².

1. Vanclay defined SIA as: “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 (policies, programs, plans, projects) and any social change processes invoked by those interventions. Its primary purpose is to bring about a more sustainable and fairer biophysical and human environment,” ³

In a similar view, C. Roche defined as:

“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,” ⁴–pp.21.

Details

Peter Drucker, “Free enterprise cannot justify as being good for business. I can justify it only as being good for society,” ibid. In addition, leadership has to perceive that the core purpose of any business is to serve society, rather than creating jobs for them-selves and creating value to stakeholders. Because if they recognize the business purpose wrongly, then that company, preferably serving in a free society, does not last long. It will perish by losing support from society. Similarly, Peter Drucker supported this when he posited, “Every one of our institutions today exists to contribute outside of itself, to supply and satisfy nonmembers.

Furthermore, Business exists to supply goods and services to customers, rather than to supply jobs to workers and managers, or even dividends to stockholders. The hospital does not exist for the sake of doctors and nurses, but for the sake of patients whose one and only desire is to leave the hospital cured and never come back. The school does not exist for the sake of teachers, but for the students. For a management to forget this is mismanagement,” 81–pp.34. P. Drucker is right and under-lines our SIA scope that any business has to prove its worth to community and society.

The details and Interactive Approach to SIA depicted by C. P. Wolf⁵ in Figure 1: Interaction Effects in SIA; followed by the details of interfaces.

Graphical Details

Consider Figure 1 “The direct impact :

• is a deformation in the state variables describing initial conditions, but if analysis were to end there, it would severely distort the reality situation of SIA. The continuing effects of readjustment and adaptive change represent a sort of feed-forward 
• We can further hypothesize a differential social responsiveness by affected units. Conversely, in the planning phase, the direct impact may cause a kind of reaction formation which impinges on project planning itself
• as public opposition and plan modification. The project itself regarded as the social effect of a social cause–its history as a prospective solution to preexisting concerns, problems and issues living in the affected area
• and this history conditions public receptiveness at the points of impact and subsequent adaptation
• Finally, the intrusion of exogenous variables
• whether random or systematic, compounds the problem of attributing measured effects to planned interventions”

Challenges

With such complexities, in addition to missing reference documents about SIA, reports generated in SIA vary with high deviations from the expected principles. However, using our Personal Influence Scanner (PI-Scanner), we can standardize outcomes because PI-Scanner generates powerful core values, which apply as a comparison devise. For example, CUER defines a self-deceptive thought that operates without consideration for the customer—the business driver. Any business operating from CUER does not last unless otherwise perpetually works out of a vicious-cycle; unfortunately, when advised to take revolutionary steps, usually they are defensive about their entrenched vices.

Therefore, business that succeeds or thrives is the one operating in PUER, where they invest both in IS (individual spectrum) and PS (public spectrum) and pursue consideration for society. Such a modern tool (PI-Scanner) introduction pursues long-awaited devices tackling SIA. The most challenging process in SIA is to identify new technologies before implementing, which is discussed next.

Identifying Social Impacts

Inventing new technology is the intrinsic motivation in business as a Competitive Advantage (CA); however, analyzing the expected consequences is critical because it serves diverse advantages, including loss of life. Such assessment is very difficult because of the organizational Personal-Influence (PI), such that if a particular organization assessing a technology effect is operating in CUER, every decision will be deceptive. In a correct course, PUER will predict with high accuracy, alas, high IS (Individual Spectrum) and PS (Public Spectrum), though the process is time-consuming. PI-Scanner depicts nine SIA Organizational Character Zones, grouped into two regions (CUER and PUER); CUER is for Pathological Narcissism and Altruism SIA, where self-deception dominates.

Leadership SIA Influence

Leadership has a high probability of creating crises. PUER is for complying characters; they are reliable, but they can obstruct or redefine any project for development by conforming to nature. This is the area for good SIA judgment, and PUER is for developers and compliant features to varied degrees. PUER underlines sound core-values for diverse subjects, including SIA; some of them are Leadership, merger, trust, etc.

Peter Drucker supports this when he postulates, “The first job of management is, therefore, to identify and to expect affects coldly and realistically”. The question is not “Is what we do right?” It is “Is what we do what society and the customer pay us for?” In addition, if an activity is not integral to the institution’s purpose and mission, it is to be considered as a social impact and as undesirable. This sounds easy. It is actually very difficult.

In essence, The best illustration is the problem of technology assessment, the identification of social and economic effects of new technology at the time of its introduction. There is, these days, great interest in technology assessment that is in anticipating impact and side effects of new technology before going ahead with it. He went on cautioning, “This attempt can end only in a fiasco. Technology assessment is likely to lead to the encouragement of the wrong technologies and the discouragement of the technologies we need. For future effects of new technology are almost always beyond anybody’s imagination.” ⁶–pp.230.

Practice

Apart from this general and fundamental SIA generation, some elites are more specific in accomplishing SIA, which is used as a starting point. However, for organizations operating from CUER, they usually put aside all of SIA provisions. Let us discuss some of the SIA key indicators, the core values of SIA, fundamental principles for development, and principles specific to SIA practice, all of them proposed by Prof. Frank Vanclay. While plasticizing SIA, organizational leaders need to be aware of SIA indicators discussed next.

Principles guiding Society Development are general, while SIA concentrates on assessment processes, which have to satisfy the following practice and some, which decided during SIA best interpolated from the Personality Tetra Receptor (PTR).

Social Consciousness Principles

Principles specific to SIA practice ⁷

1. Fairness considerations should be a fundamental element of impact assessment and of development planning—preferably operating from PUER.
2. Many of the social effects of planned interventions are predicted in advance, preferably in a strategic thinking (business model).
3. Planned interventions changed to reduce their negative social effects and enhance their positive effects.
4. SIA should be an integral part of the development process, involved in all stages from inception to follow-up audit–this is the technology monitoring.
5. There should be a focus on socially sustainable development, with SIA contributing to the determination of best development alternatives–SIA (and EIA – Environmental Impact Assessment) have more to offer than just being a harmonizer between economic benefit and social cost.

Further Principles

1. In all planned interventions and their assessments, avenues enveloped to build the social and human capital of local communities and to strengthen democratic processes.
2. In all planned interventions, especially where there are unavoidable effects, ways to turn affected peoples into beneficiaries investigated–a consideration as a major element of Ei Emotional Intelligence.
3. The SIA must give due consideration to the alternatives of any planned intervention, but especially when there are likely to be unavoidable affects.
4. Full consideration given to the potential mitigating measures of social and environ-mental effects, even where affected communities may approve the planned intervention, and where they regarded as beneficiaries.
5. Local knowledge, experience, and acknowledgment of different local cultural values incorporated in any assessment.
6. There should be no use of violence, harassment, intimidation or undue force in connection with the assessment or implementation of a planned intervention, and
7. Developmental processes that infringe the human rights of any section of society not accepted.

SIA Principles Detailing

These are the fundamental startup key-points to be observed in SIA; however, they are not exhaustive; the direction for SIA is the scrutiny for The Personality Tetra Receptor (PTR) and Personal Influence Scanner (PI-Scanner) such that any business has to operate from PUER, completely discouraging CUER. When these considerations were performed with enthusiasm, technologies like GMOs needed to end during the strategic thinking stage.

Observations in key International Agreements and declarations that contain notable statements are key Ultimate Enterprise. SIA is a very complicated process because it involves people’s synergy or discord; sometimes loss of life, leadership has to take it seriously in order to achieve a synergistic move, rather than discords! The key point to remember is postulated by Jessica Glicken Turnley⁸ that “SIA can conduct at any stage in a decision-making process”; she concluded by citing Endter-Wada et al.⁹. “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 is about researching for facts about society’s impact experience; therefore, research & development (R&D) is the foundation not only in SIA but also to the rest of the accompanying links covered in this book, and Research & Development discussed next.

1. Glasson, J.:  Socio-economic impacts 1:  overview and economic impacts, in: Morris, P. and Therivel, R. (2000) (edt), Methods of Environmental Impact Assessment, ©2000 – Spon Press, London and New York ↩︎
2. Guidelines and Principles for Social Impact Assessment: ©1994 – Inter-organizational Committee on Guidelines and Principles for Social Impact Assessment ↩︎
3. Frank Vanclay: SOCIAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT: International Principles – ©2003-International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA) – Special Publication Series No. 2, accessed from http://www.iaia.org/publicdocuments/special-publications/sp2.pdf?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1. ↩︎
4. Roche, C.: ‘Impact Assessment for Development Agencies: Learning to Value Change.’ Development Guidelines, ©1999-Oxford, Oxfam ↩︎
5. C.  P.  Wolf: SOCIAL  IMPACT  ASSESSMENT: THE STATE OF THE ART – access on 1/1/2014 from http://www.edra.org/sites/default/files/publications/EDRA05-v2-Wolf-1-44.pdf ↩︎
6. Peter Drucker, The Practice of Management, ©1954 by Harper and Row Publishers, New York ↩︎
7. Guidelines and Principles for Social Impact Assessment: ©1994—Inter-organizational Committee on Guidelines and Principles for Social Impact Assessment ↩︎
8. Office of Emergency and Remedial Response (Attn. Jessica Glicken Turnley): Social, Cultural, and Economic Impact Assessments: A Literature Review; ©2002-US Environmental Protection Agency, available from http://www.epa.gov/superfund/policy/pdfs/SILitRevFinal.pdf, access 05-01-2014 ↩︎
9. Endter-Wada, Joanna, Blahana, Dale, Krannich, Richard and Brunson, Mark “A Framework for Understanding Social Science Contributions to Ecosystem Management.” ↩︎