Social impact
Social impact is a change in people's rights, wellbeing, opportunities, relationships, or living conditions connected with an activity or decision. Applying Social impact requires a stated affected people, rights, value-chain tier, geography, remedy, and distribution of benefits or harms. Those choices determine how Social impact can be compared or acted upon.
In simple terms
In practical use, Social impact is a change in people's rights, wellbeing, opportunities, relationships, or living conditions connected with an activity or decision. For Social impact, the label organizes a condition or relationship but does not by itself demonstrate performance or compliance within a declared affected people, rights, value-chain tier, geography, remedy, and distribution of benefits or harms. Social impact connects with Social sustainability and Sustainable procurement; each can affect its application without sharing its definition. The candidate link between Social impact and Diversity, equity and inclusion remains a separate expansion question supported here by International Association for Impact Assessment.
Why it matters
Social impact matters because decisions about it determine which workers or communities are visible, what rights or harms are assessed, and where prevention or remedy is assigned. A defensible use of Social impact therefore exposes its boundary, method, evidence, responsible actor, and uncertainty before a conclusion is accepted. That discipline keeps Social sustainability and Sustainable procurement from being treated as proof of Social impact when their criteria, scope, or results differ.
Example
A procurement and human-rights team evaluates Social impact for a defined decision and records the relevant affected people, rights, value-chain tier, geography, remedy, and distribution of benefits or harms. For Social impact, the team uses cited material from International Association for Impact Assessment to frame the decision and distinguish the idea from adjacent concepts, documenting the period, data, assumptions, and comparison with Social sustainability. It treats Sustainable procurement and Diversity, equity and inclusion as separate questions rather than proxies for Social impact.
How it differs
Social sustainability
Social impact is a concept; Social sustainability has a different function. Evidence for Social sustainability does not establish Social impact unless both sets of applicable criteria are met.