Cargando…

Quantification of corruption in preventative cost-based S-LCA: a contribution to the Oiconomy project

PURPOSE: Corruption is one of the key social aspects, heavily impacting all three Planet-, People- and Prosperity sustainability pillars and is therefore essential to be included in S-LCA. The objective of this article is to consider the available options to quantify corruption in preventative cost-...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Croes, Pim R., Vermeulen, Walter J. V.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6383569/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30872903
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11367-018-1507-z
_version_ 1783396862591500288
author Croes, Pim R.
Vermeulen, Walter J. V.
author_facet Croes, Pim R.
Vermeulen, Walter J. V.
author_sort Croes, Pim R.
collection PubMed
description PURPOSE: Corruption is one of the key social aspects, heavily impacting all three Planet-, People- and Prosperity sustainability pillars and is therefore essential to be included in S-LCA. The objective of this article is to consider the available options to quantify corruption in preventative cost-based S-LCA, and to make a first proposal for quantification. METHODS: Literature was investigated on potential S-LCA assessment methods of corruption. To date, such literature is hardly available, so more generally, S-LCA methods were assessed on described concepts and ideas, and assessed on five criteria. Following this, using the obtained conclusions and ideas, a proposal for the quantification of corruption for the preventative cost-based Oiconomy system was developed, following the five-step Oiconomy method (Croes and Vermeulen in J Clean Prod 102:178–187, 2015). RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: Based on some examples, Dreyer et al. (Int J Life Cycle Assess 15(3):247–259, 2010) argue that various social aspects, including corruption, are better assessed by companies’ preventative efforts than by their impact. Therefore, modifying a method developed by Dreyer et al. (Int J Life Cycle Assess 15(3):247–259, 2010), an indicator is proposed provided by the product of the marginal preventative costs and the quality of a companies’ preventative governance. For the aspect of corruption, the internationally accepted target is “zero tolerance.” Literature shows that the ultimate business choice under pressure of corruption is “not doing the business.” Because profitability is the main driver for companies, refraining from the business is proposed as the marginal preventative measure, and the related profit as the maximum quantitative indicator for S-LCA. For the risk factor, a technique is proposed based on scoring a company’s governance quality by checking the four Plan-Do-Check-Act effort classes of common risk-based certification standards’ criteria. CONCLUSIONS: Our assessment shows a definite need for the inclusion of the aspect of corruption in S-LCA, but no options for a reasonably certain assessment are available for the aspect of corruption in impact-based S-LCA, also suitable for the preventative cost-based Oiconomy system. However, based on literature-derived ideas and principles, for the Oiconomy system, we could propose both a performance reference point and marginal preventative costs as a quantitative measure for corruption. The proposed measure is not paying the bribe, but the proposed indicator is a governance quality-dependent fraction of the consequentially lost profit margin. Consequences, limitations and possible objections to our proposed methods are discussed. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s11367-018-1507-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-6383569
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2018
publisher Springer Berlin Heidelberg
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-63835692019-03-12 Quantification of corruption in preventative cost-based S-LCA: a contribution to the Oiconomy project Croes, Pim R. Vermeulen, Walter J. V. Int J Life Cycle Assess Societal Lca PURPOSE: Corruption is one of the key social aspects, heavily impacting all three Planet-, People- and Prosperity sustainability pillars and is therefore essential to be included in S-LCA. The objective of this article is to consider the available options to quantify corruption in preventative cost-based S-LCA, and to make a first proposal for quantification. METHODS: Literature was investigated on potential S-LCA assessment methods of corruption. To date, such literature is hardly available, so more generally, S-LCA methods were assessed on described concepts and ideas, and assessed on five criteria. Following this, using the obtained conclusions and ideas, a proposal for the quantification of corruption for the preventative cost-based Oiconomy system was developed, following the five-step Oiconomy method (Croes and Vermeulen in J Clean Prod 102:178–187, 2015). RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: Based on some examples, Dreyer et al. (Int J Life Cycle Assess 15(3):247–259, 2010) argue that various social aspects, including corruption, are better assessed by companies’ preventative efforts than by their impact. Therefore, modifying a method developed by Dreyer et al. (Int J Life Cycle Assess 15(3):247–259, 2010), an indicator is proposed provided by the product of the marginal preventative costs and the quality of a companies’ preventative governance. For the aspect of corruption, the internationally accepted target is “zero tolerance.” Literature shows that the ultimate business choice under pressure of corruption is “not doing the business.” Because profitability is the main driver for companies, refraining from the business is proposed as the marginal preventative measure, and the related profit as the maximum quantitative indicator for S-LCA. For the risk factor, a technique is proposed based on scoring a company’s governance quality by checking the four Plan-Do-Check-Act effort classes of common risk-based certification standards’ criteria. CONCLUSIONS: Our assessment shows a definite need for the inclusion of the aspect of corruption in S-LCA, but no options for a reasonably certain assessment are available for the aspect of corruption in impact-based S-LCA, also suitable for the preventative cost-based Oiconomy system. However, based on literature-derived ideas and principles, for the Oiconomy system, we could propose both a performance reference point and marginal preventative costs as a quantitative measure for corruption. The proposed measure is not paying the bribe, but the proposed indicator is a governance quality-dependent fraction of the consequentially lost profit margin. Consequences, limitations and possible objections to our proposed methods are discussed. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s11367-018-1507-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2018-09-06 2019 /pmc/articles/PMC6383569/ /pubmed/30872903 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11367-018-1507-z Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
spellingShingle Societal Lca
Croes, Pim R.
Vermeulen, Walter J. V.
Quantification of corruption in preventative cost-based S-LCA: a contribution to the Oiconomy project
title Quantification of corruption in preventative cost-based S-LCA: a contribution to the Oiconomy project
title_full Quantification of corruption in preventative cost-based S-LCA: a contribution to the Oiconomy project
title_fullStr Quantification of corruption in preventative cost-based S-LCA: a contribution to the Oiconomy project
title_full_unstemmed Quantification of corruption in preventative cost-based S-LCA: a contribution to the Oiconomy project
title_short Quantification of corruption in preventative cost-based S-LCA: a contribution to the Oiconomy project
title_sort quantification of corruption in preventative cost-based s-lca: a contribution to the oiconomy project
topic Societal Lca
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6383569/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30872903
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11367-018-1507-z
work_keys_str_mv AT croespimr quantificationofcorruptioninpreventativecostbasedslcaacontributiontotheoiconomyproject
AT vermeulenwalterjv quantificationofcorruptioninpreventativecostbasedslcaacontributiontotheoiconomyproject