Social innovation and workplace development for social entrepreneurship

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to explore how social LCA (S-LCA) & social organizational LCA (SO-LCA), can be used to shape the business model of companies that want to be social sustainable both related to one’s own daily operation and the value proposition. It is especially concerned with companies at an early stage when a value chain and the internal and external business network has not yet been established. Current SLCA studies do not assess the social performance of products, because most of the indicators refer to the organizational level. Starting from the extensive list of indicators presented by Martínez-Blanco et al. these indicators have been filtered down to the most relevant for early-stage businesses based on social entrepreneurship. Further, these indicators have been used to extend business modelling guidance using The Business Model Canvas (BMC) methodology, also known as the Osterwalder model, as a framework. The findings have been tested through dialogues and workshops with a newly established centre for social entrepreneurship with a focus on workplace development for young people, refugees, and immigrants who are out of work in a Norwegian municipality.