home > conference - November 24-25, 2003

Enterprise Development Impact Assessment Information Service (EDIAIS)

NEW DIRECTIONS IN IMPACT ASSESSMENT FOR DEVELOPMENT: METHODS AND PRACTICE

Stephanie Barrientos, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex

Labour Impact Assessment: Challenges and Opportunities of a Learning Approach

Link to full paper

ABSTRACT

Poverty and social impact assessment is now used in a wide range of areas, including at enterprise level, but focus on workers is relatively new. Policies and programmes aimed at enhancing the position of workers include corporate codes of conduct, international labour standards, and support for informal migrant and home workers. This paper explores how a learning approach to impact assessment could be developed to better understand the poverty and social effects of such policies on workers. It develops a 'value chain mapping to labour impact' approach, to explore the impact of company codes of conduct. It focuses particularly on the challenge of developing 1A in relation to 'marginal' workers such as informal, migrant, contract and home workers, who are often women and from disadvantaged ethnic groups. The paper explores how such challenges could be addressed in order to further advance labour impact assessment.

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