Social sustainability in architectural practice: Examining experiences of architectural offices in B-Corp certification in the United Kingdom

Purpose: Social sustainability (SS) is one of the key pillars of sustainability along with environmental and economic sustainability. Several impact assessment frameworks (IAF) exist to evaluate sustainability in the built environment, yet SS is often neglected. This paper is the first to investigate the effectiveness of the B-Corp certification scheme as an IAF to promote SS in architectural practice. With almost 3.5 folds increase in the number of B-Corp-certified UK-based architectural offices, in the last two years, and the neglect of the social dimension of sustainability in IAF application; the key question of this research is “What roles does B-Corp play in architectural practice to promote SS in the UK?” 

Design/methodology/approach: This research is based on qualitative data collection and thematic analysis. Eight semi-structured online interviews were conducted with B-Corp-certified architectural offices in the UK. The interview questions focused on understanding the offices' B-Corp experiences around three categories: motivations, challenges and changes. Through a coding process, the interviews were analysed to find the similarities and differences between the offices' approaches to SS and their experiences as B-Corps. Keywords were identified and themes with an inductive approach, applying the research question as a lens. 

Findings: Data was analysed to understand how B-Corp and its IAF relate to the architectural offices. The study concluded that B-Corp can make it easier to establish inter-actor relationships and B-Corp’s IAF can provide a holistic approach in which architectural offices can better measure their sustainable values by switching the evaluation scale from “building” to “business” unlike common IFAs in the built environment; with these two roles, it can effectively contribute to social sustainability. 

Originality/value: It is the first research to introduce the B-Corp certification to the architectural literature. Even though over 90 publications are covering B-Corp in other domains, there has yet to be any research looking at B-Corp-certified architectural offices, its merits as an IAF and limitations. This paper presents novel contributions to the knowledge concerning the assessment of social sustainability in architecture.