Why does the concept of impact matter for the real estate sector?

The environmental, social, economic, institutional, and regulatory contexts in which organizations operate are increasingly critical and demanding when it comes to taking ESG issues into account. Corporate governance had to adapt and become increasingly sophisticated. The innovative organization must attest of the performance of its governance mode, its business model, and its sound management of ESG issues by measuring the impacts, both positive and negative, of its activities and decisions. We are entering a new era, the one of social, climate and ecological governance. The challenge is to identify the limits of the perimeter and the scope of these impacts, including their relationships with the different organizational levels. The overview of the academic and documentary literature on the concept of impact reveals its omnipresence in several frameworks and regulations, but also its importance in the development of major disclosure standards. The study of the nature of the impacts that must now be taken into consideration shows the preponderance of the environmental dimension, but also the complexity linked to the socio-economic dimension. In the real estate sector, the evaluation of the two-way impacts between the building and its natural and human ecosystem requires the integration of a multitude of research fields such as environmental psychology, social entrepreneurship, urban design, social life cycle analysis, etc. Indeed, the assessment of the impacts on the various stakeholders of the organization is multi-faceted, especially when it comes to assessing well-being. Their involvement seems essential for this exercise.