Позитивные изменения. Том 2, №4 (2022). Positive changes. Volume 2, Issue 4 (2022)

Blended social impact investment (SII) transactions, in which multiple types of capital are combined to support attainment of social impact, are a pervasive, yet not closely examined, feature of the SII market. This paper seeks to describe and understand blended SII transactions through the lens of institutional theory. Specifically, we use the institutional logics theoretical frame to shed light on the implications of combining several institutional logics in SII transactions. Consistent with other SII research, we find that parties to blended SII transactions combine financial /commercial and social welfare logics. However, in blended SII transactions, different combinations of these logics are enacted by different stakeholders in a multi-hybrid-logic structure. As such, we propose that blended SII transactions are hybrids-of-hybrids. We argue that it is this hybrids-of-hybrid characteristic that differentiates blended SII transactions from other forms of SII and increases the potential for significant logical misalignment and resultant conflict and contestation. From a business ethics perspective, blended SII transactions cast light on the critical and often unrecognized role that grants and concessionary capital frequently play in enabling SII in not-for-profit charitable ventures. We speculate that this can distort understanding of SII with adverse implications at the transaction and field levels.

https://clck.ru/32ucUi

2. ETHICAL SENSEMAKING IN IMPACT INVESTING: REASONS AND MOTIVES IN THE CHINESE RENEWABLE ENERGY SECTOR

Tongyu Meng, J. Newth, C. Woods

Article, 15 June 2022, Journal of Business Ethics

This article explores impact investing within the renewable energy sector. Drawing on ethical decision making and sensemaking, this article contributes to an enhanced understanding of the complex ethical sensemaking process of impact investors when facing plausible situations in a world of contested truths. Addressing the ethical tensions faced by impact investors with mixed motives, this study investigates the way decision makers use context-specific reasons to make sense of and shape the renewable energy investment (REI) process. This represents an initial attempt to understand ethical sensemaking in impact investing made within the renewable energy (RE) sector using a multi-stakeholder approach. Our findings show that prosocial, personal, reputational, and economic motives are the main drivers of REI, with prosocial and personal motives being value-based, and reputational and economic motives being evidence-based. We find three different modes of ethical sensemaking (pragmatic, retrospective, and forecasting), allowing for the construction of the four motives noted above. These motives are based on the context-specific reasons of impact investing decision makers in the RE sector. This article contributes to the academic discourse on ethical sensemaking with some key processes involved in ethical decision making, and a better understanding of the underlying motivations of impact investing in the RE sector.

https://goo.su/AlQAGFf

3. DOES IMPACT INVESTING HELP VC FUNDS TO ATTRACT STARTUPS? EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE

Ye Zhang

Research paper, 12 October 2022, SSRN Electronic Journal