Social Impact Research
What helps organisations create real social impact?
Leading through paradoxes in sustainable business, ESG finance and leadership
What does it really take for leaders and organisations to act responsibly in a world of climate risk, social inequality and shifting stakeholder expectations? Across three interconnected studies, Waikato Management School researchers show that the answer is not simply 鈥渂etter tools鈥� or 鈥渕ore data,鈥� but a deeper leadership capacity to live with, and work through, paradox.
The first article, Shaping the Future of Business Sustainability, tackles a deceptively simple question: what do we actually mean by 鈥渂usiness sustainability鈥�? Drawing on more than 92,000 articles and using advanced topic modelling, the authors map the landscape of sustainability research on an unprecedented scale. They reveal a crowded field in which multiple definitions, theories and agendas coexist, sometimes productively, sometimes confusingly. From this, they develop a clearer theory-driven framework that helps scholars, managers and policymakers see where their own work belongs: is sustainability being framed as risk management, innovation, stakeholder value, social justice, long-term resilience, or some combination of these? The article offers a conceptual compass for leaders guiding social impact in a field that is evolving rapidly but not always coherently.
If the first piece clarifies the intellectual terrain, the second examines the messy reality of practice. The Business鈥揝ocial Paradox of ESG Investing follows institutional investors over 32 months as they try to make Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing workable. Rather than treating ESG challenges as implementation 鈥渂ugs鈥� to be ironed out, the authors reconceive ESG investing as a business鈥搒ocial paradox: a domain that must satisfy both financial logics and societal expectations that pull in different directions. They show how tensions around measurement, efficiency and time horizons never fully disappear, but can be managed over time through evolving strategies of experimenting, ordering, anchoring and shielding. ESG progress, in this view, depends on leaders learning how to keep paradoxical work alive, not pretending they can solve it once and for all.
The third article turns to the human side of organising and social impact. Negotiating in a 鈥楶arrhesiastic Pact鈥� While Co-constructing Leadership examines how leadership is co-created through dialogue in a hierarchical organisation trying to move towards more shared, 鈥減ost-heroic鈥� leadership. Using the lens of parrhesia (frank, risky truth-telling), the authors introduce the idea of a 鈥減arrhesiastic pact鈥�: an implicit agreement that people can speak openly despite power differences. They show how such a pact can open up genuine spaces for shared leadership, but also how lingering hierarchies and contradictory behaviours can reassert themselves, making shared leadership fragile and ambiguous.
Together, these three studies offer a powerful message for business and society: sustainable, responsible organising is fundamentally paradoxical work that calls for astute leadership. It requires clearer conceptual maps of what we mean by sustainability, financial practices that accept and manage competing logics, and leadership cultures where people can speak honestly about power, trade-offs and responsibility.
All three articles are free to download, please use the links below:
Li L; Lemke F (2025) Shaping the future of business sustainability: LDA topic modeling insights, definitions, and research agenda, Journal of Business Ethics, 201: 391-456 脿
Dumas C; Louche C; Bednarek R. (2025) The business鈥搒ocial paradox of ESG investing: Responding to persistent tensions over time, Journal of Business Ethics, online 脿
Souza, R; Wood, T; Jackson, B (2025) Negotiating in a 'Parrhesiastic Pact' While Co-Constructing Leadership: A Cautionary Tale, Organization Studies, 46(8): 1153-1176 脿