Strange Bird in the Breed: The Translation of the Impact Investing Concept to the Corporate Logic

Abstract

In the face of the aggravating state of many grand challenges, corporations are increasingly pursuing and trialling less-conventional ideas, practices and models from fundamentally different fields to affect positive environmental and social change. While institutional scholars have explored the translation of ideas, practices, and forms in-between contexts that adhere to the same or largely compatible logics, much less is known about the translation of concepts in between mutually incompatible logics. Drawing on a 21 months long ethnographic single case study of the translation of the concept of impact investing to a European media corporation, I show that the corporate motivations for such translation gradually change from ideological to pragmatic as incompatibility tensions surface, and that internal agents morph the translated concept from a strict coupling to a decoupling with the source concept in response to these changes. My findings contribute to the literatures on institutional translation, organizational adoption of practices and ideas, and business and the natural environment.