How To Keep Track On Impact Investing Promises: Exploring The Potentials Of New Governance Schemes
Résumé
Impact investing is gaining momentum but still calls for an examination of how such a promise regarding the allocation of capital toward social and environmental goals can be kept on track. This paper explores the role and different levers of governance, particularly formal structures, in the advancement of impact investing. Through a focus group convened by the French Sustainable Investment Forum, we build on an innovative framework, the Société à Mission, to uncover investor expectations regarding the need to transform governance schemes for impact. Our review shows that traditionally, governance has been utilized to address agency biases and mitigate the risk of opportunism among actors, thereby reinforcing transparency and alignment. However, we argue that some of the practical challenges regarding evaluation, integration, and institutionalization stem from the specific nature of impact, which calls for extending governance concerns to include cognitive and methodological matters, at every stage of the investment chain.