Financing a sustainable planet: research agenda for impact investing in the renewable energy sector from an identity-based view

This chapter offers three theoretical lenses to investigate the impact investing field, where institutional logics, stakeholder management theory, and sensemaking are all interconnected through the concept of identity. An institutional logics perspective opens research avenues for the hybridity of blended institutional logics, legitimacy, and institutional work by which individuals, groups, and organisations evaluate their everyday activities and organise those activities. Stakeholder management theory and the stakeholder salience framework help managers to identify and prioritise stakeholder groups. Further to this point, we offer a behavioural perspective to examine how investors navigate and shape their institutional contexts and what motivates them to do so through ethical sensemaking. This chapter contributes to the environment-focused impact investing literature by offering an overview of the development of the field and a focus on some of the key theoretical anchors for upon which a research agenda can build.