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<p>Growing support for Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing over the past twenty years has not been matched by&#xa0;widespread implementation. Prior research has identified obstacles to ESG investing. However, little attention has been paid to its inherent paradoxical nature, to examine the persistent tensions involved and understand its complicated practical realisation. Studying why barriers to ESG investing endure offers valuable insights into how paradoxes persist over time, particularly when examining how these paradoxes interact with various response strategies. Over 32 months of field work, we collected observations of meetings, interviews and secondary data of institutional investors developing an ESG investment framework. Our analysis dissects the business–social paradox’s interconnected tensions linked to measurement, efficiency, and temporality. We identified four paradox response strategies—experimenting, ordering, anchoring, and shielding—that enabled the group to construct and work through multiple layers of complexity over time. Our findings advance ESG investing literature by theoretically reframing ESG investing into a paradoxical lens and showing how the mundane responses to paradoxical tensions, which shift over time, can support the development of more nuanced ESG tools. They also contribute to paradox theory by emphasizing the role of shielding as a dynamic enabler rather than a defensive strategy and by showing how responses gradually deepen over time.</p>

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The Business–Social Paradox of ESG Investing: Responding to Persistent Tensions over Time

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年12月3日

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  • Christel Dumas,
  • Céline Louche,
  • Rebecca Bednarek

摘要

Growing support for Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing over the past twenty years has not been matched by widespread implementation. Prior research has identified obstacles to ESG investing. However, little attention has been paid to its inherent paradoxical nature, to examine the persistent tensions involved and understand its complicated practical realisation. Studying why barriers to ESG investing endure offers valuable insights into how paradoxes persist over time, particularly when examining how these paradoxes interact with various response strategies. Over 32 months of field work, we collected observations of meetings, interviews and secondary data of institutional investors developing an ESG investment framework. Our analysis dissects the business–social paradox’s interconnected tensions linked to measurement, efficiency, and temporality. We identified four paradox response strategies—experimenting, ordering, anchoring, and shielding—that enabled the group to construct and work through multiple layers of complexity over time. Our findings advance ESG investing literature by theoretically reframing ESG investing into a paradoxical lens and showing how the mundane responses to paradoxical tensions, which shift over time, can support the development of more nuanced ESG tools. They also contribute to paradox theory by emphasizing the role of shielding as a dynamic enabler rather than a defensive strategy and by showing how responses gradually deepen over time.