We examine the joint effects of shareholder engagement—coordinated as part of the Climate Action 100+ (CA100+) initiative—and governmental climate regulation on firms’ carbon emissions intensity. Our theory and findings support the standalone effects of firms’ voluntary responses to investor pressure and mandatory pressure from climate regulation. Notably, we find that these two forms of pressure are complementary, with firms facing both shareholder engagement and regulatory pressure reducing their subsequent emissions intensity on average. Furthermore, we test and find supportive evidence for spillover effects arising from board ties between firms targeted by CA100+ and connected non-targeted firms, which are likewise reinforced by the prevalence of government climate regulatory pressures. By demonstrating the additive effects of these different sources of pressure on firms’ environmental impacts, we contribute to the corporate governance and stakeholder literatures, while also recognizing the complexity of normative pressures and interrelationships between actors that are key contributors to climate-related challenges and solutions.

We present novel evidence on how environmental and social (E&S) incidents affect the capital-raising ability of Private Equity (PE) firms. PE firms with E&S incidents in portfolio companies are less likely to fundraise and raise smaller subsequent funds. The decrease in capital commitment does not seem related to fund performance; instead, it is driven by E&S concerns of relationship limited partners (LPs). LPs trade off E&S concerns with financial cost of breaking relationships, implying a weaker impact on large, top-performing PE firms. The threat of “exit” by E&S-concerned investors incentivizes PE firms to exert “voice” and mitigate negative E&S externalities.

This paper examines the impact of immigrant entrepreneurship status and political clientelism on attracting attention from state legislators—key public resource providers. We conduct a field experiment with 6,734 state legislators across the US. Each legislator received an email with identical content from an entrepreneur asking for help with hiring. We randomized entrepreneurs’ immigrant status (1st or 3rd Generation American) and political constituency (inside or outside the legislator’s constituency). Thus, each legislator was randomly assigned to one of the four arms: (a) Arm 1: 3rd Generation American Inside Legislator Constituency, (b) Arm 2: 3rd Generation American Outside Legislator Constituency, (c) Arm 3: 1st Generation American Inside Legislator Constituency, (d) Arm 4: 1st Generation American Outside Legislator Constituency. We find that legislators allocate their attention unequally: reply rates for immigrant entrepreneurs (1st Generation American) are substantially lower than for nonimmigrant entrepreneurs (3rd Generation American). Importantly, we find that the difference between legislator reply rates for immigrant and nonimmigrant entrepreneurs is higher within the legislators’ constituency but negligible outside it. The relative difference is larger for Republican legislators and smaller in states with more immigrant eligible voters. State’s startup job creation, immigrant educational attainment, and racial composition influence the relative differential.

Sustainability scholars have traditionally focussed on global and national governance spheres, but the increase of “localism” means that subnational governments and local governance—including local businesses—are also becoming an integral part of these systems. Drawing on an ethnographic case study of a rural county in the South-West of England, we examine how the concept of place impacts local sustainability governance. We contribute by: (1) demonstrating how local sustainability governance is part of broader multilevel governance systems, in which governance divisions happens along place-based lines rather than public-private spheres; (2) theorising how local sustainability governance is different because of its “local pragmatist” approach, emphasizing problem-solving, deliberation, creative action, and experimentation between local businesses, governments and civil society; and (3) explaining how local sustainability governance can alters the initial ‘sense of place’ through collective place-forming, bridging insights from geography studies. Our contributions help to complete the picture of sustainability governance and sketches an alternative, place-based governance system to enhance the resilience of societies and economies in the face of sustainability challenges.

This paper examines the effects of environmental transparency and enforcement regulation on the sourcing patterns of commodity trading firms (i.e., firms that source commodities from producers and distribute them downstream). By exploiting Brazil's priority regulation targeting producers in deforestation-intense municipalities, I find trading firms do not reallocate their sourcing from regulated to unregulated locations. However, treated trading firms reduce their exposure to deforestation and CO2 emissions associated with their sourcing in both regulated and unregulated locations relative to control firms. Although the effect in regulated locations could reflect the first-order responses by producers, the positive spillover effect in unregulated locations suggests trading firms respond to upstream production shocks and enhance the sustainability of their firm-wide sourcing activities. Importantly, (i) local enforcement actions and (ii) voluntary commitments to zero-deforestation sourcing and third-party audits appear to be crucial factors in altering trading firms' behavior and thereby enhancing the sustainability of commodity sourcing.

Organizations addressing grand challenges at scale must intervene in a way that is sensitive to institutionally diverse contexts to effect enduring change. How do they develop capabilities to conduct enduring place-based intervention work repeatedly across contexts and over time? The organization we studied addressed poverty via inclusive finance in lower and middle income countries, developing four interrelated capabilities for scaling place-based intervention work: contextualizing, field building, practice embedding and norm changing. Examining its 50-year trajectory, we identified a capability development process, involving reflective learning and knowledge circulation leading to capability scope and locus expansion over time, which led to expanded intervention work. Our findings on place-based intervention work contribute theoretically and practically to addressing grand challenges and introduce a new line of research on capabilities for institutional work, building a process model of their development and expansion over time.

Hype, or the collective vision of a promising future, is both an opportunity and a risk for emerging ventures, technologies, and industries. While it mobilizes resources, public interest, and institutional support, the inevitable decline of hype—into the "trough of disillusionment"—often leads to resource withdrawal, venture failures, and stalled industry growth. Focusing on the UK's ocean energy industry, particularly wave and tidal technologies, from 2000 to 2024, we identify three distinct phases: 1) peak hype around wave technology (2000–2011), 2) disillusionment and venture collapse (2012–2017), and 3) a resurgence driven by tidal technology (2018–2024). Our findings reveal that ventures initially benefit from associating with hyped sectors but later may dissociate to avoid negative consequences. We develop a theoretical framework explaining how entrepreneurial identification with different market categories can foster resilience during hype cycles, offering practical strategies for entrepreneurs to leverage hype while mitigating its risks. This research contributes to understanding the evolution of nascent industries through cycles of excitement and skepticism.

Ventures founded by women (versus men) face significant funding disparities, largely due to gender bias. Research suggests that this penalty may be mitigated in stereotypically feminine industries, where women are perceived as having more expertise. However, I argue that under certain conditions, this perceived expertise may paradoxically be associated with further penalization. When founders address social issues pertinent to their own disadvantaged group—a situation I refer to as identity-issue fit—investors may attribute ideological rather than economic motives to ventures, leading to concerns about the prioritization of societal over financial goals. Consequently, ventures founded by entrepreneurs with (versus without) identity-issue fit are likely to raise less capital than similar ventures. Consistent with my core argument, I further theorize that penalization intensifies when entrepreneurs engage in advocacy, and diminishes when the addressed issue gains public salience. I test these hypotheses using data from 2010-2024 on venture-backed Femtech companies in the U.S., the UK, and Canada focused on women’s health issues. The findings support my predictions and align with the proposed mechanism. This paper contributes to our understanding of the barriers faced by founders from disadvantaged groups and introduces a new mechanism through which ideology may influence key audiences’ evaluations of organizations.

We investigate the effects of communication framing on necessity entrepreneurs’ participation in corporate-sponsored training programs. Necessity entrepreneurs (who start businesses for sustenance amidst a lack of alternative employment opportunities) play a critical role in alleviating poverty and fostering regional economic growth, especially in emerging economies. Companies often offer training programs to support these entrepreneurs as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts. However, these programs frequently suffer from low participation, thus diminishing their potential to help the intended beneficiaries. Utilizing regulatory focus theory, we investigate whether promotion-framed messages (emphasizing growth and advancement) or prevention-framed messages (emphasizing security and safety) are more effective in encouraging participation. We conduct two randomized field experiments embedded in corporate-sponsored entrepreneurial training programs involving 5,773 necessity entrepreneurs in Peru. We find that promotion-framed messages lead to higher participation rates than prevention-framed messages. Our study contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by demonstrating how communication framing affects necessity entrepreneurs’ engagement with training programs. We also extend the CSR literature by showing that communication nudges based on regulatory focus can enhance beneficiary engagement. Additionally, our findings have practical implications for organizations designing training programs aimed at empowering necessity entrepreneurs.

This paper contributes to research on nonmarket strategy and legitimacy maintenance in contexts of weak state capacity by showing how one of the world’s largest mining firms struggled to maintain legitimacy in local communities after legitimation through nonmarket activity. Based on data collected during nine months of fieldwork in Peru’s mining industry, the article advances a theoretical model of a legitimation trap. The model encapsulates how the delivery of public goods and services to community stakeholders as nonmarket strategy raised stakeholder expectations for more nonmarket activity, forcing the firm to sustain nonmarket activity solely to maintain legitimacy and avoid community opposition. The paper also shows how the private delivery of public goods and services instead of the state eroded state legitimacy in terms of public goods and services delivery in the communities, increasing legitimacy maintenance pressure on the firm. These findings have implications for how we study firms operating in contexts of low state capacity, and what roles firms can sustainably play instead of states.

Although sustainability certifications are widespread, the challenges confronting the sustainability certification organizations (SCOs) who develop, promote and administer such certifications have received less attention. We argue that SCOs face three task domains: legitimacy management, organizational learning, and stakeholder engagement. Critically, these domains are interdependent; a preoccupation with one domain poses limitations on the others. First, an emphasis on legitimacy management can inhibit organizational learning, leading to the advocacy trap. Second, an emphasis on stakeholder engagement can inhibit learning processes, leading to the inertia trap. Third, an emphasis on legitimacy management can inhibit stakeholder engagement, leading to the mobilization trap. Collectively, these challenges constitute the trap triangle. Building on our theoretical model, we develop propositions about how SCOs fall into these traps and how they can overcome them. Finally, recognizing SCOs vary in terms of their movement, market or mission orientations leads to propositions about the traps each type of SCO is most likely to fall into. We close the article by discussing our contributions to the literature on sustainability certifications and environmental governance.

Issue fields are dynamic arenas where actors converge to address shared issues, seek- ing consensus through field settlements established by public or private actors at local or global levels. In fields tackling grand challenges like climate change, global settlements are often advocated to harmonize efforts across jurisdictions. While prior research has explored settlement constellations and field evolution, we know surprisingly little about how global settlements shape the emergence and trajectory of issue fields. Drawing on a historical study of the carbon offsetting field, we examine how the Clean Devel- opment Mechanism (CDM) catalysed the field’s emergence by providing foundational structures and legitimacy while also triggering fragmentation, governance gaps, and field de-legitimation. We highlight how governance mechanisms were adapted to these challenges, ultimately driving settlement convergence and field stabilization. By doing so, we advance our understanding of global settlements as both enablers and disrup- tors, showing how they foster legitimacy and practices while simultaneously fuelling fragmentation, reshaping fields, and their ability to address grand challenges.