Sustainability Social finance Social impact investing Paradigm building Structuration theory

The structuring of social finance: emerging approaches for supporting environmentally and socially impactful projects

Although a new landscape of social finance institutions (SFIs) is evolving rapidly in Europe, the academic
literature on the structures of legitimation that characterize the development of social finance has been
limited. This paper addresses this gap: (1) by conceptualizing social finance (SF) as a pre-paradigmatic
field where leading SF institutions have spontaneously adopted different investment rationalities and
logics to achieve positive social impact through financing and banking activities; (2) by discussing

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