 Decontesting an essentially contested concept: The standardization of sustainable financeOlivier Boiral,
Isabelle Martinez,
Marie-Christine Brotherton,
David Gilbert-Parisée and
David Talbot
Post-Print from HAL Abstract: The aim of this article is to investigate how the standardization process and the public consultations carried out in the development of new sustainable finance standards and laws tend to shape the decontestation of practices in this field. The analysis of 255 comment letters submitted by various stakeholders in the context of these public consultations shows the dual role of standardization as a mechanism for both the decontestation and the (re)contestation of sustainable finance. This article makes important contributions to the emerging literature on the governance of sustainable finance through initiatives that are meant to improve the transparency of disclosures in this field and prevent investor misconduct. In light of Gallie's theory of essentially contested concepts, this article also contributes to the literature on the challenges of developing sustainability standards and the implications of adopting practices centered on concepts whose meanings and applications are the subject of endless disputes. Keywords: TCFD; Task Force on Climate‐Related Financial Disclosures; decontestation; ESG disclosures; essentially contested concepts; socially responsibleinvestment; standardization; sustainable finance1 | I N T RO DU CT I O NThe inclusion of environmental; social; and governance (ESG) consid-erations in financial decision; Dimmelmeier; 2023; Migliorelli; 2021); has grown very rapidly over the past decade (Akomea-Frimponget al.; 2022; Kashi & Shah; 2023; Kumar et al.; 2022; TheCityUK; 2022). Between 2012 and 2021; the global sustainablefinance market is estimated to have grown a hundredfold; from $5.2billion to over $540 billion (TheCityUK; 2022); but this growth slowedin 2022 (Azevedo Rocha et al.; 2022; Hanfi Brögger &Schwartzkopff; 2023). General awareness of the urgency of certainenvironmental issues—in particular climate change—and institutionalpressure to integrate various ESG criteria into investment decisionshelp explain the growth observed between; 34:39–56. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/bse 39; WBCSD; WorldBusiness Council for Sustainable Development.Received: 4 January 2024 Revised: 31 July 2024 Accepted: 3 September 2024DOI: 10.1002/bse.3972This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDeriv; UNGC; United Nations Global Compact; Akomea-Frimpong et al.; 2022; SRI; socially responsible investment; SFDR; Sustainable FinanceDisclosure Regulation; GRI; Global Reporting Initiative; GHG; greenhouse gas; FSAB; Financial Sector AmendmentBill; FCA; Financial Conduct Authority; EU; European Union; ESMA; European Securities and Markets Authority; ESG; environmental; social; and governance; ECC; essentially contested concept; Kawabata; 2019). However; the way in which sustainablefinance practitioners integrate ESG issues in practical terms; and theAbbreviations: CSR; corporate social responsibility; Cunhaet al.; 2021 (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published in Business Strategy and the Environment, 2025, vol. 34 (n° 1), pp.39-56 There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05229262 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Post-Print from HAL |
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