Impact valuations in social finance: emic and polyvocal stakeholder accounts

Purpose - This paper aims to understand how social finance and impact measurement experts include stakeholders' voices in valuations of social and environmental impact. Design/methodology/approach - The paper used the content analysis of an online discussion forum where experts discussed impact valuation approaches. Findings - Many experts seek impact valuations that take into account the experiences of those whose lives are most affected. Ideally, these accounts need to be emic to (in the language of) those stakeholders, and polyvocal (representing many different stakeholders' voices). However, these experts also seek to effect systemic change by encouraging mainstream financial markets to use social and environmental valuations in their decision-making. These experts consider full plurality too complex to be useable by financial markets, so the experts argue in favor of etic valuations (stated in the language of investors), to appeal to mainstream finance, while endeavoring nonetheless to represent multiple stakeholders' voices. The authors identify two discursive strategies used to resolve this tension: effacing of differences between diverse stakeholders, and overstating the universality of money as a common language. Social implications - The terms emic and polyvocal provide experts with nuanced ways to understand “stakeholder voice.” The authors hope these nuances inspire new insights and strategies and help the community with their goal of bridging to mainstream finance. Originality/value - The paper presents a theoretical framework for describing plurality in impact valuations and examines the challenges of bridging from social finance, which seeks to give voice and representation to those whose lives are most affected, to mainstream finance.