Disciplinary conversations on sustainability impact: epistemic bubbles and silent spaces

Abstract

This paper maps where sustainability impact (social, economic and environmental) conversations are taking place within business and management disciplines. This paper presents a review of impact conversations within papers published in highly ranked journals in the Chartered Association of Business Schools (ABS) Academic Journal Guide 2018 between 1970 and 2018. Following a bibliometric review of 1455 abstracts we map where the discipline conversations on sustainability impact are occurring. We present an Impact-Issue typology which shows that three distinct patterns emerge in terms of how the term ‘impact’ is deployed within and across 22 ABS sub- disciplines: 1) Sustain-centric impact conversations; 2) Corporate- centric impact conversations, and 3) The ‘quiet’ sub-disciplines. We find distinct leaders in terms of sub-disciplines and journals who are shaping and influencing the conversation, however we find “strong” disciplines” are notably absent. The evidence suggests that epistemic bubbles exist at the discipline level, leading to a persistent disconnect between corporate and system level literatures. Epistemic bubbles reinforce single disciplinary approaches to corporate sustainability impact which can be problematic in the development of theories of impact, This we argue is due to the epistemic landscape of disciplines. We argue that these bubbles need to be bridged, rather than burst, as disciplines play an important role. Bridging argue is through the creation of conversations to create “common ground” to enable collaboration and interdisciplinary impact research to emerge to bridge the divide.