Invigorating impact investment networks: actor-actant engagement in a smart city environment

Impact investing seeks to generate measurable social and/or environmental impact alongside a financial return. Accordingly, assumed trade-off between financial return and social benefit is no longer a given, with Masdar City demonstrating that the mobilisation of dynamic networks facilitates the growth of impact investments. So as to better understand the complex dynamics of successful impact investing networks, we engage General Systems Theory, Open Systems Theory, and Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as a tripartite conceptual framework. Directly related to this, we show the role of technologies and reveal how network participants enhance distributed agency. We also identify three pillars crucial to the impact investing milieu: strategic innovation, communication, and impact measurement. The article finally observes a set of key outcomes, explores the implications for practice and considers directions for further research.