In boardrooms and on trading floors, in protest camps and policy forums, three letters now carry outsized weight: ESG.Once a niche concern for socially minded investors, environmental, social and governance criteria have become a global language for risk, reputation and responsibility. Yet as ESG metrics proliferate and billions of dollars chase “lasting” assets, a more fundamental question is being asked with growing urgency: who gets to define what ESG means, and who has the authority to tell its story?
At London Business School, academics, investors and corporate leaders are grappling with this contested narrative. From ratings agencies and asset managers to activists and regulators, a crowded cast of storytellers is shaping how ESG is framed, measured and ultimately judged. Their competing interests and worldviews are not just influencing capital flows; they are determining which environmental harms are spotlighted, whose social concerns are prioritised, and what counts as good governance in the first place.
This article explores the power struggle behind the ESG label: the institutions and individuals setting the agenda, the voices left at the margins, and the implications for businesses under intensifying scrutiny. As the battle over who tells the ESG story intensifies, London Business School offers a vantage point on how this debate could redefine the future of finance and corporate responsibility.
Corporate voices versus community realities in ESG narratives
In boardrooms and glossy sustainability reports, the story is often told in the smooth cadence of investor decks and PR briefings. Yet on the ground, in supply-chain towns, factory neighbourhoods and frontline ecosystems, the narrative sounds very different. While corporates highlight carbon-neutral headquarters and diversity dashboards, local stakeholders may be focused on air quality at the school gate or whether seasonal workers can afford rent. The friction between these viewpoints is not just semantic; it shapes what gets funded, what gets fixed, and what quietly remains off the balance sheet of responsibility.
- Corporate focus: metrics,ratings,investor confidence
- Community focus: lived experience,safety,dignity
- Risk for ESG: credibility gaps and “green hush”
| Corporate Message | Community Reality |
|---|---|
| “Net-zero by 2040” | Unreliable public transport today |
| Global human-rights policy | Irregular hours at a local contractor |
| Inclusive hiring campaign | No childcare or safe commute options |
Growing pressure from regulators,activists and employees is forcing firms to move beyond curated narratives and invite uncomfortable voices into the room. That means shifting from one-way disclosure to co-created agendas, where residents, workers and indigenous groups help define what “good” looks like. When companies embed participatory methods – community panels, worker councils, citizen science – the story of ESG stops being a corporate monologue and becomes a negotiated account of shared risks and benefits, grounded less in slogans and more in verifiable change.
How investor expectations are reshaping who speaks for sustainability
In boardrooms once dominated by CFOs and corporate affairs directors,a new power bloc is quietly rearranging the seating plan: investors who treat sustainability metrics as core financial data rather than charitable add-ons. Their demands are reframing not just what gets disclosed, but who is deemed credible enough to deliver the message. Proxy advisors,stewardship teams at asset managers and ESG-focused analysts now routinely interrogate climate scenarios,labor standards and supply-chain resilience with the same intensity once reserved for earnings per share. As a result, narrative control is shifting away from glossy sustainability reports towards technically fluent voices who can withstand forensic scrutiny and link emissions trajectories, water risk or human rights exposure directly to valuation models and cost of capital.
This recalibration is also redrawing the internal map of influence. Where sustainability teams were once siloed, investor pressure is forcing closer alliances between:
- Chief Sustainability Officers and Investor Relations to produce integrated, data-backed briefings.
- Risk and Audit Committees to treat climate and social risks as mainstream governance issues.
- Operational leaders who can translate decarbonisation targets into tangible capex and productivity outcomes.
| Key Voice | Old Role | New Expectation |
|---|---|---|
| CFO | Financial gatekeeper | Explains ESG in cash-flow terms |
| CSO | Report author | Strategic risk and value architect |
| Investor Relations | Quarterly storyteller | ESG data translator for markets |
The media’s gatekeeping role in framing winners and losers in ESG
Newsrooms, podcasts and financial platforms increasingly act as arbiters of whose sustainability stories gain traction and whose are sidelined. By choosing which data points to spotlight and which case studies to elevate, journalists and editors quietly define what “good” and “bad” ESG look like.A bold emissions pledge with a compelling founder narrative is more likely to be profiled than a low-key,methodical supply-chain overhaul,even if the latter has greater long-term impact. This editorial selection process can quickly harden into a hierarchy of perceived performance, where certain sectors, regions or ownership models are routinely cast as winners, while others become shorthand for laggards.
- Headlines simplify complex scores into binary verdicts: “leader” or “failure”.
- Soundbites from vocal activists or CEOs crowd out quieter, data-driven voices.
- Short news cycles reward dramatic ESG incidents over incremental progress.
- Visual storytelling favours photogenic projects over invisible back-office changes.
| Media Frame | Perceived Winner | Perceived Loser |
|---|---|---|
| “Green pioneer” narrative | High-profile tech brand | Unbranded industrial supplier |
| Single-issue spotlight | Firm with one flagship project | Firm with broad but quiet reforms |
| Scandal-driven coverage | Vocal critics and short-sellers | Companies framed as repeat offenders |
Building an inclusive ESG storytelling framework for business schools and boards
For tomorrow’s leaders, the ability to frame environmental and social impact is as fundamental as reading a balance sheet.Yet too often, ESG narratives are authored by a narrow circle of voices: senior executives, dominant shareholder groups, or a single discipline within the faculty. A more rigorous and democratic approach requires business schools and boards to hard-wire plurality into their storytelling architecture. This means curating cross-functional case studies, co-teaching modules that blend finance, climate science and behavioural psychology, and using live board simulations where students and directors stress-test competing narratives in real time. It also means shifting from glossy success stories to evidence-based accounts that include trade-offs, dissenting opinions and incomplete outcomes.
- Shared authorship: Students, alumni, community partners and affected stakeholders co-create case materials and board briefings.
- Structured dissent: Formal roles for “ESG sceptics” and “impact advocates” in classroom debates and governance workshops.
- Data plus lived experience: Quantitative indicators are paired with testimony from workers, suppliers and local communities.
- Continuous challenge: Storylines are revisited annually against fresh data,not archived as finished narratives.
| Story Element | Customary Approach | Inclusive Approach |
|---|---|---|
| Protagonist | CEO as sole hero | Multi-voice ensemble |
| Evidence | Selective KPIs | Mixed methods, audited |
| Outcome | Linear success arc | Messy, iterative learning |
| Audience | Investors only | Investors plus society |
Wrapping Up
the question of who gets to tell the story of ESG is really a question of who gets to shape the future of business itself. As regulators, investors, activists and executives all compete to define what “good” looks like, the balance of narrative power is shifting from unilateral corporate storytelling to a more contested, plural arena.
For business leaders, the task ahead is less about finding the perfect ESG script and more about engaging credibly in this evolving conversation: opening up their data, exposing their trade-offs and accepting that uncomfortable scrutiny is now part of the license to operate. For investors and policymakers, it is indeed about recognising that metrics alone will not carry the story; context, accountability and lived experience also matter.
What is clear is that ESG’s narrative will no longer be written behind closed doors. It will be co-authored – by markets, by society and by those willing to interrogate both the promises and the performance. The organisations that thrive will be those that understand this new reality, and are prepared not just to tell their ESG story, but to let others help write it.
