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Cet article s’intéresse au discours de l’industrie de l’investissement d’impact à travers le cas du Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), l’une des plus importantes organisations à faire la promotion de cette approche à travers le monde. À partir d’une analyse documentaire, nous décrivons le concept flou d’« investissement d’impact » qui se trouve au cœur de ce discours. Afin de favoriser la diffusion de ce concept et de son discours, le GIIN fait appel à deux techniques de « concrétisation » qui le rendent plus tangible : l’objectivation de l’impact social ou environnemental d’un investissement qui fait exister ce dernier à travers des mesures quantifiables et son exemplification, qui se focalise avant tout sur les investisseurs et leurs intentions plutôt que sur les entreprises bénéficiaires ou les populations et environnements visés in fine par ces investissements. Nous montrons enfin que ce concept est porté par un discours plus général qui est construit autour d’une logique dite « gagnant-gagnant ».

This article looks at the discourse of the impact investing industry (a term that designates an investment whose stated intention is to produce both a social or environmental impact and a financial return on investment) through the case of the Global Impact Investing Network, one of the largest organizations promoting this investment approach worldwide. Illustrating the ‘caring’ shift (Barman E., 2015) in capitalist discourse at the beginning of the 21st century, impact investors argue that it is possible to finance businesses with a mission to solve social or environmental problems (poverty, poor access to education or health, non-renewable energy, climate or biodiversity crisis, etc.) without having to sacrifice financial returns. Based on a document analysis, we first describe the vague concept of impact investing which is at the heart of its discourse. To make impact exist and promote its discourse, the GIIN uses two ‘concretization’ techniques: objectification techniques make impact exist through measurements and quantifiable indicators. Exemplification techniques focus on investors and emphasize their intentions as opposed to investees or beneficiary populations. Finally, we show that the concept of impact investment is supported by a more general discourse that is built around a so-called ‘win-win’ logic. According to the GIIN, this new practice of sustainable finance would have the advantage of producing only winners, thus reversing the idea that what is gained on one side is lost on the other.