With a little help from a stranger: The impact of external change agents on corporate sustainability investments

We investigate the role external change agents (e.g., consultants), play in stimulating corporate sustainability investments. Using data on more than 5,300 energy efficiency investment decisions by 462 firms, we find that firms that draw more strongly on external change agents seize significantly more sustainable investment opportunities. We show that external change agents are more effective in stimulating investments if they broadly search for investment opportunities and are more strongly involved in the implementation of change initiatives. Moreover, surprisingly, we do not find that using internal change agents in parallel with external agents enhances the effectiveness of external change agents. Our findings have important implications for the literature on corporate sustainability as they point to external change agents as an important means of steering firms onto more sustainable pathways. Additionally, we shed light on the conditions under which external change agents can be used to most effectively overcome organizational path dependencies.