Organizational Architectures of Sustainable Investment Funds: Evidence from Private Equity

Abstract: We analyze the contractual and marketing documentation of 89 French private equity funds raised between 2017 and 2026, hand-code approximately 120 architectural variables across objectives, resources, incentives and governance, and apply configurational clustering. Three findings emerge. First, sustainable funds do not form a homogeneous organizational category: eight distinct organizational signatures distribute across three families (weakly structured 28.1% intermediate 38.2%, complete 33.7%). Second, each mechanism takes radically different forms and their combinations follow non-random patterns. The carried interest indexed on extra-financial objectives, present in 47.2% of funds, splits into four configurations ranging from generic indexation to calibrated outcome-based thresholds. Third, the additionality strategy structures the compatibility between logics: funds pursuing operational additionality, the theoretically most demanding strategy, display the weakest architectures (25% with a dedicated extra-financial committee versus 62% for financial additionality, 24% with a fully structured measurement process versus 44%). This misalignment between strategic ambition and architectural depth creates the conditions for mission drift and undermines social impact potential. These results extend hybrid organization theory to the financial system and establish the configurational coherence of investment vehicles, not the presence of isolated mechanisms, as the relevant unit of analysis for evaluating social impact potential.