Towards a critical social impact framework: enhancing support for culturally and racially marginalised consumers in the Australian energy market

The social impact agenda has been advanced for the past decade under the auspices of mechanisms such as the Research Excellence Framework in the UK (Tilley et al., 2018). This has become an accepted part of the metrification of academic work but has raised questions about the fundamental differences in how impact is conceptualised and instrumentalised across disciplines. There is increasing evidence that there are negative impacts on research, researchers and universities under pressure to achieve impact metrics including increased admin and reporting workloads, short termism, distortion of research agendas, performative compliance and gaming of the system, and marginalisation of slow, relational or critical scholarship (The Wellcome Trust, 2020; Tinkler, 2020). Furthermore, the impact agenda can also have real world negative impacts for communities such as tokenistic engagement, extractive research practices and short-term interventions that produce measurable outputs rather than sustained community benefits (Metcalf et al., 2021). In this paper we ask what a social impact agenda in business research is for, how it is governed, and how such work can and should be conducted. Furthermore, we consider how the implicit orientation of the social impact agenda in business research often fails to acknowledge that what constitutes social good is often contested and tends to be ultimately defined by those who hold power – especially governments, corporations and economic and social elites (Gordon et al., 2016).

Our paper argues for the importance of adopting critical perspectives for social impact in business research. We draw upon a social marketing research case study focusing on the experiences of Culturally and Racially Marginalised (CARM) consumers ^[1]* in the Australian energy market, we introduce the CSI (Critical Social Impact) Framework. This framework sets out a process for critically oriented research, theorising, methods, analysis and co-interpretation, co-design and development of recommendations that can help drive social impact for social good. Our goal is to encourage business researchers to adopt more critical perspectives in advancing a social impact agenda that effectively addresses global challenges, including the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations, 2015). In doing so, this can help advance pathways for driving social impact through behavioural business research (Russell-Bennett et al., 2019). Managerially, this is important as it can help address how organisations design, govern and evidence social impact without reinforcing existing inequities.

The social impact agenda is now a major feature of higher education, with increasing governmental, societal, institutional and academic expectations to orient research accordingly (Smith et al., 2020). Making social impact is now also a prominent feature of business research discourse, as evidenced by the recent launch of this publication: The Journal of Social Impact in Business Research. Yet, as Smith et al. (2020) and others attest (Jazeel, 2011; Power, 2018; McCowan, 2018; Kidd et al., 2021), there are growing questions about and critiques of the social impact agenda and attendant concerns.

A critical perspective is necessary because much social impact thinking in business research remains grounded in managerial and measurement logics that treat impact as a politically neutral and linear output of research (Smit and Hessels, 2021; Yang et al., 2021). This tends to under-acknowledge power relations, epistemic inclusion and exclusion and the politics of who defines impact and social good (McCowan, 2018). As a result, well intentioned impact agendas can serve dominant paradigms and overlook unintended consequences for communities experiencing marginalisation (Smith et al., 2020).

Our work joins nascent conversations to consider the role and importance of adopting critical perspectives when conducting business research for social impact. We argue that a critical approach in business research can address some of the problems associated with the social impact agenda and provide clear guiding principles for doing such work. We identify that a CSI approach in business research involves critical thinking (Glaser, 1942; Alston, 2001), reflexivity, a critical research ontology, epistemology and methodologies, using critical theories and a critical approach to co-design, development of recommendations and impact activities. The value of a critical perspective for social impact research is that it can help uncover biases, assumptions and established power dynamics; foster individual and collective reflexivity; facilitate diverse perspectives and support inclusivity, and advance social justice and social good goals (Gordon and Vink, 2024). Indeed, critical approaches have a constructive and emancipatory purpose – to question, challenge, redefine, rethink and escape from current systems and outcomes towards something better (Horkheimer, 1972) – which aligns well with social impact to facilitate a social good agenda.

The rest of our paper is structured as follows. Following an overview and critique of current social impact frameworks, our paper introduces the CSI framework as developed from a project that explored the lived experiences and market representations of CARM energy consumers in Australia, and which provided recommendations for improving support for them in navigating the energy market. The framework is oriented around the following key elements: critical ontology and epistemology, critical theorising, critical research design and methods, critical analysis and co-interpretation, critical co-design of recommendations and critical impact activities.

Social impact has been defined in many ways, but most commonly as:

Such definitions have been criticised for being both so broad that they encompass almost anything, and so vague that they lack meaning (Hurst and Johnston, 2025) and scholars are urged to critically reflect on social impact to prevent it becoming a “catch-all” term (Yang et al., 2021). More consideration should be placed on what is meant by social impact in specific contexts. Through a critical lens, social impact is not a neutral or universally agreed idea, but a contested space that is shaped by power relations, and where dominant structures, institutions and actors define and operationalise impact in ways that align with their own values and interests.

Social impact assessment frameworks are recognised as vital for evaluating societal consequences of projects, policies and programs and for promoting research that is impactful and socially oriented (Ward et al., 2023). However, traditional assessments privilege productivity metrics such as bibliometrics and funding, which narrows the definition of impact and shapes what kind of research is pursued and valued. Scholars and policymakers have argued that traditional metrics are insufficient for determining research value, given their limited reflection of real-world benefit (Smit and Hesseles, 2021; Milat et al., 2015). While methods such as panel assessments, interviews and case studies have provided richer insights into social impact, they come with their own set of biases and resource barriers (Milat et al., 2015). Many of the issues around these methods stem from their post-hoc nature. Indeed, research projects that achieve the greatest policy and practice impacts have been shown to be those that address proximal needs of the policy context by engaging end-users from the inception of research projects and utilising existing policy networks and structures (Milat et al., 2015). Attention must therefore be given not only to assessing the outcomes of research but also to how social impact is produced through the research process.

In business research, social impact is predominantly framed through metrics, measurement and managerial logics that often mask questions of social justice, inequality and structure change (Haenlein and Jack, 2025). This may reinforce the status quo and inhibit the truly transformative potential of social impact. However, there are opportunities to enrich CSI research in business through acknowledging intersections with established sub-disciplines such as critical marketing, social marketing and transformative service research. Critical marketing has a long and established tradition of foregrounding the importance and value of criticality in business research (Tadajewski et al., 2026). Meanwhile, social marketing has traditionally focused on behaviour change for social good which strongly aligns with creating positive social impact, and in recent years has engaged with a more critically oriented agenda (Gordon et al., 2022). Similarly, transformative service research aligns with a positive social impact agenda through emphasising consumer well-being outcomes and service systems transformation (Anderson et al., 2013).

CSI converges with these existing sub-disciplines through a normative commitment to social good, but focuses increased attention on power relations, epistemic justice and the politics of knowledge production across the entire research process in business research. In doing so, CSI extends existing disciplinary approaches by not only introducing critical perspectives, or by focusing on how change can be achieved, but by considering who defines impact, whose voices are legitimised, and which forms of change are prioritised?

Social impact therefore is not simply a measurable endpoint but a dynamic, co-produced outcome that emerges through continual engagement between researchers, stakeholders and broader societal contexts. This points to the importance of process frameworks that capture how research practices themselves contribute to shaping societal value. Numerous practical frameworks such as the Interorganizational Committee on Guidelines and Principles (2003/1995), the Public Involvement in Research Impact Toolkit (National Institute for Health and Care Research, 2024) and the Co-Design to Empower Framework (Figueiredo et al., 2023) provide guidelines for supporting, evaluating and reporting patient and public involvement in research. However, these approaches largely focus on methodological and reporting stages, often overlooking opportunities to strengthen social impact throughout the entire research process. Furthermore, these frameworks largely assume that impact follows a linear pathway from research to outcome, encouraging a short-term focus. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, current frameworks fail to acknowledge the potential problems associated with a social impact research objective. Without acknowledging these limitations, researchers risk reinforcing existing inequalities or misrepresenting the communities they aim to support. The introduction of the CSI framework, therefore, aims to address these gaps by providing researchers with a structured guideline for embedding, monitoring and reflecting on social impact across all stages of a project, while remaining attentive to its complexities and potential unintended consequences.

A critical ontology to social impact in business research represents a foundational shift from traditional positivist paradigms surrounding impact towards a reflexive, emancipatory and social justice orientation. Reflexivity is commonly and closely associated with a critical ontology (Wacquant and Bourdieu, 1992; Fournier and Grey, 2000) and allows people to “consider themselves in relation to their (social) contexts and vice versa” (Archer, 2007, p. 4) acknowledging how personal perspectives and biases, power structures, ideology and agency shape the world and social outcomes (Fournier and Grey, 2000). In essence, a critical ontology adopts a philosophical perspective that interrogates how our understanding of being and becoming is shaped by power structures and social dynamics. It explores relationships between what exists, how we perceive and understand it, and possibilities for change and transformation, in relation to power, social justice and identity (Bhaskar, 2020). In both critical management studies (Alvesson, 1994) and critical marketing scholarship (Tadajewski et al., 2026), critical ontology has long been advocated as a way to incorporate social considerations into business-oriented perspectives. A critical ontology provides a means to examine often overlooked assumptions that shape our understandings of how to have, and measure social impact. This approach has been used in business research to provide a critique of consumerism (Gibson, 2011) and business and organisational processes (Scherer, 2011).

Critical thinking is foundational for a critical ontology. Critical thinking is the process of actively and thoughtfully analysing, synthesising, applying or evaluating information to inform our thinking, beliefs, judgments and actions (Glaser, 1942; Alston, 2001). This is important for social impact research because it helps to facilitate clarity, accuracy, consistency, relevance, sound reasoning, strong evidence, inclusivity and fairness in decision-making (Alston, 2001). A critical thinking approach links to reflexive practices, selection of theory, methods, analysis and co-interpretation, co-design and development of recommendations and impact activities that are featured in the project. This critical approach was discussed among our research team and built into the project from the design and funding application stage through to completion.

A critical ontological approach allowed us to investigate how existing energy market practices perpetuate social inequalities and systematic injustices for CARM energy consumers. We uncovered issues of power, voice and marginalisation (Spicer et al., 2009) which effectively excluded CARM consumers from the clean energy transition. Accordingly, our project made time and space for critical reflexivity through ongoing researcher dialogues about our own positionalities, engaging with critical theory and literature, use of reflexive questions through the research process (e.g. what voices are being included or excluded), member checking with research participants and fostering critical dialogue through co-design of solutions. Critical reflection also shaped the focus of the research issues and questions because for many CARM energy consumers energy efficiency and climate change effects from home energy consumption were less pertinent than financial vulnerability, problems with poor utility service provision, or lack of support such as language translation services or clear explanations of billing and tariffs. Thus, the project was more representative of CARM consumers’ experiences and gave greater emphasis to better supporting consumers in navigating the complex Australian energy market (Bádéjọ and Gordon, 2022).

Meanwhile, critical epistemology concerns the politics of knowledge production illustrating how knowledge is value-laden, situated, and often serves hegemonic interests (Harding, 1992; Morrow and Brown, 1994). Our critical epistemological approach supported methodological pluralism combining automated text analysis, critical discourse analysis (CDA), ethnography and co-design methods as well as the inclusion of marginalised voices by centring CARM energy consumers, their lived experiences and their ideas for social impact solutions that could better support them through the clean energy transition. Indeed, the co-design of recommendations during the project was focused on realising transformative potential by not simply describing the lived experiences of CARM consumers in the Australian energy market, but by explicating clear and actionable changes to better support them at different levels of influence and across different actors.

Our project also adopted critical theorising as an approach to social impact in business research. Critical theory tends to be rooted in Marxist and neo-Marxist Frankfurt School approaches and has been expanded through feminist, intersectionality, postcolonial and critical pedagogy perspectives among others. These perspectives are concerned with uncovering and challenging the socio-political and economic conditions that underpin systems of domination, exclusion and inequality (Marx, 1867; Horkheimer, 1972; Said, 1978; Mohanty, 1984; Crenshaw, 1989; hooks, 1994). These theoretical lenses push us beyond normative and instrumental ideas of social impact to critically consider what is meant by impact and for whom, what knowledge is privileged, how impact is measured and whose interests are served.

As with many research projects dealing with complex social issues, a multi-theoretical approach was adopted. Given the focus of the project was on problematising existing energy market narratives, understanding the lived experiences of CARM energy consumers and developing recommendations and impact activities to better support consumers, we combined critical theory, narrative theory and intersectionality. A critical theory approach underpinned the research project helping to understand systems of power and ideological tools such as dominant narratives in the Australian energy market, how CARM consumers experience inequalities, and how to create social impact pathways to address these problems.

Critical theory is an interdisciplinary paradigm that focuses on uncovering, critiquing, challenging and changing structural inequalities, power relations and ideological forces embedded within economic, political and social systems that create oppression. Critical theory originated through a Marxian tradition with a focus on critiquing capitalism and addressing class politics. A broader range of critical social theories now engage with intersectional (Collins, 2019), postcolonial (Said, 1978), feminist (Davis, 1981) and decolonial perspectives (wa Thiong’o, 1986), with a common emphasis on interrogating power, calling for reflexivity and advocating for epistemic justice and the dismantling of systems of oppression through research and practice. Rather than seeking to be objective and neutral, critical theorist researchers advocate for an emancipatory agenda and one that not only describes and interprets the world but aims to transform it by exposing hegemonic power.

Narrative theory was used to design, frame, analyse and interpret existing energy market narratives in Stage 1 of our project which included automated text analysis and CDA methods. Narrative theory focuses on how stories are structured, shared and represented and how they shape human experiences, understanding and identity (Bruner, 1991). Commonly, narratives use characters, discourse, functions and actions that shape the process of storytelling, listening and interpretation and influence whether stories are received as believable, possible or enjoyable (Barthes, 1975; Rohse et al., 2013). Prior social marketing research has identified that narratives can play an important role in representing, engaging and encouraging behaviour change among householders (Gordon et al., 2016).

Finally, intersectionality is a theoretical framework for understanding how social structures produce and reproduce multiple levels of power asymmetry, privilege and oppression for people whose social and political identities are shaped by intersecting and overlapping factors such as class, gender, race, ethnicity, language, culture, sexuality, ability, physical appearance or political beliefs, to create a unique form of social injustice (Crenshaw, 1989; McCall, 2005). By embedding intersectional theory throughout the research process, our research moved beyond prior and somewhat surface-level descriptions of disadvantage in the energy market associated with ethnicity, income, education level or sex as discrete categories. Rather, we drew upon intersectionality to reveal how overlapping axes of identity such as race, language, class and migration status mediate access to energy services and exposure to systemic barriers. Our critically oriented theoretical foundation for the research informed subsequent stages of the project, which we discuss next in relation to research design and methods.

Critical research design and methods refer to approaches that set out not only to describe and understand the world, but to challenge, critique and change it (Alvesson and Deetz, 2020). Rooted in critical theory, critical methods focus on interrogating and critiquing power structures, engagement with critical reflexivity and fostering social justice and emancipation from inequality, marginalisation and oppression (Kincheloe and McLaren, 2007; Creswell and Poth, 2017). In effect,critical research acknowledges that reality and knowledge are socially constructed and always embedded within power dynamics (Harding, 1992). This contrasts with positivist paradigms that focus on objectivity, and generalisability of results (Bryman, 2015). Our research comprised three key stages and employed a multi-method research design that was grounded in critical principles:

1. Automated text and CDA of energy market policies and program narratives;

2. Ethnography with CARM energy consumers; and

3. Co-design of recommendations

All participants in the project were recompensed for their time and effort following each stage of the research. Ethical approval for the project was granted by the relevant university human research ethics committee.

Stage 1 featured textual and CDA of existing energy market policies and program narratives to interrogate the language and representations, assumptions and ideologies used to frame Australia energy consumers. The analysis focused on publicly available documents including company reports, annual reports and media releases from key energy stakeholders as defined by the Australian Energy Regulator (AER, 2022). These stakeholders included government agencies and departments, energy institutions, state regulators, ombudsman, representative groups, consumer organisations and international organisations.

Stage 2 involved qualitative ethnographic methods including narrative interviews and video ethnographies with 21 CARM energy consumers from African, South-East Asian or Middle Eastern backgrounds to understand their lived experiences of using energy and navigating the energy market. All participants were household energy account holders, aged 18 or older, first- or second-generation migrants, and were Australian residents or citizens. Participants were recruited via existing community networks as well as through a reputable professional research recruitment agency. During this stage, participants took part in 60–90-minute qualitative interviews where they spoke about energy use at home, the tensions and challenges of using energy, dealing with the energy market and retailers, understanding energy bills, and if, and how cultural practices shaped their energy use. Following this, the video ethnography element involved participants recording 5–10-minute video clips demonstrating everyday energy practices like cooking, laundry, cooling and heating. This was followed up by shared viewing and discussion of videos to elicit participant critiques of the energy market, forms of marginalisation, and suggestions for better serving and supporting CARM consumers.

Stage 3 involved collaborative co-design of recommendations with CARM energy consumers for market actors to improve support and facilitate equity in service provision. Adopting a critical approach to co-design emphasises the importance of addressing power asymmetries, historical and structural inequities, and epistemic justice through the process (Hernandez Ibinarriaga and Martin, 2021). Rooted in critical theory and intersectional awareness, our approach positioned co-design not simply as a method for generating user engagement, consultation and input, but as a social-justice oriented and transformative practice centring the lived experiences, cultural knowledge and agency of CARM energy consumers (Costanza-Chock, 2020) to avoid tokenistic solutions (Akama and Light, 2020). It was also key to ensure meaningful participation, to prioritise CARM consumers’ perspectives over other stakeholders, and account for barriers relating to language, trust and limited access to digital and energy infrastructures that others may take for granted (Bouzarovski et al., 2022). Co-design activities were carefully sense checked in terms of rationale, required resourcing, cultural safety and systemic change as well as practical everyday relevance. The co-design workshops were audio-recorded and transcribed with participants invited to reflect on transcripts.

The critical nature of this research approach lay not only in its focus on traditionally underrepresented communities in the Australian energy market, but also in its explicit focus on using methods to question dominant narratives and power structures and foreground lived experiences of CARM energy consumers. Our approach prioritised critical reflexivity through sense checking with participants, and the research team reflecting on how our positionalities and experiences as energy consumers ^[2]* shaped our engagement and interpretations. This helped to critically interrogate biases including our own, illustrated issues of representation and attended to the structural and discursive forces shaping consumer experiences. Furthermore, inclusion of co-design as both a methodological and a political practice, which has not usually been standard practice in our context, helped foster participatory knowledge production, challenging hierarchical researcher-participant dynamics and promoting epistemic justice.

Adopting a critical approach to social impact research in business also requires the use of critical analysis to help unpack power dynamics and systemic inequalities that shape the experiences of people experiencing marginalisation (Willis, 2007). Our analytical approach therefore attended to these concerns and how they shaped the lived experiences of CARM energy consumers in the complex, highly technical and corporate capitalistic context of the Australian energy market (Chester, 2014; Gordon et al., 2022).

In Stage 1 of the project our data set was analysed using an inductive, mixed methods approach (Creswell, 2014). This included automated text analysis using the Linguistic Inquiry Word Count (LIWC) tool (Pennebaker et al., 2015), and qualitative CDA (Fairclough, 1995). LIWC was selected as it enables theoretically informed interrogation of affective, cognitive and social dimensions of language, which combined with subsequent CDA aligned with the project’s critical and narrative orientation. LIWC is particularly suited to examining how dominant discourses, values and power-laden frames are linguistically constructed and reproduced within institutional narratives.

The LIWC automated text analysis revealed higher levels of typical sustainability and masculinity lexemes, and Australian energy market narratives were found to be primarily framed around sustainability and masculinity linguistic sources and their respective, larger discourse systems. To support interpretation, the key linguistic patterns identified from the LIWC analysis are visually summarised in Table 1, to illustrate the prominence of validated construct categories and the dominant discourse identified within Australian energy policy and program narratives. The Stage 1 data set also incorporated visual elements, including photographs, infographics and visual timelines, which were analysed for their narrative insight. In this, we drew on the text-interpretive approach where visual aspects of a text are considered equally relevant in conveying meaning separately from written text (McQuarrie and Mick, 1999).

Adopting an intersectional approach to analysis we checked the cultural, class based and gender diversity of the authors and signatories of the data set. For example, visual profiles of senior management and company leadership revealed Anglo-Celtic or European backgrounds, male appearance and traditional male names for most individuals named in the data set in executive, leadership and/or managerial positions (e.g. Australian Energy Council Executive Board) of Anglo-Celtic or European origin (e.g. Australian Energy Market Operator Executive Leadership Team). Therefore, observations of our data set reflect those of the wider Australian context, with individuals of non-European or Indigenous background or female-identified gender in leadership and managerial roles absent (Soutphommasane et al., 2018). This insight reinforces Strengers (2014)’ conceptualisation of the masculine discourses that dominate the Australian energy market.

CDA was then applied to further interrogate power structures, dominant narratives as well as normative representations of energy consumers. This method aligns with Fairclough’s (2013) framework for how CDA can reveal the way that language reinforces institutional power and marginalisation. Our CDA built upon the insights from the automated text analysis and drew attention to how a dominant consumer sustainability and responsibility narrative serves to individually responsibilise consumers (see Giesler and Veresiu, 2014) for managing their energy consumption efficiently and sustainably to help tackle the climate crisis. Furthermore, representations and narratives of non-European or Indigenous background or female-identified gender people were notably absent.

Using the narrative theoretical framework developed by Campbell (1949, 2008), and drawing upon intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989) we found that the Australian energy market narratives create a dominant social norm of the energy consumer as rational, male, highly educated, with high income, who only needs access to information and education to successful navigate the market and clean energy transition. This representation neither reflects cultural and gender diversity of Australian energy consumers nor acknowledges the complex array of intersectional and socio-cultural characteristics that shape energy consumption beyond economic rationality (Waitt et al., 2016; Gordon et al., 2021).

The analysis of the Stage 2 ethnographic data emphasised narrative and participatory video ethnographies to foreground the lived experiences and realities of CARM energy consumers. Our critical approach moved beyond describing cultural practices to illustrate and challenge oppressive systems of power and advocate for social change (Madison, 2020). The data analysis adopted an iterative approach, with interview data, video footage and field notes being organised using open, axial and selective coding of categories and concepts through inductive and deductive thinking (Strauss and Corbin, 1990). We toggled between data sets guided by critical theory, narrative theory and intersectionality perspectives, using member checking and co-interpretation of meaning with participants through the analysis process.

Our analysis highlighted diverse experiences and practices in CARM households that were often intergenerational, a mix of ethnic backgrounds, lower income, in rental housing, and where traditional cultural practices relating to food, socialisation, home making and security were imbricated with energy consumption. Participants often struggled with high energy prices and bill shock, reduced levels of comfort, market complexity, opaque pricing, difficulties in monitoring energy consumption and costs, poor levels of service support, poor retailer behaviour and lack of culturally appropriate and multilingual language support. Contrasting with the narratives identified in Stage 1, Stage 2 ethnographic analysis revealed that CARM consumers felt a lack of agency, trust or engagement by energy market actors, and that market narratives do not represent them. They were sceptical about Australian energy policy and the clean energy transition, lacked engagement with environmental responsibility, and were frustrated about how to plan for a sustainable future.

The analysis of the Stage 3 co-design workshop data adopted a critically informed, iterative approach, with audio transcripts, notes and fieldnotes inductively and deductively coded (Strauss and Corbin, 1990). Informed by critical theory, narrative inquiry and intersectionality the analysis of workshop data attended to power relations, racial marginalisation and institutional practices (Costanza-Chock, 2020; Hernandez Ibinarriaga and Martin, 2021) of Australian Government and energy market actors. Analytical themes focusing on developing recommendations prioritised interventions that attended to the structural conditions underpinning the marginalisation of CARM consumers in the Australian energy market.

The co-design workshop identified three areas for intervention. First, energy market actors require a whole of organisation approach to better support CARM consumers. As an example, for energy retailers this would mean product development and design such as tariffs, customer service provision, billing and debt collection functions to be coordinated with clear understanding of the needs of CARM consumers such as translation services, culturally sensitive service provision, and avoiding exacerbating difficult situations relating to health, social or financial vulnerability.

Second, energy market actors need to acknowledge the complexities of many CARM householders’ lives such as racial marginalisation, financial or health challenges and language barriers. It is necessary to assist with their energy needs through language and translation services, to provide referrals or access to community support, financial counselling and legal services as acknowledgment of intersectionality shaped disadvantage (Crenshaw, 1989). As well, improved screening and monitoring processes should assist CARM consumers experiencing challenges or hardship to enter supportive customer hardship programs, avoid disconnection orders and aggressive debt collection approaches that intimidate.

Third, participants emphasised the importance of providing multiple touchpoints for better support, making online and digital services easy to access, being sensitive to diverse needs and avoiding a one-size-fits-all approach. As well, language, messaging and communication that is friendly, supportive and non-judgemental, representative of different cultural and racial groups and their needs and experiences and avoids stigma was viewed as crucial.

Findings from the workshops included a need for more representative energy narratives that profile, feature and better engage with different CARM householders and strengthen community engagement and partnerships between Australian energy market actors and trusted, local and on-the ground community groups and organisations. This could be supported by improving cultural competency through staff training, communication and messaging, greater cultural diversity within organisations and provision of culturally informed services such as in-language and translation provisions. The next section considers the critically informed development of recommendations and presents the six key issues that emerged from the project.

From a critical perspective the development of research recommendations when undertaking social impact focused projects should be grounded in a reflexive and social justice-oriented approach that acknowledges, challenges and addresses power relations, dominant discourses and structural inequalities and goes beyond technical or policy focused responses. This means focusing on recommendations that enhance visibility, address commonly used deficit-based or individualising frames, and mask systemic drivers of vulnerability, hardship and inequality (Bedggood et al., 2021).

Unlike conventional approaches to co-design that emphasise participation, consultation and idea generation, a critical co-design approach explicitly interrogates power asymmetries within the design process itself (Hernandez Ibinarriaga and Martin, 2021). This includes questioning who sets agendas, whose knowledge is legitimised and how structural constraints shape participation. Practices used to address some of these concerns included having a greater numerical balance as well as diversity of lived experience of CARM research participants compared with sector stakeholders in the workshops, running hybrid workshops at different times of the day to facilitate attendance from people with work and caring responsibilities, and including activities that questioned the inherent power dynamics in the energy market. This also as outlined in the previous section included an analysis approach that was informed by critical theory, narrative inquiry and intersectionality to foreground and interrogate power relations, marginalisation and normative institutional discourses and practices (Costanza-Chock, 2020). In this project, critical co-design functioned not simply as a method, but as a political approach and ethical practice aimed at redistributing epistemic authority and resisting tokenistic consultation and inclusion.

Indeed, developing research recommendations in social impact research is inherently political as it seeks to redistribute not simply material resources, but epistemic authority in ways that give voice to marginalised groups such as CARM consumers. Following this critically informed approach, six priority recommendations were developed from the project as follows:

1. Develop representative energy narratives.

2. Increase community engagement and partnerships.

3. Make energy billing easier to understand and give households the ability to monitor and track their energy consumption.

4. Increase the familiarisation and targeting of energy policy and programs with CARM consumers.

5. Increase the cultural competency of energy market stakeholders.

6. Develop targeted social marketing programmes with CARM energy consumers.

The presentation and description of recommendations is vital for ensuring their clarity, feasibility and effective implementation. To facilitate this, each of our recommendations included information on the aim and rationale, features and characteristics, timing, resources required, target segment(s) and value benefit. Table 2 provides an overview of these recommendations, illustrating how they were structured in a way that can help create practicable pathways to impact.

What makes these recommendations distinct is their grounding in a critical approach. Each one moves beyond surface-level fixes to interrogate and address systemic inequities. Each recommendation clearly articulates what is being recommended and the aim and rationale behind it, ensuring actions are purpose driven. This provides a clear, structured and actionable pathway for translating critical insights into actionable, practical strategies.

From a critical perspective, undertaking social impact activities means moving beyond instrumentalist frameworks that equate impact solely with measurable, quantifiable outcomes such as policy citations, economic return on investment or behavioural change or can even create epistemic corruption (McCowan, 2018; Williams, 2020; Kidd et al., 2021). A growing body of literature argues for a more expansive, creative, process-based and qualitative view of impact that acknowledges its iterative, situated and contested nature (Power, 2018; Smith et al., 2020). Instead of framing social impact as an end-goal, a critical perspective emphasises the importance of dynamic processes of engagement with diverse stakeholders including community members, policymakers, industry and advocacy groups that is oriented towards generating pathways for disrupting power asymmetries, foregrounding marginalised voices, and facilitating transformative social relations.

Our project adopted this critical approach to social impact activities. Building on our project findings and recommendations, we co-developed a toolkit of recommendations designed to better support CARM energy consumers in equitable and inclusive ways. The toolkit was widely disseminated to key policymakers, community and customer advocacy organisations, retailers and distributors and research participants. The toolkit was hosted online attracting significant social media and mainstream media coverage, amplifying public awareness of the challenges facing CARM energy consumers in Australia. Findings and recommendations were shared with energy sector stakeholders.

Critically our project recommendations were integrated into the Australian Energy Regulator’s Customer Engagement Toolkit: Better Practices for Identifying and Supporting Consumers Experiencing Vulnerability (Australian Energy Regulator, 2025). This AER initiative set out to instruct, and guide energy sector organisations to recognise and respond to consumer vulnerability through proactive engagement and cited and drew upon our toolkit of recommendations. A milestone reflected its announcement on the Australian Government website.

Combined, the project illustrated how pathways towards social impact unfold in different ways, across multiple sites and temporalities. However, a critical reflection is that to realise true social impact from this project a key consideration moving forward is whether, and how the experiences of, and support for, CARM energy consumers in Australia improves over the long term.

We define CSI as the transformative effects of research that emerge from interrogating and challenging dominant power relations, discourses and structural inequalities while fostering more just, inclusive and participatory outcomes. Drawing upon critical marketing, and critical social marketing perspectives, we approach social impact as a contested and power-laden idea rather than a neutral managerial output. These critical perspectives emphasise the role of critique in revealing how dominant business logics, metrics and narratives can reproduce inequality and marginalisation, underscoring the need for more reflexive and justice-oriented impact frameworks (Gordon et al., 2022; Tadajewski et al., 2026). Unlike metric-driven, instrumental conceptualisations of impact, our critical perspective emphasises the relational and processual nature of change, and how impact unfolds in diverse ways through reflexivity, relational engagement, intersectional critique, amplification of marginalised voices and co-production of marginalised knowledge for more equitable and sustainable outcomes. Through prioritising critique of power relations, reflexivity, ethical responsibility and the recognition of diverse knowledge and voices, CSI in business research can help disrupt exclusionary systems and foster pathways towards structural and cultural transformation in policy, practice and everyday life.

This article extends theorisation of social impact in three ways, representing an envisioning and explicating conceptual contribution to business research (MacInnis, 2011). Firstly, we introduce a systematic, transformative, rights-based approach to conducting impactful business research that privileges consumer empowerment and sustainability of outcomes. Our CSI framework (see Figure 1) equips business researchers with a novel approach to achieve, and measure sustained social impact. By integrating critical theory, participatory design approaches and narrative inquiry, we offer an emancipatory framework for conceptualising social impact. Secondly, our framework reimagines and reconceptualises social impact as a relational engagement process rather than a fixed, measurable outcome. This conceptualisation enables business researchers to interrogate the relational dynamics of power, epistemic exclusion and structural inequalities that can reproduce dominant research paradigms and outcomes. Finally, our framework contributes to the growing body of critical social marketing (see Gordon et al., 2022) and transformative services literature by re-specifying social impact as a relational, power-attentive and intersectionality-informed research practice rather than an instrumental post hoc evaluative outcome. By incorporating multi-level social impact – from the individual to the institutional – we demonstrate the potential of our framework to engender and sustain large scale, transformative impact.

Our CSI framework contributes to practice in several ways. Firstly, we demonstrate how a participatory approach to business research design can multiply social impact through translation and adoption of actionable research insights. This practical guidance for researchers and practitioners (see Figure 2) offers equitable mechanisms for meaningful engagement with marginalised communities and improved wellbeing outcomes. As evidenced by our recommendations we offer concrete strategies and tactics for lowering systemic barriers faced by marginalised consumers. Our framework can influence organisational change by providing clear benchmarks to shift service ecosystem practices beyond performative engagement towards structural and relational transformation. Our framework is a tool for policymakers and managers to inform more inclusive and ethical marketplace strategies that uphold human dignity and align with regulatory standards.

Although our CSI framework offers a critical and robust lens for research and practice, it is not without limitations. Firstly, we acknowledge that this framework was informed by a single case study and may not be generalisable across contexts. Secondly, our co-design method was constrained by time, funding, format and composition, which impacted the depth and breadth of participation and quality of outputs possible. Finally, the transformative and enduring impact of recommendations cannot be qualified without longitudinal research impacting on scalability and sustainability.

Future research could investigate the applicability of our framework across other cultural, geographic contexts or regulatory and public sectors such as justice, education or health sectors to confirm its relevance and transformative potential. This may extend theorisation of the framework and enhance its broader relevance. Longitudinal research can help evaluate the sustained value of CSI interventions in terms of empowerment and transformation of consumers, shifts in organisational behaviours and practices, or policy and regulatory changes.