Pens and purse strings: Exploring the opportunities and limits to funding actionable sustainability science

•Program managers in U.S. and Europe are observing and acting on changes in science funding that could strengthen links between sustainability knowledge and action.•Interviews and document analysis showcase how program managers exercise discretion in their duties and may contribute to research policy formation.•Program manager discretion can be constrained by organizational capacity and a perceived obligation to operate in line with research community norms.•Different management styles and expectations for science interact to result in multiple ways to conceive and enforce the social contract for science.•More understanding of the drivers of actionable knowledge and the social contract(s) for science will require further evaluation of program management and research impact. Producing actionable science to improve social and environmental well-being enables the scientific enterprise to uphold expectations that accompany public funding for science. While innovations in the management of science funding may help overcome institutional hurdles to generating actionable science, the role of program managers in implementing such changes is relatively underexamined. Using sustainability science and related fields as a case, this study examines program documents (n = 33) and interviews of program management staff (n = 61) from public science funding programs in the United States and Europe. The results illuminate program management perspectives on the changing relationship between science and society and their own role in shaping it. In many instances, program managers in both regions are actively experimenting with practices that may strengthen links between knowledge and action. In certain contexts, program manager discretion may also amount to a form of science policy formation. However, program managers may still be limited in their ability to enact changes due to capacity constraints and still prevalent norms expressed by the research community. These results provide a window, and basis for future research, into the contemporary practice of science funding program management and its implications for sustainability and the social contract for science. [Display omitted]