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Battling the Devolution in the Research on Corporate Philanthropy

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Abstract

The conceptual literature increasingly portrays corporate philanthropy (CP) as an old-fashioned and ineffective operationalization of a firm’s corporate social responsibility. In contrast, empirical research indicates that corporations of all sizes, and both in developed and emerging economies, actively practice CP. This disadvantaged status of the concept, and research, on CP, complicates the advancement of our knowledge about the topic. In a systematic review of the literature containing 122 journal articles on CP, we show that this business practice is loaded with unique characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses, and both conceptual and practical challenges that require renewed attention. We identify six interrelated but distinctive research themes in the literature: concept, motives, determinants, practices, business outcomes, and social outcomes. Dividing the literature on CP into six research themes creates an insightful comprehensive map of this intellectual terrain. Moreover, we distinguish among the level at which CP is analyzed: individual, organizational, institutional, or any combination of these levels. The review reveals significant gaps in the knowledge on CP. Most importantly we find that the conceptualization is limited, the research is mostly quantitative, the effects of CP on society are severely under-researched, and there is a lack of multilevel analyses. A detailed future research agenda is offered, including specific suggestions for research designs and measurements.

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Notes

  1. In this respect, we would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for raising the need to look at disciplines other than management, such as political science, which have addressed a critical approach to the study of CSR—including CP. This critical perspective focusing on the potential impacts on the communities, particularly in the developing world, has received special attention (e.g., Blowfield and Frynas 2005; Frynas 2005; Jenkins 2005; Newell 2005; Prieto-Carrón et al. 2006).

Abbreviations

CCI:

Corporate community involvement

CEO:

Chief Executive Officer

CFP:

Corporate financial performance

CP:

Corporate philanthropy

CSP:

Corporate social performance

CSR:

Corporate social responsibility

DJSI:

Dow Jones Sustainability Index

NGO:

Non-governmental organization

SME:

Small and medium enterprise

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Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the discussions at earlier stages of this paper in the context of the ERNOP Working Group on ‘Measuring Philanthropy’. In addition, the authors gratefully acknowledge the guidance of the editor Adam Lindgreen and the anonymous reviewers, for their intensive and inspiring help.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business Economics, Erasmus School of Economics (ESE), Erasmus University Rotterdam, Burgemeester Oudlaan 50, 3062 PA, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    Kellie Liket

  2. Unide, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Av. das Forças Armadas, 1649-026, Lisboa, Portugal

    Ana Simaens

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  1. Kellie Liket
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Appendix 1

Appendix 1

The review scope, which delimits the literature search, included an automated search of peer-review papers in academic journals on the following scientific databases: (1) Science Direct; (2) ISI Web of Knowledge; and (3) ProQuest-ABI/INFORM Global. Based on the output from these three databases, the systematic literature review was performed in two steps.

The first step consisted of a systematic search in a limited number of journals with the following search equation: “corporate philanthropy” OR (philanthropy AND [company or corporate]). We specifically looked for twenty-two journals: twenty journals following Aguinis and Glavas (2012) (Academy of Management Journal; Academy of Management Review; Administrative Science Quarterly; Business and Society; Business Ethics Quarterly; International Journal of Management Reviews; Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science; Journal of Applied Psychology; Journal of Business Ethics; Journal of International Business Studies; Journal of Management; Journal of Management Studies; Journal of Marketing; Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology; Journal of Organizational Behavior; Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes; Organization Science, Organization Studies; Personnel Psychology; and Strategic Management Journal) plus the two nonprofit sector journals that are ISI journals (Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector and Voluntas).

From this first step, we retained 120 papers from the following journals: Academy of Management Journal (3); Academy of Management Review (5); Administrative Science Quarterly (2); Business and Society (12); Business Ethics Quarterly (2); Journal of Business Ethics (71); (The) Journal of Management Studies (3); Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (3); Journal of Marketing (2); Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly (9); Organization Science (1); Strategic Management Journal (5); Voluntas (2). From these, 36 were mostly excluded for three main reasons (did not deal with CP, the organization developing CP initiatives was not a firm; the paper was a book review or editorial). Consequently, the final sample for the first step consisted of 84 journal articles. These papers were coded into the following categories: (1) theoretical/conceptual; (2) empirical—quantitative/qualitative/mixed methods; (3) position of CP in the paper; (4) theme; (5) level and context of analysis; (6) research question; and (7) lessons.

From the first step, the dominance of quantitative research in CP research (only about 10 % was qualitative) became clear, reflecting a general trend in management theory where qualitative methods are greatly undervalued (Heugens and Mol 2005). However, qualitative research has an important role to play in the theory-building process. Hence, we performed a second step that looked in more detail into the literature on CP that uses qualitative methods, but this time there was no pre-selection of journals. In addition, we extended the search equation so as to be more inclusive ([corpor* OR company* OR business OR enterprise* OR firm*] AND [donat* OR philanthrop* OR giving]). Again, any paper that somehow put together (in the title, abstract, or keywords) corporations and philanthropy (or similar wording) was captured. In a second step, the papers selected had to employ qualitative research methods in studying CP (or similar terminology) even if other research methods or topics were covered as well, as is the case for mixed-methods studies combining both qualitative and quantitative research methods. The main research methods associated with qualitative research are ethnography and participant observation, qualitative interviewing (unstructured and semi-structured), focus group, discourse and conversation analysis, and the collection and qualitative analysis of texts and documents (Bryman 2008). In addition, the papers had to explicitly refer to some sort of CP, corporate giving or community involvement, for instance, since these are terms often used interchangeably. In this second step, criteria were applied to around 3800 abstracts that resulted from the initial search in three databases. Second, they were applied to the full papers retrieved from the first selection. The authors were unable to access 5 out of the 51 papers that were then excluded from the analysis (Anghel et al. 2009; Ertuna and Tukel 2010; Mackie et al. 2006; Webb 1996; Zippay 1992). This resulted in 46 papers, 38 of which were new papers, that is, not detected in the first step. We believe that this second step has enriched our sample.

In both steps, quality selection criteria excluded dissertations; conference proceedings; reports or other non-peer reviewed research; editorials or editor notes; and papers written in a language other than English, without an abstract, author, publication year, or publication name.

The final set of papers used for the purpose of this study is 122.

The whole selection of the papers was performed using the qualitative research software MAXQDA, which helped in searching for terms and coding the abstracts in a way that facilitated dealing with the variety of codes and abstracts. The analysis of the papers was based on the qualitative content analysis method, which is an approach that emphasizes the role of the researcher in the construction of the meaning of documents and texts (Bryman 2008). Categories tend to emerge out of data, and in this particular study based on the analysis of the research question(s) found in the various papers, research themes have emerged. In order to enhance comparability, the analysis was grounded mostly on the research themes and not on the papers themselves. Often multiple research themes were addressed in one paper, inhibiting the ability to classify papers within one theme or within one type of the other classifications (e.g., research methods). Consequently, the categorization by themes often sums up to a greater number than the total number of papers.

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Liket, K., Simaens, A. Battling the Devolution in the Research on Corporate Philanthropy. J Bus Ethics 126, 285–308 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-013-1921-x

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