TY - JOUR
T1 - Elite philanthropy in the United States and United Kingdom in the new age of inequalities
AU - Maclean, Mairi
AU - Harvey, Charles
AU - Yang, Ruomei
AU - Mueller, Frank
N1 - Funding Information:
There are, of course, notable exceptions. In the US, elite endowed private universities, arts and healthcare organizations typically fund the greater part of capital expenditures and a large part of operating expenditures from philanthropic income, the sum of endowment income, grants from foundations and donations from individuals and families (Hammack & Smith, 2018 ). This is less true in the UK, where government funding predominates, but the same concentration of philanthropic resources on the most prestigious elite institutions—like the universities of Oxford and Cambridge—still applies (Boliver, 2015 ). There is a parallel, mutually reinforcing concentration of large‐scale philanthropic resources on prestigious causes like medical research. Numerous scientific research centres, like the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, launched in 2004 to discover new treatments for human diseases through the application of genomics, would not exist without elite philanthropy (Nwakpuda, 2020 ; Stevens, 2019 ).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Authors. International Journal of Management Reviews published by British Academy of Management and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2021/7/1
Y1 - 2021/7/1
N2 - Elite philanthropy—voluntary giving at scale by wealthy individuals, couples and families—is intimately bound up with the exercise of power by elites. This theoretically oriented review examines how big philanthropy in the United States and United Kingdom serves to extend elite control from the domain of the economic to the domains of the social and political, and with what results. Elite philanthropy, we argue, is not simply a benign force for good, born of altruism, but is heavily implicated in what we call the new age of inequalities, certainly as consequence and potentially as cause. Philanthropy at scale pays dividends to donors as much as it brings sustenance to beneficiaries. The research contribution we make is fourfold. First, we demonstrate that the true nature and effects of elite philanthropy can only be understood in the context of what Bourdieu calls the field of power, which maintains the economic, social and political hegemony of the super‐rich, nationally and globally. Second, we demonstrate how elite philanthropy systemically concentrates power in the hands of mega foundations and the most prestigious endowed charitable organizations. Third, we explicate the similarities and differences between the four main types of elite philanthropy—institutionally supportive, market‐oriented, developmental and transformational—revealing how and why different sections within the elite express themselves through philanthropy. Fourth, we show how elite philanthropy functions to lock in and perpetuate inequalities rather than remedying them. We conclude by outlining proposals for future research, recognizing that under‐specification of constructs has hitherto limited the integration of philanthropy within the mainstream of management and organizational research.
AB - Elite philanthropy—voluntary giving at scale by wealthy individuals, couples and families—is intimately bound up with the exercise of power by elites. This theoretically oriented review examines how big philanthropy in the United States and United Kingdom serves to extend elite control from the domain of the economic to the domains of the social and political, and with what results. Elite philanthropy, we argue, is not simply a benign force for good, born of altruism, but is heavily implicated in what we call the new age of inequalities, certainly as consequence and potentially as cause. Philanthropy at scale pays dividends to donors as much as it brings sustenance to beneficiaries. The research contribution we make is fourfold. First, we demonstrate that the true nature and effects of elite philanthropy can only be understood in the context of what Bourdieu calls the field of power, which maintains the economic, social and political hegemony of the super‐rich, nationally and globally. Second, we demonstrate how elite philanthropy systemically concentrates power in the hands of mega foundations and the most prestigious endowed charitable organizations. Third, we explicate the similarities and differences between the four main types of elite philanthropy—institutionally supportive, market‐oriented, developmental and transformational—revealing how and why different sections within the elite express themselves through philanthropy. Fourth, we show how elite philanthropy functions to lock in and perpetuate inequalities rather than remedying them. We conclude by outlining proposals for future research, recognizing that under‐specification of constructs has hitherto limited the integration of philanthropy within the mainstream of management and organizational research.
KW - Elites
KW - Inequalities
KW - Philanthropy
KW - Power
KW - Third sector
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85101159440&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/ijmr.12247
DO - 10.1111/ijmr.12247
M3 - Article
VL - 23
SP - 330
EP - 352
JO - International Journal of Management Reviews
JF - International Journal of Management Reviews
SN - 1460-8545
IS - 3
ER -