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Abstract

The phenomenon of corporate giving or philanthropy has been among the topics of interest for management and organization studies since more than half a century ago (Johnson, 1966; Schwartz, 1968). One of the core questions that has intrigued researchers of this phenomenon for decades is the “why” question: Why do companies make philanthropic contributions? The scholarly fascination with this question has been rooted in the obvious contradiction between the apparent nature of the actor (for-profit) and the action (philanthropic/charitable). This puzzle has fueled plenty of research into the motives of organizational decision makers for engaging in philanthropy, making up to 44% of all empirical research on corporate philanthropy according to some counts (Gautier and Pache, 2015). A wide variety of motives have been speculated in theoretical discussions and inferred from empirical studies, with most cases showing signs of multiple entangled motives (Eger et al., 2019; Neiheisel, 1994). Reflecting on the issue of “mixed motives,” Margolis and Walsh (2003: 288) noted that “Managers may seek to relieve normative and coercive calls for involvement; secure their companies’ legitimacy, reputation, and ability to function; and actually aid society.” This area of inquiry has proved to be a generative but challenging one with mixed results and no definite answer (Wang et al., 2016).

In recent years, however, it has become more common for empirical studies, particularly in some of the most influential management journals, to presuppose that there must be nonphilanthropic motives (by which I mean “amorally instrumental” motives akin to marketing or lobbying) behind all corporate philanthropic practices (e.g. Ge and Micelotta, 2019; Jeong and Kim, 2019; Jia et al., 2019; Luo et al., 2018). This presupposition is in many cases implicit or buried under jargon; nonetheless it is there, inevitably framing the empirical investigation as well as the interpretation of results. The normalization of this presupposition in organization studies is precipitated by two coinciding trends in the literature of corporate philanthropy: First, the focus of scholarly interest has gradually shifted away from explanations of corporate philanthropy based on individual factors to explanations that highlight firm-level and field-level drivers of corporate philanthropy (Eger et al., 2019; Gautier and Pache, 2015). Since moral agency is predominantly ascribed to individuals rather than collectives or structures (MacIntyre, 1999; Soares, 2003), this shift has sidelined discussions of moral reasons behind corporate philanthropy. The second trend is the rise of “strategic” corporate philanthropy “where organizations use philanthropic activity to meet marketing and other business related objectives” (Ricks and Williams, 2005: 148; also see Porter and Kramer, 2002). The proliferation of societal discourses on corporate social responsibility (CSR) during the past few decades has created growing pressures on companies to engage in philanthropy for the sole purpose of gaining legitimacy or reputation as a responsible organization. Acknowledgement of this environmental transformation has led researchers to view corporate philanthropy, and CSR practices more broadly, solely as an amorally instrumental response to mounting demands of professions and societies (Scherer and Palazzo, 2007).

It is also interesting to notice that the emerging trend of presupposing amoral instrumentality behind all corporate philanthropic practices is most vividly manifested in studies of Chinese and Korean businesses conducted by teams of researchers some or all of whom are based in Asia (e.g. Ge and Micelotta, 2019; Jeong and Kim, 2019; Jia et al., 2019). This is obviously not to suggest that philanthropic activities of businesses in those countries are devoid of moral, altruistic motives. But it is a testimony to the significant role of institutional and cultural context in our understanding of economic phenomena. In this regard, the flawed and yet quite common approach to account for how philanthropy is culturally and geographically shaped is to comment on its variability across national borders. Some scholars, for instance, noted that the notion of CSR in general, and corporate philanthropy in particular, is predominantly colored by the individualism and neoliberalism that are characteristic of society in United States (Matten and Moon, 2008; Pasquero, 2004). Others noted that the culture of countries such as China and South Korea is characterized by collectivism and Confucianism, where people are generally suspicious of the intention of private businesses in contributing toward social causes (Lee et al., 2009). Accordingly, it is noted that in China, for instance, the government has been the sole provider of public goods and social services for decades, and thus corporate philanthropy is still considered an alien concept that has been recently transposed by people who returned to China after studying or working abroad (Luo et al., 2021). Underlying the majority of studies in this body of work is the flawed treatment of a country’s culture as monolithic, which goes counter to abundance of evidence provided by more nuanced, ethnographic studies (Keim and Shadnam, 2020; Sackmann and Phillips, 2004). So further research would be needed to explain why the presupposition of amoral instrumentality has started to emerge more vividly in the work of researchers from certain cultural backgrounds.

The central argument in this article is as follows: The presupposition that there must be nonphilanthropic motives behind all corporate philanthropic contributions is problematic. I offer three reasons to substantiate this argument: First, this is a scientifically unfounded presupposition, because as I already mentioned in the beginning of this section, the literature of corporate philanthropy has identified a host of different motives (see Galaskiewicz, 2016; Gautier and Pache, 2015; Liket and Simaens, 2015) for philanthropic contributions that includes moral instrumental ones (e.g. helping the community) or even moral noninstrumental ones (e.g. moral obligation to give). While there is no way to uncover the “real” reasons of the decision makers, we know that company managers and representatives most often cite altruistic motives for their contributions (Campbell et al., 1999). It is understandable to be suspicious of their word and look for other signs to evaluate the “genuineness” (Godfrey, 2005) or “virtuousness” (Bright, 2006) of corporate philanthropy. But those researchers who examined this question have reported mixed and contradictory results, identifying motives ranging from profit maximization to long-term community investment to purely unconditional altruism (Dennis et al., 2009; Gautier and Pache, 2015; LeClair and Gordon, 2000; Muller et al., 2014). So while there are reasons to refrain from taking the word of corporate managers on their motivations for donating, it is certainly not reasonable to assume that all corporate giving is driven solely by managers’ pursuit of profit or legitimacy.

Second, the presupposition that there must be nonphilanthropic motives behind corporate philanthropy is academically unnecessary for studies of corporate philanthropy, because the arguments can in most cases be easily rearticulated to avoid such a presupposition. Most of the studies that have such a presupposition are focused on how a diverse array of internal factors (e.g. economic expectations of investors) and external factors (e.g. regulative, mimetic, and normative pressures of the institutional environment) influence organizational decision makers in their decisions with respect to philanthropic contributions. For this type of research design, it is not necessary to make any claim about the motives of corporate giving. Even if senior managers make donations for purely altruistic reasons, it does not imply that they are in isolation from the social and economic forces in and around the organization. The altruistic and instrumental motives of organizational decision makers are both always situated in the broader context of resources, priorities, and contingencies (Maclean et al., 2015; Wang et al., 2016). The purely altruistic decision to give money to a social cause, for instance, is always weighed and assessed in relation to how important and urgent the need of that social cause is and if that money can do more or less good if invested back in the business. So the influence of internal and external factors on corporate philanthropy decisions of managers can be discussed even in the case of altruistic motives.

Finally, the presupposition that there must be nonphilanthropic motives behind corporate philanthropy is performatively dangerous, because it reproduces and reinforces the gloomy view that managers do not care about anything but the bottom line. When this view is presented as a taken-for-granted presupposition of the offered arguments, it effectively forecloses the possibility of any other motivation behind corporate giving. As Ghoshal (2005) argued, research practices that propagate amoral management theories destroy good management practices, because these academic writings socially construct a world in which there is no morality. In this sense, publication and dissemination of research writings of this kind in influential management journals make them “performative,” that is these writings contribute to the creation of a business world that they purport to be only describing (Shadnam, 2019; Marti and Gond, 2018). We can clearly see the performative circuit in how management research acts as a source that feeds several other genres of business discourse including practitioner-oriented publications (e.g. articles in Harvard Business Review), material for management consulting workshops and projects (e.g. McKinsey Quarterly), educational textbooks and case studies for business schools (e.g. Ivey cases), and pop culture productions (e.g. bestseller books, oft-cited wisdom words of management gurus, business-themed movies, and TV series). The core idea of economic theories, for instance, is that self-interest is the primary human motive. But these theories become performative through educational systems to the extent that studies show economics graduate students are far more likely to exhibit self-interested behavior in comparison with graduates of other disciplines (Cadsby and Maynes, 1998; Marwell and Ames, 1981). It is certainly not good news if we hear that the corporate world is devoid of morality; but it is certainly much worse to make it so through our discursive practices of research (Ferraro et al., 2005).

In the following section, I focus on a study by Jeong and Kim (2019), which is published in the Academy of Management Journal (AMJ), as an illustration for the offered critique.

Illustration

In their recent article, Jeong and Kim (2019) argued that senior managers strategically decide about corporate giving based on the opposing pressures of legitimacy and efficiency. Accordingly, they hypothesized that the level of corporate giving is related to the positive or negative media attention to the company, and they tested their hypotheses with a study of the corporate giving behaviors of 747 publicly listed Korean companies between 2003 and 2011. The presented results confirmed this relationship and highlighted firm performance as a contingency factor conditioning this relation.

While this article makes an important contribution to our understanding of corporate giving, nonphilanthropic motives are presupposed behind corporate giving in their theoretical framing of the study. From the outset, corporate giving is understood as a “cost” that senior managers decide to bear in exchange for attaining legitimacy in the eyes of external audiences; so it is basically presupposed that the only driver of corporate giving is the instrumental pursuit of external legitimacy. The motive behind corporate giving is taken to be no different than the motive for adopting a new accounting method, acquisition strategy, Total Quality Management, or diversification strategy. Their conceptual framework and the arguments offered in support of the hypotheses are also based on an image of senior managers as cold, apathetic, calculative automatons that are merely after striking an optimum balance between demands of social legitimacy and economic efficiency. So corporate giving is viewed as nothing more than a financial instrument that secures the benefits of normative acceptance in the community and shields the company from the penalties of challenges by stakeholders.

These presuppositions are the hallmark of rational choice theories in which human beings are reduced to “homo economicus” (Coleman, 1990; Friedman and Hechter, 1988). There is a wide range of critiques against the idea of “homo economicus”; but a common theme of all these critiques is the rejection of the assumption that all human actions are in pursuit of self-interest (Boudon, 1998). People do some things to pursue their interest, but not everything that they do can be categorized as such, regardless of how narrow or broad we define the notion of interest. A behavior such as donating, for instance, can be motivated by belief in moral principles or driven by empathy and compassion. Thus, a more adequate theory of action should account for all these variety of motives. Most of the sociologically inspired streams of organizational scholarship, despite their fundamental differences and disagreements, have for long refused the idea of reductionism in human motives. This has been particularly the case in institutional theory since its revival in 1970s, which is ironically the theoretical lens that Jeong and Kim (2019) employed for their study. As DiMaggio and Powell (1991: 8) noted, “the new institutionalism in organization theory and sociology comprises a rejection of rational-actor models.” In fact, a fundamental point of departure for new institutionalism was this rejection of the previous theories that portrayed action as a rational pursuit of gratification through a means-ends logic (Cardinale, 2018; Scott, 2013).

Therefore, the presupposition in Jeong and Kim’s (2019) article is problematic in at least two ways: First, it is unacceptable for researchers outside the limited territory of rational choice theory, and second, it is inconsistent with the tenets of the employed theoretical lens, that is institutional theory. Since the presupposition is untenable, the collected data on corporate giving by Korean companies should be interpreted differently. Here I show how: As I mentioned in the previous section, having altruistic motives does not neutralize the effect of other social and economic forces in and around the organization. In terms of economic efficiency, for instance, managers need to consider the available financial resources of the company and weigh out the needs and priorities of their business against those of the social causes outside the organization (Wang et al., 2008). In terms of external legitimacy, since there is no predefined guideline on how much corporate giving is good enough for a socially responsible company, managers tend to look for clues in the practices of other companies, particularly those in the same sector or similar in size and visibility. Several studies of corporate giving have documented the existence of this mimetic mechanism (Galaskiewicz and Burt, 1991; Galaskiewicz and Wasserman, 1989; Marquis et al., 2007; Marquis and Tilcsik, 2016), which can substitute the legitimacy seeking argument in Jeong and Kim’s (2019) article. Note that in this alternative argument, there is no need to discuss the motives of managers for donating or moving toward CSR practices.

Where to go from here

Spotlighting a presupposition that is scientifically unfounded, academically unnecessary, and performatively dangerous is of paramount importance. Rather than an endpoint, however, this moment must be treated as the start point for a new set of research practices that take theoretical presuppositions seriously. Below, I offer four suggestions for the field of corporate philanthropy (and beyond) toward heightening theoretical awareness:

First, reflect upon presuppositions and articulate them explicitly. We must acknowledge that presuppositions are not something that we can avoid or do away with. It is well established in the literature of philosophy and sociology of knowledge that ex nihilo nihil fit, and research studies are always intertwined with presuppositions (Alexander, 1982; Turner, 1994). Any study relies upon ontological presuppositions regarding what the object of study is, and epistemological presuppositions regarding how knowledge can be acquired about that object of study. Here the suggestion is to reflect and figure out what those presuppositions are, and then make them explicit. This is critical for two reasons: (a) Any challenge to a presupposition could invalidate the entire study; (b) There is always the risk of incorporating two or more inconsistent presuppositions, which would again threaten the validity of the entire study. In the case of corporate philanthropy, had the researchers reflected upon and explicitly articulated their presupposition of amoral instrumentality, they would have noticed the issue, and as I argued, there was a way to avoid the problem. Also, when a presupposition remains implicit and unchecked, it can end up being inconsistent with the employed theoretical lens, as I illustrated in the example of Jeong and Kim’s (2019) article.

Second, move away from all-or-nothing presuppositions unless strongly supported by prior research. The social world is often messy, complex, multifaceted, and nuanced, and does not lend itself to blanket statement presuppositions (Shadnam, in press; Sandberg and Alvesson, 2021). So when it is necessary to presuppose, researchers need to be very cautious not to slip into all-or-nothing extremes unduly. These types of presuppositions are strong claims that are very likely inaccurate, unless of course in rare circumstances where repeated reliable evidence in prior research warrants such presuppositions. Presupposing that amoral instrumentality must be behind all cases of corporate philanthropy is as wrong as presupposing its absence in all cases. So the critique offered in this article also extends to those frameworks that view corporate philanthropy as a manifestation of altruism at the highest level of the pyramid of CSR (Carroll, 1991). The more accurate presupposition is that corporate philanthropy is driven by multiple motives of moral and amoral character, and the precise mix depends on contextual factors. A well-known theory that can be useful in this regard is the typology that Weber (1968) developed at the dawn of sociology, where he characterized action into four categories: instrumental-rational, value-rational, affectual, and habitual. He also stressed that these categories are ideal-types, and any action must be understood as a combination of all the four ideal-types. So to avoid the pitfalls of rational choice theories, even when we conduct research on what appears to be purely self-interested behavior, we must consider how it is in part influenced by values, emotions, and habits of the actor (Swedberg, 1998).

Third, consider the performative effect of research and articulate in a fashion that brings about a better world. Our understanding of reality is always mediated through cultural codes, meanings, and stories that originate in our context and precede our external encounters, in other words, the things that are presupposed (Alexander, 1988; Shadnam, 2018). The cultural context of present day societies is particularly influenced by scientific discourses. So rather than “innocent” observations and descriptions of the reality out there, research publications are stories that have the potential to transform and shape the reality, for better and for worse. Callon (1998: 2), for instance, shows how “economics, broadly defined, performs, shapes and formats the economy, rather than observing how it functions.” The performative power of academic writings may not be readily felt by many individual scholars. Nonetheless we know that it exists, and this knowledge must make us beware of using it irresponsibly. In the case of corporate philanthropy, for instance, we can perform a better world through studying and narrating those moments when corporate philanthropic practices make a real difference to the world and improve the experiences of receivers in meaningful ways. This kind of research offers enabling stories that provide readers with virtuous identities that can be worn, justifications for doing good that can be learned, and opportunities for reinventing ourselves (Shadnam, 2020).

Finally, institutionalize academic spaces—particularly in research journals—for continuous reflection, critique, and debate upon presuppositions. Explicating presuppositions and having open, disciplined debates about them is not a “once and for all” endeavor that we do and be over and done with. Rather, it is an ongoing and open-ended maintenance work of the kind that Spivak (1990: 239) describes:

“when we actually brush our teeth, or clean ourselves everyday, or take exercise, or whatever, we don’t think that we are fighting a losing battle against mortality, but, in fact, all of these efforts are doomed to failure because we are going to die. On the other hand, we really think of it much more as upkeep and as maintenance rather than as an irreducibly doomed repeated effort.”

This continuous maintenance work is important not only as a methodology for generating interesting research questions (Alvesson and Sandberg, 2011), but also as an essential dimension of research reflexivity as well as responsibility for the potential impact of research (Cunliffe, 2003; Hardy et al., 2001; Zyphur and Pierides, 2020). It is especially important for empirical research, because researchers’ indulgence in the appealing details of empirical phenomena can come at the expense of less scrutiny in presuppositions. It is thus unfortunate that in 1972, AMJ stopped its “Communications” segment where researchers could reflect on and problematize the work that was being published in that journal. For example, it is currently impossible to respond to and criticize Jeong and Kim’s (2019) article in the same journal that it is published. So I echo the words of once AMJ editors Schminke and Mitchell (2003: 282) who lamented this omission and longed for reestablishment of such spaces for reflexivity: “Perhaps this generation’s scholarly lives might be somewhat enhanced by a renewed opportunity for conversations like this on the empirical side.”

Concluding remarks

This article reflects upon an emerging trend in corporate philanthropy research that presupposes nonphilanthropic motives (amoral instrumentality) behind all corporate philanthropic contributions. I argued that this presupposition is scientifically unfounded, academically unnecessary, and performatively dangerous. I also offered a way of reframing and rearticulating research that avoids such a problematic presupposition. On one hand, this article is a cautionary tale that warns against such problematic and pessimistic presuppositions in research. On the other hand, however, it opens up novel possibilities and invites research built upon alternative presuppositions; for example, understanding human nature as altruistic, friendly, and peaceful (Bregman, 2020). These are deep waters, and the multifaceted debates in this area are of course not something that can be dealt with in any final sense in the short space of this article. But reflecting upon our research practices and disciplined questioning of our presuppositions are essential for a reflexive, thriving management field.

Footnotes

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Masoud Shadnam

Author biography

Masoud Shadnam is an Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at University of Nottingham in Ningbo, China. His research focuses on moral and cultural aspects of organizational settings from a descriptive perspective drawing primarily on insights from the disciplines of sociology and social theory.

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Problematic presuppositions in corporate philanthropy research: Reflexivity and reframing

Abstract

Illustration

Where to go from here

Concluding remarks

Footnotes

Funding

ORCID iD

Author biography

References