Doctoral Dissertation Research: Corporate Philanthropy in an Age of Capital Mobility

长期以来，美国的企业慈善事业一直高度局限于公司总部或其他重要业务所在的社区。 虽然个人贡献的慈善事业的最大份额，企业发挥了核心作用，在美国的非营利事业的私人资金在社区一级通过其直接的企业慈善计划或企业赞助的基金会。 有两种趋势可能会打破这种传统的公司地方主义，即公司及其市场的全球化，以及转向有利于公司利益的战略慈善形式，而不是满足特定社区需求的慈善形式。 虽然学术文献中承认这些转变，但没有明确的证据表明美国公司的全球化水平与美国公司慈善事业规模的变化有关。 这个博士论文研究项目将通过探索美国公司的本地和全球慈善事业如何随着公司变得更加全球化而变化来弥合这一差距。 该项目将使用定量方法来确定具有较高全球化程度的美国公司是否比全球化程度较低的公司对他们拥有业务或市场的当地有更多或更少的慈善承诺。 该项目将衡量200家上市公司的全球化程度，这些公司拥有积极的慈善项目企业基金会，抽样公司的慈善捐款数据将从每个企业基金会的公共税务申报中提取。 通过将公司捐赠按地理变量分组，并按其地点或战略联系分类，该项目将确定是否证实与传统地方主义的决裂，以及这是否随公司全球化的程度而变化。 该项目还将使用半结构化的关键信息提供者访谈，比较波士顿、弗朗西斯科和西雅图的20至25家公司的全球慈善事业，以确定全球化对美国公司在十年内的本地和全球慈善实践的影响，并确定这些过程之间是否存在因果关系。 由于过去的研究指出，企业慈善事业的地理和历史的偶然性，研究的理论背景也指出，在当地的权力精英的特定网络的公司的嵌入性，至少有三个案例是必要的，以说明在不同的地方，企业慈善事业的地方特异性，并确定在所有的城市发生的一般因素。 该项目将确认企业慈善事业是否正在脱离其在美国的地方主义历史传统，以及全球化和战略慈善事业的新趋势是否确实正在取代过去的做法。 总之，这项研究将确定企业慈善事业的地理规模是如何在当地重新定义的公司变得更加全球化。 它将使用实证方法，突出全球化进程如何在地方和全球范围内同时运作，并将有助于新出现的规模理论。它将确认公司的全球化是否打破了美国慈善事业的传统地方主义，以及针对非美国受益人的公司慈善事业是否存在一定程度的地方主义。 这项研究将有助于我们了解企业慈善事业的新兴全球地理，企业与当地社区的关系不断变化，并将更普遍地增加我们对全球化进程的理解。 作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将提供支持，使有前途的学生建立一个强大的独立的研究生涯。

Corporate philanthropy in the United States has long been highly localized in the communities where firms have headquarters or other significant business operations. Although individuals contribute the largest share of philanthropy, corporations play a central role in the private funding of non-profit causes in the U.S. at the community level through their direct corporate philanthropy programs or corporate sponsored foundations. Two trends may be causing a break with this traditional corporate localism, the globalization of firms and their markets, and the shift to forms of strategic philanthropy that are beneficial to corporate interests rather than philanthropy which meets the needs of a specific community. While there is recognition in the scholarly literature of these shifts, there is no clear evidence that shows how the globalization level of U.S. firms is linked to the changing scales of U.S. corporate philanthropy. This doctoral dissertation research project will bridge this gap by exploring how the local and global philanthropy of U.S. corporations changes as firms become more global. The project will use a quantitative approach to determine whether U.S. corporations that have higher degrees of globalization have a greater or lesser philanthropic commitment to the local places where they have operations or markets than do less globalized firms. The project will measure the degree of globalization for a sample of 200 public corporations that have active corporate foundations for their philanthropy programs, with Data on the charitable contributions of the sampled firms will be drawn from the public tax filings for each corporate foundation. By grouping corporate donations into geographical variables that are also categorized by their place or strategic links, the project will determine whether the break with the traditional localism is confirmed and whether this varies with the level of globalization of a corporation. The project also will use semi-structured, key-informant interviews to compare the global philanthropy of 20 to 25 firms based in Boston, San Francisco, and Seattle in order to ascertain the effects of globalization on the local and global philanthropy practices of U.S. firms over a ten-year period and to determine if there is a causal connection between these processes. Because past studies point to the geographically and historically contingent nature of corporate philanthropy and the theoretical context for the study also points to the embeddedness of corporations in specific networks of power elites in local places, a minimum of three cases is necessary to account for the local specificity of corporate philanthropy in different places and to determine what general factors occur in all of the cities. The project will confirm whether corporate philanthropy is moving away from its historical tradition of localism in the U.S. and if the new trends toward globalization and strategic philanthropy are indeed displacing past practices. In sum, this research will identify how the geographic scale of corporate philanthropy is re-defined in local places as corporations become more global. It will use an empirical methodology to highlight how the process of globalization is operationalized simultaneously at local and global scales and will contribute to emerging theories of scale. It will confirm whether globalization of the firm breaks the traditional localism of U.S. philanthropy and whether there is a level of localism for corporate philanthropy directed to non-U.S. beneficiaries. This research will contribute to our knowledge of the emerging global geography of corporate philanthropy, the changing relationship of corporations to local communities, and will add more generally to our understanding of the processes of globalization. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.