Corporate Philanthropy: What Is the Strategy?

The competitive advantage of corporate philanthropy.

When it comes to philanthropy, executives increasingly see themselves as caught between critics demanding ever higher levels of "corporate social responsibility" and investors applying pressure to maximize short-term profits. In response, many companies have sought to make their giving more strategic, but what passes for strategic philanthropy is almost never truly strategic, and often isn't pa...

What Is Corporate Accountability?

Since the 1990s, the world has witnessed the growing importance and visibility of a range of initiatives led by businesses, social organisations and governments, with the stated aim of pressuring companies to behave in more socially responsible and accountable ways. This is a new development for many parts of the business world. Previously, the state (or government) was assumed to lead standard...

Corporate Philanthropy, Political Influence, and Health Policy

BACKGROUND The Framework Convention of Tobacco Control (FCTC) provides a basis for nation states to limit the political effects of tobacco industry philanthropy, yet progress in this area is limited. This paper aims to integrate the findings of previous studies on tobacco industry philanthropy with a new analysis of British American Tobacco's (BAT) record of charitable giving to develop a gener...

What You See is not What You Get: Product Architecture and Corporate Strategy

Corporate Donations to the Arts : Philanthropy or Advertising ?

This paper is an attempt to provide evidence on two questions: Why do companies sponsor art events, and where exactly does the money go? We analyse data collected on the revenue structure of cultural institutions in Berlin and Hamburg. This data set not only tells us where the money goes, it also allows us to draw conclusions with respect to donors' motives. We regress sponsorships received on ...