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We examine the role of mediators in locally embedding the community foundation model of philanthropy to enable its global diffusion. We hold that mediators, as trusted agents within elite networks, promote and legitimate institutional innovation by tailoring the model to satisfy local requirements. They thereby limit resistance while creating future potentialities. Our novel addition to the community foundation literature stems from research on the transatlantic diffusion of the community foundation template from the United States to the United Kingdom focused on an in-depth case study of one of Europe's largest community foundation, that serving Tyne & Wear and Northumberland in North East England. Our findings suggest that success in embedding the community foundation model depends on rendering it fit-for-context and fit-for-purpose. Mediators operating at both the macro and micro level matter because they have the cultural, social, and symbolic capital needed to win acceptance for initially alien philanthropic principles, practices, and structures.

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.

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.

Drawing on Bourdieu's concept of the field of power, we examine the cross-national translation of organizational models and the strategic processes induced in recipient institutional contexts. By means of an in-depth historical case study, we demonstrate how elite strategists mobilized networks and symbolic capital to disrupt field relations and embed the US community foundation model of philanthropy in North East England. Our findings suggest that instead of simply copying alien field-level practices, strategic actors within the philanthropic field adapted and modified them to deliver fit-for-context change legitimated by support from the regional power elite. Our main contribution is to show how strategic elites drawn from different life-worlds build coalitions within the field of power to modify institutional infrastructures and embed innovative organizational models, simultaneously bolstering their legitimacy and symbolic capital. We hold that the field of power construct offers uniquely valuable insights into how strategic elites accomplish institutional change.