IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jbuset/v178y2022i2d10.1007_s10551-021-04807-2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Putting the “Love of Humanity” Back in Corporate Philanthropy: The Case of Health Grants by Corporate Foundations

Author

Listed:
  • Muhammad Umar Boodoo

    (University of Warwick)

  • Irene Henriques

    (York University)

  • Bryan W. Husted

    (Tecnológico de Monterrey)

Abstract

With the growing call for private sector actors to address global challenges, it is necessary to first assess whether regions with the greatest needs are accessing corporate philanthropy. In this paper, we ask whether corporate philanthropy is reaching those with the greatest health-care needs. Drawing on economic geography and corporate homophily, we argue that corporate philanthropy tends to exacerbate health inequality as grants are destined for counties with fewer health problems. We test and find support for this hypothesis using data on health grants made by US corporate foundations and county-level health data. Our results that corporate health grants are less likely to go to counties which have a lower proportion of medical service providers and insured citizens suggest that corporate foundations are unwittingly complicit in worsening the resource gap between small, poor, rural counties and large, wealthy, urban counties. From an ethical perspective, we provide some guidance as to how this may be corrected.

Suggested Citation

  • Muhammad Umar Boodoo & Irene Henriques & Bryan W. Husted, 2022. "Putting the “Love of Humanity” Back in Corporate Philanthropy: The Case of Health Grants by Corporate Foundations," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 178(2), pages 415-428, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:178:y:2022:i:2:d:10.1007_s10551-021-04807-2
    DOI: 10.1007/s10551-021-04807-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-021-04807-2
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10551-021-04807-2?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Amartya Sen, 2008. "The Idea of Justice," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(3), pages 331-342.
    2. Cameron,A. Colin & Trivedi,Pravin K., 2013. "Regression Analysis of Count Data," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107667273.
    3. Alan Muller & Gail Whiteman, 2016. "Corporate Philanthropic Responses to Emergent Human Needs: The Role of Organizational Attention Focus," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 137(2), pages 299-314, August.
    4. Dahlberg, Matz & Johansson, Eva, 2002. "On the Vote-Purchasing Behavior of Incumbent Governments," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 96(1), pages 27-40, March.
    5. Benjamin Golub & Matthew O. Jackson, 2012. "How Homophily Affects the Speed of Learning and Best-Response Dynamics," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 127(3), pages 1287-1338.
    6. Ron Boschma, 2005. "Editorial: Role of Proximity in Interaction and Performance: Conceptual and Empirical Challenges," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(1), pages 41-45.
    7. McLaughlin, D.K. & Stokes, C.S., 2002. "Income inequality and mortality in US counties: Does minority racial concentration matter?," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 92(1), pages 99-104.
    8. Bryan W. Husted & Dima Jamali & Walid Saffar, 2016. "Near and dear? The role of location in CSR engagement," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(10), pages 2050-2070, October.
    9. Arthur Gautier & Anne-Claire Pache, 2015. "Research on Corporate Philanthropy: A Review and Assessment," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 126(3), pages 343-369, February.
    10. Shi, L. & Macinko, J. & Starfield, B. & Politzer, R. & Wulu, J. & Xu, J., 2005. "Primary care, social inequalities, and all-cause, heart disease, and cancer mortality in US counties, 1990," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 95(4), pages 674-680.
    11. Sandra A. Waddock & Samuel B. Graves, 1997. "The Corporate Social Performance–Financial Performance Link," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(4), pages 303-319, April.
    12. Davis, James C. & Henderson, J. Vernon, 2008. "The agglomeration of headquarters," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(5), pages 445-460, September.
    13. Miller, Charlotte E. & Vasan, Ramachandran S., 2021. "The southern rural health and mortality penalty: A review of regional health inequities in the United States," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 268(C).
    14. Adam M. Kleinbaum & Toby E. Stuart & Michael L. Tushman, 2013. "Discretion Within Constraint: Homophily and Structure in a Formal Organization," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(5), pages 1316-1336, October.
    15. Katherine Maddox Mcelroy & John J. Siegfried, 1986. "The Community Influence on Corporate Contributions," Public Finance Review, , vol. 14(4), pages 394-414, October.
    16. Ivkovic, Zoran & Weisbenner, Scott, 2009. "Individual investor mutual fund flows," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(2), pages 223-237, May.
    17. Joshua D. Coval & Tobias J. Moskowitz, 1999. "Home Bias at Home: Local Equity Preference in Domestic Portfolios," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(6), pages 2045-2073, December.
    18. Federico Belotti & Partha Deb & Willard G. Manning & Edward C. Norton, 2015. "twopm: Two-part models," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 15(1), pages 3-20, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shuili Du & Assaad El Akremi & Ming Jia, 2023. "Quantitative Research on Corporate Social Responsibility: A Quest for Relevance and Rigor in a Quickly Evolving, Turbulent World," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 187(1), pages 1-15, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hanwen Chen & Siyi Liu & Xin Liu & Daoguang Yang, 2022. "Adversity Tries Friends: A Multilevel Analysis of Corporate Philanthropic Response to the Local Spread of COVID-19 in China," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 177(3), pages 585-612, May.
    2. Li, Chengcheng & Wang, Xiaoqiong, 2022. "Local peer effects of corporate social responsibility," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    3. Farah Zamir & Abubakr Saeed, 2020. "Location matters: Impact of geographical proximity to financial centers on corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure in emerging economies," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 37(1), pages 263-295, March.
    4. Steven F. Cahan & Chen Chen & Li Chen, 2021. "Do local social norms affect investors’ involvement in social activism? Revisiting the case of US institutional investors," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 61(S1), pages 1957-1992, April.
    5. Bono, Pierre-Henri & David, Quentin & Desbordes, Rodolphe & Py, Loriane, 2022. "Metro infrastructure and metropolitan attractiveness," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    6. Zhu, Minghao & Yeung, Andy C.L. & Zhou, Honggeng, 2021. "Diversify or concentrate: The impact of customer concentration on corporate social responsibility," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 240(C).
    7. Pantzalis, Christos & Park, Jung Chul, 2014. "Too close for comfort? Geographic propinquity to political power and stock returns," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 57-78.
    8. Anand, Amber & Gatchev, Vladimir A. & Madureira, Leonardo & Pirinsky, Christo A. & Underwood, Shane, 2011. "Geographic proximity and price discovery: Evidence from NASDAQ," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 193-226, May.
    9. Chen, Zhuo & Roy, Kakoli & Haddix, Anne C. & Thacker, Stephen B., 2010. "Factors associated with differences in mortality and self-reported health across states in the United States," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 94(3), pages 203-210, March.
    10. Lei Zheng & Xuemeng Guo & Libin Zhao, 2021. "How Does Transportation Infrastructure Improve Corporate Social Responsibility? Evidence from High-Speed Railway Openings in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-23, June.
    11. Jay Cai & Guifeng Shi, 2019. "Do Religious Norms Influence Corporate Debt Financing?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 157(1), pages 159-182, June.
    12. Kim, Donghyun & Wang, Qinghai & Wang, Xiaoqiong, 2022. "Geographic clustering of institutional investors," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(2), pages 547-570.
    13. Bailey, Warren & Kumar, Alok & Ng, David, 2010. "Behavioral Biases of Mutual Fund Investors," Working Papers 10-23, University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School, Weiss Center.
    14. Guiso, Luigi & Sodini, Paolo, 2013. "Household Finance: An Emerging Field," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1397-1532, Elsevier.
    15. Yang, Tse-Chuan & Chen, Vivian Yi-Ju & Shoff, Carla & Matthews, Stephen A., 2012. "Using quantile regression to examine the effects of inequality across the mortality distribution in the U.S. counties," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 74(12), pages 1900-1910.
    16. Wang, Zhixiao & Kong, Dongmin & Liu, Shasha, 2024. "Corporate social responsibility and firm-level systematic risk: The moderating effect of economic policy uncertainty," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    17. Byungki Kim & Jinhan Pae & Choong-Yuel Yoo, 2019. "Business Groups and Tunneling: Evidence from Corporate Charitable Contributions by Korean Companies," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 154(3), pages 643-666, February.
    18. Nejad, Mohammad G. & Amini, Mehdi & Babakus, Emin, 2015. "Success Factors in Product Seeding: The Role of Homophily," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 91(1), pages 68-88.
    19. Bryan W. Husted & Dima Jamali & Walid Saffar, 2016. "Near and dear? The role of location in CSR engagement," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(10), pages 2050-2070, October.
    20. Hui-Cheng Yu & Lopin Kuo, 2021. "Corporate Philanthropy Strategy and Sustainable Development Goals," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(10), pages 1-10, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:178:y:2022:i:2:d:10.1007_s10551-021-04807-2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.