Blending Business and Philanthropy in the Data Economy: Insights from the Emerging Field of Data Philanthropy

Corporations increasingly blend philanthropy programs with commercial activities, in line with recommendations to integrate corporate social responsibility into their core businesses. In this light, data philanthropy has emerged as a novel approach, in which corporations provide access to their data to support a social cause. To introduce this phenomenon to management research and enrich prior perspectives on corporate philanthropy, this study leverages 22 in-depth interviews with corporate managers responsible for data philanthropy programs to derive a model of data philanthropy and specify foundational mechanisms characterizing this phenomenon. The findings reveal that data philanthropy tends to be intrapreneurial, driven bottom-up by intrinsic motives, then becomes more instrumental as the organization works to capture value. From a resource-based view, data are contested assets for philanthropic giving; while they enable integrating philanthropy with the core business, they also present significant ethical challenges for corporations and societies, beyond just data protection and privacy. The authors contribute to hybrid organization research by introducing blurred philanthropy as inefficient state of objective ambiguity. For data philanthropy as a hybrid phenomenon that balances commercial with society-oriented activities, a dual-mission success is more likely if corporations establish one dominant strategic contribution, business or philanthropy, thus avoiding blurred philanthropy.