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Introduction
When investigating corporate disclosures on philanthropy, Spence and Thomson (2009, p. 372) found that corporate philanthropy can best be described as a "structurally incoherent discourse". In the publications about companies' philanthropic actions, motivations rooting in altruism interfered with perspectives of business case rationale, and the beneficiaries of philanthropic actions were usually referred to as the "deserving poor". However, the ways in which companies conceptualize corporate philanthropy are diverse. Mastercard, for instance, the US-American financial services provider, counts corporate philanthropy as one of the elements of its corporate responsibility commitment, among other corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities that concentrate in the areas of financial literacy, supplier diversity and empowerment of women. The company engages in the three "classic" philanthropic actions, corporate giving, volunteering and an independent corporate foundation worth $6bn in assets. Corporate philanthropy, in this view, is included in Mastercard's corporate social responsibilities1 (Mastercard, 2014), as it is for companies such as Goldman Sachs or Novartis.
This conception of corporate philanthropy included in CSR, however, is not universal across firms. Other financial institutions such as the banks BNP Paribas or UBS understand corporate philanthropy to be distinct from CSR, hence exclusive. This understanding is shared by Clariant, a Swiss chemicals producer about the size of Mastercard (in revenues) that describes its CSR conduct under the label "sustainability", which includes the key topics people, planet, performance and sustainability in the workplace (for a review on CSR and/or sustainability, see Gatti and Seele 2014). Clariant does not neglect any philanthropic engagement but conceives corporate philanthropy activities as corporate citizenship, hence a field exclusive to CSR. Activities in this area include the provision of scholarships, disaster relief actions and sponsorships, all closely linked to the local communities the company operates in (Clariant, 2012).
These diverging conceptualizations of corporate philanthropy might be due to different cultural contexts in the USA and Europe. However, as there are examples of European companies that follow a "USA-American" approach to corporate philanthropy (e.g. Novartis), this assumption might not hold true. Rather, a reason for this ambiguity might be the unclear relationship between the two concepts of CSR and corporate philanthropy in theory. The "role and place of philanthropy in business, let alone in CSR, continues to be controversial" (Aakhus and Bzdak,...