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Sing to me of the man, muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy […] Homer (translation by Fagles, 1996).
This prayer, offered by Odysseus in Homer’s epic work Odyssey, metaphorically embodies the inner quest for expiation of guilt and redemption (McAdams, 2006). This kind of quest exemplifies Andrew Carnegie’s journey from self-regarding entrepreneur to others – regarding entrepreneurial philanthropist who attempted to redeem his identity tarnished by previous amoral and morally dubious acts committed during his remarkable period of wealth accumulation (Bostaph, 2015). To justify his prior questionable acts later in his life, Carnegie used rhetoric of moral cleansing (Humphreys et al., 2016), coupled with his generative entrepreneurial philanthropic efforts aimed at benefiting future generations (Erikson, 1963). Through rhetoric and donations, he strived to sustain the symbolic power of his successful entrepreneurial self (Creed et al., 2014).
Carnegie’s case illustrates the similarity of entrepreneurial and philanthropic motives. However, the symbiotic relationship between entrepreneurship and philanthropy has been a neglected area of study. Particularly neglected is the domain of entrepreneurial philanthropy, which is pursued generatively for the benefit of future generations (Downing, 2005). This neglect has occurred primarily because the literatures on entrepreneurship, philanthropy and generativity have been largely distinct (Jones et al., 2008), and therefore scant academic research has sought to understand the motivation that elicits acts of generative entrepreneurial philanthropy (Taylor et al., 2014). But, how and why such exceptional future-oriented altruistic motivation emerges is important to unpack to understand the process of generative entrepreneurial philanthropy (Bekkers and Wiepking, 2011; Branas-Garza et al., 2013).
In this article, we provide empirical evidence indicative of how different power motives and the underlying contextual factors influenced the emergence of Carnegie’s entrepreneurial philanthropy in which he engaged with the aim of leaving a legacy for future generations (Fox and Wade-Benzoni, 2017; Maclean et al., 2015). With this evidence, we provide support to Harvey et al.’s (2011, p. 426) model of entrepreneurial philanthropy which proposes that generative acts “serve to boost the cultural, social and symbolic capital of entrepreneurs […] within the field of power.” We extend this theory by focusing on examining how different...