SPEAKER_02 0:12

You're listening to the Philanthropists podcast with Rodri Davis. Hello, you're listening to the Philanthropisms Podcast. This is the podcast where we try to put philanthropy in context. I'm your host, as ever, Roger Davis, and this week is the fifth of our partnership with the European Research Network on Philanthropy, or ERNOP. So ERNOP every quarter put out a series of research notes which are kind of short, one-to-two-page practitioner-focused praises or summaries of recent academic work in philanthropy, and they're written by kind of practitioners who've read the research themselves. And every time Earnop does one of these, I talk to three of the academics who've brought out work that was in the most recent release of Research Notes to find out a bit about what their work's about and kind of what value it has for practitioners, and also just talk a bit more broadly about how we get better links between philanthropy and practice. We have Arthur Gautier up first, then we have Isabel DeBrine, and finally we have Janice Petzinger. I'll give a bit more sort of detailed biographical information on each of those before we go into the interview section with them. And then I'll be back at the end of the podcast for just a little bit of housekeeping and tell you where you can find out more information about the things that we discuss. So without further ado, let's get into the interviews. And up first we have Arthur Gautier. Now, Arthur is an associate professor at Esseck Business School and executive director of the Essex Philanthropy Chair. So he's based in France. And his paper, which is really interesting, is called Making Sense of Hybrid Practices: The Role of Individual Adherence to Institutional Logics in Impact Investing. Or if you want the title of the research note based on it, which maybe gives you slightly clearer flavour of what the whole thing's about. And that's called The Role of People's Life Stories when Making Sense of Impact Investing as an alternative to either charitable giving or traditional investing. So that's very much what Arthur and I talked about. So without further ado, let's hear from Arthur. Okay, great. Well, I'm here with Arthur Gautier. Hi there, Arthur.

SPEAKER_03 2:53

Hi Rodri. Nice to talk to you.

SPEAKER_02 2:55

Yeah, great to talk to you too. And yeah, we're so we're here for one of the uh Earnop partnership episodes to talk about a paper that you have featured in the latest release of research notes or write-up of the paper. Um so yeah, it'd be really great just to hear uh a bit in your own words about what the paper was about, what some of the key findings were in it.

SPEAKER_03 3:14

The paper is about people involved uh in philanthropy andor impact investing. So we had the chance to access um clients of a private bank, so wealthy clients, uh, that have uh significant activity uh for the others. So uh either through uh investments uh for social or environmental projects uh or philanthropy or both. And uh what we wanted to do in this paper is try to understand why some of these clients, when introduced to impact investing, which we understand you know as the um investments in funds or social enterprises that try to combine both a financial return and a social uh return on investment. So we were trying to understand why some of these clients were really enthused by the idea of combining, in a sense, finance and philanthropy through this uh hybrid practice, as we call it, uh, why some of them were enthused, while others were really uh critical of the idea, or they did not really understand what it was about. So we really wanted to understand that was our initial puzzle, and uh we wanted to go in depth about that. So we did some live story interviews with uh a sample of uh of clients of this bank, and we saw we we interviewed them three times over a course of three years. So we were really really able to develop trust and uh deep connections with them on their on their journey. Most of them had an entrepreneurial journey, uh made their wealth uh through a business, some of them inherited their wealth as well, which was an interesting contrast. And then what we try to do in this paper is to understand what explains, so what could uh explain the mechanism leading to either adopting impact investing or rejecting it, or some for some of them even ignoring it. So that's the baseline of the of the of the paper. You want me to talk about findings, I guess?

SPEAKER_02 5:13

So well, yeah, just to out I'd love to hear from you. I guess for me, the takeaway, and correct me if I'm wrong, was that what one of the sort of surprising things or counterintuitive things in the key finding in it was actually for those um high net worth individuals you spoke to who had either no uh previous knowledge at all about either one of the domains, or for those who had quite a significant level, um that that seemed to not work that well. What was the sort of Goldilocks zone? Were those people who knew a bit about either or both, um, you know, enough to be kind of comfortable, but they were sort of more willing to think a bit more flexibly? Is that is that sort of fair summation?

SPEAKER_03 5:52

Yeah, exactly. So, in a sense, in this paper, we we view impact investing as some sort of a hybrid between traditional giving and traditional investments. And um, if you are if you have no knowledge at all about finance or investments, well, impact investing will sound you know a little unusual to you. You may not understand what it is about. Uh, and the same if you have zero connection or interest in the field of impact, broadly speaking, which includes philanthropy uh as well. Um so these people did not really see what this hybrid practice was combining because they were either completely novice in finance or in philanthropy. Uh and on the other hand, on the other hand, you're right, uh, some people who were extremely knowledgeable and what we call in the paper emotionally emotionally attached uh with the logics of finance, for instance, uh these people, when they viewed impact investing first as a financial activity, like as an alternative to traditional uh asset management, they they they opposed it because they they thought, well, uh, if impact investing is asking me to not maximize the return on investment, if it means uh adopting another standard to measure success, I'm lost. I don't understand it. And what is you know uh below market return? It doesn't exist. You know, to me, you know, I want to maximize my return. I don't, I cannot fathom you know this idea of uh uh diminished return. I prefer to maximize my financial return in traditional investments and then do philanthropy. You know, I these two worlds they they are connected through financial you know flows, but they have different logics, and I'm don't want to blend any any of it. So this was an interesting finding. And it's uh it was a bit the same for some people who were you know uh religious uh people were attached to the the logic of pure charity and uh asking nothing in return when they when they make a gift. And for them, you know, they were completely attached to the logic of charity and pure philanthropy, and they also opposed impact investing because to them it was a way to taint uh the purity of their intentions with this idea of having something back, having the capital back. And uh so these people were really interesting because they opposed uh impact investing because it was not as pure as their vision of either mainstream finance or mainstream philanthropy. And you're right, those in the middle, those people who had some experience, some knowledge, but that were not either professional finance people or really uh you know uh you know believers of pure giving, those were able to navigate this hybrid sphere and to fit to see impact investing as an interesting uh activity to explore.

SPEAKER_02 8:56

And did you get a sense um in those people, the sort of the rejection of the less familiar or the unfamiliar logic that people were presented with, if they were coming from the investment end or if they were coming from the philanthropy end? It feels like going through some of the more detailed case studies in the paper, as though in some cases it's that they they didn't understand it in the sense of they just didn't really quite get their heads around the concepts. Whereas you say in other cases, for perhaps for those where they had um, you know, religious views that played a part, they did understand the idea of impact investing, they just kind of rejected the underlying logic. Was were there any kind of distinctions to be drawn between the different ways in which people perhaps didn't understand it, whether it was a kind of lack of ability to grasp the concept or whether they did, but they just didn't believe that that it was a clinical thing?

SPEAKER_03 9:43

It's a really great point, Rodri. So what we call the so the the novices, the people who actually ignore the practice are the ones who don't really grasp how things go together, you know. Those who reject it, I think they understand the um what impact investing proposes, but they don't view it as uh appropriate. Uh they they they they they they question the legitimacy of this practice. So for the um we had a few professional investors in a sample, so people who made their wealth either through you know stock brokering or uh turnaround investments or private equity, and these guys were really interesting because when they hear the word investing, you know, a red light flashes, you know, they view it usually, they view impact investing as some sort of uh you know uh deficient uh investment activities because of this lack of um you know standard way to measure performance and in in many cases below market returns. And but the same guys, if they if they understood impact investing as, for instance, an alternative to charitable giving with this idea of you know reusing uh you know grants eternally in a way, they probably would not have reacted this way. They probably say, oh wait, why why not um you know doing something uh you know more efficient with the same sum of money instead of just giving one time? But since they reacted to the word investing uh as professional investors, they were really you know not comfortable with the with the practice. And I would say that's the main difference. So to me, both the professional investors and the uh I would say the religious donors, you know, sample, they reacted uh in a way they they viewed impact investing as uh you know illegitimate uh practice because it was not as pure as their ideal uh for either investments or giving. Uh and and they rejected it for these reasons because they they they opposed uh you know this. But what is important in the paper is what do you compare impact investing to, actually.

SPEAKER_02 11:57

And and related to that, I don't know if it's not something I think that you cover explicitly in the paper, but I wondered how the findings in the paper might relate to what it seems to me is one of the kind of the big questions out there about impact investing in relation to philanthropy, which is whether it is genuinely something that's additive, so it enlarges the overall volume of resources available for doing social good, or whether in some sense it is cannibalizing philanthropy because it's eating into money that otherwise might have been given in the form of donations and grants. Do you does this paper sort of shed any light on that or provide avenues for thinking about it?

SPEAKER_03 12:32

That's an excellent point. I think this is something that's um maybe uh in the background of our of our paper. I I remember two cases. So, one one in one case, uh a woman uh who has created a large foundation uh with her husband in the protection of the environment. Well, to her, impact investing was interesting because it was a way to try helping people uh on the ground and and social entrepreneurs. It was a way for her to try something different than just a grant. So she was not canceling the grants, she was just adding a new uh a new tool in her toolbox to support the the mission of the foundation. So for her, it was really additive and a way to try something new uh to support projects. But for others, I remember uh uh a case, another uh a man in this uh you know sample, to him, you know, he refused impact investing because to him it was a way to cannibalize philanthropy and he was afraid that wealthy people like him, you know, uh, were would be uh probably seduced by impact investing and would cancel their traditional giving uh altogether. And he was afraid of that. And it's true that some people do, you know. Uh uh a third man in our sample uh was a young entrepreneur, he he he he he he took over the family business and he also developed new activities, and he was also you know uh a bit disgusted by some of the practices of some charities that uh uh his mother was supporting. So for him, impact investing was you know the new grail in a sense, and he wanted to give up both you know mainstream investments and also traditional giving. And for him, you know, he was trying to follow the example of Charles and Isaac Leisner, for instance, you know, who wanted to dedicate a hundred percent of their assets to impact, and he was trying to follow their lead and this goal, and to him, it was also a way to say, you know what, I think I'm done with charitable giving. I prefer to do impact investing. So, yes, I guess there is a risk of cannibalizing, but it's really different for each person, I would say.

SPEAKER_02 14:42

Yeah, that's really interesting to hear. Um, I just want to zoom out a bit and think about the sort of wider context for philanthropy, academia, and practice, because obviously one of the focuses of the Earn Op research notes series is to try and bridge that gap. If it sounds like the work you're doing, you know, certainly in that paper is has a very healthy dose of being uh practice focused, or would be you know the clear relevance to practice. What is your experience and sense of the sort of current state of links between academia and philanthropy and practice? Do you have you found it easy to kind of maintain those links, or do you find it there's a challenge in kind of getting the work you're doing out to a practitioner audience?

SPEAKER_03 15:21

Well, there is a challenge, and we've you know we've tried to address the challenge since we created the uh the Essex Philanthropy Chair, you know, more than 12 years ago. One of our goal in this uh center really is to try to bridge the gap between uh philanthropy professionals, especially those in France, uh, and uh philanthropy research. And we are very glad that ARNOP is now doing uh initiatives at the European level to do that, because this is what we've we've done you know for for for for France for years now, and and there is actually a challenge because the the academic researchers are not incentivized to do research that is understandable and meaningful for practitioners. You know, we are incentivized to develop new theory uh through our empirical cases. Of course, uh practitioners want are interested in research that could be used in their daily operations, for instance, either to transform their practices or to inspire them to think differently about challenges. So I think there is a there is a window to really uh make research that is relevant for practitioners. But I'm just the the incentives are just not there yet, even though things are improving a little bit. I think now in business schools, um, you know, professors also evaluated it's the case at SAC business school on their impact on the outside world, I would say. So outside of the Ivory Tower. So um we are evaluated in you know the way in which we intervene in professional conferences, uh, our visibility in the media, and this usually is connected to our research because if you know our legitimacy is to study philanthropic phenomena uh with uh an academic and scientific uh uh approach, so we don't want to promote it, we want to study it, and um, I think it's you know it's going in the right direction, but uh more good incentives need to be invented, I think both by uh academic institutions and also by the media or practitioners themselves. And I'm really happy that uh Airnop and uh actors like Philea are collaborating more in this regard. You know, I feel less alone than I was 12 years ago, and I think it's going in the right direction. But we need energy and incentives to continue to bring people together to you know translate the problems and the jargon in both worlds into something that is understandable and useful, uh, at least to get new perspectives on what we do. And I think it's uh it's amazing to do that. I'm really happy in this uh, you know, uh trying to connect practitioners to to researchers and and and the other way around. And I think it's really important. And Rodri, what you do in your podcast is really uh contributing to this. So thank you also to you.

SPEAKER_02 18:10

Oh, that's very kind of you. Um, and yeah, just just finally, it'd be really interesting to hear uh a little bit about what you're working on now, because I know often the uh papers actually take quite a while to come out. Several years, yeah. Yeah, we're we're talking about something that you were working on three or four years ago at least. So, what what is it that you're focusing on at the moment?

SPEAKER_03 18:27

There are several projects. I will only mention two maybe. So I'm currently doing an ethnography in a corporate foundation in France, trying to understand how the decisions to fund or not to fund projects uh that are uh you know identified and uh assessed by the foundation are actually taken. I'm trying to open the black box of the decision-making process to understand who's doing what uh beyond you know the the official you know boards or the official reports. So this is something in which we really lack research, uh uh you know how foundation uh boards or committees actually decide, and you know, what is the the part of you know rationality, emotions, uh reputation, uh and also the role of you know invisible uh people, you know, the the the um the staff of some of these foundations who do an amazing work and they are not necessarily mentioned in all the the glossy reports. So this is what I'm trying to do, you know. It's an ethnography, it's really focusing, spending time with the staff, trying to see what they do on a daily basis, doing their work myself, you know, helping them sort through projects and understand the process, how it works, what is the difference between the official discourse and the reality of the job. So that's uh that's a cool project I'm working on right now. And I could go on for hours, you know, on that.

SPEAKER_02 19:53

No, I mean that's that's a tantalizing glimpse. It sounds absolutely fascinating, I think. As you say, getting to the the lifting the lid a bit on the the life of philanthropoids and and how that sort of thing actually works would be absolutely fascinating. So I really look forward to seeing that when it's out. Um just remains to say thank you ever so much for finding the time to come on the podcast. Great to hear about um the work that you're doing, and hopefully we'll have a chance to talk in more depth at some point in the future.

SPEAKER_03 20:16

Yes, Rodri, I would be happy to thank you so much for inviting me.

SPEAKER_02 20:28

Okay then. Well, my thanks again to you Arthur for coming on the podcast. It was really great to have a chance to talk to him. Um, he's very much one of those people that I've been kind of aware of for a long time. Um, and I think uh similarly the other way round, but we've never managed to meet, so it was great uh to have a chance to chat. Uh next up we have Isabel De Bryn. Uh now, Isabel, uh she is a PhD uh candidate currently uh in Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Um and her paper, which is really fascinating and I think will have a lot of resonance, certainly with anyone who works in the international NGO space, is called How Moral Goodness Drives Unethical Behaviour, Empirical Evidence for the NGO Halo Effect. So, yeah, we're very much talking about that idea that sometimes the uh the conviction that you're doing good or working for a good organization can lead to problematic behaviour. Um so without further ado, let's go into that conversation and I will be back again afterwards. Okay, great. Well, I'm here with Isabel DeBrine. Hi there, Isabel. Hi, Rodri. Well, great to have you on the podcast, um, and really looking forward to uh talking about the paper that you've got uh featured in the most recent Earnot Research Notes series, um, all about the idea of the NGO Halo effect and looking at some of the empirical evidence uh behind that idea, which I think people will find really fascinating. So maybe the best place to start is just for you to say a bit about what the paper is actually all about and what the key findings were in it.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

Sure. Well, this paper is part of my dissertation, uh, which I defended uh a little bit less. In a month ago, but this specific paper that you're referring to is qualitative evidence that we generated based on interviews to show what a halo effect within NGOs looks like, and also to correlate a halo with unethical behavior. So the initial premise is trying to make sense of why NGOs as perceived good organizations can behave unethically. And of course, my research is not the first or the only one to try and make sense of this phenomenon. But the factors that have been used to explain unethical behavior in NGOs before are quite generic. So in other words, these factors have also been used to explain unethical behavior, let's say in businesses, governments. And then I thought, what makes NGOs a distinct type of organization? And I looked at this perception of moral goodness that is there amongst our sector in general. I mean, the literature also speaks to that. Like when an NGO is categorized as an NGO, it generally gets a label as a good organization. And I should say, when I say NGO, I mean it to be synonymous to charity, voluntary association. So I thought, okay, can we indeed look at this perception of moral goodness alongside an ethical behavior? Is it paradoxical? So with that framework, I decided to make sense of whether the two can be related. And I find that they can indeed. So I find that particularly when there is a sense of a mission, the morals behind the mission, as well as the people within the NGO being considered as good. And when I'm talking about being considered as good by the people in the NGO, so it's staff, the volunteers, anybody that is working within the context of the NGO, there can be a tendency for the glorification of this goodness. And by the glorification, I mean then the idealization or the prioritization of these mission, morals, and people. And when that I define as a halo effect, this glorification. And once that glorification is there, I find then that unethical behavior can be rationalized, motivated, or ignored. And through these interviews, I try and uh show what this glorification looks like. So some interviewees, for example, talk about their NGO's mission as their life calling. Some of them talk about their mission as the embodiment of their moral identity. So, in other words, this mission goes over and beyond just a typical nine to five. Colleagues aren't necessarily referred to just as colleagues. They're referred to as inherently trustworthy, angelic, sanctified. So looking at these elements then of glorification and then also looking at the examples of an ethical behavior that respondents measure or identify during the interviews, I try to make sense of whether indeed we can associate them together. And I find that there are several mechanisms that can be activated. So if the mission is glorified, it can lead to this tendency of moral justification. It's almost like end justifies the means mentality. So if the mission is prioritized above other considerations in the organization, people in the organization can say, well, regardless of what we do to meet the mission, we will consider it to be good because the mission is so so brilliant. The same holds for people, for example. If there is a sense that people are inherently trustworthy, inherently good, they can be prioritized over ethics management, like your safeguarding policies or your codes of conduct. I call this moral naivete, where people are, how should I say, trusted or prioritized over the rules and regulations that their organization has. And with respect to morals, if uh people within the NGO consider their norm their morals to be better than, for example, legal norms or social norms, there can be a tendency for moral superiority where people in the organization then feel licensed to trump others' norms, considering their norms to be better.

SPEAKER_02 26:05

Yeah, I thought this was was really fascinating. There's a couple of things I wanted to pick up on. I guess taking that one of the moral naivety first. I mean, so essentially the argument there is because people, I mean, perhaps because they're working as volunteers, or there's some sense that they've chosen a mission-driven occupation and maybe compromised on on kind of financial um compensation as a result. This all adds to a sense that they're they must be good. So you don't, you know, we don't need to monitor people's behaviour as much as you might need to in other contexts, because surely we're all good people. And I think anyone who uh has you know worked in the NGO sector or or sort of you know observed it from the outside will know that that doesn't always hold true. Um and you do get wrongdoing. I'd be really interested in what your sense is of whether, you know, when there is wrongdoing, the extent to which people you know genuinely are good in one dimension of themselves in that they are committed to a mission, and it's not that they're overtly using that to mask wrongdoing in another sense, although that might may be the case in some uh areas. Is it just that there's a certain kind of you know difference of mental accounting so that people are identifying their sense of moral worth that comes from having chosen to work in a certain sort of organization? And then that makes them kind of less able to be self-reflective about the other ways in which they might be acting in a way that is more morally or ethically dubious, you know, or is it more conscious? Do people sort of make slightly more conscious trade-offs?

SPEAKER_00 27:32

I think it comes back to how we as individuals relate also to others within the organization, and as how we also relate to the NGO that we work with. Um, because generally speaking, we work in a context where the organization's norms or morals align with our own. Um so we also assume that our colleagues have similar norms to ours. So if indeed colleagues don't act according to our expectations, because we all have expectations that okay, if we all are in it together, we we kind of expect us to behave in the same way as well. And if we see that that doesn't happen, it also asks bigger questions on ourselves. We reflect on ourselves, but he or she or they are not necessarily behaving according to what I thought. What does this mean then for my own identity? So there becomes a bit of a cognitive dissonance at play where it becomes psychologically easier to downplay somebody's behavior that's not in line with your expectations, or simply to ignore it. Um, so that also came up quite strongly during the interviews when incidences have been reported either by outsiders or people within the organization, there can be a tendency to think, well, at the end of the day, that person is good because they are bound by the same set of norms and morals that are pushing us towards to work towards this mission. Let's give them another chance. Even if the safeguarding policy, for example, says, well, according to this behavior, these are the repercussions. Well, you were talking about this element of compromise. There is, generally speaking, a sense of sacrifice. Um, working with NGOs, we give up some salary cuts or we give up elements of our time without necessarily getting anything in return. So there is that inherent sense of goodness to begin with, but that's even more perpetuated within the organization because people have aligned value base.

SPEAKER_02 29:22

And it was really interesting what you were saying there. So, in a in a sense, uh above and beyond the fact that the moral naivety or some of these other dimensions might facilitate wrongdoing in the first place, also at an institutional level, they they might limit the effectiveness of trying to deal with it because people essentially sort of say, you know, maybe the people in HR are also bought into the idea that the organization itself is good, and so they are, consciously or not, less willing to entertain the idea that people are acting out of character or kind of create, you know, engaging in misdeeds, because that would affect their own view of themselves in the organization that they've chosen to work for. Is it is that something that you saw through the interviews as well?

SPEAKER_00 30:04

Yes, yes, and it's interesting also that you point out HR specifically, because this is also something that came out during recruitment uh procedures. If it is seen that that person comes from a like-minded organization previously, for example, there's already this tendency to think, okay, they are one of us. They they know how we think, they know uh how we behave. So there might be less of a tendency to do rigid uh checks and balances beforehand, or there might also be less of a tendency to do these induction trainings with the expectation that we are all together, we are already all a team. So I think this finding does have implications for how we look at recruitment. Also, one of the unethical behaviors, uh, the top three examples of unethical behavior that we identified during these interviews was indeed faulty recruitment practices through through nepotism, favoritism, uh, especially because of the tendency to think, well, they are one of us, so they must be good, so we trust them, so we don't expect them to uh break our trust or to behave uh counter to our expectations.

SPEAKER_02 31:04

Yeah, and you you mentioned that she was uh something I wanted to ask about the the different types of of wrongdoing or kind of unethical behavior you'd identified. Um, to what extent or kind of what was the breakdown of those different types in terms of things that related perhaps to the relationship between organizations and recipients or the communities they're working with, as opposed to ones that were internal to the organization? Because I would assume there was there were you know examples of both there, but I'd be interested to know you know which were more prevalent or which were seen to be more problematic.

SPEAKER_00 31:36

Sure. We identified six different categories, and I should also disclaim here that these were respondents' perceptions of unethical behavior. So we did not necessarily look at any case files that was beyond the scope of this research. So it was really there are perceptions. Uh we find discrimination to be up there, discrimination based on gender, race. Um, we find also financial mismanagements, cover-up as well of unethical behavior. Uh, by cover-up, I mean either the unethical behavior not being taken as seriously as the code of conduct would indicate for it to be, um, going against best practice. Um, so if there are, for example, standards or guidelines or or or research advocating for a particular program to be or not be a certain way, then the NGO going counter to that. Um, this ties into the sense of moral superiority. Um, and some of these unethical behaviors, like you said, are different based on the stakeholders. So some of these unethical behaviors are indeed vis-a-vis the beneficiary or the target group. Some of them are also vis-a-vis staff members internally, but it could also be vis-a-vis donors. So, grant mismanagement, for example, looked at how some data can be manipulated in order to show to the donor that the NGO is having a greater impact than it might be having. But it could also be a reflection of, you know, donors have this expectation that let's say out of your one euro invested, 90 cents goes into the beneficiaries. But an organization, of course, needs money to operate. Um, ethics also costs money. So um manipulating the data, and I say that between quotes, um, to show to the donor, yes, your money is being used for beneficiaries, but not necessarily articulating that the money is also being used for operating costs is also different, also an example to show how NGOs can engage in unethical practice. Of course, it raises the question, unethical for who? For the for the for for the NGO, it is uh survival because you need the money to be able to survive in order to conduct your um your programs to meet your mission. But the donor might be the one that's considered to be unethical because you're not fully transparently reporting on how their money is being implemented.

SPEAKER_02 33:55

Yeah, yeah. And I can imagine lots of organizations will have found themselves in that situation. And I would imagine lots of them could imagine scenarios in which they would feel that that was perfectly justifiable on pragmatic grounds. That's a really interesting one. I just wanted to ask on that question at the moral superiority one. One thing I thought was really interesting in that was it struck me that particularly when you're talking about organizations that have some sort of campaigning focus, the scenarios in which an organization might find that actually it it is in the situation where it has to make a determination that it has a better um ability to judge moral worth or when something is just or right, precisely because it feels that the current situation or the way in which a government is acting is is not morally right or or fair. You know, that will be the case in lots of different examples. Is that the sort of scenario that might contribute? I think, you know, in a way it's justifiable, but it could easily tip over into thinking, well, you know, we're campaigning on this issue around gender equality or something like that, you know, but then it becomes culturally a sort of norm that the organization feels that it's able to do that across all different domains, and then finds that actually that tips over into unethical behavior. Is that is that something that people kind of touch upon?

SPEAKER_00 35:13

Yes, and I think it's a very good point that you're raising as well, because in my research, uh I don't put a normative label to unethical behavior. So I don't say it's good or it's bad. I define unethical behavior simply as going against uh socially acceptable norms, and again, whether they're legal norms or social norms. So indeed, we do need NGOs, activist advocacy campaigning NGOs to highlight when the law is wrong. So even if we say that breaking the law is illegal, what if the law in itself is wrong? So we also look at if we look at the history of NGOs and being able to make a difference in changing laws, policies on equality, for example, it's it's in large part because NGOs have used their own sense of morals to be able to break the law in order to be able to change the law. So it's very much also looking at how ethics is discussed within an organization, within an NGO. An NGO might think that rule breaking is a necessary means to reach the end of improving on those laws. So moral superiority should not be considered equal as anarchy when you're breaking the rules for the sake of breaking the rules. No, it's for the sake of improving rules and related norms.

SPEAKER_02 36:31

Yeah. Yeah, it's really interesting. I think at that point that it it it is easy to think that when we're talking about, you know, uh this sort of behavioral things like moral superiority, that it's there's a pejorative element, but actually maybe it's an important part of what NGOs do in some context. Um I just wanted to zoom out and ask you um a bit about what your obviously this piece of work I think has you know obvious kind of implications for practitioners, um, but what your sense is of the current links between practice and and academia in the field of philanthropy? I mean, have you found that it's been easy to engage practitioners, um, both to kind of inform your work and to disseminate it? Or is it, you know, do you think there are kind of structural challenges in doing that?

SPEAKER_00 37:10

Um amongst practitioners, I've seen that it resonates. Um I've had some people say, well, now I can articulate this sense of glorification and I can determine the halo effect. And another piece of work, I developed a measurement tool or like a survey, if you will, to be able to uh gauge the existence or the strength of the halo within the organization, and also to try and correlate that to unethical behaviors that people in the organization might perceive to exist. So this is almost like a self-reflection tool for organizations themselves to be able to see, okay, we are leaning towards this tendency of a halo. And if we do indeed have a halo, how can we then explain some of these unethical behaviors that we might be be seeing? From implementing the survey, some of the feedback that I've gotten too is like we didn't realize that people are perceiving this unethical behavior to exist within the organization. Can this indeed be unpacked and understood by a haloization, if you will, of a mission or the morals or the people behind it? That's not to say that unethical behavior can only be explained by the halo effect. There are, of course, other factors that can explain it. Um, it's also not a study in causality, because that is very difficult to prove. But for practitioners, being aware of the risk of a halo effect is an important consideration when thinking through how we can mitigate unethical behavior. So, in any of these strategizing, foresighting exercises, recognizing that there can be a tendency for glorification can also help people within the NGO be aware of it's a it's a means to be able to prevent, detect, and respond to unethical behavior. So, yes, it does have practical implications, this research.

SPEAKER_02 38:57

Absolutely, it's really interesting. Um and then just finally be really interesting. You mentioned there that this is part of the work that you've been doing for your dissertation, that you've just um defended that as well. Um so you know, congratulations on that. But just what you're working on now, whether it's more sort of work that follows on from this uh project or whether there are kind of other areas that you're also working on at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 39:17

Um, keeping one foot in the academic world and one foot in the practitioner world. Um my dream, if you will, my mission vision um is to be more articulate about the need for NGO ethics. Um, a lot of how we, and I say we like in the NGO sense, talk about ethics is still very much borrowed from and leaned from the business ethics discipline. They've been talking about ethics within corporations for the past 30, 40 years. With us, it's still relatively new. And I think with this research, it also comes to show that there can be inherent drivers for unethical behavior or it are inherent factors that can help us make sense of that. So continuing to research on NGO ethics and be able to translate that and see how NGOethics lives as a distinct field within practice, um, hopefully will allow me to be able to better, yeah. I don't know, if advocate is the right word, but um see if there is space for a distinct field on NGO ethics.

SPEAKER_02 40:19

Yeah, yeah, really interesting to hear. And we'll just mainly say thanks ever so much for finding the time to come on the podcast. Really interesting to hear about the work uh and you know, wish you all the best with it in the future.

SPEAKER_00 40:29

Thank you so much, Rob Lee. Okay, I look forward to talking to you. It was nice.

SPEAKER_02 40:42

Okay, great. Well, my thanks again to Isabel for finding some time to come on the podcast. Uh it was great to hear all about her work, which I'm sure you'll agree was really interesting. And then last but not least for this episode, we have uh Janice Petzinger. Uh now Janice uh is a research assistant uh in the at the University of St. Andrews, um, in their center for the study of philanthropy and public good. Um and her paper um is called uh Pragmatism, Partnerships and Persuasion: Theorizing Philanthropic Foundations in the Global Policy Agora, um, which is uh something of a mouthful. Uh and the shorter title again for the research note is Philanthropic Foundations in the Global Policy Arena. So that's very much the kind of thrust of what we were talking about. Uh so without further ado, let's hear from Janice. Okay, great. Well, I'm here with Janice Petzinger. Hi there, Janice. Hi Rodri. Uh well, it's great to have you on the podcast. Um, and yeah, I mean, probably the best place to start is if you could tell everybody listening a bit about the paper that you've got that is featured in the latest Ernot research notes, what it's all about and what the kind of key findings in it are.

SPEAKER_01 41:46

Yeah, absolutely. So um, this paper looks at um philanthropic foundations in the global policy agora. So um typically scholarship in general has focused on the work of nation states to understand how global policy is created. So policy work is essentially govern government work, but now scholarship has moved to look at how non-state actors, so private corporations, third sector organizations, and foundations are now entering the global policy field. This is largely because of globalization and just the increase in private money and um policy creation in general. This doesn't necessarily mean states are in decline, but it's more the case that now through the realm of global policy work, states are the term that's frequently used is in meshing with um private actors and blending their work together through partnerships. So this phenomenon of states and non-states um sort of mixing together is analogized um with the concept of the Greek agora. So that's basically pulls from Athenian history and looks at how in um Greece the agora was essentially a marketplace slash public sphere, um, which you know blended commercial and public life and state life. So the agora had the mint, it's where admin duties took place for different um court work, um, but it also had shops, shrines. Um, so it's kind of the heart of intellectual and public life and discourse. So essentially what this paper looks at is uses this analogy of the Greek agora to look at how foundations are operating in the global policy agora, basically working in this marketplace um of policy and using um their influence in this policy space, bringing their own forms of knowledge, um, their own ideas about how um change should happen in society at a wider level. And um, yeah, having exercising their great influence.

SPEAKER_02 43:46

And what are the some of the kind of key roles that you identified foundations playing in that policy aggregate? Because I because I guess the the the question in my in my mind and other people's minds is when you think about the context for international policy, I mean, pragmatically. even the biggest foundations are not operating on the scale of of governments when it comes to straightforward expenditure. So they're they're probably not kind of competing in terms of of pure money flows. What what roles do you you see them as filling in that space?

SPEAKER_01 44:14

So the most common role is um what's typically referred to as the soft transfer of policy. So you're totally right. They're not frequently, they might not be at the head of the table all the time, but the um sort of private money sphere that foundations are operating in tend to create these sort of soft um forms of policy that take place in just the sharing of knowledge or like the creation of standards, for example. So there's the NetFWD, which is basically a group of foundations that work for the OECD, which basically sets standards, market-related standards for how foundations work in global policy work. They're not participating in the hard policy like changing laws, but they're basically creating a culture of how different governments can think about their um approach to any kind of any kind of program essentially. And they also work as conveners in different spaces. So Michael Moran looked at this in 2011 with um a great article on the Rockefeller Foundation and how in the 1980s basically money had dried up for different research on diseases such as HIV or tuberculosis, because at that point in the West research tend to focus on health in the realms of you know cardiovascular disease. So the Rockefeller Foundation knew that there's this gap in research and then used their offices in Lombardy to basically convene a bunch of different research groups and that essentially led to different vaccine development overseas, which then led to different government contracts, etc. So they're doing a lot of convening as well as just setting standards about how policy should happen.

SPEAKER_02 46:00

And in terms of the the sorts of foundations we're talking about, I guess you mentioned Rockefeller there and I guess immediately in people's minds it would be organizations of the scale of Rockefeller or the Gates Foundation or Children's Investment Fund Foundation is is it primarily that kind of foundation operating that sort of scale or is there a kind of meaningful role for for smaller foundations as well in this in the sort of global policy agora?

SPEAKER_01 46:23

Yeah there is there is a meaningful role with smaller foundations I guess when we when we talk about global policy we're talking about big policy in general typically that's what the scholarship is looking at here. So a lot of research has been done on like these mega foundations especially on like the Open Society Foundation and the work that they do. I think also the sort of tapering down of foundation size takes can happen within the same project. So the Rockefeller Foundation will frequently be working with smaller local foundations within a specific place for example so sometimes so smaller foundations and charities definitely play a role but it seems like in general they're kind of subsumed by these big um mega foundations especially when we're looking at yeah big policy. The global agora is interesting because um typically if we look at the sort of Greek the Greek history there, it in theory was a public space for everyone to participate in and be a part of but the people with the most money and the loudest voices tend to have the biggest influence in that space. So it is a public sphere where everyone is included in theory but whether that's actually what's happening um is a different question.

SPEAKER_02 47:40

Yeah and I guess some relatively obvious echoes from history there for definitely the current context. Just sort of getting for a minute into the the nitty gritty of the paper as well although maybe let's not not sort of dive too much into it but one of the things that you do in it is try and kind of look at the how we understand the role of the of um of foundations by applying um a sort of theoretical framework you you um term French pragmatic sociology of critique in it which I thought was really interesting. And particularly the thing that really sort of sprung out at me from that was where you talk about the idea of different grammars of worth or sort of orders of worth that can be applied. Could you just say a bit about that idea because I think that will really resonate with people.

SPEAKER_01 48:22

Yeah absolutely so um French pragmatic sociology is a non-structuralist way to look at philanthropic foundations. It moves beyond this sort of like um typological view that foundations are there are different types of foundations that do different kinds of activities or the critical theory view that sees foundations as basically organizations with heavy power and lots of resources and they exercise their power in different ways. French pragmatic sociology kind of sits between these things and looks at how foundations are fundamentally pragmatic organizations. And they're pragmatic because they are filled with everyday people and actors who are constantly facing different uncertain questions about how to exercise their philanthropy. And through this sort of experience of being pragmatic, people that work in foundations pull from different political philosophies. So that's what Boltansky um who basically is the founder of French pragmatic sociology, he referred to this as the grammars of worth. So it's basically the idea that any organization in general is inherently political that's political with like a lowercase P. And that happens because any organization pulls from certain ideologies, right? And the grammars of worth are kind of a scaffolding of these different kinds of political ideologies that people can pull from. And the basic idea here is that um these political ideologies um are traced back to different political philosophy texts. So Boltansky argues that organizations can take on a market grammar of worth which basically reflects ideas of Adam Smith and inspired grammar of worth which basically relates to singularity and creativeness tied to the work of St. Augustine and the City of God. There's a domestic grammar of worth which is related to esteem, reputation and relationships and trust and that's um from Bousseau's politics there's a civic grammar of worth which ties to the idea of collective welfare and that goes back to Rousseau's social contract an industrial grammar of worth which relates to technical efficiency which ties to St. Simon's theories of um industrial systems. And then finally there's a fame grammar of work related to renown which ties to Hobbes. So basically the argument here is that everyday actors in organizations use their own critical reflexivity to pull from any sort of normative form, any sort of political grammar in this grammar of worth list. So this list came together um in 2006 in um the seminal on justification that Poltensky wrote with his co-author Fabineau. But this is since the grammars of worth has since been updated into a new grammar of political philosophy that they put forward in their book The New Spirit of Capitalism and that basically argues that now this sort of prevailing grammar that's happening is a project-based grammar. So um now within the system of capitalism that works on contracts, works on public-private partnerships, now organizations justify their work, maybe alongside these other grammars that I mentioned, but mostly on the fact that projects are in themselves sources of value. So project-based work is a grammar now essentially does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02 52:04

Yeah that's really interesting so I'm particularly the project bit at the end because I've I mean there's quite a longstanding critique of sort of projectism as I know it's been the foundation world. And I just wanted to just sort of just to finish on that thought and the thing that made me think was I'm sure anyone who works in the NGO space or in foundations will be kind of even if they don't know the terminology of of grammars of worth will the idea that you present your work in different ways potentially to different audiences by using different forms of justification will feel quite familiar. I just wondered in your perception of whether when foundations do that it kind of reflects fundamentally a sort of pragmatism because they're just trying to find more effective ways of speaking to particular audiences or whether it is reflects something more fundamental about their kind of ideological nature and what and you know what it is that they actually believe about the world.

SPEAKER_01 52:55

Yeah that's an excellent question. I'm not sure if foundations can even answer that themselves. No probably not I think that I mean realistically I think that it's a bit um of both I think if we look at foundations at sort of an everyday level if we were to walk into a room and saw people on a board conducting their grant making I think we'd see a lot of examples of them pulling from different political philosophies, right? So a foundation might want to fund um an organization because they reflect a sort of civic idea of participation and getting people in a community working again. But at the same time they're gonna look um at their finances and see how well they're doing and how for lack of a better word effective they're being right. So I think a point of this is to basically show that foundations pull from more than one ideology in their everyday work. So typically when we think of foundations in the global agora we're framing them alongside the idea of markets and neoliberalism and how that ideology is fed into their work. And that's definitely true, but there is more complexity in terms of what their ideologies are sort of at the heart. But at the same time equally to um your question um the first part of it which I think speaks to this sort of critical suspicion that you know we might have sometimes of foundations like are they really are they being honest about what they're doing or are these just empty words? Can we trust foundations when they say that they are creating trust-based relationships with people on the ground we can essentially like usually only take their word for it and in the empirical example that I use in my paper, it shows that um no, there's a ton of a ton of reasons why we should be suspicious of the sort of um PR that mega foundations put out there. And just because they are saying one thing that does not necessarily mean that it's true. So essentially the grammar of worth are meant to both show the complexity of the these ideologies within their practices but also show how they can be weaponized as a way to um market themselves more or less.

SPEAKER_02 55:12

Yeah yeah no it's really interesting um I just wanted to zoom out um for a minute and just uh before I let you go kind of ask you for your perceptions of the sort of wider question of how academia currently links up with practice in the field of philanthropy because obviously the focus of all the this um this research note series with Urnop and these podcasts is to kind of explore that space and the connections between them. How have you found that so far? Have you found it easy to engage with practitioners um both to inform your work and disseminating it or have you found that there are challenges there are a lot of challenges.

SPEAKER_01 55:44

I I find it really challenging I do um I think that I mean to pull from this sort of grammars of worth even I find that we're speaking different languages pretty often so I feel like what I what my job has been doing what I've been doing in my work especially as I've been I work very closely with my funders at the Rank Foundation and consult on some of their practices I have found my work to essentially be an emissary between academia and practice quite often. And that means finding the right language and that that is more difficult than I would have thought prior to entering academia um and it really requires academics I think to take a look at some taken for granted assumptions. I mean not many practitioners I think practitioners can relate as you said to these grammars of worth but talking about post-structuralism, French pragmatism that's not helpful to them.

SPEAKER_02 56:41

Yeah no it it requires putting in a different form I think so that the the basic ideas get across because as I say I do think they they speak to to people and they would get them but as you say when the language often differs and the conceptual frameworks differ maybe that gets a bit lost.

SPEAKER_01 56:56

Absolutely equally though I think that something that I would like to see more of in the practice space is the use of theory and um being really sort of centering theory as a a piece of as a way to guide us in our practices because I feel like that's something when we do practices in philanthropy sometimes we become unanchored and just see um the thing in front of us but theoretical frameworks remind us that you know no matter what kind of philanthropy we do we are operating with a specific point of view and I think academia can help bring that to practice a bit more. It just needs to you know find the right way to say it. And then beyond that I really struggle with the fact that and we talked about this before we started recording academia moves at a completely different pace. I put this paper in this time last year actually I submitted the first draft and then it finally got published in August 2023 and things change so fast and peer review just does not keep up with that. I I don't know I don't know what to do about that.

SPEAKER_02 58:06

I mean and and that's a relatively quick turnaround I think so massively quite really lucky. And on on which note I just wanted before I let you go just to ask given that kind of what are you working on now? Because obviously as you say this paper in in a way is something you did a year or so uh ago.

SPEAKER_01 58:24

Yeah um right now I'm uh working with the Ring Foundation, looking at data that they have from some surveys that they've taken with their beneficiary network essentially on the cost of living crisis and looking at how organizations typically when we think of the cost of living crisis we think about its impact on households. I'm looking at how it's impacted charities and how they are facing demand. And it's it's a pretty dark picture right now the sector I've really been diving into more so like the charity phenomenon right now of like trying to do more with less um and finding unpacking what we call like a bi-directional relationship of struggle in organizations whereby the demand from the cost of living crisis is asking more of charities. But because charities can't give as much as they maybe have in the past that increases the demand. So we're stuck in this bi-directional cycle so I'm unpacking that a bit more within the UK sphere and seeing seeing what important lessons can be pulled out of that.

SPEAKER_02 59:28

Well it'd be really interesting to to hear and I'm sure again lots of people will unfortunately have experience of that because I know it's a challenge facing lots of organizations right yeah yeah um just for me to say thanks ever so much Janice for finding time to come on the podcast. It's really interesting to hear about the the work and what you're doing now and uh hopefully we might have a chance to to talk in a bit more depth at some point in the future. Yeah that'd be brilliant thank you I'm a big fan of the podcast oh thank you great well my thanks again to Janice and to Arthur and to Isabel for finding time to come on the podcast. It was great to hear all about their work. I will put links in the show notes as usual to places where you can find both the research note and the original articles that they were based on. I'll also put some places where you might be able to find a bit more information about other work that they've all done and if I can find any relevant links to past editions of this podcast or things that I've written on why philanthropy matters I'll make sure to put links to those too. If you're interested more broadly in issues around philanthropy and civil society why philanthropy matters is a great place to start I think there's a real growing amount of content there on the website now some would say almost an overwhelming amount but there's lots of articles uh there's lot all the back issues of this podcast there's news updates on all kinds of things uh there's an archive of the newsletter that I do every month and so do check that out. If you've got ideas for people that I could talk to on the podcast or topics that we could cover in future please do drop me a line. That's definitely uh produced fruit on a number of occasions when people have um suggested themselves or others uh and that's ended up leading to really really interesting conversations and I should say we've got some great uh episodes lined up I'm not going to spoil the surprise but I've uh I was involved in the conversations and I've heard them and they're really really interesting so do uh keep an eye out over the coming weeks and months for those. If you want to follow more broadly what I'm doing uh follow me on social media definitely the best place these days is LinkedIn um you can just about find me on Twitter or X but I'm not really using it for very much like I think uh most people these days other than that just follow the podcast uh share with other people if you've got colleagues or friends that you think might be interested in in the podcast or in the work of why philanthropy matters do point them uh in my direction and you know the more the merrier and I will see you next time bye