“Building a Culture”: The Construction and Evolution of Venture Philanthropy as a New Organizational Field
研究了风险慈善在1990年代末兴起后如何通过意见领袖的战略推广、文化契合和网络制度化构建新组织领域，并因实施困难与商业-非营利文化冲突而演变。
“Venture philanthropy” burst loudly onto the scene in the mid- to late 1990s, promoted as a way to revolutionize grantmaking. Today the field has been refined, and its proponents are more modest. The case of venture philanthropy provides insights into the construction and evolution of a “new” organizational field and “new” professional culture, topics that require further scholarly exploration. Qualitative research examining venture philanthropy organizations and their leaders is reported here. Findings suggest that although the dot-com boom was an important prompt, the construction and diffusion of the field depended on opinion leaders who strategically defined, legitimated, and advocated the new model. The fit with existing culture and institutionalization via networks were also important. Implementation difficulties and the business—nonprofit culture clash are among factors forcing evolution of the field. Several avenues for further research on this understudied field, and on other new fields and hybrid professional cultures, are suggested by these findings.