Pathological networks and the illogic of confidence in international grantmaking relationships

Abstract

Within the neoinstitutional tradition, this paper asks how private philanthropic foundations award grants to nonprofit grantees in an institutionally complex environment. Using qualitative multiple-case study methodology looking at sustainable development organizations, I find that foundation money is awarded via a system of interpersonal networks, in a process that is meant to disguise the organizational decoupling that occurs in the awarding of grants. In answering my research question, I make additional empirical discoveries that bear on both our understandings of social networks, and on our understandings of organizational legitimacy in multi-institutional environments. I identify a dynamic that I term an “illogic of confidence”-a type of ceremonial display that permits organizations to avoid close scrutiny of their processes-as well as a new category of network failure, what I term a “pathological” network.