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.
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