Unequal pathways to addressing inequality: Divergent boundary work strategies in Belgian philanthropy

Philanthropic organizations often seek to address inequality in society through grant funding and supporting diverse initiatives that contribute to the public good. Increasingly, incumbent philanthropic organizations are challenged by the emergence of a new generation of philanthropic platforms that provide technology-supported mechanisms to (re)distribute funds and address inequalities in a more decentralized way. In this paper, we examine how philanthropic incumbents respond to this challenge and engage in field-level “boundary work” to respond to the arrival of platform-based newcomers. Drawing on an in-depth qualitative case study of Belgian philanthropy, we identify two divergent boundary work strategies that are paradoxically simultaneously at play. While one strategy seeks to include and take inspiration from social mission platforms (affiliating strategy), another strategy (discriminating strategy) works to maintain rigid boundaries and exclude these platforms. Our findings examine how these two strategies interact and how these interactions shape the field’s symbolic and social boundaries. By bringing a more fine-grained understanding of how populations within a field engage in different forms of boundary work and how this shapes the interaction between social and symbolic boundaries, we extend the literature on boundary work in organizational fields.