Papers presented by Thomas Buckley since 2019

2025 Atlanta, Georgia

"Philanthropy and Hybrid Organisations: Capital, the Market and Solutions to Social Problems"

Abstract:

For the financial year ending 31st August 1960, the Wellcome Foundation Ltd, the British-based pharmaceutical multinational, reported global sales of £27,668,789 and consolidated net profit of £2,018,520. In his 1960 Annual Review, the Chairman of the Foundation, Sir Michael Perrin, quoted an article from The Times stating that the main purpose of new drugs, was to enable sick people to recover more quickly. Perrin went onto remark that while this might be the case, a view was held by governments and the public around the world, that the cost of achieving this was becoming “unjustifiable,” to both the state and patient. Fortunately, however, the Wellcome Foundation Ltd., had been protected from the worst of such criticism because, according to Perrin, of its attitude toward its business activities, and “the utilisation of its distributed profits by the Wellcome Trust.” In referencing the distribution of the Foundation’s profits by the Wellcome Trust, Perrin was drawing attention to the distinct organisational form of the Wellcome organisation, in which the entire share capital of the pharmaceutical MNC – the Wellcome Foundation Ltd. - was owned by the Wellcome Trust: a philanthropic enterprise, created in 1936, upon the death of the entrepreneur-founder of the Wellcome Foundation Ltd., Henry Wellcome. Building on Brooks and Buckley (2024), this paper examines the hybrid-nature of the Wellcome Foundation, and the combination of profit and non-profit practices within the same organisation (Battilana et al. 2017). By analysing the blurred boundaries between practices, our research assesses to what extent the Trust’s ownership of a pharmaceutical MNE provided effective solutions to social and health-related challenges and generated societal value. In so doing, we reflect on the relationship between philanthropy and capitalism, contributing greater historical understanding to debates about philanthrocapitalism (McGoey, 2015; Youde, 2016) and the nature of private actor’s social activities.

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2024 Providence, Rhode Island

"Building Global Networks of Philanthropy: The International Activities of the Wellcome Trust, 1950-1994"

Abstract:

This paper examines the international activities of the Wellcome Trust, a pioneering British philanthropic organisation that operated, and continues to operate, in the critical domain of health research and knowledge production. Although the Wellcome Trust was created in 1936 by the will of the pharmaceutical entrepreneur, Sir Henry Wellcome, it was not until the early 1950s that the Wellcome Trust was able to start focusing on its philanthropic purpose and develop a programme for supporting medical research. From the very beginning the development of this programme involved looking outside of the UK to philanthropic organisations in other countries so that it could understand better its relationship with the Wellcome Foundation Ltd., a pharmaceutical multinational, whose entire share capital the Trust owned. The Carlsberg Foundation, owner of the Carlsberg breweries, was a particularly important reference point for the Trust at this time, but there were differences as well as similarities between the two organisations which informed the Trust’s thinking about how it related to the profit generating Wellcome Foundation Ltd. Over time, as the Wellcome Trust grew in scale and resources, so too did its international programme of research funding. Having inherited existing schemes that Henry Wellcome had himself funded during his lifetime, the Trust continued to be guided by his precedent: devoting resources to the funding of research in tropical medicine. This was a subject Wellcome himself had invested in, and that his will specified should continue to be provided for, but whose scope was extended and expanded by the Trust. The Trust also began to undertake new initiatives and branch off into new areas of international activity, not envisioned by Wellcome. This paper thus presents a new perspective on the interaction between philanthropy, business and health: one that seeks to develop understanding of the dimensions of philanthropy across borders.

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2023 Detroit, MI, United States

"The Wellcome Trust and the Rise of the Business of Giving in the UK"

Abstract:

Evaluating the nature of philanthropy in 2022, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that private giving has become a prominent industry in which high net worth individuals systematically distribute private wealth into critical public infrastructure and research. A central institution through which private giving now occurs is the philanthropic foundation, an institutional form that emerged in the last quarter of the nineteenth, and early twentieth century. Commonly associated with the industrialists John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford, it is important to recognise the existence of European variants of such foundations, most notably the Carlsberg Foundation. While philanthropy is widely recognised to have a long history, the scientific systematised version of philanthropy, based on the industrial wealth of super-rich entrepreneurs or “entrepreneurial philanthropy” was something distinctly new and innovative. This paper examines the creation and “re-invention,” of one such foundation in a European context, by analysing the emergence and development of The Wellcome Trust. Formed in 1936 by the will of Sir Henry Wellcome the pharmaceutical entrepreneur, and owner of the Wellcome Foundation (a commercial not a philanthropic organisation) the Wellcome Trust was an innovative UK philanthropic organisation, funded not by an invested endowment but by the profits of a large, multinational company, in which the trustees (initially) held the entire share capital. Based on research conducted in the archives of GlaxoSmithKline (who would later acquire the Wellcome Foundation) and the Wellcome Trust, this paper assesses not only the Trust’s position as the largest foundation supporting medical research in the UK during the twentieth Century, but also its broader institutional, international role in shaping relationships between industry, governmental and research communities. We analyse the Wellcome Trust’s role not only in shaping medical knowledge and the business of giving but also conceptions of philanthropy as they exist today.

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2022 Mexico City

"Early Forms of FinTech: Experiments in Delivering Banking Services"

Abstract:

This paper explores competition and collaboration between banks and retailers to overcome the challenges of automating on-the-spot transactions in the USA during the 1970s and early 1980s. Existing literature documents how banks have contended with, and responded to the emergence of new technologies since at least the 1890s when technical devices focused on improving “back office” operations started to be introduced. It was though in the late 1960s, and early 1970s that information and communication technologies, in particular Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT), emerged and grew in a way that really impacted consumers, and consumers’ relationships with their banks and retailers. This paper focuses on this triangular relationship between consumer, bank and retailer. We depart from previous research on the automation of banking and retailing to focus on co-competition between retail financial institutions and grocery chains to solve the problem of digitalising on-the-spot transactions. The 1970s were a unique period in US history, witnessing the end of the Vietnam War and Bretton Woods, rising inflation, oil shocks, Nixon’s resignation, the rise of Japan Inc., the further advancement of women and people of colour in the workforce, continued suburban flight and the questioning of the American management mystique. Within this turbulent context, the early steps towards a cashless-digital economy were taken, but not without critics. Using archival data, we examine early experiments with, and the adoption of, EFT by savings and loans associations (S&Ls) in the United States. The paper focuses on the introduction of Point of Sale installations by S&Ls in retail locations that allowed customers to make deposits and withdrawals, while also enabling retailers to verify balances and support bank checking. By examining these early experiments in digital innovation, we better understand the factors driving the adoption of new, customer facing technology in the financial sector, and shed light on role of differences in gender, ethnicity and geography within the US during the early stages of financialisation.

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