Is “disaster philanthropy” more likely to be made available by multinational corporations in their efforts to overcome the “liability of foreignness” or by locally embedded members of place-based communities of fate? Are multinationals tempted to withdraw their support during global shocks, when money is tight back home and their kin, co-nationals, and co-ethnics need support? And what are the implications for developing countries that are already dependent upon foreign aid and investment? I address these questions in a detailed case study of the pharmaceutical industry’s reaction to COVID-19 in the Dominican Republic and find, first, that locally owned firms were more forthcoming than multinationals; second, that their efforts were facilitated by intermediate associations that are all but absent from the existing literature; and third, that similar dynamics in all likelihood played out beyond the pharmaceutical sector. The results not only speak to the roles of organizational identity and interorganizational ties in driving disaster philanthropy and development but also suggest that global shocks demand—and perhaps fortify—local communities of fate.
Andrew Schrank (Thu,) studied this question.