Does Engaging in Data Philanthropy Impact Business Value?

ABSTRACT

Data philanthropy (DP) is a new but much-lauded phenomenon. Extant DP research has been either conceptual, exploratory, and/or qualitative. The present study seeks to examine the business value of data philanthropy to the donor firm. We use an event study method to analyze stock performance of public firms associated with data philanthropy activities to determine if a link exists. We find significant relationships between abnormal returns and data openness and the number of collaboration participants.

KEYWORDS:

• Data philanthropy
• corporate philanthropy
• data collaborative
• open data
• event study
• corporate social responsibility

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website

Notes

1. Contaminating events are defined as confounding events other than the phenomenon of interest that may sway market performance, such as dividend announcements, mergers, or new contracts (McWilliams & Siegel, 1997).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jordana J. George

Jordana J. George is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Information Systems in the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University. She earned her Ph.D. in Information Systems at Baylor University. She holds an MBA from Penn State University and an MFA from the University of California at Davis. A former manager with two decades in client services, technical support, and general management at technology companies and educational institutions, she researches data management and the social impact of information systems. Jordana is also the Managing Editor for Workshops at the Journal of the Association of Information Systems.

Jie Yan

Jie Yan is an assistant professor in the department of Accounting and Information Systems at The University of Texas at El Paso. Kevin received his Ph.D. in Information Systems from Baylor University. Before beginning his Ph.D., Kevin possessed over 6 years of work experience in the Telecom and Datacom industries. He worked for companies including Ericsson AB, Cisco Systems and General Electric (GE). His research focuses on cloud computing, IT consumerization and online user innovation communities.

Dorothy E. Leidner

Dorothy E. Leidner is the Ferguson Professor of Information Systems at Baylor University and a visiting professor at the University of Lund. As a scholar, Dorothy is widely published in such journals as MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Organization Science, Journal of Management Information Systems, Decision Sciences Journal, and Journal of Strategic Information Systems, among others, with other 30,000 citations.

Pranjal Awasthi

Pranjal Awasthi is a graduate student at the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University and holds a BS in computer science from the Manipal Academy of Higher Education (Manipal University) in Jaipur. His research interests center around Big Data Governance, Data Philanthropy, Management Information Systems, Social Sciences, Business Strategy, and Image Processing. Recently he has been working on understanding the interplay between technology and humans from a qualitative and quantitative lens, studying how technology and data affect people and how can we leverage IT both as a tool for social transformation and business strategic advantage.