Mega-Gifts: Hijacking Administrative Discretion?

Abstract

Blending organizational types enables public agencies to seek alternative resources, sometimes yielding mega-gifts large enough to transform the public institution and its agenda. Administrative discretion enables administrators to shape priorities based on negotiations with donors. Drawing on two cases, we examine administrative discretion in negotiating mega-gifts and implementing changes. Two findings suggest that as hybridization increases, trust and confidence in public agencies and actors may erode without responsible use of administrative discretion. First, institutions may pursue change that does not conform to elected officials’ goals. Second, absent trusted leaders, institutional actors may mire gifts in institutional cultures that prohibit change.

Keywords:

• Administrative discretion
• hybrid organizations
• philanthropy

NOTES

Notes

1 Batten has developed an undergraduate degree and minor in Public Policy and Leadership, which requires two courses with leadership in the title and others, such as social entrepreneurship, which may be linked to leadership. The graduate degree in the same area includes three leadership courses. Additionally, the school has developed a number of dual graduate degree programs (source: batten.virginia.edu/academics, n.d.).

2 This research is part of a larger project on the implications of donations for institutional management, administrative discretion, and organizational culture and change.

3 There is a body of literature that discusses the state as principal and the university as the agent (for an overview, see Lane & Kivisto, 2008). This literature acknowledges that the state-university have a complex principal-agent relationship, fraught with information asymmetry and multiple formal and informal accountability mechanisms (Lane, 2007). The current research is focused on understanding how the agent may exercise discretion in ways that may hinder the state’s accountability mechanisms. We are not considering the state’s discretion, although future research should endeavor to understand state administrators’ views on these mega-gifts.