Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive of over 1,500 titles.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
In this chapter, the authors conclude with answers to a set of questions that can help people reflect on their philanthropy, and they outline the additional understanding that could be delivered by further research. They also provide a set of action steps, based on this research, that people who are contemplating their own philanthropic journeys can take.
In this chapter, the authors focus on a particular form of self, the essential or true self – that is, who philanthropists believe they truly are, were born to be or are meant to be. They first define what the essential self means, then explain how this essential self can be experienced, developed and expressed in the context of one’s philanthropy. They also explore how identity ceding can enhance these essential self-related processes and how the essential self is experienced in the five elements of self.
In this chapter, the authors take the discussion of people’s sense of self to the next level and describe a particular self-transformation process that can provide a rich source of meaning for an individual’s philanthropy: identity ceding. Identity ceding is defined as a psychological process through which people willingly allow their sense of self to be transformed in order to achieve the goals they share with a community. Identity ceding can be experienced in five different elements of self: the agentic self; the object self; the experiential self; the represented self; and the meta-self. The authors define these terms and explain how they link together to provide a holistic sense of self. This chapter is by far the most conceptually challenging of all chapters in this book. It is also where the central thesis of the book begins to emerge. The authors describe the pivotal connection between what people do in their philanthropy, who they are as a person and how they relate to the community in which their philanthropy is grounded.
The opening chapter explains the purpose and nature of the research project on which this book is based. It provides a profile of interviewees and maps out how the interviews were undertaken. The chapter also locates the study in the wider literature on philanthropy and high-net-worth giving.
In this chapter, the authors consider meaning and meaningfulness. They explain that meaning is not only experienced as the sense we make of something or what it signifies, but also the process through which the sense is made. Meaningfulness derives not only from how significant we judge our experiences to be, but also from the process of allowing this sense of significance to emerge over time. The authors explore these concepts in the context of what people do in their philanthropy and the impact they create. They then extend the discussion to how meaning can also be experienced in association with people’s object self, agentic self and meta-self.
With unparalleled access to some of the world’s most reflective and thoughtful philanthropists, this book explores the philanthropic journeys of 48 high net worth individuals (HNWIs) and ultra-high net worth individuals (UHNWIs) to uncover the person behind the giving.
Their stories reveal the difference between the meaning they experience and the impact their philanthropy makes. Through the lens of philanthropic psychology, the authors examine how philanthropists experience their giving and the psychological challenges they need to overcome.
This fascinating book provides a unique guide for new and experienced philanthropists and their trusted advisers and fundraisers in the creation of more meaningful philanthropic experiences.
In this chapter, the authors outline additional paths to meaningful philanthropy by leveraging the learning derived in the preceding chapters. They cover the concepts of authenticity, transcendence, self-efficacy, self-worth and coherence. They also differentiate identity ceding from general self-transcendence and specify the directionality that is inherent in philanthropic decisions. Then, they explore why these paths to meaningful philanthropy can help sustain philanthropic journeys in the long term, how they can help families create the most meaningful philanthropic journeys for each individual family member and how a person’s philanthropic experience can enhance the meaning and purpose that they can ascribe to their life.
In this chapter, the authors define two key concepts used repeatedly by interviewees to describe the nature of their philanthropic experiences: psychological ownership – ‘that state in which individuals feel as though the target of ownership (material or immaterial in nature) or a piece of it is “theirs”’ (Pierce et al, 2001, p 299); and moral conviction – a strong and absolute belief or attitude that something is right or wrong, moral or immoral (Skitka et al, 2021). Specially, interviewees differentiate the ownership they experience of domains from the ownership they experience over processes. The purpose of this chapter is not to superficially conclude that everyone takes ownership over their philanthropy or that everyone considers moral conviction important. To the contrary, the authors use these concepts to illustrate how diverse the interviewees’ philanthropic experiences are. Whether they take ownership and experience moral conviction, how they experience these processes and what they ultimately experience are all different for the interviewees. So how can we understand and support people’s philanthropic journeys in the face of such differences? To best answer that question requires that we develop a deeper level of analysis, looking at the person behind the giving and thus who the person is who is taking psychological ownership and deciding on moral convictions. This chapter begins that journey.
In this chapter, the authors define types of identity that people can label themselves with: moral identity; personal identity; and relational identity. They also provide examples of how these different forms of identity can be expressed through giving. They do not offer any prescriptions here about the kind of definition of the self that will create the most meaningful philanthropy. Rather, they suggest that to explore meaning, it is first necessary to understand how people choose which labels they want to use to define themselves (in different situations) and how they define what these labels mean to them.
We are living in the age of rapid change characterised by an ageing population, mass immigration, digitalisation, interconnectedness and transformation of the political landscape. The pace of the change is fast and it poses new challenges for the design of public services, but also many new opportunities. This chapter is based on the findings of the Horizon 2020 CoSIE project, building on the idea that public sector innovations can be best achieved by creating collaborative partnerships between service providers (public sector agencies, third sector organisations, private companies) and citizens who benefit from services either directly or indirectly. The goal is to contribute to democratic renewal and social inclusion through co-creating public services by engaging diverse citizen groups and stakeholders in varied public services. This chapter draws together ideas about co-creation, social innovation, social investment and individual and collective values and shows the relationship between these concepts and how they can support innovation in public services.
