The early origins of social responsibility in family businesses: constructing strategic philanthropy at Ingenio Manuelita, 1929–1947

Purpose: This study aims to examine the early stages of family business philanthropy amid institutional transformations to address the challenges of limited statehood. Despite a growing interest in the historical aspects of corporate responsibility, these dimensions remain relatively unexplored, especially in certain regions and for family businesses. However, they hold valuable insights that can contribute to contemporary discussions. Design/methodology/approach: The study analyzes the board minutes of Ingenio Manuelita, an emblematic family business in the sugar industry in Colombia, from 1929 to 1947. Using a qualitative approach, the authors categorize the top management’s decisions to respond to various stakeholders’ demands. Findings: Most early social responsibility in family businesses has been characterized as philanthropy, driven by family owners’ morals and ethical predispositions. The authors argue that depicting these actions as purely entrepreneurial philanthropy or implicit corporate social responsibility fails to capture the strategic dimension of businesses. Ingenio Manuelita implemented a multifaceted approach, comprising charity, providing public goods and increasing wages and social welfare for its employees and communities. The analysis contributes to understanding philanthropy as a practice that arises from the ongoing interaction between the requests formulated by close stakeholders and board members’ willingness, which nonetheless privileges the paternalistic predispositions of the family business board members and systematically reflects strategic business concerns. Originality/value: The primary contribution of this research is its analysis and explanation of how philanthropic decisions changed within family businesses at the beginning of the 20th century. Specifically, the study proposes that philanthropy in the early 20th century was driven by strategic rationality, in contrast with the paternalistic and charity orientations that characterized philanthropical practices in the 19th century. This work addresses a notable gap in business history literature, which has not adequately explained the emergence and routinization of social responsibility actions. Furthermore, the authors propose the concept of strategic philanthropy to understand the origins of modern social responsibilities of family businesses in Latin America, offering a complementary approach to the paternalist, charity-doing-good hypothesis in traditional (family) business historiography that undervalues the strategic motivations.