The rise and global reach of the corporate foundation (CF) phenomenon has attracted the attention of academic researchers and practitioners and led to a plurality of definitions and understandings. This definitional fuzziness notwithstanding, the term hybridity is widely used as the defining characteristic to describe a CF’s position between business and civil society and its diverse interlinkages with its founding company. However, the extant literature has seldom explained what hybridity signifies, when it occurs and how it is shown. This paper presents the findings of a systematic review of the academic and gray literature on CFs. Based on 80 publications covering 30 countries worldwide, this study proposes 15 characteristics along four global themes as a comprehensive set to account for the complexity of CFs. It develops propositions for a fine-grained understanding of what constitutes the hybrid nature of CFs at the strategic, organizational and contextual levels. Accordingly, this study suggests ways forward by revealing questions that require further research toward a better understanding of the CF phenomenon.

公司基金会（CF）现象的兴起和全球影响吸引了学术研究人员和从业人员的注意力，并导致了多种定义和理解。尽管存在这种定义上的模糊性，但“混合”一词被广泛用作描述CF在企业与公民社会之间的地位以及与其创立公司之间各种联系的定义特征。但是，现有文献很少解释杂交的含义，何时发生以及如何显示。本文介绍了有关CF的学术和灰色文献的系统综述。基于覆盖全球30个国家的80个出版物，本研究提出了四个全球主题下的15个特征，作为应对CFs复杂性的综合设置。它提出了一些建议，以便在战略，组织和环境层面上对构成CF的混合本质有更深入的了解。因此，本研究通过揭示需要进一步研究以更好地了解CF现象的问题，提出了前进的方向。