Corporate Elites and Intercorporate Networks

Constituting Corporate Europe: A Study of Elite Social Organization

“…In the structure of economic power such advisors are subordinate to functioning capitalists, yet in the political and cultural fields they often lead the way in representing corporate interests or in mediating between those interests and others (Carroll 2004). Just as “corporate community” is not an exact proxy for “capitalist class”, neither is it coterminous with the concept of economic elite, which has recently attracted renewed research interest (Carroll and Sapinski forthcoming; Savage and Williams 2008). “Economic elite” designates “an inter‐organizational group of people who hold positions of dominance in business organizations” (Scott 2008:37), irrespective of whether they maintain bonds of association or interaction.…”

“…In this article we use network‐analytic techniques to map the social organization of the European capitalist class's top tier, and its trajectory toward a transnational corporate community exercising collective political agency. Critical sociology contains a long tradition of “power structure research”, which has revealed, in networks of corporate affiliations, extensive elite cohesion and the capacity for political action (Carroll and Sapinski forthcoming; Domhoff 1980; Fennema and Schijf 1978). Beginning with Jeidels’ (1905) study of German banks’ relationship with industry, researchers have charted the “inner circles” (Useem 1984), “small worlds” (Davis, Yoo and Baker 2003) and “corporate communities” (Domhoff 1967) that are sustained in part by the longstanding practice of interlocking corporate directorates.…”

“…Speaking to one aspect of Wills’ suggestion, corporate network analysis offers “a coherent approach” to mapping an important element of class. But rarely have such studies taken up the geography of corporate power —the spatial organization of corporate networks—and rarer still are studies that map the geography of corporate power across national borders (however, see Carroll and Sapinski 2009 for discussion).…”

Is the locus of class development of the transnational capitalist class situated within nation‐states or in the emergent transnational space?

“…Another way in which directors can gain geographical proximity to international business networks is through international education. Research on national interlocks shows that these networks are built on top of individual networks that go back to shared educational and social backgrounds (Carroll and Sapinski 2010). Such shared group memberships create social capital that can have a multiplication effect on other types of capital (Bourdieu 1986).…”

Hollowing Out Corporate Canada? Changes in the Corporate Network Since the 1990s

“…Sociological research on networks of interlocking corporate directorates has proliferated since the 1960s, and has established the ubiquity of national "corporate communities" bound together by such social relations (Domhoff 1980;Stokman et al 1985;Windolf 2002). Although the precise significance of any particular directorate interlock is highly context dependent (Mizruchi 1996), the entire set of interlocks that constitute an intercorporate network serves to reinforce elite solidarity while enabling interfirm relations of communication, coordination, influence, and control (Carroll and Sapinski 2010). Canada has a rich tradition of scholarship in this field (Carroll 2008).…”