This paper documents the changing patterns of corporate interlocking among approximately 250 corporations across four time periods—1962, 1973, 1983, and 1995. By utilizing network analyses, we describe several attributes of the overall set of interlocking corporate directors in a period of increasing corporate concentration, economic globalization, and changing regulatory environments. Measures of network density are based on all corporations and are broken-down by the ties formed by single versus multiple interlocking directorates. Three measures of network centralization are based on complete sociomatricies in which all ties between corporations are non-directional and have been recorded as either present or absent. Finally, we report the number of cliques formed by minimum size across time. Measures of network density, centralization and the number of cliques all underscore that the network of corporate ties in 1995 is less dense, less concentrated, and contain few subgroups. Our analyses at the corporate level demonstrate that these changes occurred primarily among financial corporations and correspond to a period of dramatic changes in the U.S. financial markets. Given our descriptive findings, we conclude that interlocking directorates in the United States are becoming less concentrated, though by no means insignificant.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Allen, Michael P.1974. “The structure of interorganizational elite cooptation: interlocking directorates,” American Sociological Review . Vol. 39, No. 3, June, pp. 393—406.
2.
Anderson, Sarah and John Cavanagh.2000. Top 200: The Rise of Corporate Global Power. Washington D.C.: Institute for Policy Studies.
3.
Bunting, David.1983 “Origins of the American Corporate network ,” Social Science History. Vol. 7, No. 2, Spring, pp. 129—142.
4.
Carroll, William K.1986. Corporate Power and Canadian Capitalism. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
5.
Carroll, William K. and Malcolm Alexander .1999. “Finance capital and capitalist class integration in the 1990s: Networks of interlocking directorships in Canada and Australia,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology. Vol. 36, No. 3, August, pp. 331—354.
6.
Carroll, William K. and Scott Lewis.1991. “Restructuring finance capital: changes in the Canadian corporate network 1976—1986.” Sociology. Vol. 25, No. 3, August, pp. 491—510.
7.
Davis, Gerald F. and Mark S. Mizruchi .1999. “The Money Canter Cannot Hold: Commercial Banks in the U.S. System of Corporate Governance,” Administrative Science Quarterly. Vol. 44, No. 2, June, pp. 215—239.
8.
Dobb, Maurice.1967. Studies in the Development of Capitalism. New York: International publishers.
9.
Domhoff, G. William.1967. Who Rules America?Englewood Cliffs : Prentice-Hall.
10.
———. 1970. Higher Circles. New York: Random House.
11.
———. 1983. Who Rules America Now?Englewood Cliffs : Prentice-Hall.
12.
———. 1998. Who Rules America? Power and Politics in the Year 2000 . Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company.
13.
Fennema, Meindert.1982. International Networks of Banks and Industry. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers .
14.
Fennema, Meindert and Huibert Schijf.1985. “The transnational network,” pp. 250—266, in Frans N. Stokman et al. (eds), Networks of Corporate Power. Cambridge: Polity Press.
15.
Fligstein, Neil and Roger Freeland.1995. Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives on Corporate Organization,” Annual Review of Sociology . Vol. 21, pp. 21—43.
16.
Fohlin, Caroline.1999. “The rise of interlocking directorates in imperial Germany,” Economic History Review. Vol. 52, No. 2, pp. 307—333.
17.
Freeman, L.C.1977. “A set of measures of centrality based on betweenness ,” Sociometry. 40:35—41.
18.
———. 1979. “Centrality in social networks: I. Conceptual clarification ,” Social Networks. Vol. 1, pp. 215—239.
19.
Galaskiewicz, Joseph.1985. “Professional Networks and the Institutionalization of a Single Mind Set,” American Sociological Review . Vol. 50, No. 5, October, pp. 639—58.
20.
Galaskiewicz, Joseph and Stanley Wasserman .1981. “A Dynamic Study of Change in a Regional Corporate Network,” American Sociological Review. Vol. 46, No. 4, August, pp. 475—84.
21.
Galaskiewicz, Joseph, Stanley Wasserman, Barbara Rauschenbach, Wolfgang Bielefeld and Patti Mullaney.1985. “The Influence of Corporate Power, Social Status, and Market Position on Corporate Interlocks in a Regional Network ,” Social Forces. Vol. 64, No. 2, December, pp. 403—431.
22.
Galaskiewicz, Joseph and Akbar Zaheer.1999. “Networks of Competitive Advantage ,” Research in the Sociology of Organizations. Vol. 16, pp. 237—61.
23.
Haunschild, Pamela R.1993. “Interorganizational imitation: The impact of interlocks on corporate acquisition activity,” Administrative Science Quarterly. Vol. 38, No. 4, December, pp. 564—92.
24.
Haunschild, Pamela R. and Christine M. Beckman .1998. “When do interlocks matter?: Alternate sources of information and interlock influence,” Administrative Science Quarterly. Vol. 43, No. 4, December, pp. 815—44.
25.
Knoke, David and James H. Kuklinski .1982. Network analysis. Quantitative applications in the social sciences, No. 28, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.
26.
Kotz, David M.1978. Bank Control of Large Corporations in the United States . Berkeley: University of California Press.
27.
Lang, James R. and Daniel E. Lockhart .1990. “Increased environmental uncertainty and changes in board linkage patterns,” Academy of Management Journal. Vol. 33, No. 1, March, pp. 106—28.
28.
Mills, C. Wright.1956. The Power Elite. New York: Oxford University Press.
29.
Mintz, Beth and Michael Schwartz.1985. The Power Structure of American Business. Chicago : University of Chicago Press.
30.
Mizruchi, Mark S.1982. The American Corporate Network 1904—1974 . Beverly Hills: Sage Publications .
31.
———. 1996. “What do Interlocks Do? An Analysis, Critique, and Assessment of Research on Interlocking Directorates,” Annual Review of Sociology. Vol. 22, pp. 271—98.
32.
Ottosson.1997. “ Interlocking directorates in Swedish big business in the Early 20th Century ,” Acta Sociologica. Vol. 40, No. 1, pp. 51—77.
33.
Pfeffer, Jeffrey.1972. “Size and composition of corporate boards of directors: the organization and its environment,” Administrative Science Quarterly.17:218—28.
34.
———. 1974. “Cooptation and the composition of electric utility boards of directors,” Pacific Sociological Review . Vol. 17, pp. 333—63.
35.
———. 1987. “A resource dependence perspective on intercorporate relations,” pp. 25—55 in Mark S. Mizruchi and Michael Schwartz (Eds.), Intercorporate Relations: The Structural Analysis of Business . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
36.
Roy, William.1983. Social Science History. “Interlocking directorates and the corporate revolution,” Social Science History . Vol. 7, No. 2, Spring, pp. 143—164.
37.
Salisbury, Joseph G. T. and George A. Barnett1999. “The world systems of international monetary flows: a network analysis,” Information Society. Vol. 15, No. 1, January-March, pp. 31—49.
38.
Scott, John.1985. “Theoretical Framework and Research Design,” pp. 1—19, in Stokman, Frans N., Rolf Ziegler and John Scott (Eds.), Networks of Corporate Power: A Comparative Analysis of Ten Countries. Cambridge: Polity Press.
39.
Scott, John, and Catherine Griff .1984. Directors of Industry: The British Corporate Network 1904—1976. Cambridge: Polity Press.
40.
Sklair, Leslie.1998. “Globalization and the Corporations: The case of the California Fortune Global 500,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. Vol., No., June, pp. 195—215.
41.
———. 1999, “Competing Conceptions of Globalization,” Journal of World-Systems Research. Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 143—162.
42.
———. 2001. The Transnational Capitalist Class. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
43.
Soref, Michael and Maurice Zeitlin .1987. “Finance capital and the internal structure of the capitalist class in the United States,” pp. 56—84 in Mark S. Mizruchi and Michael Schwartz (Eds.), Intercorporate Relations: The Structural Analysis of Business. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
44.
Stearns, Linda Brewster and Mark Mizruchi.1993. “Board composition and corporate financing: The impact of financial institution representation on borrowing ,” Academy of Management Journal. Vol. 36, No. 3, June, pp. 603—18.
45.
US Senate.1978. “Interlocking Directorates Among the Major U.S. Corporations”, A staff study prepared by the subcommittee of the Committee of Governmental Affairs. Washington: GPO.
46.
Useem, Michael.1984. The Inner Circle. New York: Oxford University Press.
47.
van der Pijl, Kees.1998. Transnational Classes and International Relations . London: Routledge.
48.
Wallerstein, Immanuel.1980. The Modern World-System II: Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World-Economy, 1600—1750. New York: Academic Press.
49.
Wasserman and Faust.1994. Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications. New York: Cambridge University Press.
