The global corporate elite after the financial crisis

AMCIS Inequality Seminar

Lecture

Eelke Heemskerk discusses the impact of the recent financial crisis on the international network of the corporate elite. Has the structure of corporate governance become more national or have transnational networks been robust?

This lecture is based on a comparison of the networks of interlocking directorates among the 176 largest corporations in the world economy in 1976, 1996, 2006 and 2013.

A growing number of single linkers

Corporate elites have not retrenched into their national business communities: the transnational network increases in relative importance and remains largely intact during the crisis period 2006-2013.

But this network does not depend – as it used to do - on a small number of big linkers but on a growing number of single linkers. The network has become less hierarchical.

From national to transnational

As a group, the corporate elite becomes more transnational in character. This is an indicative of a recomposition of the corporate elite from a national to the transnational orientation.

Published by  AISSR