Decline of the Corporate Community

From its inception, big business in the western industrialised world has been organised in national business communities. Central elements of these business communities are corporate board interlocks that constitute the notorious 'Old Boys Network'. This corporate elite connects the centres of corporate governance. In recent times, these networks of the corporate elite show signs of decline. Heemskerk investigates how the decline of the old boys network in the Netherlands has affected Dutch capitalism. Combining formal network analysis with insights from interviews with key corporate elite members, he shows how during the last quarter of the 20th century the Dutch business community has disappeared. This is interpreted as a drift towards a liberal market economy. However, as the study shows, even in a liberal market economy corporate directors need social networks to communicate and coordinate their strategic decisions. Hence, the corporate elite shift its meeting network to private and informal circles. To order this book, mail to "mailto:[email protected]">[email protected] jaar en dag verbindt het 'Old Boys Netwerk' de top van het bedrijfsleven in een hecht netwerk. Maar sinds enige tijd vertoont dit elitenetwerk tekenen van verval. Heemskerk brengt dit uiteenvallen scherp in kaart, en hij is daarbij een van de eerste onderzoekers die grondig reflecteert op de onderliggende oorzaken hiervan. Het boek geeft inzicht in de bestuursnetwerken van de top van het Nederlandse bedrijfsleven. Het brengt de verschuivingen in het netwerk in kaart en laat zien hoe sociale relaties binnen de 'corporate elite' ook in de 21ste eeuw van groot belang blijven. De studie heeft een zeer rijke empirische basis. De eerdere analyse van het netwerk van 250 bedrijven in 1976 is aangevuld met nieuwe gegevens over 1996 en 2001, waardoor er een unieke vergelijking over tijd mogelijk is geworden. Elitenetwerken staan momenteel erg in de belangstelling. Deze publicatie sluit qua thematiek goed aan op het recent verschenen boekje van de Volkskrant over de serie 'De top 200 van Nederland'. Behalve voor onderzoekers is dit boek uitermate geschikt voor (top)managers en commissarissen van grote bedrijven, (management) consultants, bedrijfsadviseurs en studenten aan de internationale business schools

Decline of the Corporate Community

From its inception, big business in the western industrialised world has been organised in national business communities. Central elements of these business communities are corporate board interlocks that constitute the notorious 'Old Boys Network'. This corporate elite connects the centres of corporate governance. In recent times, these networks of the corporate elite show signs of decline. Heemskerk investigates how the decline of the old boys network in the Netherlands has affected Dutch capitalism. Combining formal network analysis with insights from interviews with key corporate elite members, he shows how during the last quarter of the 20th century the Dutch business community has disappeared. This is interpreted as a drift towards a liberal market economy. However, as the study shows, even in a liberal market economy corporate directors need social networks to communicate and coordinate their strategic decisions. Hence, the corporate elite shift its meeting network to private and informal circles. To order this book, mail to "mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]

Catering to Cleantech’s Resource Needs: The Strategic Importance of Board Networks in an Emerging Green Industry

This paper explores the role of elite networks in shaping business strategies in the cleantech industry. In order to do so, we investigate whether and if so how boards of directors cater to the resource needs of the innovative and expanding cleantech industry. We create a new dataset of the board network of leading cleantech firms that allows us to show how cleantech directors are integrated into the worlds of government, banking, and research. The strategic merits of board networks considered are 1/ the need for operational resources 2/ the need for conducive policies; and 3/ the need for market access. We find that Finance and Innovation are most sought after, and domestic networks remain dominant. While larger firms are well embedded in big business and finance, smaller corporations seek ties with innovation and policy networks. Cleantech firms currently show no significant capacity to reduce dependencies in terms of access to future cleantech markets. The findings suggest that the ‘classic’ resource needs, such as finance, are much better ‘covered’ through the board’s network structures than those resources that would enable a firm to improve its long-standing needs, such as a favourable policy environment and access to future markets.

The Rise of the European Corporate Elite: Evidence from the network of Interlocking Directorates in 2005 and 2010

Studies of national networks of interlocking directorates across the globe reveal that since their heydays in the early 1970s, such corporate networks are in decline. During the past decade, there are indications that the cohesion between European corporate boards is actually increasing. However, the financial crisis might have well put a halt to the emerging European corporate network of board interlocks. The return of the nation state in the economic arena in response to the financial and economic crisis might have encouraged European big business to orient themselves towards the national community. Therefore this paper investigates the social organisation of Europe’s corporate elite over the past years. It compares the network of board interlocks between the largest stock listed European firms (the Eurofirst top 300) in 2005 and 2010. The findings show that by 2010, the European network of corporate board interlocks was stronger than five years before. The emerging European corporate network is increasingly becoming established. Whereas the European political elite was unable to counter the financial crisis by a common European approach, Europe is a fait accompli for the corporate elite. An analysis of the robustness of the network, its core, the central directors and the political geography reveals that corporate Europe nevertheless remains the playground of a few, heavily centred in the founding nations of the European Union

Uncovering Offshore Financial Centers: Conduits and Sinks in the Global Corporate Ownership Network

Multinational corporations use highly complex structures of parents and subsidiaries to organize their operations and ownership. Offshore Financial Centers (OFCs) facilitate these structures through low taxation and lenient regulation, but are increasingly under scrutiny, for instance for enabling tax avoidance. Therefore, the identification of OFC jurisdictions has become a politicized and contested issue. We introduce a novel data-driven approach for identifying OFCs based on the global corporate ownership network, in which over 98 million firms (nodes) are connected through 71 million ownership relations. This granular firm-level network data uniquely allows identifying both sink-OFCs and conduit-OFCs. Sink-OFCs attract and retain foreign capital while conduit-OFCs are attractive intermediate destinations in the routing of international investments and enable the transfer of capital without taxation. We identify 24 sink-OFCs. In addition, a small set of five countries -- the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Singapore and Switzerland -- canalize the majority of corporate offshore investment as conduit-OFCs. Each conduit jurisdiction is specialized in a geographical area and there is significant specialization based on industrial sectors. Against the idea of OFCs as exotic small islands that cannot be regulated, we show that many sink and conduit-OFCs are highly developed countries

The anatomy of a population-scale social network

Large-scale human social network structure is typically inferred from digital trace samples of online social media platforms or mobile communication data. Instead, here we investigate the social network structure of a complete population, where people are connected by high-quality links sourced from administrative registers of family, household, work, school, and next-door neighbors. We examine this multilayer social opportunity structure through three common concepts in network analysis: degree, closure, and distance. Findings present how particular network layers contribute to presumably universal scale-free and small-world properties of networks. Furthermore, we suggest a novel measure of excess closure and apply this in a life-course perspective to show how the social opportunity structure of individuals varies along age, socio-economic status, and education level. Our work provides new entry points to understand individual socio-economic failure and success as well as persistent societal problems of inequality and segregation

Peningkatan Pemanfaatan Jati Plus Perhutani (Jpp) Untuk Kayu Lamina

Jati plus perhutani (JPP) adalah jati (Tectona grandis) yang dikembangkan dengan menggunakan kultur jaringan. Informasi mengenai kualitas kayu jati cepat tumbuh tersebut belum banyak diketahui. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk memperbaiki sifat inferior agar pemanfaatannya optimal. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa JPP umur sembilan tahun termasuk kriteria kayu bulat kecil (KBK, A.1.), rentan terhadap rayap kayu kering (Cryptotermes cynocephalus) dan rayap tanah (Coptotermes curvignathus). Kayu tersebut setelah diawetkan, kelas awetnya meningkat. Untuk meningkatkan nilai tambah dan manfaatnya, kayu tersebut dibentuk menjadi balok lamina dengan dan tanpa sambungan bentuk jari kemudian dirakit menjadi balok lamina menggunakan perekat campuran fenol-resorsinol-formaldehida dan urea formaldehida. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan adanya sambungan dan pengawetan dengan boraks tidak berpengaruh terhadap modulus elastisitas balok tersebut kecuali pada uji tekan sejajar lamina

Decline of the Corporate Community : Network Dynamics of the Dutch Business Elite

Sinds jaar en dag verbindt het 'Old Boys Netwerk' de top van het bedrijfsleven in een hecht netwerk. Maar sinds enige tijd vertoont dit elitenetwerk tekenen van verval. Heemskerk brengt dit uiteenvallen scherp in kaart, en hij is daarbij een van de eerste onderzoekers die grondig reflecteert op de onderliggende oorzaken hiervan. Het boek geeft inzicht in de bestuursnetwerken van de top van het Nederlandse bedrijfsleven. Het brengt de verschuivingen in het netwerk in kaart en laat zien hoe sociale relaties binnen de 'corporate elite' ook in de 21ste eeuw van groot belang blijven. De studie heeft een zeer rijke empirische basis. De eerdere analyse van het netwerk van 250 bedrijven in 1976 is aangevuld met nieuwe gegevens over 1996 en 2001, waardoor er een unieke vergelijking over tijd mogelijk is geworden. Elitenetwerken staan momenteel erg in de belangstelling. Deze publicatie sluit qua thematiek goed aan op het recent verschenen boekje van de Volkskrant over de serie 'De top 200 van Nederland'. Behalve voor onderzoekers is dit boek uitermate geschikt voor (top)managers en commissarissen van grote bedrijven, (management) consultants, bedrijfsadviseurs en studenten aan de internationale business schools

Decline of the Corporate Community. Network Dynamics of the Dutch Business Elite

From its inception, big business in the western industrialised world has been organised in national business communities. Central elements of these business communities are corporate board interlocks that constitute the notorious ‘Old Boys Network’. This corporate elite connects the centres of corporate governance. This project investigates how the decline of the old boys network in the Netherlands has affected Dutch capitalism. Combining formal network analysis with insights from interviews with key corporate elite members, the project shows how during the last quarter of the 20th century the Dutch business community has disappeared. This is interpreted as a drift towards a liberal market economy. However, as the study shows, even in a liberal market economy corporate directors need social networks to communicate and coordinate their strategic decisions. Hence, the corporate elite shift its meeting network to private and informal circles. The dataset contains the board composition of the largest 250 firms in the Netherlands, 1976, 1996 and 2001, the board interlocks between firms, and the meetings between directors. Worksheets READ ME (description of data) 1976 Positions top 250 1996 Positions top 250 2001 Positions top 250 Board Interlocks 1976 Board Interlocks 1996 Board Interlocks 2001 Meetings Between Directors 1976 Meetings Between Directors 1996 Meetings Between Directors 200

The Community Structure of the European Network of Interlocking Directorates 2005-2010

<p>The boards of directors at large European companies overlap with each other to a sizable extent both within and across national borders. This could have important economic, political and management consequences. In this work we study in detail the topological structure of the networks that arise from this phenomenon. Using a comprehensive information database, we reconstruct the implicit networks of shared directorates among the top 300 European firms in 2005 and 2010, and suggest a number of novel ways to explore the trans-nationality of such business elite networks. Powerful community detection heuristics indicate that geography still plays an important role: there exist clear communities and they have a distinct national character. Nonetheless, from 2005 to 2010 we observe a densification of the boards interlocks network and a larger transnational orientation in its communities. Together with central actors and assortativity analyses, we provide statistical evidence that, at the level of corporate governance, Europe is getting closer.</p&gt