The structure of class cohesion: the corporate network and its dual

Abstract

The techniques of structural analysis have been applied to the business community in various ways and a particularly popular application has been in the study of interlocking directorates. Assuming that intercorporate relations can be traced through an investigation of structural ties, recent work in the area has mapped corporate interaction patterns in an attempt to address the question of cohesion within the business community. A consistent finding of such network analyses has been the identification of commercial banks as important actors in the world of big business (Bearden et al., 1975; Mariolis, 1975; Sonquist and Koenig, 1975; Norich, 1980; Mintz and Schwarz, 1981; Mizruchi, 1982, 1983; see also Allen, 1974; Burt, 1979, 1980, 1983). Many investigators have concluded from this and similar evidence that bank boards are the primary location for collective decision-making within the corporate world (Bearden, 1982; Glasberg, 1981; Mintz and Schwartz, 1985).