Business-Managed Democracy

“Business-managed democracies are those in which the political and cultural arrangements are managed in the interests of business.”
Sharon Beder, 2009.

 

 

 

For more on this subject see
Suiting Themselves:
How Corporations Drive the Global Agenda, Earthscan, London, 2006.
book cover

and Free Market Missionaries: The Corporate Manipulation of Community Values, Earthscan, London, 2006.
book cover

pointer Business-Managed Democracy » Inner Circle » Interlocking Directorates

Interlocking Directorates

reference
Reference: Michael Useem, The Inner Circle: Large Corporations and the Rise of Business Political Activity in the U.S. And U.K., Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1984.

Michael Useems' study of the US and UK found that even in the early 1980s large corporations were becoming more and more interrelated through shared directors and common institutional investors.

reference
Reference: See for example, Jeffrey Kentor and Yong Suk Jang, ‘Yes, There Is a (Growing) Transnational Business Community: A Study of Global Interlocking Directorates 1983-98’, International Sociology, vol 19, no 3, 2004; William K. Carroll and Meindert Fennema, ‘Is There a Transnational Business Community?’ International Sociology, vol 17, no 3, 2002; Ernie Englander and Allen Kaufman, ‘The End of Managerial Ideology: From Corporate Social Responsibility to Corporate Social Indifference’, Enterprise & Society, vol 5, no 3, 2004, p. 436. (pdf)

Various studies have shown that interlocking directorates have grown even more in the ensuing decades and have become more global. What is more the size of corporate boards has decreased whilst the proportion of outsiders on each board has increased with CEOs and executives from other companies therefore dominating the composition of many  boards.

reference
Reference: G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America? Power and Politics, 4th edn, New York, McGraw Hill, 2002, pp. 21-4.

In the US corporations with the most extensive connections – American Express, Sara Lee, Chase Manhattan Bank, General Motors, Procter and Gamble – tend to play a central role in business network. Their directors are 90-95 percent male, 95 percent white, usually business executives, bankers or corporate lawyers, and tend to vote Republican. The few business leaders who don’t fit this profile, nevertheless, adhere to corporate values. These directors, along with the leaders of supporting think tanks and policy groups, constitute a corporate class with common interests in fostering a pro-business political climate that has minimal scope for democratic intervention.

Some interlocking directorates in key corporations mentioned in this website are shown in figure below. Corporations that are joined by a line have at least one shared person on their board of directors. So for example, AIG has directors that are also directors of  JP Morgan, Time Warner and Eli Lilli.

interlocking directorates diagram

Source: Information from http://www.theyrule.net/2004/tr2.php
 and http://www.theyrule.net/2001/
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© 2012 Sharon Beder
http://www.herinst.org/BusinessManagedDemocracy/introduction/interlocking.html