Bruce Cronin | University of Greenwich (original) (raw)
Papers by Bruce Cronin
[Introduction] When a director of one company at the same time serves on the board of another com... more [Introduction] When a director of one company at the same time serves on the board of another company, the two companies are said to be interlocked by that director. Through this linkage each company has potential access to information about the activities of the other, either explicitly as intelligence transferred by the director or implicitly in shaping the director’s perspective and general views. Director interlocks formed by executive directors, employed by the firm, are generally interpreted as more instrumental for the firm than those formed by non-executive directors. Firms are often interlocked with more than one other firm and those firms, in turn, with others; a web of social relationships envelops business
Think Tanks and Global Politics, 2017
A key consideration in heterodox economics is the situating of economic activity in a social cont... more A key consideration in heterodox economics is the situating of economic activity in a social context. Where classical and neoclassical economics abstracts away from social relationships to a foundation of atomized rational egoists optimizing choices in conditions of scarcity, heterodox traditions focus on the variety of social interactions involved in people meeting their material needs, emphasizing the social embeddedness of economic decisions and particularly power disparities within this (Polanyi 1944). But even within this tradition, the extent to which economic decisions are subject to social or individual determination remains grist to a large, philosophical and politically polarized mill (Granovetter 1985). Social network analysis (SNA) provides a set of powerful techniques for the study of social interactions empirically. It is thus well placed to provide concrete evidence illuminating the polarized and historically abstract structure-agency debate. For example, SNA has been used to identify extensive interlinks between firms formed by their sharing directors, and persistent links between contracting firms and contractors, both undercutting assumptions that firms act independently of one another (Eccles 1981; Useem 1979). It has provided important tools to move beyond the neoclassical 'black box' of the firm and explore Penrose's (1959) notion of the firm as a bundle of resources and knowledge and the micro-power relations associated with this (Burt 1992; Ferlie et al. 2005; Kogut 2000; Kondo 1990). It has contributed to the understanding of team dynamics and conflict (Brass 1992; Burt and Ronchi 1990; Ibarra 1992), matching problems underpinning imperfect labour markets (Calvó-Armengol and Jackson 2004; Granovetter 1974). And there have been many applications of social network analysis in the field of decision-making, contrasting rational decision assumptions, brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by Greenwich Academic Literature Archive particularly the influence of interest groups on government policy (Knoke 1990; Laumann and Knoke 1987; Sabatier 1987). This chapter provides an introduction to social network analysis, and ways in which this methodological and theoretical approach might contribute to heterodox economic analysis. It considers first the notion and visualization of social networks, next important data considerations, then the principal analytical methods in the field. These include individual positions within the network, the concepts of closure and brokerage, subgroups and characteristics of the network as a whole. Finally, issues related to hypothesis testing with network data are considered, and conclusions are drawn. 12.2 SOCIAL NETWORKS AND THEIR VISUALIZATION Social network analysis comprises a set of techniques for the quantification and interpretation of relationships among social entities. Social entities may be single individuals or organizations; groups of individuals such as teams, communities, or alliances; and social constructions such as artefacts, texts, databases, or processes. The focus on social entities reflects the origins of the field in sociology and anthropology and the theoretical assumptions it draws on in terms of the interpretation of relationships. But many of the analytic techniques, drawing from the mathematics of graph theory, are common to applications of networks in physical fields such as computing, engineering, and physiology. A characteristic tool of SNA is visualization. Network visualization allows social relationships to be portrayed simultaneously at individual and global levels providing rich context for each. Network graphs such as Figure 12.1 (alternatively described as 'social graphs' or 'sociograms') communicate complicated data powerfully. In this graph, each circle (alternatively described as a 'node' or 'vertex') represents a social entity, such as an individual staff member in a workplace, a group, an organization, or even a social artefact such as a text.
If you wish to subscribe to CESifo Forum, please fill in the order form and return to the Press a... more If you wish to subscribe to CESifo Forum, please fill in the order form and return to the Press and Publications Department of the Ifo Institute. Please enter ...... subscription(s) to CESifo Forum Annual subscription price: EUR 50.00 plus postage (Members of the Ifo Institute: EUR 37.50 plus postage) Do not send payment. We shall bill you.
Based on the IMP research tradition this paper regards relationships and networks as key issues i... more Based on the IMP research tradition this paper regards relationships and networks as key issues in the product development and supply management agenda. Within business networks, co-development is only possible to be analysed when emphasis is placed on interdependences and interactive relationships. Co-development usually implies close relationships that allow companies to rely on each other’s resources. Close relationships imply interdependences, which may improve companies ’ technical and product development. By looking at the actual interactions – between a UK company and its Chinese suppliers – that led to an innovative solution and a successful product launch, evolving relationship patterns are identified and analysed in a case study. Both the literature review and case study findings highlight the importance of the ‘guanxi ’ concept (meaning interpersonal relationships in Mandarin) when analysing business-to-business networks in China. Hence, it is suggested that guanxi-based ...
Provides detailed instructions and theoretical context for undertaking social network analysis wi... more Provides detailed instructions and theoretical context for undertaking social network analysis with the software package Netdraw in organisational settings.
In recent decades the organisation of production has changed, with production and manufacturing a... more In recent decades the organisation of production has changed, with production and manufacturing activities no longer taking place in a single location, with lower transportation and communication costs leading to production activities geographically spread out into a global value chain. This reorganisation and fragmentation of the production process has led to increased sources of competition at the international level, with many firms from industrialised nations increasing their level of outsourcing and off-shoring of lower value activities to developing countries. Along with the increase in outsourcing activities, many industrialised nations are also now facing increasing competition from developing countries, who are steadily developing capabilities, in which industrialised nations once held a firm competitive advantage. This paper makes use of network analysis of the international trade network to analyse the competitive level of countries in the automotive industry, and to answ...
In this paper we introduce a new generation of sensemaking tools that are able to imprint organiz... more In this paper we introduce a new generation of sensemaking tools that are able to imprint organizational values, qualities, and skills, assess their compatibility with the corporate vision or their adequacy for a specific change and depict organizational archetypes. The main advantage of these tools derives from their ability to deliver reliable, tangible and contextual information on intangible assets and ambiguous issues. For this, they use archetypal models to structure their content, complex emergent methods to collect data, common logic rules to assess them and geometric templates to visualize the results. This combination permits easy contextualization of the content, authentic and real life representing data, removal of biases, as well as meaningful and comparable deliverables. The experience from the development and implementation of such a relevant tool shows that a structured approach to emergence and self-organization is feasible and fruitful. This opens new perspectives ...
preview 1 THE 25 IMP CONFERENCE Marseille, 2009 CHINESE SUPPLY NETWORKS – AN INTERACTIVE GUANXI A... more preview 1 THE 25 IMP CONFERENCE Marseille, 2009 CHINESE SUPPLY NETWORKS – AN INTERACTIVE GUANXI APP ROACH FOR PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT Christos Bassayannis * and Bruce Cronin 1. PhD Candidate, Visiting Lecturer in the Department of International Business & Economics, University o f Greenwich, Old Royal Naval College, Park Row, Londo , SE10 9LS, UK * 2. Head of International Business & Economics Departme nt, University of Greenwich, Old Royal Naval Colleg e, Park Row, London, SE10 9LS, UK, Email: b.cronin@gre .ac.uk *Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 7748 3838 33; Email: c.bassayannis@g re.ac.uk
The recent overseas outsourcing of a number of business services, such as call centres and accoun... more The recent overseas outsourcing of a number of business services, such as call centres and accounts processing, has raised concerns about the future of an area of business activity in which the UK has been deemed to hold a competitive advantage. While the future direction of UK manufacturing may have been questionable, the abundance of skilled service workers has long been thought to provide the basis for a strong alternative range of businesses. But ICT developments have reduced the dependence of many tasks from any particular location and made possible the relocation of many service jobs from industrialized to developing countries that provide a suitable infrastructure, high skills labour market and labour cost benefits. The great majority of work which is being offshored is in information technology (IT) and business process or call centre work (BPO). The providers of IT/BPO services include UK specialists, multinationals, and an emerging group of Indian companies. Interestingly,...
Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies, 2016
Review of Political Economy, 2004
Review of "Between Hierarchies and Markets: the Logic and Limits of Network Forms of Organiz... more Review of "Between Hierarchies and Markets: the Logic and Limits of Network Forms of Organization" by Grahame F. Thompson, Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 240, $29.95 paperback ISBN 0-19-877527-X.
The Creative Industries are a significant sector for the success of the UK economy contributing £... more The Creative Industries are a significant sector for the success of the UK economy contributing £87.4bn GVA in 2015 (DCMS). It is therefore important that we use the research funds allocated to university support for this sector (over £46 million in 2015) as effectively as possible. To do this, we must understand the distinctive nature of knowledge exchange relationships between universities and enterprises within this sector.
Drawing from two long standing traditions in organizational studies, executive manager recruitmen... more Drawing from two long standing traditions in organizational studies, executive manager recruitment and shareholder value creation, we analyze managerial migrations from the perspective of investment and financing decision-making. In two samples of large companies in the UK, cohorts of executive managers observed between 2006 and 2016 are examined applying network models, by comparing residual income between originating and recruiting firms and isolating exogenous residual income growth. In managerial migrations between firms during this period, differences in residual income were greatest where migrations occurred across industries or from different sized firms within industries. This indicates that executive experience of high performance is valued by firms recruiting across or within industries and thus supports the view that emulation of other firms practices is an important driver of executive recruitment.
Competition & Change, 2020
Culture, attitudes and perceptions have an underappreciated effect on industrial cluster policies... more Culture, attitudes and perceptions have an underappreciated effect on industrial cluster policies particularly in transition economies, where long-established local social norms are confronted with hard-pressed external imperatives. This paper examines the impact of cultural and governmental peculiarities in the Russian context on the development of special economic zones and industrial parks. Based on some stylized facts about the Russian context, in-depth interviews and surveys of the managing companies and tenants of all industrial clusters in Russia, we find cultural and governmental characteristics emerge as major influences on the effective development of industrial cluster policies. We develop an adapted industrial cluster model that accommodates these factors and suggests a policy pathway for mitigation.
Choice Reviews Online, 2000
Preface The Origins and Development of International Maoism Latin America Albania Africa and Asia... more Preface The Origins and Development of International Maoism Latin America Albania Africa and Asia Bibliography Index
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2016
Network data on connections among corporate actors and entities – whether through investment flow... more Network data on connections among corporate actors and entities – whether through investment flows, co-ownership ties, or elite social networks – is increasingly available to researchers interested in probing many important questions related to the study of modern capitalism. We discuss the promise and perils of using Big Corporate Network Data (BCND) given the analytical challenges associated with the nature of the subject matter, variable data quality, and other problems associated with currently available data at this scale. We propose a standard process for how researchers can deal with BCND problems. While acknowledging that different research questions require different approaches to data quality, we offer a schematic platform that researchers can follow to make informed and intelligent decisions about BCND issues and address these issues through a specific work-flow procedure. Within each step in this procedure, we provide a set of best practices for how to identify, resolve, and minimize BCND problems that arise
European Management Journal, 2017
We introduce a recent development in the statistical analysis of relational data that offers rigo... more We introduce a recent development in the statistical analysis of relational data that offers rigorous discrimination of a variety of structural and behavioural effects of interest to management research. Exponential random graph models account for the highly interdependent nature of network data that are problematic for the predominant inferential statistical analysis used in management research. We illustrate the value of the approach with an application focused on executive recruitment by large UK firms, modelling migrations of managers among firms as a network of relationships. We find rigorous statistical support for the influences of industry origin in executive recruitment, particularly in relation to legal and accounting activities. The flexibility and sophisticated relational variables available in the models offer considerable analytical power of value to a wide range of management applications.
The relationship between business and politics is multi-dimensional. This paper focuses only an u... more The relationship between business and politics is multi-dimensional. This paper focuses only an under-examined aspect of this multi-dimensional relationship – the embeddedness of interlocking directorates within political networks. There is established theory that firms in transitional economies have more extensive networks with politicians than in developed economies to compensate for the market and institutional uncertainties (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978). Our study develops this argument by showing that political bodies can be also interested in being involved in certain business networks to reduce what might be called political uncertainties. The validity of this argument is checked with regard to the relationship between interlocking directorates and political networks, an interaction that has not been particularly examined within the framework of resource dependency theory. Our inquiry aims to bring an insight into this under-researched topic by examining political aspects of interlocking directorate in contemporary Russia, the country in which business and politics is especially highly interconnected. This research is based on data collected from a variety of sources, including Orbis, a comprehensive database of business information. The findings show that there are a considerable number of ties between the Russian government and director boards of largest Russian corporations, and this allows the government to exercise control over activities of these companies with certain benefits for both sides
Review of Political Economy, 2007
Review of the book "Capital resurgent: roots of the neoliberal revolution", Gerard Dume... more Review of the book "Capital resurgent: roots of the neoliberal revolution", Gerard Dumenil & Dominique Levy. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2004, 249 pp., $55.00 hardcover. ISBN 0-674-01158-9.
[Introduction] When a director of one company at the same time serves on the board of another com... more [Introduction] When a director of one company at the same time serves on the board of another company, the two companies are said to be interlocked by that director. Through this linkage each company has potential access to information about the activities of the other, either explicitly as intelligence transferred by the director or implicitly in shaping the director’s perspective and general views. Director interlocks formed by executive directors, employed by the firm, are generally interpreted as more instrumental for the firm than those formed by non-executive directors. Firms are often interlocked with more than one other firm and those firms, in turn, with others; a web of social relationships envelops business
Think Tanks and Global Politics, 2017
A key consideration in heterodox economics is the situating of economic activity in a social cont... more A key consideration in heterodox economics is the situating of economic activity in a social context. Where classical and neoclassical economics abstracts away from social relationships to a foundation of atomized rational egoists optimizing choices in conditions of scarcity, heterodox traditions focus on the variety of social interactions involved in people meeting their material needs, emphasizing the social embeddedness of economic decisions and particularly power disparities within this (Polanyi 1944). But even within this tradition, the extent to which economic decisions are subject to social or individual determination remains grist to a large, philosophical and politically polarized mill (Granovetter 1985). Social network analysis (SNA) provides a set of powerful techniques for the study of social interactions empirically. It is thus well placed to provide concrete evidence illuminating the polarized and historically abstract structure-agency debate. For example, SNA has been used to identify extensive interlinks between firms formed by their sharing directors, and persistent links between contracting firms and contractors, both undercutting assumptions that firms act independently of one another (Eccles 1981; Useem 1979). It has provided important tools to move beyond the neoclassical 'black box' of the firm and explore Penrose's (1959) notion of the firm as a bundle of resources and knowledge and the micro-power relations associated with this (Burt 1992; Ferlie et al. 2005; Kogut 2000; Kondo 1990). It has contributed to the understanding of team dynamics and conflict (Brass 1992; Burt and Ronchi 1990; Ibarra 1992), matching problems underpinning imperfect labour markets (Calvó-Armengol and Jackson 2004; Granovetter 1974). And there have been many applications of social network analysis in the field of decision-making, contrasting rational decision assumptions, brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by Greenwich Academic Literature Archive particularly the influence of interest groups on government policy (Knoke 1990; Laumann and Knoke 1987; Sabatier 1987). This chapter provides an introduction to social network analysis, and ways in which this methodological and theoretical approach might contribute to heterodox economic analysis. It considers first the notion and visualization of social networks, next important data considerations, then the principal analytical methods in the field. These include individual positions within the network, the concepts of closure and brokerage, subgroups and characteristics of the network as a whole. Finally, issues related to hypothesis testing with network data are considered, and conclusions are drawn. 12.2 SOCIAL NETWORKS AND THEIR VISUALIZATION Social network analysis comprises a set of techniques for the quantification and interpretation of relationships among social entities. Social entities may be single individuals or organizations; groups of individuals such as teams, communities, or alliances; and social constructions such as artefacts, texts, databases, or processes. The focus on social entities reflects the origins of the field in sociology and anthropology and the theoretical assumptions it draws on in terms of the interpretation of relationships. But many of the analytic techniques, drawing from the mathematics of graph theory, are common to applications of networks in physical fields such as computing, engineering, and physiology. A characteristic tool of SNA is visualization. Network visualization allows social relationships to be portrayed simultaneously at individual and global levels providing rich context for each. Network graphs such as Figure 12.1 (alternatively described as 'social graphs' or 'sociograms') communicate complicated data powerfully. In this graph, each circle (alternatively described as a 'node' or 'vertex') represents a social entity, such as an individual staff member in a workplace, a group, an organization, or even a social artefact such as a text.
If you wish to subscribe to CESifo Forum, please fill in the order form and return to the Press a... more If you wish to subscribe to CESifo Forum, please fill in the order form and return to the Press and Publications Department of the Ifo Institute. Please enter ...... subscription(s) to CESifo Forum Annual subscription price: EUR 50.00 plus postage (Members of the Ifo Institute: EUR 37.50 plus postage) Do not send payment. We shall bill you.
Based on the IMP research tradition this paper regards relationships and networks as key issues i... more Based on the IMP research tradition this paper regards relationships and networks as key issues in the product development and supply management agenda. Within business networks, co-development is only possible to be analysed when emphasis is placed on interdependences and interactive relationships. Co-development usually implies close relationships that allow companies to rely on each other’s resources. Close relationships imply interdependences, which may improve companies ’ technical and product development. By looking at the actual interactions – between a UK company and its Chinese suppliers – that led to an innovative solution and a successful product launch, evolving relationship patterns are identified and analysed in a case study. Both the literature review and case study findings highlight the importance of the ‘guanxi ’ concept (meaning interpersonal relationships in Mandarin) when analysing business-to-business networks in China. Hence, it is suggested that guanxi-based ...
Provides detailed instructions and theoretical context for undertaking social network analysis wi... more Provides detailed instructions and theoretical context for undertaking social network analysis with the software package Netdraw in organisational settings.
In recent decades the organisation of production has changed, with production and manufacturing a... more In recent decades the organisation of production has changed, with production and manufacturing activities no longer taking place in a single location, with lower transportation and communication costs leading to production activities geographically spread out into a global value chain. This reorganisation and fragmentation of the production process has led to increased sources of competition at the international level, with many firms from industrialised nations increasing their level of outsourcing and off-shoring of lower value activities to developing countries. Along with the increase in outsourcing activities, many industrialised nations are also now facing increasing competition from developing countries, who are steadily developing capabilities, in which industrialised nations once held a firm competitive advantage. This paper makes use of network analysis of the international trade network to analyse the competitive level of countries in the automotive industry, and to answ...
In this paper we introduce a new generation of sensemaking tools that are able to imprint organiz... more In this paper we introduce a new generation of sensemaking tools that are able to imprint organizational values, qualities, and skills, assess their compatibility with the corporate vision or their adequacy for a specific change and depict organizational archetypes. The main advantage of these tools derives from their ability to deliver reliable, tangible and contextual information on intangible assets and ambiguous issues. For this, they use archetypal models to structure their content, complex emergent methods to collect data, common logic rules to assess them and geometric templates to visualize the results. This combination permits easy contextualization of the content, authentic and real life representing data, removal of biases, as well as meaningful and comparable deliverables. The experience from the development and implementation of such a relevant tool shows that a structured approach to emergence and self-organization is feasible and fruitful. This opens new perspectives ...
preview 1 THE 25 IMP CONFERENCE Marseille, 2009 CHINESE SUPPLY NETWORKS – AN INTERACTIVE GUANXI A... more preview 1 THE 25 IMP CONFERENCE Marseille, 2009 CHINESE SUPPLY NETWORKS – AN INTERACTIVE GUANXI APP ROACH FOR PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT Christos Bassayannis * and Bruce Cronin 1. PhD Candidate, Visiting Lecturer in the Department of International Business & Economics, University o f Greenwich, Old Royal Naval College, Park Row, Londo , SE10 9LS, UK * 2. Head of International Business & Economics Departme nt, University of Greenwich, Old Royal Naval Colleg e, Park Row, London, SE10 9LS, UK, Email: b.cronin@gre .ac.uk *Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 7748 3838 33; Email: c.bassayannis@g re.ac.uk
The recent overseas outsourcing of a number of business services, such as call centres and accoun... more The recent overseas outsourcing of a number of business services, such as call centres and accounts processing, has raised concerns about the future of an area of business activity in which the UK has been deemed to hold a competitive advantage. While the future direction of UK manufacturing may have been questionable, the abundance of skilled service workers has long been thought to provide the basis for a strong alternative range of businesses. But ICT developments have reduced the dependence of many tasks from any particular location and made possible the relocation of many service jobs from industrialized to developing countries that provide a suitable infrastructure, high skills labour market and labour cost benefits. The great majority of work which is being offshored is in information technology (IT) and business process or call centre work (BPO). The providers of IT/BPO services include UK specialists, multinationals, and an emerging group of Indian companies. Interestingly,...
Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies, 2016
Review of Political Economy, 2004
Review of "Between Hierarchies and Markets: the Logic and Limits of Network Forms of Organiz... more Review of "Between Hierarchies and Markets: the Logic and Limits of Network Forms of Organization" by Grahame F. Thompson, Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 240, $29.95 paperback ISBN 0-19-877527-X.
The Creative Industries are a significant sector for the success of the UK economy contributing £... more The Creative Industries are a significant sector for the success of the UK economy contributing £87.4bn GVA in 2015 (DCMS). It is therefore important that we use the research funds allocated to university support for this sector (over £46 million in 2015) as effectively as possible. To do this, we must understand the distinctive nature of knowledge exchange relationships between universities and enterprises within this sector.
Drawing from two long standing traditions in organizational studies, executive manager recruitmen... more Drawing from two long standing traditions in organizational studies, executive manager recruitment and shareholder value creation, we analyze managerial migrations from the perspective of investment and financing decision-making. In two samples of large companies in the UK, cohorts of executive managers observed between 2006 and 2016 are examined applying network models, by comparing residual income between originating and recruiting firms and isolating exogenous residual income growth. In managerial migrations between firms during this period, differences in residual income were greatest where migrations occurred across industries or from different sized firms within industries. This indicates that executive experience of high performance is valued by firms recruiting across or within industries and thus supports the view that emulation of other firms practices is an important driver of executive recruitment.
Competition & Change, 2020
Culture, attitudes and perceptions have an underappreciated effect on industrial cluster policies... more Culture, attitudes and perceptions have an underappreciated effect on industrial cluster policies particularly in transition economies, where long-established local social norms are confronted with hard-pressed external imperatives. This paper examines the impact of cultural and governmental peculiarities in the Russian context on the development of special economic zones and industrial parks. Based on some stylized facts about the Russian context, in-depth interviews and surveys of the managing companies and tenants of all industrial clusters in Russia, we find cultural and governmental characteristics emerge as major influences on the effective development of industrial cluster policies. We develop an adapted industrial cluster model that accommodates these factors and suggests a policy pathway for mitigation.
Choice Reviews Online, 2000
Preface The Origins and Development of International Maoism Latin America Albania Africa and Asia... more Preface The Origins and Development of International Maoism Latin America Albania Africa and Asia Bibliography Index
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2016
Network data on connections among corporate actors and entities – whether through investment flow... more Network data on connections among corporate actors and entities – whether through investment flows, co-ownership ties, or elite social networks – is increasingly available to researchers interested in probing many important questions related to the study of modern capitalism. We discuss the promise and perils of using Big Corporate Network Data (BCND) given the analytical challenges associated with the nature of the subject matter, variable data quality, and other problems associated with currently available data at this scale. We propose a standard process for how researchers can deal with BCND problems. While acknowledging that different research questions require different approaches to data quality, we offer a schematic platform that researchers can follow to make informed and intelligent decisions about BCND issues and address these issues through a specific work-flow procedure. Within each step in this procedure, we provide a set of best practices for how to identify, resolve, and minimize BCND problems that arise
European Management Journal, 2017
We introduce a recent development in the statistical analysis of relational data that offers rigo... more We introduce a recent development in the statistical analysis of relational data that offers rigorous discrimination of a variety of structural and behavioural effects of interest to management research. Exponential random graph models account for the highly interdependent nature of network data that are problematic for the predominant inferential statistical analysis used in management research. We illustrate the value of the approach with an application focused on executive recruitment by large UK firms, modelling migrations of managers among firms as a network of relationships. We find rigorous statistical support for the influences of industry origin in executive recruitment, particularly in relation to legal and accounting activities. The flexibility and sophisticated relational variables available in the models offer considerable analytical power of value to a wide range of management applications.
The relationship between business and politics is multi-dimensional. This paper focuses only an u... more The relationship between business and politics is multi-dimensional. This paper focuses only an under-examined aspect of this multi-dimensional relationship – the embeddedness of interlocking directorates within political networks. There is established theory that firms in transitional economies have more extensive networks with politicians than in developed economies to compensate for the market and institutional uncertainties (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978). Our study develops this argument by showing that political bodies can be also interested in being involved in certain business networks to reduce what might be called political uncertainties. The validity of this argument is checked with regard to the relationship between interlocking directorates and political networks, an interaction that has not been particularly examined within the framework of resource dependency theory. Our inquiry aims to bring an insight into this under-researched topic by examining political aspects of interlocking directorate in contemporary Russia, the country in which business and politics is especially highly interconnected. This research is based on data collected from a variety of sources, including Orbis, a comprehensive database of business information. The findings show that there are a considerable number of ties between the Russian government and director boards of largest Russian corporations, and this allows the government to exercise control over activities of these companies with certain benefits for both sides
Review of Political Economy, 2007
Review of the book "Capital resurgent: roots of the neoliberal revolution", Gerard Dume... more Review of the book "Capital resurgent: roots of the neoliberal revolution", Gerard Dumenil & Dominique Levy. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2004, 249 pp., $55.00 hardcover. ISBN 0-674-01158-9.