André Mach

Cosmopolitan Capital and the Internationalization of the Field of Business Elites: Evidence from the Swiss Case

The aim of this contribution is to explore how the recent internationalization and the increasing importance of ‘cosmopolitan capital’ has impacted on the structure and character of the field of the Swiss business elite. For this purpose we will develop the notion of cosmopolitan capital and comparatively investigate the field of the Swiss business elite in 1980, 2000 and 2010 with multiple correspondence analysis. We can show that in this period international managers with transnational careers and networks not only grow in number, but come to conquer the apex of the biggest and highest capitalized Swiss firms. At the same time, national forms of capital decline in importance and Swiss managers themselves are differentiated increasingly into national and international fractions.

POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ELITES IN SWITZERLAND: Personal interchange, interactional relations and structural homology

ABSTRACT As a legacy of the early stages of its state building process, Switzerland continues to be characterised by a cohesive elite whose members simultaneously occupy political and economic positions. Whereas sectoral analyses of the economic or political elite are widespread, few researchers have scrutinised the connections between business and politics. Therefore, this paper focuses on the linkages between the economic and political fields. Based on a joint multiple correspondence analysis of the CEOs and board members of the 110 largest Swiss companies in 2000 and 256 parliamentary members, we examine the interactional and objective relations between the fields through an analysis of personal interchange, participation in meeting places and structural homology of educational capital. It appears that the connections between elites are cumulative: in each field, the dominant faction shares a background in law or engineering, participates in meeting places, and personally moves between the fields. Reversely, the dominated, which come from a rather heterogeneous educational background, are excluded from interactional relations and moves between the two fields. That the two forms of elite coordination coincide and reinforce each other could be typical for a small country with little differentiated fields, where elite members quickly get to know each other and can easily meet on a regular basis.

The Swiss business elite (1980 2000): how the changing composition of the elite explains the decline of the Swiss company network

Abstract In this paper we analyse the decline of the Swiss corporate network between 1980 and 2000. We address the theoretical and methodological challenge of this transformation by the use of a combination of network analysis and multiple correspondence analysis (MCA). Based on a sample of top managers of the 110 largest Swiss companies in 1980 and 2000 we show that, beyond an adjustment to structural pressure, an explanation of the decline of the network has to include the strategies of the fractions of the business elites. We reveal that three factors contribute crucially to the decline of the Swiss corporate network: the managerialization of industrial leaders, the marginalization of law degree holders and the influx of hardly connected foreign managers.

Networks of Coordination: Swiss Business Associations as an Intermediary between Business, Politics and Administration during the 20th Century

Until the 1990s, Switzerland could be classified as either a corporatist, cooperative or coordinated market economy where non-market mechanisms of coordination among economic and political actors were very important. In this respect, Business Interest Associations (BIAs) played a key role. The aim of this paper is to look at the historical evolution of the five main peak Swiss BIAs through network analysis for five assorted dates during the 20th century (1910, 1937, 1957, 1980 and 2000) while relying on a database that includes more than 12,000 people. First, we examine the logic of membership in these associations, which allows us to analyze their position and function within the network of the Swiss economic elite. Until the 1980s, BIAs took part in the emergence and consolidation of a closely meshed national network, which declined during the two last decades of the 20th century. Second, we investigate the logic of influence of these associations by looking at the links they maintained with the political and administrative worlds through their links to the political parties and Parliament, and to the administration via the extra-parliamentary commissions (corporatist bodies). In both cases, the recent dynamic of globalization called into question the traditional role of BIAs.

Impacts of Globalization Processes on the Swiss National Business Elite Community: A Diachronic Analysis of Swiss Large Corporations (1980–2010)

Abstract This paper investigates the impacts of globalization processes on the Swiss business elite community during the 1980–2010 period. Switzerland has been characterized in the 20th century by its extraordinary stability and by the strong cohesion of its elite community. To study recent changes, we focus on Switzerland’s 110 largest firms’ by adopting a diachronic perspective based on three elite cohorts (1980, 2000, and 2010). An analysis of interlocking directorates allows us to describe the decline of the Swiss corporate network. The second analysis focuses on top managers’ profiles in terms of education, nationality as well as participation in national community networks that used to reinforce the cultural cohesion of the Swiss elite community, especially the militia army. Our results highlight a slow but profound transformation of top management profiles, characterized by a decline of traditional national elements of legitimacy and the emergence of new “global” elements. The diachronic and combined analysis brings into light the strong cultural changes experienced by the national business elite community.

How corporatist institutions shape the access of citizen groups to policy makers: Evidence from Denmark and Switzerland

ABSTRACT Traditional corporatist groups such as business groups and unions still play an important role in many countries, and the rumors exaggerate the decline of corporatist structures. Nevertheless citizen groups have grown in number and political importance. The authors show that Danish and Swiss citizen groups have gained better access to the administrative and parliamentary venues in the period 1975–1985 through 2010, but with Swiss citizen groups more successful than their Danish counterparts, particularly with regard to the parliamentary venue. Danish and Swiss neo-corporatism has confronted similar socio-economic and political challenges during this period, but the political opportunity structure is more favorable towards citizen groups in Switzerland than in Denmark. The Swiss referendum institution makes parliamentarians more open to popular demands while in Denmark strong unions, a strong parliament and frequent minority governments make it more difficult for citizen groups to be heard.

The Rise of Professors of Economics and Business Studies in Switzerland: Between Scientific Reputation and Political Power

This paper studies the rise of professors of economics and business studies in the second half of the 20th century in Switzerland. It focuses on three types of power resources: positions in the university hierarchy, scientific reputation and extra-academic positions in the economic and political spheres. Based on a biographical database of N = 487 professors, it examines how these resources developed from 1957 to 2000. We find that professors of economic sciences were increasingly and simultaneously successful on all three studied dimensions – especially when compared to disciplines such as law, social sciences or humanities. This evolution seems to challenge the notorious trade-off between scientific and society poles of the academic field: professors of economics and business increased their scientific reputation while becoming more powerful in worldly positions. However, zooming in on their individual endowment with capital, we see that the same professors rarely hold simultaneously a significant amount of scientific and institutional capital.

The Specificity of Corporate Governance in Small States: Institutionalization and Questioning of Ownership Restrictions in Switzerland and Sweden

For a long time, the literature on corporate governance has been dominated by analyses of the relations between shareholders and management and was concerned with very restrictive issues, such as the way shareholders could monitor management to act in their interests. However, recent studies have increasingly adopted a broader view. In this new perspective, corporate organization is not only determined by an efficiency logic (minimization of transaction or agency costs) but also by institutional factors (Jackson, 2001). Corporate governance is thus embedded in national institutions and can be broadly defined as the interactions between the central actors of companies (owners, managers, and workers), codified in some regulatory framework (company law, financial market regulations, and labor law) produced by the state or by collective actors.