Beth Mintz

Interlocking Directorates and Interest Group Formation

This paper uses data on interlocking directorates to test three theories of corporate organization: managerialism, coalition theory, and the theory of finance capital. Findings suggest that the modern corporation is not an autonomous unit as suggested by managerialism, that firms do not form flexible alliances which pursue mutual interests as implied by coalition theory, and that the interest groups of traditional finance capital theory do not characterize the interlock network of the 1960s. Instead, the system is dominated by a handful of interconnected major New York commercial banks and insurance companies which form the center of an integrated national network.

The Structure of Intercorporate Unity in American Business

This paper examines the structure of intercorporate unity in the United States through an analysis of interlocking directorates. Our findings suggest that the major organizing institutions within the corporate world are the largest New York commercial banks, themselves united by a small number of prominent insurance companies. These institutions lend an order to corporate affairs and maintain a loose unity among firms. Although sources of conflict remain, patterns of director interlocks emphasize the capacity for cohesion supplied by the financial sector and suggest that mechanisms for conflict resolution reside within U.S. business.

Capital flows and the process of financial hegemony

Among the most vexed issues in the sociology of business has been the identification of the conditions under which conflict has been resolved or unity established. Managerialists since Berle and Means have asserted the autonomy of the modern large corporation and this is the foundation for their assumption that capitalist class unity is impossible to achieve. 1 Critics of this view, both Marxist 2 and non-Marxist 3 have challenged the idea of business disunity without questioning the premise of corporate autonomy. They argue that united action is possible either through consensus of interest among firms, or by the imposition of common policy through state action.

The Intersection of Race/Ethnicity and Gender in Occupational Segregation: Changes over Time in the Contemporary United States

In this article, we examine changes in the types of occupations that members of various racial/ethnic-gender groups have entered. We are interested in two trends that we believe may have contributed to differences in occupational concentration: budget reductions and policy changes in Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) enforcement procedures, and the continuing increases in womens educational attainment. Using whites, African Americans, and Hispanics in our analysis, we evaluate race and ethnic differences by gender, and gender differences by race and ethnicity; thus, we pay particular attention to the intersection of race/ethnicity and gender in these processes. Our results suggest that white men have maintained their advantage in the occupational hierarchy in the period under investigation, and that white women have made more progress than any other group. For women, educational investment reaps rewards, although these benefits continue to be unequal. At the same time, the rewards accruing to white men, above and beyond the additive effects of their race and gender, have not changed over time; white womens progress has not intruded on this. Instead, white womens progress is a result of changes in two additive effects: the cost of being female has declined over time and the white advantage has increased. To the extent that changes in EEOC policies have had a negative impact on occupational desegregation, the impact is racialized but not gendered.

THE ETHNIC, RACE, AND GENDER GAPS IN WORKPLACE AUTHORITY: Changes over Time in the United States

We analyze factors explaining differences in hierarchical authority between men and women within and across categories of race and ethnicity in two time periods, finding that the processes leading to authority within the workplace operate differently by gender than by race or ethnicity. The demand-side factor, percentage of women in an occupation, helps explain authority differences between men and women in most groups. Supply-side factors, and, in white–black comparisons, occupational location, contribute to differences by race and ethnicity within genders. In the later period, education is particularly important for Hispanic men reflecting, we believe, the recent surge in immigration rates.

Financial Interest Groups and Interlocking Directorates

Many recent studies of interlocking directorates have paid special attention to the possible existence of interest groups or cliques within the corporate world (Allen, 1978; Dooley, 1969; Mariolis, 1977; Mintz and Schwartz, 1981a; Mizruchi, 1982b). The search for economic groupings of this type dates from the early part of the twentieth century when financial domination of industrial firms was thought to characterize American business. Bank control theory, in particular, posited the coalescence of individual companies into a number of competing groups, each organized around banking interests. Thus, Baran and Sweezy (1966: 17) define interest groups as “a number of corporations under common control, the locus of power being normally an investment or commercial bank or a great family fortune.” Early work in this area, therefore, attempted to identify separate groups of companies organized around either family or financial interests. Rochester (1936), for example, used information on stock ownership, banking dependence, service relationships, capital investments, and joint ventures to identify many autonomous cliques headed by founding families. Sweezy (1939) used a similar set of criteria to identify eight dominant financial interest groups. Perlo (1957) replicated these results 20 years later.

Problems of Proof in Elite Research.

This paper reviews the two most prominent methodological procedures used in the study of elites: social background investigations and decision-making analyses. Neither of these methodologies when used alone can resolve the power structure debate. Social background analyses do not take into account the possibility that individuals may not, in all cases, represent the social groups from which they are recruited. Decision-making analyses fail to investigate the process of policy formulation and therefore cannot identify which groups control government institutions. Two research strategies are offered in an attempt to cast new light on the controversy; however, researchers are cautioned to pay close attention to theory construction and to the creation and expression of complete and sophisticated theories that admit to detailed analysis and empirical test. The valid theory will be that which remains unmodified through a series of tests, while the opposition theory is repeatedly revised because of its inability to explain new data.

The Struggle for Control of the Modern Corporation: Organizational Change at General Motors, 1924-1970

employee morale and union-management cooperation than U.S. firms, which place more emphasis on turnover. This chapter ends with two main points. First, there is a divide between those with stakeholder values and those with shareholder values among the U.S. respondents. Second, the old system in Japan is reforming itself in a piecemeal fashion resulting in a hybrid Japanese model, in which market principles are being “grafted” onto a traditional base. Overall, Jacoby suggests that both Japan and the U.S. are moving toward market-orientation, yet the distance between the two national systems has been widening with the shift in the U.S. more far-reaching. The book has some shortcomings. First, the book ends without any explicit assessment of the four hypotheses identified at the onset, though the conclusion seems to support both the converging-divergences and weak-path-dependence hypotheses. A more explicit discussion of this in the conclusion may be necessary to theoretically clarify how pressures for greater industry-specific commonalities across countries and historical legacies of each system together generate an alternative system. Second, by exclusively focusing on large firms, the analyses might have significantly underestimated the extent that Japan has shifted toward market orientation. Unlike the U.S., where ILMs have been phenomena limited to certain large firms, in Japan ILMs (or stakeholder values) were social norms even among smalland mediumsized firms, which account for 99% of the total number of firms and approximately 80% of the workforce. These smalland mediumsized firms have been a crucial source for large firms’ resistance to change in Japan; but their own employment practices have been much more seriously affected by the external pressures. The book does not consider this important issue. Despite these shortcomings, The Embedded Corporation is a well-written, provocative, and innovative work on the topic. Jacoby has provided insightful observations and compelling evidence for his arguments. The book is useful for anyone interested in comparative management, economic sociology, and industrial relations. The Struggle for Control of the Modern Corporation: Organizational Change at General Motors, 1924–1970, by Robert F. Freeland. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 364 pp.

Review symposium II: CNN's Tailwind Tale: Inside Vietnam's Greatest Myth, by Jerry Lembcke. Rowman & Littlefield. 2003. 217 pp.

27.99 paper. ISBN: 0521677912.

24.95(cloth). ISBN: 0-7425-2328-4

In 1998, CNN launched an ambitious new program with a story of the Valley of Death, in what they envisioned as the expose of the decade. This was followed by a more detailed article in Time Magazine, clearly one of the most influential news sources of our time. It was a tale of Vietnam War sin, covert action by the U.S. Special Forces (a.k.a. The Green Berets, immortalized by John Wayne) in Laos (where they weren’t supposed to be) using sarin nerve gas (banned under international law) to kill American soldiers, who had defected to the North Vietnamese. Indeed, this was the blockbuster they imagined with one less than minor problem: It was not true. While based on a real war time event that was staged in Laos and code-named Operation Tailwind, the nerve gas and deserters were imagined. In this book Lembcke asks why the producers of the story, professional journalists themselves, their editorial superiors, and many lay Americans, find this story credible. This is clearly a very important question and Lembcke is particularly well positioned to address it. Having written a book on war and public memory, he was especially attuned to the permeable boundary between truth and fantasy. He also knew enough about the details of the Vietnam experience to be highly suspicious. But this is about much more than fact and fiction in a war characterized by government deception. It is about cynicism, right wing antigovernment messages, Christian fundamentalism, and most importantly, to me at least, the role of popular culture in defining our reality. Indeed, I saw in this book two questions with which I have been grappling: How is it that mass audiences are attracted to films, or television programs for that matter, about government agencies gone violently awry and to what extent do our undergraduates learn their history from these productions. Lembcke offers insight into both of these matters. Moreover, Lembcke’s timing is extremely fortuitous. The book was released during a particular moment in the history of media coverage, a period in which journalists are, perhaps, caught in the middle of a recurring ideological debate about their role and their neutrality. In this way it can be read not only an