From Classwide Coherence to Company-Focused Management and Director Engagement

Abstract

Defining features of the American corporate apex have evolved in recent decades from a modest classwide coherence to a more dispersed amalgam of company-focused management and then to greater director engagement in company leadership. The rise of institutional investing had moved executives and directors to focus more on the specific interests of their own firms and less on their common concerns. More recently, the nation’s borders that have long defined its business elite have been giving way to an elite-ness transcending those boundaries. While the classwide sinews of the American business elite are diminishing within the United States, we find evidence that they have at the same time been strengthening with other national business elites to create a transnational informal network with a modicum of global coherence.

Citation

Useem, M. (2015), "From Classwide Coherence to Company-Focused Management and Director Engagement", Elites on Trial (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 43), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 399-421. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X20150000043026