Does the accumulation of capital generate a transnational business community? This project takes the angle of "interlocking directorates" ("ID"), that is, networks of people holding simultaneous leading positions in several major companies, based in two or more countries. Yet we intend to push this approach further by examining sociologically how much interlockers resemble each other, interact with each other and, possibly, coordinate their activity. We combine and cross-fertilise the structural, network angle of ID studies, with the biography-oriented research on the sociology of elites. All along we keep a systematic, wide-scale empirical perspective, through a rigorous prosopography of interlockers in five core capitalist countries over a six-year period.
This perspective should enable us to uncover the concrete agents of corporate strategies, how they connect with each other and how they enter (then leave) the core business elite. Among other topics, we will: reassess the allegedly central role of transitional finance; seize the historical logics of accelerated transnational capitalist dynamics; better understand the tension between national roots and transnational socialisation; and articulate the transient logics of life course accidents and business alliances, with more structural economic changes (the relative success of business domains; renewed generations of career strategies and variations in national attractiveness).
Our project is a unique combination of international political economy, European studies, political sociology, sociology of economic elites and cutting-edge data analysis methods. Its outputs will be conference presentations to varied disciplinary audiences (political scientists, critical management specialists, social network analysts and sequence analysts, employment relations scholars), articles in high-ranked journals, a unique database on interlockers; training in summer schools and international doctoral networks; and the preparation of a more ambitious research project for the European Research Council.