Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
Postprint
Publication Date
6-2010
Abstract
Business has played a central role in the debate over Britain's place in the European Union. This paper examines the socio-economic characteristics of directors of Britain's largest corporations who affiliated either to Business for Sterling or Britain in Europe. It reports associations between directors' social backgrounds and their probabilities of affiliation. Elite university education, club membership, wealth and multiple directorships were all associated with higher propensities to affiliate. The associations are consistent with the idea that directors' social resources allow them to overcome collective action problems as well as supplying them with the motivations to affiliate. They also indicated that directors form a privileged group in that they have a number of very powerful actors who can take unilateral political actions.
Keywords
Business politics, social clubs, elite schools, super-wealthy, collective action, boards of directors
Discipline
Industrial Organization | Work, Economy and Organizations
Research Areas
Sociology
Publication
British Journal of Sociology
Volume
61
Issue
2
First Page
306
Last Page
335
ISSN
0007-1315
Identifier
10.1111/j.1468-4446.2010.01314.x
Publisher
Wiley
Citation
BOND, Matthew, Glouharova, Siana, & HARRIGAN, Nicholas.(2010). The Political Mobilization of Corporate Directors: Socio-economic Correlates of Affiliation to European Pressure Groups. British Journal of Sociology, 61(2), 306-335.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/1030
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Additional URL
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-4446.2010.01314.x