(1985). Levine's Atlas of Corporate Interlocks. Connections ... - INSNA

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In the 1920's, Toronto's upper class had a much lower birth rate than did the middle and working classes .
This meant its own children weren't numerous enough to fill all the elite jobs when they grew to adulthood,
and this became a factor in allowing significant numbers of middle class people to move in .
The move coincided with a surge of economic growth after the Second World War and with it, "an increase
in the number of command positions in major corporations," Tepperman said in an interview .
"Even if all the children born to the elite of the 1920's had taken elite positions, they would only fill
40 to 50 per cent of the jobs created by 1950 ."
(This pattern, however, was probably a one-time phenomenon because the birth rate of the middle and working
classes has now fallen similarly .)
An elite-dominated sector is defined as one in which most top-level jobs are held by people from old
families . The oldest sectors of the Canadian economy, such as banking, are almost entirely dominated
like this, he said .
In a period of limited economic growth, such as the one we are currently experiencing, there is less room
for those from below . However : "When new sectors of the economy open up, these provide tremendous opportunities
for individuals and groups who have been blocked in elite-dominated sectors ."
Where might such an opening come next "If I knew that I'd be sitting in the Vatican and people would bow
down to me," Tepperman said laughing . "You're asking me to tell you where new economic growth is going to
take place ."
But, he adds more seriously, it is conceivable that the next surge may involve the selling of some
resource which has not been in demand until now, such as water . "Whatever the new sector is, it will be
technologically as well as capital intensive ."
"The transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century is a transition from the history of great men
to that of great organizations," Tepperman said . "And since a key role in these organizations is directorship,
those who become directors capture the power ." Those who are merely wealthy still have an inside
track, but the ability to capture power in large organizations becomes more important .
Social responsibility is now exercised in the boardroom, not on the public stage, and people don't see
themselves as individually responsible in the way they once did . One factor responsible for this change
is the development of bureaucracy in business, which has made managerial expertise increasingly valuable
and permitted the organization of thousands of people and "masses of power ."
Tepperman and his colleagues have studied much of this pattern of change through studying succeeding boards
of the Toronto General Hospital, an elite organization founded as a public charity by Family Compact members
in 1818 . The membership of the hospital board has remained consistently upper class while accommodating
shifts within it, they discovered . In the early twentieth century, new blood from the provincial
government and the academic world was brought in, and more recently, Jews and women appeared on the board .
"The appearance of these groups signifies that these populations have to be addressed if you want to
mobilize their support . It doesn't mean you are necessarily going to be taking them home to dinner,"
Tepperman said .
(From Margot Gibb-Clark's story, TORONTO GLOBE & MAIL, 23 Aug 84 .)
THATCHERISM AND NETWORKS
"To drag Britain from the old state to the dawn of the new we need our Mrs . Thatcher & we needed strong
central power, wielded in traditional hierarchical style, to cut through the jungle of interest groups &
cartels & clear the undergrowth in preparation for the spread of the network society . In particular we
needed this kind of approach to break up the dominant but fundamentally bogus form of consensus which the
old producer groups had so successfully formed & projected in the 'seventies' in Britain . The consensual
tendencies of the future, which government leaders will be expected to reflect & articulate will be
of a wholly different kind, coming up from individuals & groups rather than imposed from the top of the
pyramid . . .
"The advanced societies wanting less government will still have to deal with the centralised governments
of less mature countries who will be throwing their weight around . So strength in international affairs
will require a much lighter touch at home . Come to think of it, that sounds a bit like the style of
British Government before Marx and before the rise of the modern industrial state . And perhaps that
reflects a certain reality . Maybe the information society, with its computers in millions of homes, is
really the old little bourgeois society, with its tight little network of contacts and interests, writ
large . The bourgeoisie wanted to be left at home alone to pursue both its individual and communal
interests, while government sent gunboats abroad . The labouring classes were meant to underpin this