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<strong>CONNECTIONS</strong> Structural Redundancy and Multiplicity in Corporate Networks Roy Barnes Department of Sociology, Anthropology & Criminal Justice University of Michigan-Flint Tracy Burkett Department of Sociology & Anthropology College of Charleston Abstract This research presents an intuitive and straight forward method of capturing both structural redundancy and the multiplicity of social ties in a small network of 20 corporate directors across four different social spheres in 1962. Structural redundancy is best thought of as the opposite of a unique tie which emerges in a network of interlocking corporate directors once the affiliations from other non-corporate organizations are included. Unlike the analysis of structural redundancy, the multiplicity of ties recognizes that the number and the configuration of ties between a given pair of directors are both meaningful. By utilizing these concepts, the paper shows how social club ties in 1962 were especially important in adding unique (i.e., non-redundant) ties among the corporate directors. The analysis of multiplicity reveals that over 60 percent of the directors had multiple ties and that 56 percent of the directors possessed ties stemming from two or more different types of social affiliations. These results underscore that there is more to the social cohesion among corporate directors than interlocks alone. Authors Roy Barnes has a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and is an Associate Professor of Sociology and serves as the Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Michigan-Flint. His research interests are in power structure research, interlocking directorates and network analyses. Tracy Burkett has a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of South Carolina, and is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Undergraduate Environmental Studies Program at the College of Charleston. Her research interests include political networks, sustainable community structures, and environmental justice. Notes An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Congress of Humanities and Social Sciences, Society for Socialist Studies, 3 June 2010, The Political Economy of Corporate Power. The authors would like to thank Wouter de Nooy and Eelke Hemskerk for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. We also remain grateful for the constructive comments provided by Connections in response to our initial submission. Please address correspondence to Dr Roy Barnes, The University of Michigan-Flint, 522 French Hall , Flint, Michigan 48502; Email: rcbarnes@umflint.edu 4
Multiplicity and Redundancy <strong>CONNECTIONS</strong> INTRODUCTION At the second meeting of the Politics and Interlocking Directorates Research Community, Burris (2006, p. 2) called for a “Sociology of Elites” in which corporate interlocks would be “only one thread in a much denser fabric of social ties among corporations and corporate elites.” Moreover, Burris cautioned those interested in pursuing a research agenda involving interlocking directorates “not to reify or isolate director interlocks from other social networks within which they are embedded.” This paper is a methodological response to this charge and explores the concepts of structural redundancy and multiplicity. There is certainly a rich literature on the sociology of elites. The early works of Mills (1956) and Domhoff (1967, 1970, 1983, 1998) which document and map the interorganizational ties among the directors of the United States’ major corporations are clearly foundational to contemporary analyses of the structure and exercise of economic and political power in America. For example, Thomas Dye’s work (2001) on his so-called “top down policymaking” begins with the national, i.e., corporate, elite. Similarly, Useem’s concept of the “Inner Circle” emphasizes how interlocking corporate directors obtain information on “contemporary business practices and the general business environment” (1984, p. 85). Likewise, in their study of policy domains, Laumann and Knoke (1987) envision dyadic communication among decision-makers as a means of monitoring streams of activities that may present opportunities or threats to their organizations. However, the men and women of the corporate elite are simultaneously directors of corporations and trustees or directors of museums, research universities, and members of social clubs. The notion that elites fulfill multiple roles and positions within a number of different types of organizations is captured by Breiger’s concept of “duality” (1974). Subsequently, many researchers, including those mentioned above, have examined ties between corporations and a variety of non-corporate organizations as a means of assessing the interpersonal network of the business community. In 1979, Moore published an article on the national elite network using data from the American Leadership Study from 1971-72. Based on personal interviews and the snowball sampling of other leaders, Moore constructed an interpersonal network that was used to identify a “central circle” of influential elites. Given this network clique, Moore was able to determine which individual business leaders were members of this “central circle” and whether such membership was associated with higher participation in non-profit foundations and policy planning organizations. In the early 1980s, Domhoff and a series of collaborators (Bonacich & Domhoff 1981; Salzman & Domhoff 1980, 1983) produced an extremely interesting set of findings concerning the links between corporations and policy planning groups, social clubs, universities, foundations and cultural/civic organizations. While certainly praiseworthy for establishing the empirical foundations for the study of the interorganizational ties between the corporate elite and policy planning organizations, nonprofit foundations and cultural organizations, these studies are not without problems. To begin, Useem’s and Domhoff’s analyses share the difficulty of operating solely at the organizational level of analysis. As such, in addition to analyzing inter-organizational connections, research into the formation, structure, and operation of the social mosaic of corporate directors would benefit from examining the inter-personal ties. Although Moore’s work operates at this interpersonal level of analysis, the reputational and snowball sampling methodology do not allow the complete analysis of the interpersonal network formed by corporate and noncorporate directors. These criticisms do not apply to the work by Carroll, Fennema and Heemskerk (2010) which examines directors among the global 500 corporations and the European Round Table of Industrialists, or to Carroll’s earlier work which examined the links between corporate directors and five leading transnational policy groups (2004). However, by focusing on one type of 5
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