Intercorporate Relations: The Structural Analysis of Business

by Edited by Mark S. Mizruchi , Michael Schwartz

• ISBN13: 9780521437943
• ISBN10: 0521437946
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1992-07-31
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Within the last decade, researchers studying business organizations have come to realize that corporate behaviour cannot be explained in terms of the actions of individual firms alone, and that in order to understand how businesses operate it is necessary to explore the relationships among them. This volume constitutes the first compilation of work by leading international scholars who have adopted a structural approach to the study of business, taking relations among companies as the fundamental unit of analysis, and examining the behaviour of individual firms within that framework. In their introduction to the volume, the editors analyze the historical and intellectual context of this rapidly growing area of research. The essays that follow include position statements by leading spokespersons for the two major structural perspectives on intercorporate relations - the resource dependence and social class views; national studies of the comparative historical development of intercorporate structures in Britain, France and Germany; essays on markets, money, and relations between corporations and cities; analyses of business structures in Europe, Latin America, japan and the US; and a chapter on transnational business relations. The volume as a whole will demonstrate to a broader public the significance and value of a structural approach to business studies, and will appeal to sociologists, organization theorists, business scholars, economists, political scientists, and business historians.

Table of Contents

List of figures

List of tables

Introduction Mark S. Mizruchi and Michael Schwartz

Part I. Theoretical Perspectives: 1. A resource dependence perspective on intercorporate relations Jeffrey Pfeffer

2. Finance capital and the internal structure of the capitalist class in the United States Michael Soref and Maurice Zeitlin

3. A structural approach to markets Eric M. Leifer and Harrison C. White

4. What is money? a social structural interpretation Wayne E. Baker

5. Corporation, class, and city system Donald A. Palmer and Roger Friedland

Part II. National and International Business Structures: A Comparative Perspective: 6. The structure of class cohesion: the corporate network and its dual James Bearden and Beth Mintz

7. Intercorporate structures in Western Europe: a comparative historical analysis John Scott

8. The articulation of power and business structures: a study of Colombia Enrique Ogliastri and Carlos Dá

vila

9. Business-government relations in modern Japan: a Todai-Yakkai-Zaikai complex? Koji Taira and Teiichi Wada

10. International bank capital and the new liberalism Meindert Fennema and Kees van der Pijl

Index of authors

Subject index.