The Small Worlds of Corporate Governance (Mit Press) - Hardcover

Adam Smith, meet network science. The role that ties among businesses play in governing collective corporate behavior has been the subject of scholarly attention since the birth of political economy. The Small Worlds of Corporate Governance brings 21st century analytic tools to understand the complex corporate global networks that drive the world economy. It is a landmark in the development of scientific methods to the study of the global political economy.

The question of who controls what in the world of corporate governance is one of immense economic and political significance, yet the data and tools required to answer the question―or even to frame it in a consistent way across countries and industries―have only recently begun to become available to social scientists. In this volume, Bruce Kogut et al. make an important start on the problem. I expect these essays to provoke a great deal of thought as well as new scholarship.

This thought-provoking study demonstrates with impressive scholarship and originality how social networks revealed through ownership ties and interlocking directorates influence corporate governance. Based on an impressive collection and innovative analyses of data on 22 countries, Bruce Kogut and colleagues fills a gaping hole on governance and network studies by their explicit comparative methodology. The book will be of great value to scholars, students as well as policy makers who follow the field.

In this comprehensive, cross-national study, Bruce Kogut and his colleagues show that corporate governance is a deeply sociological phenomenon as well as an economic and legal one. Using the most up-to-date innovations in the field of social network analysis, the authors of this volume demonstrate, in both compelling prose and revealing graphics, the role of national and global corporate elites in the origins, maintenance, and historical trajectory of the international business community. Anyone with an interest in the role of the corporation in the contemporary world will want to read this book.

The new edited book by Bruce Kogut brilliantly brings together two sets of literature―corporate governance and network analysis―in such a way that significantly broadens the insights about the importance of institutional diversity across economies and the impact of the structure of networks on the behavior of actors. This is a truly original book that highlights the importance of causal complexity and context on the strategic evolution of companies and national economies.