Conference Agenda

Business groups are widely recognized as a prominent feature of East Asian economies. However, how to define the boundary of a business group remains a question. Deviating from previous studies that defined business groups by ultimate control, this study approaches the issue from an angle of community network structures. Using director interlocking networks among Taiwanese publicly listed companies from 2010 to 2020, we apply the method of community detection to delineate corporate communities and compare the results with those by traditional definition. Our finding suggests that while there are substantial overlaps between two methods, community structures have better power of prediction for outcomes. Firms associated with corporate communities exhibit greater performance advantages than to the business group defined by ultimate control. Given the rapid transformation of East Asian capitalism, we believe community structure is a better method to analyze business groups and more studies need to be done.

Recent commentaries (notably popularized by Robert Reich) have referred to the political economy in the United States today as the “Second Gilded Age.” While America’s first Gilded Age was characterized by a tremendous concentration of wealth and power, it also represented an era during which exclusive private clubs provided meeting spaces and served as indictors of their members’ prestige. This paper examines the role such prestigious social clubs played in integrating the corporate elite at the end of the first Gilded Age in the United States. Utilizing board interlock data from 1904 and the social club memberships that were listed in Rossiter’s Club Men of New York (1901-2), the initial analyses demonstrate that membership in the 61 social clubs listed in the Social Register (1896) greatly increased director centrality and reduced social distance. The second portion of the paper interrogates further a potential division of labor among social clubs as a mechanism of cohesion among the directors of the nation’s largest corporations. By focusing the effects of membership in clubs emphasizing wealth, ancestry, culture or politics, the results show that these clubs make unique contributions to the integration of the social network of interlocking directors – that is, the four different types of clubs form non-redundant ties among these corporate elites. However, just because an individual lists a membership in these exclusive clubs does not necessarily mean substantive interactions occur between fellow club members or on the premises of these clubs. To assess the class formation effects of these social clubs, the final set of results moves beyond the structural conditions for interaction, to analysis of the how one prominent member used his memberships. Through an analysis of J. Pierpont Morgan’s Day Books, these data support the assumption that elite social clubs mattered. These results bolster the argument that ties formed through mutual affiliations in these bastions of exclusive power and prestige did in fact contribute mightily to the cohesion of the corporate directors at the end of the United State’ first Gilded Age.

Research has examined the relationship between formal bureaucratic structures and informal network structures within organizations. However, bureaucracy is not the only set of rules that governs organizations. Kinship has an important influence on how many small firms are organized and from a global perspective it also has an influence in large firms. In this paper we examine how informal organizational structures—specifically advice seeking networks—combine with kinship and bureaucracy in organizations.

Informal advice relations across units in an organization have been shown to incorporate knowledge that leads to greater productivity, innovation, and competitive advantage. However, boundary spanning ties require time and energy to create and maintain. Research has focused on understanding the mechanisms that underlie cross-unit ties in the context of bureaucratic formal rules and structures. In this paper we expand this focus to examine what occurs when there are two potentially competing sets of rules within an organization.

Our baseline hypothesis is that advice seeking is more likely to be seen within organizational boundaries and less likely to cross organizational boundaries. However, reciprocity within the informal advice network creates a level of trust that facilitates advice seeking across organizational boundaries. We then theorise that shared kinship membership facilitates advice seeking across organizational boundaries.

We gathered data on 604 employees in a financial institution located in West Asia. We use an exponential random graph model (ERGM) to analyse our data. Our initial findings suggest support for our hypotheses.

Collaborative R&D projects tackle major societal challenges, such as sustainability and the circular economy (CE). However, as projects progress, day-to-day operations can overshadow strategic goals. While leaders are expected to focus on long-term objectives and employees on execution, it remains unclear how hierarchy and network structures influence engagement in big-picture discussions. This study examines whether strategic goals remain central in project interactions or become confined to specific parts of the network—and how hierarchical position and network structures shape these discussions.

Using longitudinal network data from two interdisciplinary R&D projects in CE (N₁ = 79, 29.1% leaders; N₂ = 54, 40.7% leaders), we analyze conversational patterns during project meetings. Participants reported whom they spoke with and whether their discussions focused on operations, future projects, or big-picture topics (e.g., sustainability, CE).

Preliminary results suggest that big-picture discussions were limited to small, isolated cliques rather than widely shared across the network. Surprisingly, hierarchical position and network centrality had little impact, indicating that formal leadership alone does not ensure a sustained strategic focus. Instead, strategic discussions often remained disconnected from broader collaboration.

These findings underscore the need for leaders to monitor when strategic goals fade and actively reinforce the project’s broader transformation efforts. To ensure meaningful contributions to circular supply chains, leaders must embed large-scale objectives in daily collaboration. At the same time, strategic discussions should extend beyond central figures, empowering peripheral members to engage and ensuring that big-picture goals remain an integral part of project efforts.

With the upsurge in scholarly and policy interest in elites and inequality since the 2008 financial crisis, particular attention has been paid to finance and financiers as key structures and agents driving economic inequality. But while there have been many critical studies of financialisation, and several influential ethnographies of the financial sector, there have been few systematic empirical studies examining financial elites. This paper examines the financial elite in the UK - which has historically had a highly influential financial sector and remains an important hub for global finance - along with a comparator population of non-financial UK business elites. It details the demographic character of both these groups; the degree of cohesion of each via board interlocks in business and the third sector; the level of integration between them; as well as the nature and extent of their political engagement via an analysis of their political donations.

Tokenism theory explains how individuals from underrepresented groups experience bias in professional networks. This paper extends tokenism theory to network exchanges, arguing that gender bias in network benefits is influenced by women’s numerical representation and individual agency. We hypothesize that women in male-dominated networks receive fewer network benefits than men, but this disadvantage diminishes once women’s representation crosses a critical threshold. We further explore the role of agentic behaviors in mitigating these disadvantages. Specifically, we argue that increasing visibility and reducing information asymmetries help women counter biases that limit access to resources and referrals.

Our study contributes to tokenism theory by demonstrating how proactive behaviors can alter token dynamics in networks, shifting the focus from structural disadvantage to individual agency. Additionally, we advance network theory by highlighting how an individual’s status within their alters’ networks—not just their own network composition—shapes access to benefits. Our findings suggest that while agentic behaviors can reduce bias, they do not fully eliminate structural barriers.

This research has practical implications for fostering gender equity in professional networks. Organizations should create environments that encourage women’s participation and facilitate strategic interactions to mitigate bias. Future research should examine how these behaviors interact with network structures, perceptions of agency, and long-term career outcomes. By integrating agency into tokenism and network theories, this paper offers a dynamic perspective on how gender disparities in networks can be addressed.