How Career Hubs Shape the Global Corporate Elite

Felix Bühlmann*, Christoph Ellersgaard, Anton Grau Larsen, Jacob Lunding

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

Abstract

In this contribution, we introduce ‘career hubs’ as an alternative to interlocking directorates and propose to study transnational corporate elite networks with this new concept. Career hubs, the most frequent common career organizations, put emphasis on knowledge brokering and allow us to study a larger variety of organizations to understand the form and the spread of elite networks. We use a sample of 1366 firms on the Forbes 2000 list of 2018 and investigate the careers of 16,500 top executives by linking these data to the BoardEx database. We find three types of career hubs: global audit and consulting firms, financial firms participating in a transatlantic banking alliance and large US consumer goods conglomerates – and highlight the mechanisms through which they shape the spatial structures of finance led capitalism. In the conclusion, we consider the implication of our results for the literature on corporate networks and propose a series of future research avenues in the career hub perspective.
Original languageEnglish
Article numbere12430
JournalGlobal Networks
Volume24
Issue number1
Pages (from-to)1-21
Number of pages21
ISSN1470-2266
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2024

Bibliographical note

Published online: 01 February 2023.

Keywords

  • Career hubs
  • Corporate networks
  • Elites
  • Globalization
  • Top executives

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