Search results

Corporate success depends partially on the quality of knowledge accessible to the executive board. One route of access to such knowledge is the appointment of directors who already hold directorships with prominent other corporate actors. Such director appointments provide interlocks to a corporate knowledge ecosystem (Haunschild and Beckman, 1998). The purpose of this paper is to examine how linkages between companies belonging to different sectors impact firm performance and to examine how linkages created by female directors, as opposed to male directors, shape performance.

This paper investigates the interlocks created between UK FTSE 350 companies from 2010 to 2018. It draws on network analysis to map the roles that male and female directors play in linking firms with varying sector classifications. The paper provides an examination of the impact of these roles on firm performance, through a panel data regression analysis.

This paper finds that there is an increase of inter-industry brokers over the period, and that men are still dominant in both the network and creating inter-industry ties amongst companies. However, the role of women in establishing these ties appears to be changing, and women are more important when it comes to create inter-industry ties among key economic sectors.

This paper provides a novel approach to examine the interplay between gendered inter (and intra) sectoral linkages and firm performance. It provides an original application of the two-mode brokerage analysis framework proposed in Jasny and Lubell (2015).

The outbreak of COVID-19 has caused a slowdown of economic activity across the globe, which has resulted in high levels of disruption to labour markets. This study seeks to examine how the outbreak of COVID-19 has impacted the search strategies of students seeking for an internship, and whether these have changed since the start of the pandemic. The study utilises the strength of weak ties hypothesis, social capital theory and status attainment theory to explore the changes in securing a position since the outbreak of COVID-19.

This study draws on data from two cohorts of MBA students seeking to secure internships: one before the outbreak and one during. A multinomial regression is employed to examine how students have used network ties to secure internships and how this has changed since the outbreak of COVID-19.

The multinomial regression results indicate that there was little difference in the strategies employed by students before the crisis compared to those that secured them during, potentially indicating that students are unwilling to deviate from typical job search strategies, especially in times of uncertainty.

This study provides insights into how network ties are used by job seekers during a period of economic and environmental uncertainty.

The relationship between interlocking directorates and firm performance has been increasingly debated, with a focus on whether firm's centrality in interlock networks is associated with performance. The purpose of this study is to examine not only how a firm's position in this network is associated with performance but also how the performance of network partners can impact a firm's performance. This study examines how firms effectively utilise the interlock network to achieve the goal of higher market capitalisation – termed market capitalisation rank (MCR).

The premise of the study is the UK FTSE 350 firms from 2014 to 2018. The paper makes use of a temporal network autocorrelation model to examine how firm characteristics, the structural position in the interlock network and the performance of network partners affect MCR over time.

The analysis indicates that firms with ties (via the interlock network) to firms with high market capitalisation are more likely to enhance their own MCR, highlighting network partners have the opportunity to play a critical role in a firm's dominance strategy to optimise firm value.

The value of this research is that it does not only look at the impact of a firm's position in the network on performance, but the impact of the performance of network partners on a firm's market performance as well.

This paper aims to provide an exploratory analysis of male and female directors, comparing the case of UK FTSE 350 boards of directors for 2010–2018, with Norwegian boards from 2002 to 2018, to examine patterns of busy female directors. This paper considers the differences between the effects of interest groups’ actions and those of quotas on the emergence of busy female directors.

This paper uses a longitudinal approach, providing an examination of both non-busy directors and busy directors sitting on the boards of UK and Norwegian firms, with a focus on female directors. Drawing on methods from social network analysis, several trends and patterns are mapped for the two corporate systems. The paper tests whether the proportion of busy male directors is significantly different from the proportion of busy female directors in the two institutional settings.

The results show there has been an increase in the proportion of busy female directors, whereas the level of busy male directors is slightly decreasing in the UK from 2010 to 2018. In Norway, following the introduction of gender quotas on corporate boards, there has been an increase in overboarded directors, especially female directors, along with the rise of so-called “golden skirt” directors. However, when compared to the UK case, the proportion of busy male and female directors is higher, suggesting that the emergence of the golden skirts in Norway is not a result of quotas alone.

The topic of busy directors has received increased attention in recent years, yet the gender of these directors is often neglected. This paper provides an overview of the characteristics of busy female directors for large UK and Norwegian firms, presenting avenues for future research.

It has been over 20 years since the landmark publication of Mizruchi (1996) and his examination of “what do interlocks do?”. Since then, the nature of interlocks and subsequent research on the subject has evolved. This paper aims to revisit the literature on interlocking directorates through a quantitative bibliometric analysis.

This study undertakes a bibliometric analysis of literature citing the Mizruchi (1996) to examine the state of research following up on “what do interlocks do”. This study examines 718 publications using keyword and co-word analysis, along with a thematic analysis to revisit the research that has followed Mizruchi’s topic of what do interlocks do.

This study finds that the topics of the corporate elite, capitalist economy and corporate governance have remained prominent themes in the field. Research areas that are emerging in the field of interlocking directorates include gender diversity, globalisation and advancing theoretical frameworks.

This paper provides a quantitative bibliometric analysis to revisit the extant literature on “what do interlocks do”, examining a high number of articles to identify areas which could be developed to advance research in the field.

This paper explores how gender-related issues are communicated in Korean family-run conglomerates (chaebols) and the roles of women within these businesses. It also addresses to what extent the communication of chaebols about female employment and career development reflects the perception of gender representation in these organisations.

By paying attention to gendered discourse in Korean chaebols, this paper examines what is said and written about gender issues in glottographic statements (texts) and non-glottographic statements (charts and other visuals) of annual reports (ARs) published by five chaebols since 2010. The paper uses a Foucauldian framework to develop the archive of statements made within these ARs.

Although there is an increase in female-employee ratios, ARs show that number of women at the board or senior management level continue to be small. ARs tend to provide numbers related to female employment and retention in their non-glottographic statements, yet these numbers occasionally differ from and frequently are not explained by glottographic statements. The strategies used by chaebols to improve career prospects for their female staff are only vaguely described and rarely evaluated.

This paper looks beyond the existing discourse analysis on “talk and text” by also investigating claims made through graphic and linear/pictorial elements and their interplay with text. This approach opens new understandings of how gendered discourses are constructed and how they (unintentionally) fail to resolve issues and perceptions related to female employment and career development in Korea.