Where is the backbone of the transnational corporate elite?

The transnationalization of corporate activities has contributed to a rise in the number of transnational professionals and transnational corporate elite members. These transnational actors establish ties within and across national borders and contribute to the formation of a more connected global corporate network. And yet little is known about the geographical locations through which these transnational corporate elites operate, both nationally and internationally. This article aims to fill this gap by applying the network backbone detection algorithm to detect the global cities that are connected through the operations of the transnational corporate board members. The article detects the backbone of around 300 global cities, centered around London, New York and Hong Kong. The findings show that the backbone is currently structuring over a set of border-crossing communities and expanding to the locations beyond the Anglophone corporate world. The study interprets the presence of these new communities as the first signs toward the convergence of practices, norms and possibly identities of national elite members.

Emerging Sino-European Corporate Elite Networks.

Chinese investments into Europe have been growing prodigiously in the past decade and are increasingly the subject of controversy. However, while a lot of empirical data and analysis are available on the flows and stocks of these investments, we still know very little about the loci of corporate power and control behind them. This article focuses on a domain where substantive power of decision making and control regarding these investments lies: corporate boards. The key aim is to assess how Chinese boards are relating to the existing European corporate elite networks by analysing the extent and nature of Sino-European corporate board interlocking by China's largest firms as a particular networking mode. Based on business listings and databases, and applying social network analysis in combination with qualitative analysis, the article highlights the contours of an emerging Sino-European corporate elite, revealing under-exposed areas of ongoing Sino-European collaboration whilst at the same time indicating a sphere of potential influence by Chinese business elites at the top of Europe's corporations.

How academic achievement spreads: The role of distinct social networks in academic performance diffusion.

Behavior diffusion through social networks is a key social process. It may be guided by various factors such as network topology, type of propagated behavior, and the strength of network connections. In this paper, we claim that the type of social interactions is also an important ingredient of behavioral diffusion. We examine the spread of academic achievements of first-year undergraduate students through friendship and study assistance networks, applying stochastic actor-oriented modeling. We show that informal social connections transmit performance while instrumental connections do not. The results highlight the importance of friendship in educational environments and contribute to debates on the behavior spread in social networks.