L'organisation collective du grand patronat américain Différenciation sectorielle et réseaux d'affiliation

This article contributes to Îhe debate on "the fracturing of élites" by examining the collective organization of élite business leaders outside the professional sphère. We draw on data from an original database to analyze a two-mode network linking 1,272 corporate administrators and heads from ten économie sectors to 5,590 organizations in eight différent social sectors. Using resource mobilization theory, we demonstrate the rele-vance of taking account of sectoral differentiation when comparing two sets of top business leaders. One falls into the category of established businesses represented by the oldest historical sectors, such as industry, raw materials, food, and retail sales. Another into the category of "challenger" companies in more récent sectors, such as hedge funds, private equity firms, and technology corporations. By modeling access to social capital, strength of intergroup ties, and political invoivement, we show that at the présent time the established élite still has a greater capacity to take collective action than the challenger group.