Large multinational corporations shape our lives to an enormous extent. How is the growth, power, and significance of big business to be explained and understood? Focusing on the issues of ownership, control, and class formation, Corporate Business and Capitalist Classes explores the implications of changes in the nature of big business, which affect both the businesses themselves, and the economic and political milieu in which these multinationals
operate. Up-to-date empirical evidence is reviewed in a wide-ranging comparative framework that covers Britain and the United States, Germany, France, Japan, and many other societies, including emerging
forms of capitalism in China and Russia. Unlike other specialist texts in the area, Corporate Business and Capitalist Classes relates its concerns to issues of social stratification and class structure. The first and second editions of the book (under the title Corportations, Classes and Capitalism) were enthusiastically received, and the present edition reviews new theoretical ideas and empirical evidence that has emerged in the ten years since the second edition
appeared. The text has been completely re-written and re-structured, and it relates its concerns to contemporary debates over `disorganized capitalism' and post-industrialism.
Industry Reviews
`To date, this book represents the most comprehensive coverage of the variations of corporate governance. John Scott has done us a service in bringing together the data on ownership patterns, banking interlocks, size, network density, and many more features of advanced industrialized countries. And on top of this, he adds in the latest studies on Latin America, central and eastern Europe, and Asia. I have found myself running to this book in its
manuscript form. It will serve as one of the most important sources in comparative institutional work.'
Bruce Kogut, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
`a thorough reworking of Scott's earlier work, Classes Corporations and Capitalism ... added to so extensively that a new title is easily justified ... the scope of Scott's knowledge of the debates and literature is displayed to telling effect ... this book is an invaluable synthesis of existing kowledge of patterns of ownership and control. Anybody interested in the area will have to engage with Scott's impressive contribution.'
Bob Carter, Sociology
`a state-of-the-art synthesis of existing research in this area by one of the subject's leading authorities. Specialists will also be rewarded by the emphasis on cross-national and comparative questions, for it is here that much of the debate is now taking place ...Scott's book still contains more substance than many of the prescriptively oriented studies of corporate governance that are being produced from within various Western business schools.'
Patrick McGovern, Work, Employment and Society
`A long historical sweep on European business, and a full descriptive account of the different corporate structures that prevail around the world ... its real contribution lies ... in providing a description of the different forms of corporate governance that are found in the variety of models around the world ... The discussion of this provides enormous detail, all documented thoroughly, and will undoubtedly be a valuable source ... the analysis is
wide-ranging and it all leads to an ambitious and extended treatment of the nature of the world economy, of inequalities of income and wealth, and ultimately of class formation.'
Times Higher Education
`This book comprises a through reworking of Scott's earlier work, 'Classes, Corporations and Capitalism' ... the book had serious implications for a number of current debates ... the scope of Scott's knowledge of the debates and literature is displayed to telling effect. The book is written with impressive clarity and authority ... an invaluable synthesis of existing knowledge of patterns of ownership and control. Anybody interested in the area will have
to engage with Scott's impressive contribution.'
Bob Carter, Sociology
