How Global Boardrooms Shape the World Polity

• In Event: International Bureaucrats: Representation, Agency and Power in Global Governance

Abstract

Globalization is underpinned by international organizations—intergovernmental, non- governmental, or private—that develop policy scripts to diffuse around the world. We present an integrative model for understanding how boardroom dynamics within them impact the content of global scripts: we argue that board members balance dual roles as state representatives and socialized professionals when they interact and articulate their policy positions. To document these processes, we focus on the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund, a body that decides on economic policy issues impacting the lives of billions. First, at an individual level, we trace the education and career trajectories of all 727 board members—appointed by states—between 1980 and 2009. We find that they are homogeneous in terms of training, but heterogeneous in terms of professional backgrounds. Second, we examine how the aforementioned attributes of Board members impact a key aspect of their boardroom behavior, and demonstrate differences in what they talk about. Finally, at the boardroom level, we show how interactions of these professionals—cum—state representatives shape organizational output. Our findings reveal that global script-writing is driven by professionalization and elite socialization dynamics in apex communities, even in intergovernmental contexts where the primacy of state interests is assumed to dominate.

Authors

• Alexander Kentikelenis, Bocconi University

• Leonard Seabrooke, Copenhagen Business School