The Bureaucratic Infrastructure of Globalization: How World Culture Informs Board Governance in International Organizations

• In Event: 4158 - Transnational Processes in the Contemporary World: Culture, Professionals, Activists, Expertise, and Technologies

Abstract

Globalization is underpinned by a host of international organizations—intergovernmental, non-governmental, or private—developing rules and norms that are spread around the world. This article casts light on the bureaucratic infrastructures that make all this possible. To do this, we combine insights from two hitherto-unconnected strands of research in organization studies: World Polity scholarship on global processes of scientization, and corporate governance literature on how the composition of boards of directors impacts organizational outputs. Our integrative model examines how world culture impacts individuals’ education and careers, and—subsequently—how this affects what these individuals do when they are on the decision-making bodies of international organizations. In other words, our model aims to illuminate and clarify the links between the macro-, meso-, and micro-level processes behind globalization. To examine these issues, we focus the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a decision-making body that influences economic policies that affect billions of people. Our study traces the education and career trajectories of all 715 board members between 1980 and 2010, and examines their involvement in policy debates. We use sequence analysis methods to distinguish types of careers among board members, and then link these types to observed behavior during decision-making on how the IMF treats private and public debts accrued by its member states. In short, the global debt management regime—a core element of economic globalization—is the outcome of Board decision-making that is a function of the prevailing world culture. The article concludes by examining other cases of norm-making—in health, trade, and the environment—where this model can be applied.

Authors

• Alexander Kentikelenis, University of Oxford

• Leonard Seabrooke, Copenhagen Business School