Mills, Tom and Massoumi, Narzanin (2025). Elite status-seeking and class reproduction in civil society: an analysis of corporate elite appointments to charity boards. The British Journal of Sociology ,
Abstract
This article examines the relationship between economic elites and civil society by analysing the appointments of corporate elites to the boards of charitable companies in the UK. Whilst previous research has usually focused on who among the corporate elite hold positions in key civil society organisations, and the extent to which these organisations are integrated into corporate networks, we use data on the nature and operations of civil society organisations to identify which are more likely to attract corporate elites as board members. Using a dataset of over thirty-one thousand UK incorporated companies registered with the Charity Commission of England and Wales, we examine the appointments of corporate elite to these organisations over a ten-year period. Based on these appointments, we are able to offer insights into the social networks, values and interests of the corporate elite as a whole. We find that the UK corporate elite are more likely to join the boards of larger, high-status charities, and those that support traditional upper-class culture and class reproduction. We also find they are relatively more likely to join organisations that seek to shape politics and society – such as foundations distributing grants, or think tanks undertaking public policy research and advocacy – than those involved in the provision of welfare and social services. Taken together, the findings are suggestive of a status-seeking, culturally highbrow and secular economic elite, that is more traditional than meritocratic, and more concerned with shaping policy and supporting the institutions of their class, than directly supporting disadvantaged groups.
Publication DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.13201 |
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Divisions: | College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities > Sociology and Policy College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities > Centre for Critical Inquiry into Society and Culture (CCISC) Aston University (General) |
Additional Information: | Copyright © 2025 The Author(s). The British Journal of Sociology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of London School of Economics and Political Science. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Uncontrolled Keywords: | corporate elites,charities,civil society,class reproduction,computational social science |
Data Access Statement: | The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in GitHub at https://github.com/Narzanin/corporate‐elites‐charities. |
Last Modified: | 27 Mar 2025 17:02 |
Date Deposited: | 05 Mar 2025 10:28 |
Full Text Link: | |
Related URLs: |
https://onlinel ... 1468-4446.13201
(Publisher URL) http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL) |
PURE Output Type: | Article |
Published Date: | 2025-02-27 |
Published Online Date: | 2025-02-27 |
Accepted Date: | 2025-02-12 |
Authors: |
Mills, Tom
(![]() Massoumi, Narzanin |