Retail relations: an interlocking directorate analysis of food retailing corporations in the United States

Abstract

The US food retailing industry continues to concentrate and consolidate. Power in the agriculture, food, and nutrition system has shifted from producers to processors, and is now shifting to retailers. Currently, only eight food-retailing corporations control the majority of food sales in the United States. Expanding on previous research by Lyson and Raymer (2000, Agriculture and Human Values 17: 199-208), this paper examines the characteristics of the boards of directors of the leading food retailing corporations and the indirect interlocks that bind the food retailers into a corporate community.

“Keeping our Mission, Changing our System”: Translation and Organizational Change in Natural Foods Co-ops

“…The decentralized and participatory forms of organization that existed within the co‐op sector contrasted starkly with the structures that dominated the mainstream grocery industry. Supermarket companies increased their efficiency and reduced costs throughout the late 20th century by forming retail chains that provided centralized control of stores (Mayo 1993; Guptill and Wilkins 2002; Schwartz and Lyson 2007). The problems of local autonomy and participatory management intensified as co‐ops began to compete more closely with these chains.…”

Land-grant university governance: an analysis of board composition and corporate interlocks

“…One of the reasons for the relatively lower profile of landgrant trustees may be that LGUs tend to select board members from within the states they serve, so the pool of candidates is drastically narrowed in ways that it is not for large private universities. Although the number of interlocks that constitute a corporately embedded governing elite is not clear, some indicators may be extrapolated from Lyson and Raymer's (2000) and Schwartz and Lyson's (2007) previous research on corporate communities and boards of directors. Lyson and Raymer's (2000) study of boards of the top 10 US food and beverage companies found 584 direct interlocks between their 138 directors and other corporations (for an average of four boards per director), which they assert constituted a dense and cohesive corporate community.…”

“…Lyson and Raymer's (2000) study of boards of the top 10 US food and beverage companies found 584 direct interlocks between their 138 directors and other corporations (for an average of four boards per director), which they assert constituted a dense and cohesive corporate community. In their subsequent study of the top eight US food retailing corporations, Schwartz and Lyson (2007) found 171 direct interlocks between 84 directors and other corporations, for an average of two boards per director. These authors concluded that food retailing corporations were firmly embedded with the corporate community, but that the number of indirect interlocks (of which there were only five) did not bind the retailers together in a cohesive or dense network.…”

Supermarket chains and small farmers in Africa: A new look from the perspective of New Institutional Economics

“…This process has shown that public policies are not necessarily the fastest or most effective way of bringing about changes in food marketing (Timmer, 2009). Supermarket chains have thus created distinctive standards that involve environmental, social and economic responsibilities associated with strategies of profit maximization (Schwartz and Lyson, 2007;Konefal et al, 2005).…”