Interlocking Directorates in Canada: Intercorporate or Class Alliance?

Michael Ornstein Interlocking directorates serve both individual corporations and the class that owns those large corporations. For the corporations, interlocks serve as a means of communication and control; forthe capitalist class, interlocks serve as a means of political and ideological coordination. This paper examines the relative importance of these two distinct, but notcontradictoryfunctions of interlocking forthe morethan 5,000 interlocks among the largest Canadian corporations from 1946 to 1977. Using the reconstitution of interlocks broken by the retirement of directors as a criterion, approximately half the interlocking directorates reflected corporate imperatives and half reflected class solidarity. Interlocks involving executives or between corporations with two or more interlocking directors were more likely to be reconstituted, but the effects of location, industry, and foreign ownership were weak. Both the interorganizational and class perspectives are necessary to an understanding of interlocking directorates.