Claire E F Wright
Biographic Data
| ID | 1140385 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Claire E F Wright |
| GIVEN NAMES | Claire E F |
| FAMILY NAME | Wright |
| SIGNATURE | WRIGHT C E F |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Wollongong |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4215-4169 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 24 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 18 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Small worlds
The study of corporate elites is crucial for understanding power in society.This article uses prosopography to examine the gender, race, class and social composition of Australia's top interlocked directors between 1910 and 2018.Applying institutional theory, it analyses the way the consolidation of managerial capitalism influenced the board appointment procedures of large Australian companies.Institutional isomorphisms have increased both the do…
Cheap labour
In this special issue we focus on the ways women’s ‘cheap labour’ – cheap in the sense that Raj Patel and Jason Moore describe capitalist exploitation of ‘cheap things’ – offered capitalist economi
The boss
The appointment of women to corporate leadership positions in recent decades has been touted as the triumph of postfeminsm, or the integration of feminist empowerment and neoliberalism in the decades following the second wave feminist Women’s Movement. This article re-examines this narrative by analysing the way women were included in Australian corporate executive management from the 1980s to the 2010s. I argue that postfeminism facilitated majo…
Bossyboots”
Improving the representation of women in corporate leadership is a key postfeminist project. Postfeminism—or the integration of women's empowerment and neoliberalism in the decades following the Women's Movement—has shaped the experience of Australian women in corporate leadership roles since the 1990s. As such, while efforts to improve the number of women in leadership have yielded admirable progress, achieving sustainable improvements in corpor…
Good wives and corporate leaders
Women have played a much greater role in large Australian firms than previously appreciated. This article examines Australian women in corporate leadership since 1910, revealing the role of networks and personal characteristics for access to positions of corporate influence. From 1910 to 1964, corporate women were cast as the ‘good wife’, with marriage and kinship affording some the ability to influence the networks of corporate men, and the fort…
Australian Economic History
In a time of pandemics, war and climate change, fostering knowledge that transcends disciplinary boundaries is more important than ever. Economic history is one of the world’s oldest interdisciplinary fields, with its prosperity dependent on connection and relevance to disciplinary behemoths economics and history. Australian Economic History is the first history of an
Above board? Interlocking directorates and corporate contagion in 1980s Australia
The 1980s were an outrageous time in Australia's business history. This paper re‐examines this era of misconduct, assessing the role of interlocking directorates for corporate governance of diversified business groups. Professional interlocked executives —those with professional training, executive status and mobility between member firms—enabled the takeover culture of the time, and allowed managers to ignore promised strategic benefits and redi…
Board Games
Interlocking directorates can encourage innovation, cooperation, and adherence to best practices or can contribute to collusion, corruption, and the stagnation of ideas. Research has identified the contingent nature of director networks, with outcomes dependent on the nature of the tie; the firms and individuals involved; and the institutional, sociopolitical, and cultural context. Distinguishing between helpful and harmful interlocks thus requir…
Confronting robotization in Mexico
This paper discusses the relatively unexplored risk of societal disruption following from the replacement of human labor by the use of robots and artificial intelligence in Mexico. It sketches the broader context and background of the so called ‘fourth industrial revolution’ and reviews available data on the impact of automatization on work. While most such studies have centered on Europe and the United States, this paper argues that this issue s…
Managerial Capitalism and White-Collar Professions
This article considers the interdependence of managerial capitalism with the historical constitution of professional work in Australia. Using data on the composition of the boards of Australia’s largest companies between 1910 and 2018, we show a deep connection between the managerial class and the top layers of professional hierarchies. Professionals in Australia forged a managerial-capitalist elite within large corporations, relying on a combina…
Quotidian Routines
Cooperative corporate behavior has often been explained through the social anatomy of business leaders and structural ties among firms. Our alternative approach investigates how quotidian interactions built trust and routines among a group of major firms in the Australian wool trade—a sector that required regular interaction to be effective. Deploying extensive archives of their meetings, we use social network analysis to examine interactions amo…
The Boarding Pass
Networks are an enduring feature of Australian economic life. Connections between firms and individuals have long provided access to new knowledge and resources, while also maintaining the wealth and interests of a small group. This article examines the network of board members of large Australian corporations in the 1910s. Social network analysis is used to identify the structure of the network, and prosopography is used to understand the charac…
Buzz and Pipelines
This paper provides a historical analysis of an urban services district through its examination of the Melbourne wool trade precinct in the 1920s. It is a study of both a local and global community whose social and spatial interaction facilitated large-scale trade of a complex commodity that has rarely been examined. Geographic mapping of the local and global connections of the precinct has been combined with archival evidence. It reveals the “bu…
The university tea room
Informal spaces encourage the meeting of minds and the sharing of ideas. They serve as an important counterpoint to the formal, silo-like structures of the modern organisation, encouraging social bonds and discussion across departmental lines. We address the role of one such institution – the university tea room – in Australia in the post-WWII decades. Drawing on a series of oral history interviews with economic historians, we examine the nature …
The Evolution of an Intellectual Community Through the Words of Its Founders
Analysing the dynamic evolution of a scholarly field requires an understanding of the social interactions within its community as well as the impact of the written word. Influence might diffuse through mentoring, graduate supervision, seminar discussion, and management roles. To date, our knowledge of the growth of economic history in Australia after 1945 draws heavily upon the impact of a number of key publications. We interview a broad selectio…
Neither a Discipline nor a Colony
After years in the wilderness, economic history is becoming fashionable once more. Intellectual shifts by its parent disciplines of history and economics, the failed experiment of economic history as a separate discipline, and the impact of major economic events have conspired to produce a renaissance in the field of study in the last decade and a half. We explain these changes and show that economic history derives its main strength from its rol…
Visualising the Interdisciplinary Research Field
The 1920s Viennese Intellectual Community as a Center for Ideas Exchange
This article constructs a social network, based on informal seminar attendance, for intellectuals living and working in Vienna in the 1920s. A range of primary and secondary sources has been used to compile a dataset on the duration, operation, and membership of informal seminars and the movement of individuals through the Viennese intellectual community between 1918 and 1930. This has then been visualized as a social network, highlighting the in…
Good wives and corporate leaders
Women have played a much greater role in large Australian firms than previously appreciated. This article examines Australian women in corporate leadership since 1910, revealing the role of networks and personal characteristics for access to positions of corporate influence. From 1910 to 1964, corporate women were cast as the ‘good wife’, with marriage and kinship affording some the ability to influence the networks of corporate men, and the fort…
The 1920s Viennese Intellectual Community as a Center for Ideas Exchange
This article constructs a social network, based on informal seminar attendance, for intellectuals living and working in Vienna in the 1920s. A range of primary and secondary sources has been used to compile a dataset on the duration, operation, and membership of informal seminars and the movement of individuals through the Viennese intellectual community between 1918 and 1930. This has then been visualized as a social network, highlighting the in…
Managerial Capitalism and White-Collar Professions
This article considers the interdependence of managerial capitalism with the historical constitution of professional work in Australia. Using data on the composition of the boards of Australia’s largest companies between 1910 and 2018, we show a deep connection between the managerial class and the top layers of professional hierarchies. Professionals in Australia forged a managerial-capitalist elite within large corporations, relying on a combina…
Quotidian Routines
Cooperative corporate behavior has often been explained through the social anatomy of business leaders and structural ties among firms. Our alternative approach investigates how quotidian interactions built trust and routines among a group of major firms in the Australian wool trade—a sector that required regular interaction to be effective. Deploying extensive archives of their meetings, we use social network analysis to examine interactions amo…
The Boarding Pass
Networks are an enduring feature of Australian economic life. Connections between firms and individuals have long provided access to new knowledge and resources, while also maintaining the wealth and interests of a small group. This article examines the network of board members of large Australian corporations in the 1910s. Social network analysis is used to identify the structure of the network, and prosopography is used to understand the charac…
Buzz and Pipelines
This paper provides a historical analysis of an urban services district through its examination of the Melbourne wool trade precinct in the 1920s. It is a study of both a local and global community whose social and spatial interaction facilitated large-scale trade of a complex commodity that has rarely been examined. Geographic mapping of the local and global connections of the precinct has been combined with archival evidence. It reveals the “bu…
Visualising the Interdisciplinary Research Field
Bossyboots”
Improving the representation of women in corporate leadership is a key postfeminist project. Postfeminism—or the integration of women's empowerment and neoliberalism in the decades following the Women's Movement—has shaped the experience of Australian women in corporate leadership roles since the 1990s. As such, while efforts to improve the number of women in leadership have yielded admirable progress, achieving sustainable improvements in corpor…
Board Games
Interlocking directorates can encourage innovation, cooperation, and adherence to best practices or can contribute to collusion, corruption, and the stagnation of ideas. Research has identified the contingent nature of director networks, with outcomes dependent on the nature of the tie; the firms and individuals involved; and the institutional, sociopolitical, and cultural context. Distinguishing between helpful and harmful interlocks thus requir…
The university tea room
Informal spaces encourage the meeting of minds and the sharing of ideas. They serve as an important counterpoint to the formal, silo-like structures of the modern organisation, encouraging social bonds and discussion across departmental lines. We address the role of one such institution – the university tea room – in Australia in the post-WWII decades. Drawing on a series of oral history interviews with economic historians, we examine the nature …
Neither a Discipline nor a Colony
After years in the wilderness, economic history is becoming fashionable once more. Intellectual shifts by its parent disciplines of history and economics, the failed experiment of economic history as a separate discipline, and the impact of major economic events have conspired to produce a renaissance in the field of study in the last decade and a half. We explain these changes and show that economic history derives its main strength from its rol…
The 1920s Viennese Intellectual Community as a Center for Ideas Exchange
This article constructs a social network, based on informal seminar attendance, for intellectuals living and working in Vienna in the 1920s. A range of primary and secondary sources has been used to compile a dataset on the duration, operation, and membership of informal seminars and the movement of individuals through the Viennese intellectual community between 1918 and 1930. This has then been visualized as a social network, highlighting the in…
The Evolution of an Intellectual Community Through the Words of Its Founders
Analysing the dynamic evolution of a scholarly field requires an understanding of the social interactions within its community as well as the impact of the written word. Influence might diffuse through mentoring, graduate supervision, seminar discussion, and management roles. To date, our knowledge of the growth of economic history in Australia after 1945 draws heavily upon the impact of a number of key publications. We interview a broad selectio…
Neither a Discipline nor a Colony
After years in the wilderness, economic history is becoming fashionable once more. Intellectual shifts by its parent disciplines of history and economics, the failed experiment of economic history as a separate discipline, and the impact of major economic events have conspired to produce a renaissance in the field of study in the last decade and a half. We explain these changes and show that economic history derives its main strength from its rol…
Visualising the Interdisciplinary Research Field
The university tea room
Informal spaces encourage the meeting of minds and the sharing of ideas. They serve as an important counterpoint to the formal, silo-like structures of the modern organisation, encouraging social bonds and discussion across departmental lines. We address the role of one such institution – the university tea room – in Australia in the post-WWII decades. Drawing on a series of oral history interviews with economic historians, we examine the nature …
Quotidian Routines
Cooperative corporate behavior has often been explained through the social anatomy of business leaders and structural ties among firms. Our alternative approach investigates how quotidian interactions built trust and routines among a group of major firms in the Australian wool trade—a sector that required regular interaction to be effective. Deploying extensive archives of their meetings, we use social network analysis to examine interactions amo…
The Boarding Pass
Networks are an enduring feature of Australian economic life. Connections between firms and individuals have long provided access to new knowledge and resources, while also maintaining the wealth and interests of a small group. This article examines the network of board members of large Australian corporations in the 1910s. Social network analysis is used to identify the structure of the network, and prosopography is used to understand the charac…
Buzz and Pipelines
This paper provides a historical analysis of an urban services district through its examination of the Melbourne wool trade precinct in the 1920s. It is a study of both a local and global community whose social and spatial interaction facilitated large-scale trade of a complex commodity that has rarely been examined. Geographic mapping of the local and global connections of the precinct has been combined with archival evidence. It reveals the “bu…
Confronting robotization in Mexico
This paper discusses the relatively unexplored risk of societal disruption following from the replacement of human labor by the use of robots and artificial intelligence in Mexico. It sketches the broader context and background of the so called ‘fourth industrial revolution’ and reviews available data on the impact of automatization on work. While most such studies have centered on Europe and the United States, this paper argues that this issue s…
Managerial Capitalism and White-Collar Professions
This article considers the interdependence of managerial capitalism with the historical constitution of professional work in Australia. Using data on the composition of the boards of Australia’s largest companies between 1910 and 2018, we show a deep connection between the managerial class and the top layers of professional hierarchies. Professionals in Australia forged a managerial-capitalist elite within large corporations, relying on a combina…
Australian Economic History
In a time of pandemics, war and climate change, fostering knowledge that transcends disciplinary boundaries is more important than ever. Economic history is one of the world’s oldest interdisciplinary fields, with its prosperity dependent on connection and relevance to disciplinary behemoths economics and history. Australian Economic History is the first history of an
Above board? Interlocking directorates and corporate contagion in 1980s Australia
The 1980s were an outrageous time in Australia's business history. This paper re‐examines this era of misconduct, assessing the role of interlocking directorates for corporate governance of diversified business groups. Professional interlocked executives —those with professional training, executive status and mobility between member firms—enabled the takeover culture of the time, and allowed managers to ignore promised strategic benefits and redi…
Board Games
Interlocking directorates can encourage innovation, cooperation, and adherence to best practices or can contribute to collusion, corruption, and the stagnation of ideas. Research has identified the contingent nature of director networks, with outcomes dependent on the nature of the tie; the firms and individuals involved; and the institutional, sociopolitical, and cultural context. Distinguishing between helpful and harmful interlocks thus requir…
Bossyboots”
Improving the representation of women in corporate leadership is a key postfeminist project. Postfeminism—or the integration of women's empowerment and neoliberalism in the decades following the Women's Movement—has shaped the experience of Australian women in corporate leadership roles since the 1990s. As such, while efforts to improve the number of women in leadership have yielded admirable progress, achieving sustainable improvements in corpor…
Good wives and corporate leaders
Women have played a much greater role in large Australian firms than previously appreciated. This article examines Australian women in corporate leadership since 1910, revealing the role of networks and personal characteristics for access to positions of corporate influence. From 1910 to 1964, corporate women were cast as the ‘good wife’, with marriage and kinship affording some the ability to influence the networks of corporate men, and the fort…
Small worlds
The study of corporate elites is crucial for understanding power in society.This article uses prosopography to examine the gender, race, class and social composition of Australia's top interlocked directors between 1910 and 2018.Applying institutional theory, it analyses the way the consolidation of managerial capitalism influenced the board appointment procedures of large Australian companies.Institutional isomorphisms have increased both the do…
Cheap labour
In this special issue we focus on the ways women’s ‘cheap labour’ – cheap in the sense that Raj Patel and Jason Moore describe capitalist exploitation of ‘cheap things’ – offered capitalist economi
The boss
The appointment of women to corporate leadership positions in recent decades has been touted as the triumph of postfeminsm, or the integration of feminist empowerment and neoliberalism in the decades following the second wave feminist Women’s Movement. This article re-examines this narrative by analysing the way women were included in Australian corporate executive management from the 1980s to the 2010s. I argue that postfeminism facilitated majo…
Sociology (14 works) · Political science (13 works) · Business (9 works) · Australian History and Society (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Social science (8 works) · Economics (7 works) · History (6 works) · Finance (5 works) · Public relations (5 works)