Business Groups in 20th‐Century Swedish Political Economy: A Sociological Perspective |
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| Authors: | Mattias Smångs |
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| Affiliation: | 1. At Columbia University in the City of New York;2. The author is a graduate student in sociology at Columbia University in the City of New York. Comments or questions can be addressed to him at: ISERP, 420 West 118th Street IAB, 8th floor, mail code 3355, New York, NY, 10027;3. e‐mail: . Sm?ngs's research interests fall within the fields of economic, historical, and organizational sociology and social network analysis. He is the author of “The Nature of the Business Group: A Social Network Perspective,” published in Organization in 2006. The author would like to thank Victor Corona, Christofer Edling, Emily Erikson, Peter Hedstr?m, Jens Rydgren, Richard Swedberg, Harrison White, AJES editor Laurence S. Moss, and the late Charles Tilly for constructive comments on earlier versions of this article. He would also like to gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the Department of Sociology at Stockholm University, and the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation, grant no. J1999‐0162. |
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| Abstract: | Since the interwar period, the Swedish economy has been dominated by a few business groups that control practically all Swedish industry of any importance. This article provides a sociologically informed account of the existence and lasting dominance of business groups in Sweden. In challenging efficiency‐based accounts of business groups in Sweden offered by transaction‐cost economists, I adopt a historical and dynamic approach that understands economic institutions not as efficient responses to external circumstances, such as market conditions, but as “social constructions.” This approach emphasizes the role of contingency as well as agency in the formation and reproduction of institutions. The article demonstrates the historical contingencies of the emergence of the business groups—in the form of economic crises in the interwar period—and how the groups became institutionalized in the postwar period through a process of social exchange among the key actors in the Swedish political economy: the business elite, the trade unions, and the state. |
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