Fedex Trade Network Transport Brkr

Networks in business, politics, the social world did not arrive with the internet age. The old, historical, personal and informal networks are what still create jobs, wealth, governments. From royal families and medieval knights & trades guilds, like-minded men in early politics and political clubs, certain schools, the military, the church, the law, the criminal fraternity, select businesses, private clubs & organisations, older universities, the world is an overlapping matrix of networks. These are also known as nods & winks, understandings, accommodations, handshakes, relatives, mafias, cartels, brother/sisterhoods, hierarchies, alliances and secrets.

Networks Serve Small Elites

In Britain, a particular expression, the “Old Boy Network”, evolved, understood implicitly by people in a society where everybody knew his/her place. “Stiff upper lip”, “that’s not cricket”, “fair play” were similarly unspoken, but authoritative phrases. Loyalties and allegiances run deep.

The class system was evident by opposites: upper class v lower, with the middle class variously leaning down or up. It was “toffs versus oiks” (from toffs’ perspective); chauffeur versus public transport; sophisticated versus humdrum; wealth versus poverty; health versus disease; private versus state education; ownership versus shop-floor, and Conservative versus Labour/trade union politics. In the past 30 years, such certainties have been blurred, if not swept away altogether.