A new look at board interlocking: evidence from corporate social networks

Absract The study aims to evaluate the interconnection structures by members of the Board of Directors with political and financial expertise of companies listed in the Brazilian stock market B3. The sample consisted of 2,474 observations in the period from 2010 to 2015. It is suggested by the Agency Theory that board interlocking (BI) for financial expertise can help in corporate monitoring and mitigates the agency’s conflicts. On the other hand, BI by political expertise can maximize opportunistic behavior. In the view of Resource Dependency Theory, BI for financial expertise can assist companies in attracting financial resources, while BI for policy expertise can maximize results through more lucrative contracts and advantages offered by policymakers. It is concluded that the systematization of BI by different expertise can be used in future research to explain corporate strategies, decisions, and phenomena, as well as to evaluate the causes and effects of such structures in the management of organizations.