Decisions by boards of directors can have a critical impact on the success or failure of a firm. These decisions range from the hiring and firing of a CEO to market entry and exit to the way in which a firm reports accounting profits and losses. In seeking to understand boards of directors more fully, we have come to think that we need a more complete picture of intraboard relationships among directors, including but not limited to relationships with the CEO, because these relationships affect critical decisions for the firm. The authors propose that the study of boards of directors could benefit by using a conceptual lens that scholars have yet to apply to this setting—that of the board as a social network unto itself.
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