Theoretical and empirical differences between the interlocked boards of family and non-family firms

Class hegemony and resource dependence are the traditional perspectives used to explain interlocking directorate formation in publicly listed corporations. A subset of these corporations, family firms, are different because their governance involves non-economic interests. There are few empirical validations of these perspectives for family firms. Through a 16 semi-annual period longitudinal comparison of non-financial family and non-family Italian firms, we show that the traditional perspectives partially explain board formation in family businesses while other considerations such as family ties provide a more complete picture. Over the same period, we find that family and non-family firm interlocks evolve differently, suggesting refinements on theories of board interlocks for family firms.