Executives’ Prior Employment Ties to Interlocking Directors and Interfirm Mobility
研究了高管与连锁董事（在其他公司兼任董事或高管的人）的先前雇佣关系如何影响其跨企业流动，发现这种关系增加了高管跳槽到外部公司的可能性，且连锁董事的职位动机（如在本公司或连锁公司担任领导角色）会调节这一效应。
This paper explores how executives’ prior employment ties to interlocking directors, or those who hold additional board seats or executive positions at outside firms, influence individual executive interfirm mobility. As organizational boundary spanners, interlocking directors may be able to influence executive outcomes both within and outside of executives’ current firms. But given natural constraints on internal promotion for executives, we suggest most executives will tend to leverage ties to interlocking directors to access external opportunities, as manifested by movement to outside firms. Analysis of interfirm mobility among a sample of Standard & Poor’s 1500 executives between 2000 and 2014 offer support for this idea. We find a positive association between individual executives’ prior employment ties to interlocking directors and their hazard of movement to outside firms, including to the other firms where these directors serve. At the same time, we argue and find that the strength of this latter relationship will further depend on directors’ competing motivations owing to their specific positions in the focal and interlocking firms. Whereas holding a lead position on the focal firm’s board (i.e., as chairperson or lead independent director) weakens this relationship, holding the position of chief executive officer in the interlocking firm strengthens it. Our theory and findings highlight the unique and important role of interlocking directors in executive interfirm mobility and, in doing so, contribute novel insights regarding how ties to boundary spanners can influence individual outcomes for those to whom they are linked. Supplemental Material: The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.1638 .