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Interlocking Directorates: How Interpersonal Relationships Build Corporate Boards, Matthew A. Forrester

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In an inductive network analysis research design, this dissertation seeks to understand the influence of the interlocking directorate networks on the selection of directors. Its intent is to understand both what the individual and organizational factors are and how those factors influence selection. A practice-inspired method was developed heavily influenced by my two decades within the United States Intelligence Community to create a common network structure to define an individual director’s relationship to a board in a given year. Then using manual approaches, I developed the networks of directors that form interlocking directorates from that network structure. I analyzed these …