Networks on Boards: A Survey of the Literature

Board composition and role have been under close scrutiny both in the academic and "civil" worlds. Independence has been advocated as a way to reinforce the board’s power over the managers. However, the empirical literature does not find convincing results to support this view. This paper offers a rapid review of these results and offers a survey of two other strings of the literature that could be used to solve this contradiction. On the one hand, it presents findings on how social connections can affect corporate governance and on the other hand, it outlines the main results of information aggregation and conformity effects in committees. Those have a part to play in boards and how they work.