Incidence and performance effects of interlocking directorates in emerging market business groups: Evidence from India

The phenomenon of interlocking directorates is widespread among corporate across the world. This paper studies the structure and extent of interlocking directorates within Indian business groups and analyses the performance effects of such interlocks. It finds that large groups tend to have more interlocks and more heterogeneous the group is, lesser are the interlocks. Finance and trading companies are seen to have a higher intensity of interlocks and holding companies occupy important nodes in the directorial network. The paper also shows that directorial interlocks improve the performance of group-affiliated firms.