<DIV><DIV>Traditionally, much of big business in the industrialized Western world has been organized around particular corporate societies—notoriously referred to as “old boy” networks. With the recent drift toward a more liberal market economy, however, these networks have been showing signs of...</div></div>

In this paper we analyse the networks of interlocking directorates among the 250 largest Dutch corporations in 1976 and 1996. In 1976 there was a relatively dense and centralised network in which the banks were the central hubs. Twenty years later the network had become much thinner and...