Network Feature And Cohesive Subgroups Of Interlocking Directorates Of Listed Companies In China

As a "social man", directors are not isolated, they are nested in a certain organization framework, their decisions and behavior is affected by the other directors. On the other hand, directors’decisions and behavior impact on corporate performance through a relationship with the other directors to form a network.This paper expounds related concepts of director network and reviews research of the domestic and foreign scholars on interlocking directors and their network, in order to have deeper understanding of the formation mechanism and development of this phenomenon, at the same time we can find the breakthrough point to study. Based on703companies,6635directors in the Shanghai Stock Exchange and332companies2921director in Shenzhen Stock Exchange in2010, we build interlocking director database. Our research is mainly focused on characteristics of network, cohesive subgroup analysis and core/Periphery analysis of the interlocking director network in the Shanghai Stock Exchange and in Shenzhen Stock Exchange, and supplemented by property type of actual controllers, industry classification, director types. Finally this article also tells us how to affect the corporate performance through interlocking director network for empirical research.Our results show companies in the Shanghai Stock Exchange set in an overall and extensive network, companies in the Shenzhen Stock Exchange set in a discrete, small pattern network. And with the control of industry classification and type of actual controller and directors, this paper argues that the connection between the private holding company is less, the connection between the company of competitive industries is more from the company level; From individual director level, in state-owned and private holding company directors’contacts are less, and more communication exist in directors of congenial company. The connection between the directors in the company of same industry nature is more. They usually have the same social circle and the network easily overlaps. In addition, through cohesive subgroup analysis, we found that the companies of the same clique in Shenzhen Stock Exchange have strong relationship through the supervision of the parent-subsidiary control mode or with the easy communication between regions. But the connection between cliques is less. Company network of the Shanghai Stock Exchange has huge scale and high concentration, so the overlaps between factions usually exist to form more social circles. Monopoly industries tend to have more internal links than competitive industries and monopoly industries almost don’t put the limited energy into external relations of groups. State-owned companies tend to have more external contact than private companies. Finally, the article empirically researches the relationship between interlocking director network and corporate performance. We find the higher relative degree causes better corporate performance. The influence of relative betweenness degree on corporate performance is not significant. Interlocking director ratio is negatively related with corporate performance. Compared to a private holding company, state-owned company has higher network centrality, but the state-owned company’s performance is relatively poor.