The irony of interlocked boards.

• Author: Lindsay, D. Michael
• Position: THOUGHT LEADERSHIP - Column

One of the most contentious and yet recurrent ways senior leaders exercise power in society is through overlapping board memberships, what scholars call "interlocking directorates" or simply "interlocks." The tendency of boards of for-profit firms, policy groups, nonprofit organizations, and even universities is to share members. A CEO wants to fill a board with knowledgeable and trustworthy individuals, so she chooses people she knows and who are proven industry leaders; inevitably, there is overlap.

There are hundreds of academic studies of interlocks from the past four decades. Some have argued that the closeness of these networks allows for class cohesion and collective action among senior leaders, concentrating even more power in the hands of these already powerful people. Others, however, say that while there is interaction through these interlocks, not much really gets done.

I did not find evidence of much collusion or political unity emerging from these interlocking directors. I did find that interlocks limited the number of voices in the conversations at the highest levels of corporate and nonprofit life. They...