Italian SMEs Within Firm Networks: What Are The Effects On Innovation Of Different Compositions Of The Corporate Governance Structures?

Pubblicato con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione-Non Commerciale-Non opere derivate 3.0 Italia (CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 IT) nella collana Economia - Ricerche - Open Access

This paper analyses how the board composition of a small or medium-sized firm (SME) within an inter-firm network can improve that firm’s capacity to create net value for itself and the network to which it belongs. With this aim, we established a panel of 415 sampled companies belonging to inter-firms networks. We interviewed the CEOs of these companies and gathered, on one hand, data regarding the creation of net value and, on the other hand, data inherent to the companies’ governance structures and mechanisms. We found that the effective performance of control and service tasks by outside directors has positive effects on the capacity of the individual company in a network to create net value. In addition, the individual firm’s capacity to create net value increases when an outsider is in an interlocking directorship with another firm within the same network.