Social Capital and the Timing of Corporate Elite Mobility

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  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 2: Exploring Occupations

Abstract

This paper examines whether professional network capital accelerates entry into corporate board positions. Using longitudinal data (2007–2024) from BoardEx on 38,804 individuals and 7,026 first board appointments, I estimate start–stop Cox proportional hazards models with time-varying measures of network size. The analysis models age-based time to first board appointment and incorporates detailed controls for education (MBA, PhD, law degrees, professional certifications), time-varying career experience, board composition characteristics, and country and sector strata.

Across specifications (including robustness checks with trimmed network distributions and company-level frailty models) network size consistently increases the hazard of board entry by approximately 15 percent. In contrast, accumulated career experience does not significantly accelerate elite entry. While MBA degrees and professional certifications increase the likelihood of earlier board access, the network effect remains stable and substantial after accounting for education and experience.

These findings suggest that relational capital operates independently of formal human capital in structuring access to corporate governance. Elite mobility appears to be shaped not only by credentials and tenure, but by embeddedness in professional networks. By identifying network-based recruitment as a structural accelerator of elite mobility, this study highlights a relational mechanism through which inequality at the top is reproduced and suggests that reforms focused solely on credential expansion are unlikely to democratize access to corporate leadership.

Author

• Waris Ahmad Faizi, Virginia Tech Graduate School