(The) social capital of outside directors and their impacts on firm value

Abstract

This paper investigates whether the social capital of outside directors has an impact on firm performance and values using a sample of 480 outside directors from 125 large publicly traded Korean companies in 2006. Outside directors`` social capital is regarded as a proxy for boards`` ability to extract valuable resource from the environment. In order to measure social capital, I map out a social network of outside directors based on their social affiliation in terms of age, school, expertise etc. Then, I apply betweenness centrality and closeness centrality, the two commonly used social network analysis measures to capture the social capital of outside directors. Based on various literatures, two competing hypothesis is set; one that posits a positive relationship between boards`` social capital and firm performance and another one that posits a negative relationship between the two. This study reports a strong negative relationship between boards`` social capital and firm performance.