Numerous network studies demonstrate that interlocking directors unite corporations in the United States into a tight-knit corporate community (e.g., Sonquist and Koenig, 1975; Mariolis, 1975; Mizruchi, 1982). In addition, nonnetwork studies of foundations, universities, and other nonprofit organizations suggest that corporate officers and directors play a large role in the governance of such institutions (e.g., Hartnett, 1969; Dye, 1976; Useem et al., 1976; Salzman and Domhoff, 1980; Useem, 1981). However, there are no studies that cast light on the structural position of nonprofit institutions in relation to the well-established corporate network.

From their recent analysis of the relationship between place of enlistment and place of birth of eighteenth-century American militiamen, Villaflor and Sokoloff (1982: 542-543; 559-560) concluded that “a high level of mobility stands out,” a finding that they note is now “a commonplace both in the discipline of American history and in studies of pre-industrial communities.” While these empirical studies have surely refuted the romantic belief in the permanence of all of the personnel of preindustrial localities, they have not demonstrated that mobility was uniformly “high” everywhere. Imprecision in comparing the rates of mobility in two places is inevitable without a comparable index of the extent of movement.

Villaflor and Sokoloff (1982) implicitly reject the notion of a “mobility transition,” a construct that associates higher rates of internal migration with more rapid rates of economic growth (Zelinsky, 1971), which Jones (1981) discerned in his comparison of the handful of studies of local population persistence in the colonial period with those for the nineteenth century. They realize, however, that a precise comparison of the place of enlistment with the birthplace of young men of an average age of 24 with the proportion of adult males who appear on two successive decennial censuses is not possible.

Two different theoretical frameworks, the interorganizational and the intraclass, guide empirical research on the origin and function of corporate interlocks. Conclusions from this research often have been used as the basis for more general claims about the structure of power in the American economy. To a great extent, these claims are based on the implicit assumption that a majority of interlocks facilitate one type of interfirm relationship—formal coordination.

This article presents evidence about the continuity of interlocks which have been disrupted accidentally by such events as death and retirement. What happens after an interlock is broken reveals something of the extent and manner in which different types of interlock ties facilitate formal coordination. This in turn provides the basis for assessing the applicability of the interorganizational and intraclass approaches to the phenomenon of interlocking.