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.

Franco Rubino is professor of Business Economics and Director of the Department of Business and Law at the University of Calabria. His main research interests are corporate governance, intellectual capital and family businesses.

Francesco Napoli is an associate professor of Business Economics (economia aziendale) at the Faculty of Economics of the Università degli studi e-Campus of Novedrate (Como, Italy), where he teaches Business Economics and Corporate Strategy and Governance. Napoli also taught at the Università degli Studi della Calabria at Rende (Cosenza, Italy), where he received his Ph. D. His scientific interests deal with business strategy, corporate governance, and intellectual and knowledge capital.