acase@tulane.edu / This work adopts an attention-based view to study boards of directors’ attention and its effect on CEOs’ attentional patterns from two perspectives: how the aggregate attention of directors relating to other firms may influence the attention of focal firms’ CEOs over time; and how this dynamic may be influenced by social, power and cognitive factors or dynamics. In so doing, it considers the influence of status and power differences between board members and CEOs, the number of reciprocal interlocks present in each boardroom, and boards members’ imported attentional homogeneity. General linear models analysis is carried out to test the hypotheses, measuring board and CEO attention through previously-validated, computer-assisted content analysis of letters to the shareholders of large companies. In broad terms, this study develops a novel construct, board imported attention, to present partial evidence that suggests a process by which CEOs’ attention is affected by the prior attentional focus of board members, resulting from their board or executive roles in other firms, and that this process may be affected by social and/or power relationships between boards and their CEOs. In light of the pervasiveness of boards with an increasing proportion of interlocked directors, these findings have implications for the corporate governance and managerial cognition literatures, allowing for a deeper understanding of the importance of the composition of boards in shaping the attentional patterns of CEOs. / 1 / Juan Vicente Romero McCarthy