Abstract
Business firms experience significant advantages in large urban areas from access to large pools of executive talent to information flow through formal and informal networks. Firms located away from these urban areas therefore must seek channels through which they can access these and other resources. One potential area of competitive advantage identified is the appointment of outside Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) to the board of directors. Using three different measures of firm financial performance, I find that these CEO-directors are positively related to increased performance among rural firms and this relationship is even stronger when the CEO-director is from an urban area. Implications for researchers and practitioners are discussed.