Board roles in recently started firms have been of little interest in earlier research. The different context of smaller firms in relation to larger corporations makes the roles of the board different in different size of firms.

This study has two purposes. The first purpose is to explore if variables in the context of the firm can explain the existence of external board members in recently started firms and differences between manufacturing firms and IT-firms. The second purpose is to describe how the external board members effect the resource configuration in those firms.