noun

• An informal system through which men are thought to use their positions of influence to help others who went to the same school or university as they did, or who share a similar social background.

  ‘many managers were chosen by the old boy network’

  More example sentences

  • ‘The selection process has been reformed following criticisms that it was too secretive and liable to be influenced by an ‘old boy's network’.’
  • ‘Many of the councillors had been co-opted and this led people to believe that it become an old boys' network and was not truly representative of the community.’
  • ‘This is the modern equivalent of the old boys' network.’
  • ‘She said: We're very different from some of the other schools, without the old boys' network.’
  • ‘Most entrepreneurs and managers were male, a situation reinforced by informal and formal old boy networks.’
  • ‘This is a politics of one-party dominance, old boy networks and cronyism.’
  • ‘That's upsetting some traditions, some old boy networks over there.’
  • ‘He also laments the creation of a whistleblowing culture and the passing of ‘peer support’ of colleagues - otherwise known as the old boy network which for many years has kept secret abuse by doctors.’
  • ‘The good old boy network will start passing the word.’
  • ‘‘There's no such thing as the old boy network any more,’ he told me, with more than a hint of regret.’
  • ‘These guys are in trouble thanks to a medium they don't understand because it doesn't meet at the Groucho or follow the old boy network.’
  • ‘‘They implied that my guys got promoted as a result of a good old boy network,’ said the attorney who represents the officers.’
  • ‘And all the time I thought you'd come here to make sure I wasn't going to embarrass the old boy network.’
  • ‘No one who relays them believes that the police will be brought to account for their actions in those cases by an authority that is perceived to be a part of the old boy network.’
  • ‘He's so ensconced in the old boy network that he doesn't know if there is any way out.’
  • ‘Have I mentioned that this is how the old boy network is formed?’
  • ‘We've always known that the good old boy network existed, that ‘connected’ guys got better assignments.’
  • ‘In reality, he got where he got not because of some old boy network but because he was number one in his class and did outstanding work in every job he held thereafter.’
  • ‘I was pondering however, this good old boy network, as I come face to face with it from time to time.’
  • ‘Some say Flierl wants to reinstall the East's old boy network in the Berlin cultural scene.’

  Synonyms

  system, complex, interconnected structure, interconnected system, complex arrangement, complex system, nexus, web