Wednesday lunchtime

I am far too easily distracted. Yesterday a friend who manages to keep up to date much more quickly than I do kindly alerted me (thanks, Ruth!) to a very recent example of a misreporting of the Cadbury Committee origins, in the recent report of the High Pay Commission. The report attributed the origins of both Cadbury and Greenbury government action. Irritated, I shot off this letter to the editor of the FT and to the chair of the HPC, Deborah Hargreaves.

The High Pay Commission report inaccurately describes the origins of both the Committee on the Financial Aspects of Corporate Governance, chaired by Sir Adrian Cadbury (not Lord Cadbury, as the HPC report describes him) and of the Study Group on Directors' Remuneration,  chaired by Sir Richard Greenbury . Neither initiative was prompted by government action. The first was sponsored by  the Financial Reporting Council, the London Stock Exchange and the Bank of England. The second was set up by the CBI.

In interpreting the reports produced by interest groups, it is important to be aware of their origins. The FT editorial on 21 November ("Managing high pay in companies") notes that the HPC has the support of the Joseph Rowntree Trust but omits the equally important fact that it was established by the pressure group Compass.

I doubt whether I shall receive any acknowledgement but it made me feel better and will get a footnote in the book. I also copied it to Adrian who replied in his usual courteous fashion and pointed out that another frequent erroneous statement is that the committee was set up in response to the Maxwell case.

I then spent some time looking at my NED paper to see how I need to update it from last year - I've discovered some useful literature since then. I wanted to write a new paper looking at the limitations of mandating board composition, incorporating some of the diversity literature, but I won't have time to do that before mid January when the abstract for the conference in Verona in April has to be submitted so I shall recycle the NED one. I might get the new one done in time for the EIASM workshop in May - I expect I could get away with a very rough draft for that, since I am co-chairing!

Most of this morning has been taken up with trying to sort out the story behind the way the case of the student with a dissertation resit has been handled. Our job vacancy has finally appeared on the university website so I alerted a potential external candidate. It seems that her university is being significantly affected by demonstrations associated with today's public sector strike action. Unsurprisingly, our bins haven't been emptied.

Now to make a start on chapter 7...

Monday

Marked two more undergraduate dissertations. One was on the future of audit after the financial crisis which was very confused, mixing US, UK and Australian sources willy-nilly and with a methods section which referred to data collection using interviews and questionnaires of which there was no sign. This was from a student I had supervised, if you can call it that: a single meeting and some sporadic emails. I checked back to see what advice I had given: it had been ignored. The referencing was so bad that I was quite sure that some of his work had been plagiarised so spent some time googling random sentences. Found some of his sources but although the wording was very close he had obviously tried to put it into his own words so decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

In the course of this investigation, found an interesting paper about Prem Sikka and his work. Realised that some of our younger colleagues may never have come across Prem so sent it round to the whole department.

The other dissertation was about creative accounting, equally confused, claiming to be a case study of Enron but with only half a page about Enron.

This probably wasn't a good time to turn to my colleague's very long conceptual paper.The ideas are interesting but it's not written clearly. I didn't have the energy to edit it but suggested that the abstract could be sent off to a journal editor to enquire as to whether it would be suitable for that journal. And that the paper could be reduced in length by 40%. I won't be popular.

Continuing email conversations with the rogue colleague who persists in submitting funding bids without giving me time to consider whether to approve them. His area of work is very distant from the rest of us and I need to seek expert advice but he leaves everything to the last minute, possibly in the hope that I will just sign without asking any questions.

Read two applications for post-doc posts, one very poorly put together, the other almost too good to be true.

Read some of the papers for the meeting with the 24 item agenda.

Went to the cinema to see "The Deep Blue Sea". Excellent film. Made up for a day swamped with dealing with unproductive things, apart from the occasional email that made me laugh. Not enough of those.

Another working weekend

Cats woke me up early on Saturday but wouldn't let me concentrate so tidied up my PC desktop. Realised I now have four folders entitled "interesting papers" for 2011 and the three previous years. At some point I shall have to trawl through those files and see if they really are interesting... If I had been organised enough to set up Zotero or similar software properly it would probably be much easier but I think it's too late now.


Wrote another chunk of just under 1000 words for the book. This could be a preface or a conclusion. It spells out exactly what we intend to do in the book - I have a clearer idea now, before we started I didn't think that the archive would provide enough material so I expected to have two chapters on subsequent developments. But chapter 5 which looks at the response to the Code has become so long and my co-author (who is supposed to write the final chapter) is so slow that I think it would be more sensible to finish the story in 1995 which is really where the archive ends, making the final chapter a brief survey of Adrian's subsequent work, the reflections of the people involved, based on our interviews and some later publications, the committees and reports that followed and the overall influence of the Code but fairly superficially. Chapter 7 will look more closely at "comply or explain", linking up with some of the academic literature. If I could write 1000 words a day it would all be done by Xmas...


I wanted to make the point about the misreporting of the Committee's origins - the Larcker and Tayan book, which is otherwise very good, says that the UK parliament set it up (I wrote to them pointing out that this was wrong and they replied to say that they would correct it in any subsequent edition). So I thought I'd search Google Books to see if I could find any other examples. There were quite a few. And a  paper published by Dahya et al in 2002 has been reprinted in several collections and is widely cited - its first line is “The Cadbury Committee was appointed by the Conservative Government of the United Kingdom in May 1991.” 


Interesting email from the solicitor I met at the House of Lords do. We have been discussing the role of NEDs - he is an expert on directors' duties and has a very academic bent. He has sent me details of a current case to read - another item for my tottering pile.


Our faculty research director has sent out an agenda for next Friday's meeting with 24 items! I have tried without success to get him to group the items into those that need discussion and those that are for information only. He is remarkably resistant to this idea but has instead gone through the items telling me why each is essential. It would be much more helpful to have this detail on the agenda itself. It doesn't look as if there is much to discuss at this meeting so maybe it will be over quickly but there is a big danger that among all the papers, which really only need rubber-stamping before sending up to the next level, there is an issue that someone will pick on and make a meal of (I've even been known to do that myself!). If the agenda is properly constructed, this can be prevented. No-one has any training in chairing meetings and we waste a huge amount of time in them. An obsession with bureaucracy reflects a culture of blame-placing and a lack of thoughtful leadership. It is much easier to focus on, for example, documenting a detailed response to the student satisfaction scores than looking at the bigger picture to identify the broader influences on student satisfaction (and in particular the negative aspects of the restructuring which people are happy to expand on anecdotally but no-one seems interested in examining using hard evidence).


Enough ranting for a Monday morning...

Friday

Husband's new job meant a very early start for him. I had some really good ideas for the book in that dozy time before you really wake up but didn't get round to writing them down soon enough so now they're lost forever <sigh>. Went into work first thing to say hello to Mike Wallace and Alison Wray who are running their excellent course on critical reading and writing today at my suggestion. Anxious moment when they appeared to be late but had in fact been misdirected. Collected a book from the library and stopped for chat with the librarians.

Returned home to write but was distracted by discussion on LinkedIn about the notice of BSkyB's AGM - the date doesn't include the year and someone was asking if this meant it was invalidated. Rang colleague at ICAEW who was a company secretary to check (she said probably not if the full date was included in the other associated material) and had a lengthy chat with her about corporate governance issues, and cats.

By this time it was lunchtime and I got stuck into a cheese sandwich and Daniel Kahneman's new book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" which is fascinating and full of little tests for the reader from his experimental research, to demonstrate how our minds work. I am always keen to read about *how* people conduct research - what sparks off the question, how they decide to investigate it, what problems they have and how they solve them - it's often much more interesting than the actual outcomes of the research. The book I picked up at the library is "Models Behaving Badly: why confusing illusion with reality can lead to disaster on Wall Street and in Life" - I hope it lives up to the promise of the title! (In case anyone is actually reading this - hi, Emma and Maja! - I do read potboilers too and I am greatly enjoying Jo Nesbo's Nemesis on my e-reader)

An email from our research manager reminds me that there will be less attractive reading ahead shortly for the REF audit - looks as if I shall be reading papers by colleagues in economics and information management which could be challenging. And of course I still have that 11,000 word paper and the four dissertations sitting on my desk.... Better get on with it...

Thursday

Thursday again, they come round very quickly...

Today I have written 933 words of the book which I feel quite pleased with. I've been struggling with a structural problem - chapter 5 is far too long and overflows into chapter 6 but I can't work out how to rearrange the material sensibly. This has been preventing me from getting on with the later part of the story so I decided to just start a new document and write, in the hope that it will all fit together properly in the end. I think I'm ready to start on chapter 7 now, which will be more thematic, drawing on the earlier descriptive part. It also moves away from the archive and into the commentary in the academic literature and will include some of the interview material. With a bit of luck and a following wind I should be able to make good progress as I have some clear days ahead.

I've managed to keep my inbox clear too. Some interesting discussion on LinkedIn about the EU consultation on corporate governance which put me back in touch with Sarah Wilson from Manifest who I haven't seen for a while. She sent me their report on "Say on Pay" around the world. In another LinkedIn group, discussion about the High Pay Commission report where I interjected my thoughts on workers on boards, although I haven't of course had a chance to read the HPC report yet! A tweet from my friend at Cranfield about a paper on board diversity which looked at first glance to be the paper I'm planning to write! A moment of panic before I realised that I've seen an earlier draft of this paper on SSRN and it isn't very good.

A lengthy revised literature review from a PhD student which I dealt with by filing it and telling him he could return to it when he has written up his data analysis chapter. Postponed our next meeting until January to give him time to do that.

Two enquiries about doctoral study: one from an MBA student who didn't give any indication of the area of corporate governance she might be interested in but asked me to suggest things to read, and another with a very scrappy proposal attached. If, as he claimed, he had read the web pages he would know that we won't be accepting further applications until next September and that they have to be in specified areas.

Then a colleague emailed an application for central funding to support research impact. My blood pressure soared when I read that he would be away between now and the application deadline and he asked me and the research manager to submit it for him. And then I remembered that when he had expressed an interest in applying three weeks ago I had emailed him and asked him to let me have a draft so that we could discuss it - but he hadn't replied. The application itself is totally unacceptable - no supporting documents to show that he has in fact received an invitation to undertake the travel he is proposing. I can see that I shall have to spend a great deal of time policing rogue researchers which is not in my job description.

Wednesday

Yesterday was taken up with meetings, some of which required follow-up action. Felt like a wasted day, apart from the Scholarly Connections meeting which went well. A good turnout and two presentations which stimulated quite a lot of discussion. I forgot to collect the coffee machine tokens but people brought their own refreshments. I was delighted to receive a box of fancy macaroons from a colleague who had just come back from visiting our French connections in Dijon: I was less delighted about having to share them... I think the lunchtime slot works better than breakfast so will plan for that in future.

Arrived at work today at 8 am and by 10 am had read through and made detailed comments on the MSc dissertation draft for the student with the medical resit. He writes quite well and he has read a huge amount but in some ways this distracts from the poor structure and lack of theory. Framing the comments positively took a lot of thought. Each student is entitled to 4 hours of my time so he's had more than his fair share. And now four undergraduate dissertations to mark. Sometimes these are better than the MSc ones. One looks very thin indeed, perhaps I'll start with that one.

More meetings, formal and informal, and more listening to complaints and unhappiness. Cheered by a chat with a colleague who now works on the other campus so we hardly ever meet. She is always ready for a laugh, although she has plenty to worry about: her son is a soldier serving in Afghanistan.

The last of my academic advisees finally turned up for a meeting. He seems quite happy with everything although I was a bit worried when he asked me what an accounting standard is. After several weeks of the Accounting & Society module I would have expected him to know. I do wonder what goes on in that module. The module leader has sent me a paper to read. Over 11000 words on principle based accounting standards and judgement. I expect I can cut a good deal of it for him. He has taken on board some of my suggestions about the development of his ideas in this area which is gratifying but I'm not sure that I agree with his argument, on first reading at least.

Read a couple of pre-proposals for ICAEW and finally achieved Nirvana - a completely empty inbox!

Monday

The optician said my eyes are fine, which is cheering. Tomorrow, the doctor for my ears. A flurry of bad tempered emails made me ponder on the walk to the opticians through the fog and I have resolved to keep out of the work politics that are depressing me. I do find it difficult to watch people making foolish mistakes when a bit of imagination, responsive listening and careful impression management could preserve the goodwill that's essential to the proper functioning of the organisation. But gone are the days when people set aside their own agendas to pull together. From now on I'm saying nothing and doing nothing unless I'm asked. That should give me time to get on with the book.

Got a bit further with chapter 6. My co-author is laid up with dental problems so although today was our self-imposed deadline for completion of the whole draft I have a bit of breathing space as she hasn't finished her bit either. Reread two papers by Alice Belcher which criticised the compliance report produced by the Cadbury Committee. I think her criticisms were unfounded: the original intention of the compliance report was simply to report data for the successor committee and the papers in the archive indicate that it was only decided to publish it at a later stage when it became clear that it could be useful for companies as a benchmark. But Alice writes very well. She is a high achiever: a chartered accountant before doing a degree and becoming an academic lawyer, with a very young family, who became a professor very quickly.

Set about collecting more information from colleagues for the British Accounting Review Research Register: as usual, some immediate replies from the good guys. This time I'm not chasing anyone (another resolution). I've told them the deadline and if they don't provide the information by then they'll either not be included or included with incomplete information.

Read a draft paper for a colleague. As it's on a tax issue I couldn't make any comment on the content but it was so well written that I actually understood it and learnt something from the exercise. Difficult to get tax research published but this is to be sent to a journal that seems rather more practitioner oriented.

Long list of tasks to do at work tomorrow and a day of almost continuous meetings.