The final Friday of 2011

The lovely quiet bit of the year when email traffic virtually disappears and there is space for catching up - if every month had a few days like this, I would have space for all the projects I'd really like to get on with...

I'm struggling with chapter 5 which was originally written chronologically but doesn't read well so I've tried to reorganise it thematically. This is not working out for two reasons. Firstly, as my co-author has yet to produce chapter 4 I have no idea how that is organised and it would make sense to pick up on the themes she has identified. Secondly, the themes overlap so it is very difficult to classify specific issues under a single heading. I think I shall revert to the chronological approach but spend more time highlighting the themes running through.

I was alerted to a paper on the history of corporate governance recently uploaded to SSRN by a Cambridge legal scholar. I emailed him to let him know of the earliest use of the term which I had discovered, which predated the ones he mentioned. He replied very quickly but was somewhat dismissive, which is not surprising - he struck me as a bit arrogant when I met him. Had he been more receptive, I would have sent him the actual paper but I shall leave him to seek it out from the reference. He claims to have been more welcoming to Cadbury than other legal scholars which may be true but he didn't publish his book until 1997 so I don't think he'll get a mention.

I have been reading Maja's DPhil dissertation which is fascinating and really should be published. She has read a huge amount of literature, across different disciplines. As I was reading, I found myself noting down authors I thought relevant to her arguments - and then turning the page to find that she'd cited them. And I now have a long list of interesting references that I want to follow up, always a good sign of something that was worth reading.

Friday

A very busy week. The ICAEW Information for Better Markets conference on Monday and Tuesday was a mixed bag. The topic, accounting for financial instruments, wasn't exactly exciting (a friend asked if it was about euro violins and dollar dulcimers, which I liked the sound of) but I was very keen to hear Andy Haldane of the Bank of England who was respondent to one of the main papers, and he didn't disappoint. The technical stuff was hard to concentrate on: in one session I sat next to the chair of the research board who snoozed all through it and I don't think he was the only one. The practitioner speakers were good, though. I had some useful conversations in the breaks and caught up with old friends. The food was fairly awful and the hotel - my favourite, the Hoxton - was very noisy with youngsters running up and down the corridor all night. I was pleased to get home although two days away meant an accumulation of email to plough through.

In the most boring bits I pondered why accounting has got so much more complicated than when I first started studying it, 46 years ago. The shift from the traditional stewardship approach, which still underpins UK company law, to the notion of decision-usefulness which underpins accounting standards has led us into a world where risk and uncertainty need to be recognised much more explicitly in calculations and that has brought a host of problems around issues of judgement. The politics of standard-setting has become institutionalised so continuing complexity seems inevitable, as it works in the interests of standard-setters. One of the speakers cited Knight on risk and uncertainty which is on my list of books to read when I get a chance.

The webcast of the event should appear eventually on this page:

http://www.icaew.com/en/technical/financial-reporting/information-for-better-markets/information-for-better-markets-webcasts

On Wednesday we had a departmental meeting which in my view very much reflected the state of chaos we are in. I do find meetings more and more frustrating. People don't seem to have a clear idea of what they want the outcomes to be, no details are circulated in advance to assist the attendees in considering the topics and timing is ignored. Sadly, we bade farewell to one of my favourite colleagues but our Xmas lunch was very jolly.

Since then I have been trying to clear up admin stuff. I have managed to fix a speaker for a seminar slot in March which counts as a success, given that everyone is so busy. Of course, I shall probably have to spend time nearer the date rustling up an audience.

Thursday

A productive day today. Sorted out chapter 2 as far as I can without chapters 1 and 3 and the bits of chapter 2 that my co-author has been promising for months. Revised the first half of chapter 5 but changing the second half  will be the tricky bit - again, because I haven't yet seen chapter 4.

Avoided looking at my email but when I finally succumbed found some further interesting reading for the pile - the latest publication from the FRC about the Combined Code and the Stewardship Code and a nice note from my FRC friend. This report had prompted some of the people on LinkedIn to pontificate about the need for increased regulation and monitoring which irritated me and I wasted some time pointing out the error of their ways. I must reset the way I get messages from LI so that I am not regularly alerted to their idiocies. In a thread on women on boards, it appears that messages have got personal and people have taken offence.

I've received an electronic Xmas card from a friend at MBS and have been forwarded one from Warwick. Both would be mildly entertaining for a child of 5. I wonder why the marketing departments at these universities think this type of greeting is appropriate. And now I see that ICAEW are holding a competition for staff to design ecards: why would a professional body want electronic Valentine's Day cards?

More work on chapter 5 tomorrow. And I must finish with the PhD thesis too.

Tuesday

Monday was spent catching up with colleagues, mostly receiving and passing on information. Annie Pye's ESRC study of boards was reported in the Telegraph and the FT and led to some discussion in the Board Advisors group on LinkedIn. I'm looking forward to reading her study, it's been a huge effort for her with a serious setback initially due to ill health. We exchanged emails and I hope to catch up with her in the new year - we've discussed a project looking at the role of the company secretary and I'd still like to do that, the opportunity to work with her would be very good.

My inbox tells me this has to be a reading week, rather than a writing one. For the REF audit I have to read several papers published by colleagues in journals that do not appear in the ABS list and decide where they would sit in the ranking. This is so subjective that it seems quite pointless to me, especially when the topics are ones with which I am not familiar. The Belgian PhD student, Diane, has sent the final draft of her thesis for approval before submission so that will need careful attention, and then a trip to Louvain in February for her public defence. I am really interested to see how the Belgian process works but the Louvain campus is a bleak place at the best of times, let alone February...

Today we are interviewing for the post doc posts. We have a couple of candidates for our department, one who looks outstanding on paper.

(Later) The interviews were very interesting. Sitting on panels with colleagues always is, I learn more about them than about the interviewees sometimes. The first candidate came over very well but it would have been quite difficult to link her interests into our departmental plans. The second candidate was excellent and would be very good to work with: his background is political science and I can see he'll be a future MP (if the Lib Dems ever recover from the coalition). Hope he turns out to be one of the top five and that he accepts the post if it's offered.

Very good article in the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/dec/12/britain-ruled-by-banks
Looked up the CRESC site and found a paper by Julie Froud et al which underpins the book and article - they have written excellent critical stuff on corporate governance so this should be a good read. Added to the pile...

Managed to plough through papers written by colleagues and come up with some kind of categorisation for the audit. Agreed some dissertation marks.

Snowed this afternoon, big wet flakes but they didn't settle. This time last year we were snowed in. Freddie has had his collar taken off and is a happy cat.

More meetings tomorrow and then two clear days for writing, barring domestic disasters...

Sunday evening

Have just about caught up with myself. Thursday was full of domestic crises but in between I managed to get to London for lunch with my most erudite and charming friend, followed by an event hosted by ICAS and BDO on principles-based accounting standards. I was distinctly underwhelmed by the head of the IASB who said that the IASB doesn't know who its audience is but that doesn't matter because there is only a single economic reality. I thought that standards were an attempt to reconcile different economic realities. I strongly suspected that he didn't know what he was talking about - I assume that he got the job because he is politically adept but I do wonder what David Tweedie might think about his successor. Later I had an interesting chat with two institutional investors who bemoaned the demise of the prudence principle and the notion of stewardship. If that's the approach to financial reporting that investors want, the IASB seems to be way off beam.

No chance to sort out revisions to book chapters, lots of emails to deal with. The LinkedIn discussions about board gender diversity are beginning to irritate me - too many consultants who think that correlation implies causation. I've posted a list of papers selected from my literature search but I doubt whether any of them will bother to read them. If your livelihood depends on trying to promote female appointments, you're not likely to be very open-minded about academic research which raises questions about the consequences, are you?

The highlight of the coming week may be the interviews for the post doc posts, we've had two very good applications and I'm looking forward to meeting the candidates.

Wednesday evening

The trip to Cambridge was frustrating but ultimately quite productive. My co-author had very little down on paper but seemed to have enough of an idea in her head about what she is going to write to go through the pile of stuff I have written and help me to reorganise it more coherently. She does seem to be making very heavy weather of it all, though. Early on in the project when it became clear that the archivist had done a lousy job, only part of the papers had been digitised and the keywords for searching the site were very limited, I arranged for the son of a friend who was at a loose end to transfer all the details from the site into a spreadsheet with direct links to the site for the digitised material. I've found this really useful because it's much more easily searchable and the direct links make it very easy to use. But she obviously hasn't used it at all and on our research trips has photocopied a great deal of material unnecessarily when she could have just downloaded it.

The library in Cambridge is very over-heated and there were too many sniffing students. The hotel was less comfortable than on previous trips - my room was on two levels with a staircase in the middle which was a bit disconcerting and although there was a very fancy coffee maker on the desk it took me some time to locate the tea making facilities, in the wardrobe...

I am very pleased to be home, in spite of the huge number of emails waiting for my attention. I've been catching up with the tweets and LinkedIn messages - some worthwhile discussions about NEDs to follow up. Some of my online pals seem to be able to read huge amounts of stuff very quickly and I really can't keep up. The Canadian professor is on sabbatical which explains why he has time for all this reading.

But I shall leave everything for now to spend some time with Freddie who has had an eye operation and is wearing a "lampshade" so keeps bumping into things because he can't feel his whiskers.

Friday

A very tedious week all told, much time spent dealing with problematic colleagues and little writing.

The Scholarly Connections meeting went well although not many came. We heard about a variety of projects and it was good to know that one was sparked off by a previous meeting.

Having suggested to the author of the very long paper that he should send the abstract off to a journal editor, was pleased to discover that this advice had been followed and the editor had made some very perceptive comments, although I had to interpret them for the author. If he follows them up, he could produce a very good paper but it needs a lot of work because the ideas need to be knitted in to the existing literature properly and it's a literature that is new to him.

Reluctantly attended the RKTC meeting with the 24 item agenda. Made some observations but left early. There is a battle to be fought about conference budgets but I don't have the energy at the moment. Our incoming acting head is very much on the ball and it will be good to work with her - I don't think we'll always agree but we have a similar outlook on what's important. The post will be advertised again in the new year but I can't imagine that we'll see a flood of applications. Looks as if I'll be spending quite a bit of time on interview panels this month, with an SL/PL post to fill and post docs, as well as a potential PhD student.

Have read more of Derman's "Models Behaving Badly". Struggled through the physics to his discussion of financial models. Must ask Yuval if he has read it - I think Donald Mackenzie's sociological approach is much more readable because he provides so much more context. I'm quite prepared to be convinced that financial models and theories are not like those in physics but Derman's argument isn't very clear, in my view. But I haven't finished the book yet, perhaps all will become clear at the end. Then I can get back to Kahneman.

Busy weekend ahead, getting organised to go to Cambridge next week. Hope we really can make good progress on the book, much depends on whatever my co-author has managed to write. Second dose of Simon Russell Beale this week last night - watched "Collaborators" at the cinema, live from the NT. Amazing play and very thought-provoking.

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.

Sunday

Friday was a write-off so needed to catch up a bit over the weekend. Cleared much of inbox which included lengthy message form the student who lost his iPhone, bemoaning a mark of 57% in his first assignment on the Academic English module. He lost marks for poor referencing and using Wikipedia. Took the opportunity to explain to him about the authority of sources and why referencing is important: we tend to emphasise the plagiarism aspect without explaining to students that references in what they read are very important too and they should follow them up. Perhaps I should make a podcast on this. Also request from friend to act as referee for a promotion application. I'm happy to do this but the CV enclosed was not very well put together and doesn't really do justice to the application. I've read a lot of CVs lately - I think there is a great art to producing a good one.

Finished reading "Economics of Good and Evil". A very interesting book surveying the history of economics to show how it began with a moral aspect which has been lost in our modern rational and mathematical approach. Starting with the Gilgamesh and Bible (I don't like the rather modern English translation of the verses he cites but he certainly knows it some detail, both Old and New Testaments) and sailing through many great economic philosophers, with footnotes on Terry Pratchett, Stephen Leacock, the Matrix and other modern cultural icons. a very well read individual.

 His glancing reference to economics as helmsmanship (p61) resonated with the paper on the ICAEW logo, Economia, that Mike and I wrote. He also makes the point that Smith only referred to "the invisible hand" three times in his work and never developed the idea as it has been subsequently, and the same applied to Keynes' notion of "animal spirits". It seems to me that these are quite startling metaphors and that is why they have become central to debate about economics. He suggests that although economics is presented as scientific and rational  "a religious and emotional zeal .. accompanies many schools of economic thought". "We also have a magical incantation for predicting the future; we say ceteris paribus every time....Aside from it sounding like "abracadabra", we must admit that reality tends not to be ceteris paribus." (p307) All of which appeals to my own prejudices!

Can't imagine how a play was made out of the book but that's what it says on the cover. Found him on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_YIKK6taIE His presentation style is very much how the book reads.

Also read an interesting paper by an Israeli academic who analysed meeting minutes for insights into board behaviour. I find this worrying as there is no recognition that minutes are not necessarily an objective record: someone authored them but content analysis does not recognise this contextual issue. (The same applies to analysis of narrative reports in my view. The only people who seem to acknowledge this are those using a visual approach.) She presents minutes analysis as more objective than interviews. Maybe I'll write to her about this.

Friday

Realise I've been doing this for a month and chapter 6 still isn't finished... I see that after a small surge of interest, nobody read my blog yesterday. As I'm really only writing it for myself to remind myself of how I've been spending my working time, this doesn't matter but I feel slightly disappointed.  I'll get over it. As I will also get over my visit to the dentist which involved major excavation and reconstruction and has left my face completely numb. Strange that it became number after I got home. Feel as if I'm dribbling and as if my nose is running.

Found this in my Google Reader alerts: http://www.phd2published.com/2011/11/18/matt-might-writing-productivity-tips-for-academics/

Conscious that I'm easily distracted while at the PC. I think this is very common -
see http://xkcd.com/862/ and http://blog.xkcd.com/2011/02/18/distraction-affliction-correction-extensio/  (who knew xkcd had a blog? Another thing to read...)
Wonder if I should invest in StayFocusd now that I use Chrome a lot. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/laankejkbhbdhmipfmgcngdelahlfoji

Tried CiteULike to see how it works. Might be worth transferring all those papers in the files on my desktop which are labelled "interesting papers" for every year... I'd need to stop and read them as I went along so it could be very time-consuming. Rather like my plan to search for electronic copies of all the papers in my filing cabinets which were only available in hard copy back in the 1990s: I did get some way into that and cleared some space but I seem to have filled it up again...

So I've now spent an hour thinking about how to be more productive. Not sure that that was a good use of my time but the numbness is still interfering with my concentration.

Sorted out tokens for the coffee machine for next Tuesday's Scholarly Connections meeting - this may be my major achievement today. We're not allowed lunch under new austerity rules (I have no problem with that, the sandwiches are not very nice and a lot get left and thus wasted) but I did think tea and coffee could be possible - apparently not, because it's only a one hour meeting. Reflecting on the meetings I've attended lately, quite a few now seem to be held because they have to within the committee structure and processes of the Faculty and the university, but have very little value that I can see. Information can be communicated in so many more efficient ways and the meetings are not properly run. They are not decision-making bodies,they don't do a very good job of monitoring and most people attending don't understand what their role is. It would be a very interesting project to pull the whole system apart and construct something that was fit for purpose.

Thursday

Early start - finally manage to scan all receipts and submit expenses claim to ICAEW, much quicker with a clear head.  Follow up some alerts and forward useful links to colleagues. A PhD enquiry - these have tailed off lately, possibly because we have provided some very specific areas of study on the web site. Only one enquiry so far about the post doc advert and the topic of interest would be stretching the interpretation of our research focus somewhat. Confirmation that the funding proposal has achieved Faculty approval - now waiting for university approval before I can send off all the documents. Message from Google Scholar telling me that the Arthur Andersen paper has been cited: seems to be in a paper by one of my co-author's students so hardly surprising!

 Check on my literature search on board gender diversity via Google Scholar. Thankfully nothing seems to have been published lately that I haven't already picked up but following up the citations (such a useful feature!) I find an article by a professor of psychology at Hertfordshire which provides references for some of the material that is so frequently cited as showing the benefits of women on boards. Very tempted to write to the author pointing out that the article perpetuates a growing myth by conflating correlation with causality.

Back to chapter 6. Read through file of material I have collected on early compliance with the Code - a big file but some of contents are not directly relevant so I can clear a bit of space on my desk. I find some previous notes I had made about how to structure the discussion of compliance. Wish I could read my handwriting...

Window cleaner appears suddenly giving both me and Beanie a bit of a fright. We don't expect to be disturbed up here in the study.

Complete draft of report of the "professorial task group" I've been chairing. My group was responsible for looking at the UN Principles of Responsible Management Education. The main issue is whether we commit to this whole-heartedly through a process of "critical engagement" with the principles or superficially, just ticking the boxes where our current activities match. There is a lot already going on in the Faculty which relates to the Principles, some of which is really innovative. The group has had fluctuating membership: some colleagues are really committed to this initiative and have been very helpful. Others, having expressed an interest initially, haven't come to any of the meetings or responded to emails asking for input. I've circulated the draft and asked for comment by tomorrow afternoon so that I can send it to the dean next week.

A tweeted link to Andy Haldane's recent lecture on the Gresham College site is disappointing because it only gives his slides (he is an economist at the Bank of England and has written some excellent papers on the financial crisis: he is speaking at the ICAEW conference next month) but by happy chance I find a pdf of Adrian Cadbury's 1998 lecture and read it over lunch. Some quotable bits and a very useful addition to my collection of his reflections after the report and Code were published.

Quick trip out to the shops. In a North Oxford supermarket I find a lost shopping list which begins "Venison, Chantenay carrots..".  Succumb to temptation of 3 for 2 offers on frozen petit fours. Visit newly opened shop selling upmarket frozen meals. The packaging is good because you can see the food inside but it's all very expensive. A big range of types and sizes but a three course meal would cost just as much as a meal out in a medium-priced restaurant. Assistant tells us that it's all cooked as if home-made with no preservatives or additives. I see that the names of the cooks are shown on the packaging: not sure I'd want to eat anything cooked by a Mr Piles, though. Wonder how long the shop will last.

Back to find funding proposal has been approved - off it goes and shortly I receive confirmation that it has arrived safely. Request arrives to update the departmental entry in the British Accounting Review Research Register. This is published every two years and lists all the accounting and finance academics at every British university with a note of their teaching and research interests and publications so it is a very useful resource, but completing the return required is a pain. Much less of a pain, though, than when it was all paper based, but still a couple of hours work assembling all the information for the last two years.

Dentist first thing tomorrow, not looking forward to it.

Wednesday

Woke up at 4 am feeling queasy after sleep disturbed by vivid dreams (all components clearly related to previous day's thoughts and conversations but reassembled into a surreal experience). Decided against struggling into the City for ICAEW public sector non-executive director event. My main objective in attending was to identify potential interviewees for a project on public sector audit committees but there is no guarantee that I'll get the funding for this and if I do I already have contacts who can introduce me to appropriate people. Right now, the possibility of two consecutive uninterrupted days of reading and writing is hard to resist.

"The Corporate Objective" by Andrew Keay is the most disappointing book I've encountered for a long time. I am prejudiced against the legal style of citation with lengthy footnotes but the first part of this book has a footnote for every sentence. Some legal scholars include a parenthetical sentence summarising the relevance of the sources cited: at least that gives some idea of how the source supports the argument. But in this case the sources seem wildly disparate and often out of date. It reminded me of a student dissertation: lots of references to a huge range of literature but none of it pulled together properly. The writing style is ponderous and repetitious - a good editor could have improved it immensely.   By the end of chapter 1 I was ready to hurl the book out of the window. I skim read the remainder but even a detailed reading would have been unlikely to elucidate the new "model" proposed by the author and his recommendations for its enforcement. I searched in vain for any mention of the role of financial reporting in the accountability of directors, although there was a very brief reference to audit.

The second book "Corporate Governance: an Institutionalist Approach" is infinitely better. It's an edited collection of essays, one of which, on the Company Law Review process, is very useful. It covers some of the same ground as the Keay book in examining the theoretical frameworks but is so much better. It was published in 2003 and has been in our library since 2006 but never borrowed - I'm surprised it hasn't been culled! It wasn't on the shelf where I would have expected to find it and I certainly didn't recommend it so I wonder how it came to be purchased.

Chapter 6 got some attention today, I'm happy to report. I read the two papers which arrived via inter-library loan yesterday, which were early academic assessments of compliance with the Cadbury Code, and incorporated their findings. I reckon the chapter is half done so if I can crack on tomorrow I might even get it finished by next week.

I think the head of admin was shocked to receive anything other than a complaint. However, today the problem student has apparently been given advice by less sensible members of the postgraduate office staff which conflicts with the authoritative advice I was given and commits me, without consultation, to a course of action over which I should have had a choice. Thankfully it is what I had already planned to do but that office does need to be sorted out.

Trying to submit my ICAEW expense claim has given me a headache. I have to scan my receipts and then email them to my ICAEW address so that I can then log in to the ICAEW virtual desktop and put the claim together. This takes two passwords and I haven't yet worked out how to switch between desktops. Today I got started and then realised that I'd forgotten the cost code so tried to find an old claim to check it - that was impossible. So I had to log out of ICAEW to try to find it. In the end I phoned Gillian who was as usual very helpful.

And now I see that one of our new staff has decided to organise a Secret Santa for our departmental Xmas lunch. I HATE Secret Santa. What is the point of it? You look mean if you don't join in but I really don't want to have to buy a present for someone I may not like. I hope other people share my view.

Tuesday

Enjoying my lunchtime egg sandwich, I have just come up with a post for the FB group Famous catchphrases sound better in Shakespearean iambic pentameter. 

"Lo, I have visited that place of yore
And have performed all the requisite acts
As my emblazoned vestment doth proclaim."

I'm quite proud of that. The underlying idea was in my head as I sat through a discussion at this morning's meeting about why the library doesn't have back issues of important journals. I have spent 25 years trying to find out who makes purchasing decisions in the library. A new colleague is experiencing the same initial bafflement that many of have experienced on this issue. I do hope he has the energy to pursue it.

An errant student finally arrived to keep a rescheduled appointment - he forgot about the last one and was late this time although he sent a friend to tell me that the bus had been held up by an accident. I was treated to a long and involved story about how the iPhone4 he brought with him from China had gone missing when he was drunk and in a taxi with friends on his way to a club. He had contacted the cab company and the police but with no result. I asked him what he thought he had learned from the experience and was treated to a lengthy analysis of how students from other countries need to learn about the culture of the host country and the role of the police. I suggested that other useful strategies might be to drink less and take more care of one's possessions.

Spent a great deal of time trying to get a definitive answer as to how much further supervision time an MSc student is entitled to when granted a medical resit for a dissertation. Recent changes in programme directors and administrators make such questions a real problem as it's not at all clear who to ask, but a new person in the postgraduate office rose to the challenge and provided me with an answer. I was impressed: when I can find out the name of her line manager I'll let him/her know but finding out that name could take another hour or so...These are the unforeseen consequences of restructuring. On second thoughts, I'll just email our new head of administration and hope he'll send the compliment down the line. Now I have to find time to read the student's latest draft and give feedback. I also have to second mark another problematic dissertation. And soon there will be a bunch of undergraduate dissertations...

Collected two more inter-library loan copies of articles and two books I'd requested from the library. (I've come to terms with the new issue system at last.) Some reading for the bus to London tomorrow.  One book does not look promising: on the first page I read "Michael Jensen has emitted similar sentiments..." Emitted? Expressed, surely. And this book is by a lawyer which means that all the references are in footnotes which I find a real pain. I suspect that neither volume will be as interesting or thought-provoking as Heffernan which I finished reading over breakfast.

Alerted by a tweet from the wonderful Robert Goddard, without whom I would never manage to keep up to date in my area, I looked at the list of the respondents to the consultation on EU corporate governance. It's always interesting to see which academics take the time to express their views to public consultations: I confess that I never manage to find time. Ian Tonks from Bath was in the list and reading his submission I saw that he has co-authored a paper on gender diversity which looks very interesting so I emailed him to ask for a copy. (In this morning's discussion about the difficulty of getting hold of back issues of journals, a colleague described having to track down a seminal paper via a contact at another university: I did wonder why he hadn't emailed the author directly but perhaps that wasn't possible. I get quite a few direct requests for copies of mine.)

Google Reader flagged up a new post on the FASRI (Financial Accounting Standards Research Initiative) web site. It's such a long time since I taught financial accounting that I am very out of touch but I do try to read the occasional article on the big issues. This is about asset impairment and refers to the "three bucket" approach. What a splendid metaphor! I remember being on a bus back from London continuing by phone a discussion about research methods after a research meeting and trying to explain an idea by referring to transferring data in and out of bins. I don't think I convinced my co-author but when the conversation ended the woman sitting across the aisle from me told me how interesting the idea was and wanted to know more about the research. 

No, chapter 6, I haven't forgotten you...

PS And an hour after I emailed my request, Ian has kindly sent me the paper.

 

 

Monday

Didn't achieve much today -  most of the items on my to-do list got ticked off but they were small things. Almost cleared my inbox and had some success in arranging next week's departmental research meeting. Colleagues seem to respond speedily and positively to invitations via the electronic calendar and I even flushed out two volunteer speakers to fill the vacant slots in the programme. Some progress with paperwork for PhD student and the funding application should at last have all the Faculty approvals to enable it to go through the internal system. Sent the VC and the dean details of last week's ICAEW event. Fulfilled all requests for papers from people I talked to last week.

In the afternoon met up with Austrian lawyer friend who is studying in Oxford this term. I think he is a frustrated academic. I don't know how he is managing to attend lectures and seminars, read and write and also keep up his job back in Austria but he seems very committed. He told me that he has found a German source which indicates that debates were going about unitary or two tier boards in Germany as early as the late 1800s, which I would be very interested to see.

Tomorrow: meetings with students, research leaders meeting and a PDR.

Catching up

Being out and about is very pleasant, very interesting and very tiring. I always collect a pocketful of business cards (I wonder if anyone has researched business card design?) but establishing new relationships requires follow up emails and while I'm out and about my inbox fills up rapidly. Even the ability to deal with email on my phone makes little difference, other than raising my awareness of all the catching up I shall have to do when I get back to base, since I often can't easily access the information I need to answer queries raised.

So Thursday morning was spent catching up with Wednesday's emails, following up with new contacts and trying to complete the reading for Friday's meeting. Back on the bus to London after an early lunch and, as on Wednesday, transferring onto the tube at Hillingdon proved to be a good idea - it seems that there have been traffic problems on the A40 all week. At Chartered Accountants Hall, a meeting with my part-time PhD student to check progress on completion of her registration paperwork and to catch up with her working life in internal audit in financial services. She has also been elected deputy president of her professional association which will keep her busy but provide lots of opportunities for finding interview subjects. She seems to have people around her who are very supportive of her doctoral studies which will be a great help to her. We are both addicted to stationery so as usual we compared notes on notebooks and pens.

A chat with the ICAEW research manager about Friday's meeting which could be complicated and then off to the IT Faculty annual lecture which one of my colleagues helped to organise. He has become something of an expert on open data and was concerned that there seemed to be no accountants considering its implications so I suggested that he talked to ICAEW who responded very enthusiastically and decided to  make it the topic of their annual lecture, asking him to suggest a speaker. The very lively and charismatic Rufus Pollock gave an excellent overview of the subject and we were then given a very pleasant dinner. I caught up with people I had last seen at conferences in far-flung places like Venice and Segovia and met some of the faculty members. Back to the splendid Hoxton hotel for the night.

Up early and back to ICAEW, stopping at the cheap bookshop in Moorgate en route to search for bargains - they had some very interesting but huge coffee table type books greatly discounted but too heavy to carry home on the bus. Resisted popping over the road to Hotel Chocolat for free samples - even with my great liking for chocolate, I can't eat it at 8.30 am!

Checked email in the Business Centre (it's very convenient to be able to do this but I do still miss the old Members and Guests room with its big sofas and old men dozing in corners...) Students with queries: one who is not enjoying his course and wants to change but doesn't say what he isn't enjoying or what he wants to change to; another who seems to want to go back to his home country as soon as his exams have finished in December - no problem with that except that his English is so poor that it is difficult to be sure that this is really his query; and a Masters student telling me that he has a medical resit for his dissertation which is puzzling. I spend some time trying to track down the appropriate rules that could have led to this but have no success on the university web site and eventually forward the message to a colleague who may know more. A flurry of discussion about agenda items for next weeks research leaders' meeting reveals some unexpected issues and possible misinformation but no time to dig further. A couple of useful chats with passing technical staff who I haven't seen for some time before the start of the research board meeting which is lengthy, as usual, but not as difficult as I had anticipated.

A fascinating discussion about the future of accounting as an academic subject: the view from a post-1992 university is rather different and I think quite surprising to colleagues from the other side of the fence where they are only just catching up with some of the issues we have faced for a long time, such as the need to recruit staff wit a professional background who may not have a PhD. Of course they don't know about the annual research methods workshop designed many years ago to meet the needs of such people - well, one of the members present did because he had been a keynote speaker one year but I found myself shuddering at the thought of any of the others taking on that role...

Lunch included crème brulee in tiny glasses but no spoons to eat it with: it had a runny consistency and I was entertained by watching how people dealt with this. Difficult to eat custard with a fork so some of them drank it. An interesting gossip afterwards and then off home. Too tired to head for the bus to Victoria so took a very extravagant taxi - the traffic was heavy so the fare was high but if I travelled to London by train the total travel cost would still be far in excess of the bus and taxi fare combined so I feel justified. I think ICAEW get good value from their expenditure on me but I do find myself occasionally donning my member's hat and wondering about this. (I've asked other staff who are also members whether they too experience this conflict but they look at me as if I'm mad...)

Back home to entertain an overnight guest, a colleague who lives some distance away and has to be on campus very early on Saturday for an open day. Husband produces an excellent meal.

Spend the weekend catching up with domestic chores. The highlight was Saturday night - went to see Hot Club of Cowtown, fantastic as usual. First saw them at the Old Bag Factory in Goshen, Indiana in 2007 ( a memorable evening in more ways than one: darkness in Amish country makes unlit buggies a driving hazard unlike any other...). See them at http://youtu.be/Jr8My5Uo0gE

Wednesday, out and about

Set off for the House of Lords for the Tomorrow's Company reception. Arriving early in Westminster, strolled up Whitehall to look at the horses. Many, many police, far more than usual, setting up for a demonstration about student fees. Decided to risk being the first to arrive at the event but found that there was already a queue at Black Rod's Garden Entrance - security is tight as might be expected but only one person checking so very slow. Chatted to others in the queue  who said that last year on the day of this event it had been raining which was much worse! Spotted several old pals in the queue.

A very warm welcome from my good friend Emma who is COO for Tomorrow's Company - she used to organise events at ICAEW. With the sun shining it was very pleasant on the terrace and the canapes were excellent. Good conversation with Mark Goyder, who founded TC, and his recollections of the Cadbury time. Met an interesting lawyer who surprisingly shared some of my heretical views about NEDs and board diversity, and claimed to have read some of my work. I don't think he was just being kind, he seemed quite familiar with it - trouble is, I no longer am! Stuff I wrote ten years ago is no longer easily retrievable from my memory bank.

Everyone looking at my badge had a comment about OBU, some sort of connection from being the father of one of our MBA administrators, or an adviser to one of our research groups to having a young relative who had studied with us. Several comments about our ACCA link, especially from the CIMA people who were out in force because they have linked up with TC.

The speeches were mercifully short as we had to stand and the marquee had become very crowded and hot. A lot of rather fluffy calls for ethical behaviour and sustainability (I have some sympathy with Simon Jenkins on this in today's Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/08/ethical-fluff-st-pauls-rowan-williams ) I was particularly interested to hear Lisa Buckingham, editor of the Financial Mail, as she wrote a great deal about Cadbury twenty years ago. I spoke to her afterwards: there was a small queue of people wanting to speak to her and she seemed rather pleased to be rescued from someone from UKSIF. She told me that she was with the Guardian at the time - she had been on maternity leave and wanted to work part-time but they weren't keen to let her. She offered to write about corporate governance, convincing her boss that it would be a really important area, and because no-one else was writing on the subject, she managed to concentrate her work in a family-friendly way. She seemed interested in the book so I may ask her for some more detail about her memories of the time.

I didn't linger because I was nervous about getting caught up in the demonstrations so headed back to get the bus. Dealt with email on the journey - it's great to be able to do that on my phone, no need to lug a netbook about. Phone calls bringing me up to date about events back at base - rather pleased I'm out and about this week.

An evening reading papers for Friday's ICAEW research board meeting.

Tuesday

Morning spent at the first ever meeting of research leaders across the university. Caught up with some people I haven't seen for a very long time. Most interesting discussion about the RL role which is interpreted very differently in different faculties.

Home again by 2pm to deal with email. An enquiry about the post doc post - I had completely forgotten that this was being advertised. Prompted me to look at the departmental web page: no updating has yet taken place although the details were passed on two weeks ago.

Completed final amendments to funding application to ICAS and sent all the documents to our wonderful research manager. Caught up with Twitter updates from corporate governance experts - links to more interesting reading bookmarked - but when will they get read?

Monday

A bit fragile today after fainting quite spectacularly yesterday. Spent much of the morning being interviewed by phone by a colleague who is researching PhD supervision. We had a very interesting conversation and the study when complete should make useful reading. Off to the optician to get my glasses repaired - the frame got bent when I collapsed. Fortunately the damage didn't require any expenditure...


Finally sent off the department's research output return and sent a cross note to everyone complaining at how unhelpful they had been by not following simple the instructions as to how to complete the form. I lost patience with the last one which arrived late so I just copied and pasted the information without reformatting. The research administrator came back with a query but I told him to check with the researcher concerned, I'd had enough!

Finished writing a review of an ABR paper this afternoon so sent it off and then dealt with email.

Papers arrived for ICAEW research board meeting on Friday, will have to read them tomorrow.

Plan to meet PhD student in London on Wednesday afternoon, after I've been to the reception at the House of Lords. Will miss meeting called by dean presumably to head off the current concerns of the professors about protecting research hours which have not been officially expressed to him - we have a Deep Throat in our midst!

Useful comments from our research manager on the joint funding application - she is very good at spotting points which could be more strongly emphasised, the things that I tend to take for granted and don't spell out clearly enough. Circulated to team who replied quickly - we all seemed to be working late this evening.Will try to finish that off tomorrow afternoon.

Sunday

Seeing Son's film again at the BFI on Friday I was even more aware of how cleverly he had constructed the story out of hours of interviews, a process very much like qualitative research. The story works on so many levels - a historical record, a study of a particular experience (being in a band), a description of the growth and disbanding (npi) of a powerful nexus and the animosities inherent in that process, an intriguing story with a shadowy powerful figure whose actions and personality underpin the whole structure but who never appears (in a way, it would have spoiled things if he had), a study of the contrast between success and failure and the workings of Fate. Watching some of the protagonists in real life, I am left wondering if the apparent failures aren't much happier than the successful.

Odd moments over the weekend trying to deal with lingering paperwork. I wonder why so many of my colleagues find it impossible to follow simple instructions in providing information. I wonder why they think I bothered to provide instructions at all. Is this wilful subversion or mere carelessness? Whichever, instead of simply cutting and pasting into the document I've been asked to prepare, I have either to spend time reformatting what they have provided or email them asking for the information in the format requested and then wait for them to reply. An expanded department seems to have made the job far more difficult. I must check my timetable to see if my allowance for this has increased! (That's a joke: hours on timetables never bear any relationship to the time the job takes, of course.)

Read article in NYRB by Paul Volcker.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/nov/24/financial-reform-unfinished-business/?page=1

Was attracted to it by the illustrations:

Herscovici/Art Resource

René Magritte: La Fissure, 1949

Rafael Valls Gallery, London/Bridgeman Art Library

Gabriel-Germain Joncherie: Cashier Counter with Coins, 1829

Nothing new in the article, though, and I'm not sure that international accounting standards or auditor independence have much to do with helping us out of the present situation.

Should be able to finish review of paper for ABR and hope to be able to spend Monday on chapter 6. Very busy week ahead, out and about.

Friday

Came in very early in advance of a meeting and used the time to go through the various versions colleagues had sent round of our funding bid to look at Enterprise Performance Management in charities. The internal reviewers had made comments and this ended up with several versions of the document floating about so I checked through all of them to see what had been changed and then tried to sort out some inconsistent referencing. If we get the funding it will be important to manage the way the outputs are written so I shall have to give that some thought. I'm only used to working with one other person at a time and that's difficult enough in terms of matching writing styles. My most frequent co-author, bless him, has been very tolerant over the years of my changes to his style.

I see that two people have looked at this blog today, I wonder who. No-one has left any comments. I don't feel as if I'm writing for an audience, it's more like talking to myself. I've reached a part in "Wilful Blindness" where the author cites lots of research on productivity and how we are far less productive when we're tired but may not notice this. I certainly notice it! It's useful to read back over these entries and remember how it actually felt to be doing all the things I'm recording: I think that my tendency to postpone the tasks that need real concentration is not just procrastination but an inherent recognition that there are times in the day when it would be quite pointless to attempt them as my brain is just not up to it.

Thursday

Well, I managed not to check my email until 11.30 by which time I'd put in more than 3 hours on chapter 6. Well, chapters 5 and 6 really - I found I needed to restructure things. I woke up with really sore eyes, no idea why, but it's been a bit of a problem. Still, I have written a few hundred words and I think they make sense. I'm back into the flow now so it's a pity I won't have much chance to work on it tomorrow. I have to go in for a meeting in the morning and then we're off to London to see Son's documentary at the BFI. Big excitement today - he was interviewed on the Today programme. Of course he hadn't told us and we didn't have the radio on so had to listen to the podcast. He sounded really good. Lots of nice texts, emails and tweets from people who do listen to Radio 4 in the mornings.

Started reading "Wilful Blindness" by Margaret Heffernan. Seems to me that the idea of wilful blindness rather negates the possibility of NEDs, let alone women, having much impact on boards. I see that David Cameron thinks that more women on boards will curb executive pay - hard to understand the reasoning. Reminded me of when Linda and I had to apply for our own jobs because we were on temporary contracts. We both asked to be moved up a grade and the mad head of Accounting told us off because, he said, we were both married and didn't need the money! These days he would have been reported.

Wednesday

Early start for a Scholarly Connections meeting. It's so difficult to find a time when everyone is free that I decided to try offering breakfast. Five colleagues gave brief presentations about their current research and it all went quite well in terms of informing everyone about the different areas of work, especially for our new economist colleagues. And the breakfast wasn't bad although my fried egg sandwich had a runnier yolk than I'd anticipated. Several people seem slightly miffed that they weren't asked to present their work but in 45 minutes there wasn't room for everyone. I'll try to organise a couple of lunchtime meetings along the same lines over the next couple of weeks and see what happens.

Lots of conversations, mostly with anxious people about issues that aren't being properly managed but a delightful chat with a very good friend visiting for an exam board which cheered me up. A personal development review meeting with a newish colleague who is doing all the right things but researches in an area with limited publishing outlets so is inevitably progressing slowly.

Email discussion about statement I drafted after yesterday's profs meeting. Finally got the go-ahead to submit my funding bid - very pleasing to click on "Submit" at last. Our research manager has been brilliant in sorting it all out for me.

An internal call for funding applications is good news but will mean more work for me, helping colleagues with their bids. I think I'll encourage everyone to have potential bids tucked in a drawer ready to pull out when opportunities like this come up: at least they will have done some of the thinking in advance. And it's really good practice for less experienced researchers and those who haven't much experience of bidding. Perhaps I'll give a talk on bidding just for our department as I've done for the grants panel workshop in the past - it could be tailored to applications to the accountancy bodies.

Accepted an invitation to an event to be run by ICAS and BDO at the beginning of next month: "Principles not Rules: a question of action". Much of the most important thinking about financial reporting, auditing and corporate governance has come out of the profession in Scotland, as the Cadbury history shows. Good speakers and a London location convenient for evening travel.

Very interesting book arrived from local library: "Economics of Good and Evil: the quest for economic meaning from Gilgamesh to Wall Street" by Tomas Sedlacek. Apparently it's been made into a play in the Czech Republic. My bedtime reading for the next week or so, I think.

Email cleared as far as possible. I can see that some colleagues are not planning to send me their research output information until the last possible moment before the deadline I set on Friday. This means that I shall have to assemble the information over the weekend in order to get it to the research office by their deadline. I must remember to set a much earlier deadline next time.

Shall spend the evening sorting out papers so that I can get a clear run at chapter 6 tomorrow. WILL NOT LOOK AT EMAIL UNTIL I'VE WRITTEN IT!

Tuesday

So many emails... another request from a journal editor to review a paper but I declined immediately - the topic is too far removed from what I'm doing at the moment to make it sensible to devote time to it when chapter 6 is becoming urgent.

Emailed my kind referees to tell them that the funding body will need to be able to contact them in December or January - all replied very quickly to say it wasn't a problem. Only one is jetting off somewhere exciting and promises to check email regularly. Nice people but no doubt they'll all be after me to review papers, examine PhD students etc in the next few months..

In between a steady stream of visits from first year students I read through an MBA consultancy project report which I was sent by the student as she interviewed me for it. Did I really say what she quotes? More to the point, were the colleagues she interviewed quite so frank in their remarks as she reports? She has made a poor attempt at anonymising both individuals and universities where she collected data and the report is not well structured: I'm glad I didn't have to mark it.

The students all seem to be settling in well, happy with their accommodation, coping with the work and enjoying themselves. One is in her early thirties and I am astonished when she tells me that she has a teenage son. We used to get a great many more mature students than we do now and I miss them. At one stage we had a programme specifically designed for them which I ran for three years and I'm still in touch with a couple of the first group who graduated.

A quick trip to the library to return books - I thought I'd managed the process perfectly but a watching librarian pointed out that I hadn't followed the on screen instructions properly as to where to place the books. Collected another inter library loan and realised that the article would be very useful not only for chapter 6 but also in the review for ABR that I haven't finished yet.

Break for lunch and an interesting chat with Emma, my second cousin, who teaches part-time at Wheatley.

Spend far too much time trying to get to grips with the new letter template in order to put together letters of recommendation so that LSE colleagues can use the ICAEW library. Finally set them out in my own style, print them out, sign them and put them in the post. It all seems so time-consuming now we're so used to email.

Manage to write up notes from yesterday's meeting about PRME and circulate them for comment. Se that an email has arrived with comments on the joint funding project that I had hoped to get sent off this week. At a quick glance the comments seem mainly cosmetic and quite constructive: forward the message to the team and hope to find time later to go through them in detail.

Finally off to a meeting of professors to discuss our concerns about possible changes to our system of protecting research time. Volunteered to write up the statement we plan to produce - another task for this evening

Monday

The extra hour came in handy, allowing me to spend more time on reviewing the paper for ABR. The topic is very interesting and the paper is very well written: it's not often that I get asked to review a paper of this quality and it's taken me some time to reflect on ways in which it could be strengthened. As usual, I'm much more interested in how the research was actually undertaken than in the findings and this is especially so with case studies. The authors managed to get access to significant people and I'd like to know much more about the process of collecting the data. But typically journal articles say very little about this.

Spent the rest of the day on the South Bank and very much enjoyed a performance of Arnold Wesker's "The Kitchen" at the National Theatre. The production was quite balletic in places and left me thinking about how groups of quite dysfunctional  individuals can work together effectively. The idea of senior management being shipped off to experience work in a professional kitchen is quite appealing.

Monday got off to a good start - coffee with a young friend who has recently completed an Oxford DPhil and is now working on a fascinating project shadowing chief execs in the NHS. She told me all about her viva and, not for the first time, I regret not having pursued the project started a long time ago exploring viva experiences. (It was knocked on the head by our then research director who insisted that it wouldn't lead to an output RAEable under Business and Management.) She has sent me her thesis to read -  all 448 pages! She has cited my work on audit committees quite extensively so it will be interesting to see how she has used it.

Snail mail brings a report on risk reporting published by ICAEW which cites my co-authored paper on regulation by disclosure several times - excellent news as I can put this in the REF impact form I've been asked to complete. Slight problem that the paper itself may not make the cut as the journal is one of those which appear low down in the rankings in spite of its clear quality.

Issues about protection of research time have come to a head and after meetings, phone calls and emails I found myself organising a meeting of professors for tomorrow afternoon.

Made some headway on my inbox before chairing a meeting of the PRME task group. We need to produce some recommendations on how the Faculty should pursue the PRME agenda and I had made some notes on this beforehand but the meeting turned out rather differently - a bunch of extremely enthusiastic colleagues who see this as an opportunity to make quite radical changes in student engagement across all courses, the development of the Faculty culture and external relationships. It was a great pleasure to attend a meeting that did not involve anyone expressing anxieties or complaining about anything. Although those attending have a number of individual agendas, PRME provides a useful focus for these. I now have to draft a report which captures the interesting ideas put forward - the task list for Thursday, my working at home day, grows longer and chapter 6 is still calling to me...

Then off to teach a session on literature reviews on the MSc Finance research methods module. Most of the students seemed lively and receptive. I was shocked to find that they don't see the point of keeping themselves informed about business news by reading newspapers: they seemed surprised that anyone should suggest it. A few of them seem to have a clear idea of possible dissertation topics but many don't and seem to think they can knock out a proposal over the Xmas break. I think I shall have to offer to help with marking proposals. I rashly offered to deal with enquiries about literature reviews by email - by the time they come to write them, they will have forgotten everything I told them. In talking about how to read critically, I suggested that they should consider who authors are writing for and was then asked who the audience for their dissertations is - a very perceptive question from a student who told me he did an undergraduate degree in psychology and wants to look at aspects of behavioural finance in his dissertation. The time went very quickly but I was really tired by the end of the afternoon.

Saturday

Cats awake very early so completed comments on dissertation draft and finished reading paper for review. Inbox still contains two requests to complete forms which will take some time and a request to provide a letter of recommendation to enable scholars to use the ICAEW library which will involve seeking out the new rebranded university stationery on Monday.

How shall I use my extra hour this weekend? Work or sleep?

Friday

Late last night a tweet from James McRitchie who runs the excellent site corpgov.net alerted me to a fascinating paper in BJM critiquing agency theory. One of the inter library loans which took me to the library this week is a similar critique from a US scholar which I have only had a chance to skim. Good to see this challenge to the dominant approach. James' link was to an HTML version of the paper and wanting to save a pdf I went into EBSCO to get it and found that that issue of BJM had some fascinating articles on the state of management education in the UK. I sent one of them on to the deans as it mentioned Mike Wallace who is coming to do a workshop for us, at my instigation. He's an important person in the area and a useful contact for us.

Downloaded the articles and then Firefox crashed. Decided to try Chrome. Seems much faster. Spent some time bookmarking sites I use a lot. Late to bed and then started reading "The Sound of Gravity", a novel by Joe Simpson, the mountaineer who wrote "Touching the Void". Completely gripped by it from the first page but began to feel rather cold....

Friday: Early start at the dentist who poked about, took an X-ray and pointed to something nasty that may be lurking and needs sorting out. Made an appointment for three week's time - hadn't realised quite how full my diary is.

Not many emails this morning but time-consuming. A rather unhelpful reply to a query of mine prompted me to spend some time composing a lengthy response raising some fundamental issues about resourcing research. The university reorganisation has led to some very tricky issues about accountability and responsibility which no-one has thought through properly.

A dissertation draft from an undergraduate student which I have promised to feed back on by Monday will need careful reading. And a request from a journal editor to review a paper which is so interesting I dropped everything to read it.

Then a call from Gillian at ICAEW about the progress of a funding proposal. The chance of concentrating on chapter 6 becomes less and less likely as the day goes on...the answer has to be to ignore email entirely.

Thursday

I like this Jonah Lehrer piece on mind wandering:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/10/the-importance-of-mind-wandering/
I'm sure I'm more productive when I have space to think purposelessly. That's when I see connections or when new thoughts pop up, sometimes really obvious ideas that I can't believe I've never thought about before. These days such moments are rare.

Downloaded Andy Haldane's Wincott lecture (http://www.wincott.co.uk/lecture.htm) which looks at the history of banking. Added to the pile of interesting things to read.

Productive morning. Amended my funding proposal after some very helpful feedback from a colleague - it's always very helpful to get comments, it's surprising how one can miss the obvious by having spent a lot of time on the detail. The costs need updating but our wonderful research manager will sort that out for me. Then I went through the latest version of the bid that the team have put together. Emails have been flying about with each of them making changes so I called a halt and said I would deal with the final version. Again, it's surprising how many small things they all managed to miss. A detailed application form is also required so I filled that in and sent it all off to the research manager and the chair of the Faculty grants panel. Our new system requires bids to be circulated for comment to be fed back via the chair. I do hope this process happens quickly!

An email from the editor of a journal saying she is retiring from the role. The journal was set up about 15 years ago in an attempt to foster links between academics and practitioners. My first ever academic publication appeared in it. The original editor was very entrepreneurial and also a very convivial chap - editorial dinners were great fun. But he decided that there was life beyond academia and left, handing over the task to his colleague. She managed to keep it going for a long time, published by her university which meant she did everything from soliciting papers to posting out each issue, and with very little support, until recently it was taken over by Elsevier. The message prompted me to invite her to give a seminar next semester as her research area is CSR and we have people interested in that area.

Another reference request and an email from the former student to say that she has applied to six universities, so I can expect four more! I didn't copy yesterday's so I had to reconstruct something suitable, remembering to save it for the future. More emails asking for information, like how I have I linked my research to my teaching in the last year. This is to tick a box for the annual review. Takes me several minutes to go through my diary and then find specific module numbers. Perhaps I'll keep a note of how many similar requests for information I receive. Or perhaps not: it might be depressing.

Finish the afternoon by catching up with some ICAEW requests - a quick review of an outline research proposal and preliminary comment, and some planning for the next occasion I visit Chartered Accountants Hall in two week's time.

Dentist at 8 am tomorrow - hope she doesn't batter me about too much as I'm planning to get on with chapter 6 afterwards.

Tuesday/Wednesday

Tuesday: excellent time at LSE. Interesting people, intellectually stimulating conversation. Possibility of further research on data collected by the authors of the ICAEW report on activist investors. I'm very interested in the way in which active/activist investors define themselves and are defined by others. The word "activist" seems to have become tainted. And what impact do they have on the role of NEDs? But that will have to wait until the book is finished. Long chat with potential recruit.

Then went on to an audit committee event at ICAEW. A report has been produced jointly with BDO on audit committee reporting. The panel speakers were very good, especially Simon Laffin who has been a NED in some difficult situations - Northern Rock, Mitchell & Butler. Really good wide ranging discussion about the role of audit committees. It would be so interesting to revisit my PhD work to see how things have changed. (I noticed one of my original interviewees at the event - he was a young FD when I talked to him!) But that's another project that there's no time to do. Talked to potential interviewee for NEDs in public sector project - she will be my first port of call if I get the funding.

Arrived home very tired, looked the day's emails, most of which required my action and went to bed without doing anything about them.

Wednesday: started on emails at 6 am and cleared quite a few before heading to the campus. Several conversations, emails and phone calls to get recruitment and selection process moving in the hope of capturing a star. Further meetings with academic advisees - more cheerful Economics students whose only worry seems how to do referencing. Some interesting questions about how they would get feedback, they seem concerned about this.

Spent some time writing a reference for a former student who has applied to do a Masters at LSE. She is certainly ambitious and determined but her grades show that she is much better at exams (both numerical and discursive) than at anything which requires independent study. I was her academic advisor but didn't teach her although she visited me often for advice. Her English improved greatly. from a very weak start. I imagine there must be a lot of competition for places on her chosen courses, though. Completing references online is much easier than having to write letters as we used to.

The flood of emails seems never ending today - queries from a PhD student about completing a form, enquiries about applying for PhD study, notifications of changed meeting times and others of new meetings...
I was supposed to attend a Lord Mayor's Initiative meeting at the Mansion House tomorrow morning but I've sent my apologies as I shall need a clear day to go through the funding bid my colleagues have finally finished tweaking, to rejig my own bid and to get a move on with chapter 6. Have booked in to the nice hotel in Cambridge for two days at the start of December so that we can pull the book together and check any final references with the archive.

Meeting with PhD student after lunch. My co-supervisor had managed to read and comment on the 66 pages. We spent some time deconstructing a diagram that the student was clearly quite wedded to but which really didn't work and sent him away to reshape the literature review so that it supports his thesis properly. It is always a bit baffling for students when they discover that the research process is iterative rather than linear and that you need to keep revisiting what you wrote earlier.

More conversations about staff recruitment, funding bids and conference attendance and a quick trip to the library to collect an inter-library loan before I could leave. 8 am to 5 pm, lunch eaten at my desk while doing email - a long day but little progress on the big stuff.